by Nick Holland
While death and disease was an everyday threat in Haworth itself, we see here that at the end of 1834 Anne and Emily still found a childish bliss in each other’s company, safe within the four walls of the parsonage. That was to change within months, and to change forever, as Anne was sent to join her sister Charlotte at school.
Notes
1. Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father of Genius, p.223
2. Ibid.
3. A summary and explanation of the report and its findings can be found in Haworth in the Brontë Era, B.H. Babbage’s Visit to Haworth, published in Keighley in 1998
4. Atkinson, E., Haworth in the Brontë Era, B.H. Babbage’s Visit to Haworth, p.5
5. Atkinson, E., Haworth in the Brontë Era, B.H. Babbage’s Visit to Haworth, p.7
6. Lister, Philip, Ghosts & Gravestones of Haworth, p.12
7. Brontë, Anne, Agnes Grey, p.4
8. Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, pp.180–1
9. Brontë, Anne, Agnes Grey, p.83
10. Greenwood, Robin, West Lane and Hall Green Baptist Churches in Haworth in West Yorkshire: Their Early History and Doctrinal Distinctives, p.93
11. Green, Dudley, Patrick Brontë Father of Genius, p.133, manuscript of John Greenwood’s diary now held in the Brontë Parsonage Museum
12. The Brontës, Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal, pp.486–7
6
A PURIFICATION OF FIRE
And, O! there lives within my heart
A hope long nursed by me,
(And should its cheering ray depart
How dark my soul would be)
That as in Adam all have died
In Christ shall all men live
And ever round his throne abide
Eternal praise to give;
That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies
And when their dreadful doom is past
To life and light arise.
I ask not how remote the day
Nor what the sinner’s woe
Before their dross is purged away,
Enough for me to know
That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They’ll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.
‘A Word to the Calvinists’
The deaths of Maria and Elizabeth Brontë in 1825, as a result of the living conditions at their Cowan Bridge school, was a pivotal moment in the lives of the four remaining children. Their father, now grieving for his wife and two eldest daughters, was determined to hold on to the family that he had left. He became fiercely protective of Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne, and one way it manifested itself was in their programme of home schooling.
Patrick was, by instinct, a man with a deep reverence for formal education, which is why he would always do all he could to encourage the education of the children within his parishes. He only had to look at his own history to see how schooling could take a child from an impoverished background and set them on course for a completely different life. Nevertheless, the fallout from Cowan Bridge shook him deeply and left him with a moral dilemma: he believed in education for his children, he wanted education for his children, yet he could not countenance, could not cope with, the possibility of the loss of any more of his children. There was only one decision he could make, his children would not be schooled with others, they would remain with him.
Charlotte and Emily at least had some experience of attending school, even if very inadequate and in Charlotte’s case mentally scarring, but for Anne as the years at home passed by it seemed that there was no possibility of her ever gaining a formal education. Whilst attendance at school for the Brontë children had been ruled out, seemingly for good, they were still to receive an education that was as good, if not better, than they could have found elsewhere.
For young women of this time, the first half of the nineteenth century, there were few options available to them. As daughters of a Church of England priest, the Brontës were deemed respectable by society but solidly lower-middle class. Their future lives held only two possibilities: they would become governesses teaching the children of people who belonged to a higher social strata or they would marry somebody of a similar social background. In all likelihood, this meant marriage to a priest within the Church of England.
Life as a governess could be hard and unforgiving, with the governess being almost a pariah in the household in which they worked, too lowly to mix with the master and mistress of the house, yet too elevated to fit in with the other domestic servants. It was a life that Anne would systematically dissect in her first novel Agnes Grey, and it opened the eyes of many of its upper-class readers to what the existence of their own governesses must really be like. One such reader, Lady Amberley, noted in her diary, ‘Read Agnes Grey, and should like to give it to every family with a governess and shall read it through again when I have a governess to remind me to be human.’1
Nevertheless, this was the only likely career open to the sisters, and so the home education that was designed by their father had this primarily in mind. The majority of their teaching was put in the hands of their aunt. An educated woman herself, she would teach them their reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as the essential skills of sewing and dressmaking. They would also learn about cooking and baking, and the everyday domestic management of a home, from Tabby Aykroyd.
Sewing was the skill that Aunt Branwell prized above all others. She would have them sewing for long hours at a time, a task that must have been onerous to all three daughters: Anne and Emily because they would long to be playing outdoors and Charlotte because she, like her father, was very short-sighted and the minute detail required would have tested her to the limit. These lessons, however, provided practical benefits for the present as well as the future. Money was always scarce in the parsonage at this time, and the girls would have to be able to make their own clothing as well as mend them until it became impossible to mend them anymore. They would often be reliant on clothing being sent to them by their godparents or from friends. We can see from some of Charlotte’s letters on such occasions the pain it must have caused to the girls’ pride, but they had little choice but to accept the charity being offered them.
One such example, of many, can be found on 4 July 1834, when she writes to Ellen Nussey:
I must thank you for your very handsome present. The bonnet is pretty, neat and simple, as like the giver as possible. It brought Ellen Nussey with her fair, quiet face, brown eyes, and dark hair full to my remembrance. I wish I could find some other way to thank you for your kindness than words. The load of obligation under which you lay me is positively overwhelming, and I make no return.2
As a young girl Anne was a keen and quick learner. Her character meant that she always wanted to please others, especially her father and her aunt. Although the youngest, she wanted to be seen as on a par with her sisters, and she would never allow herself to be indulged because of her lack of years. One of the crowning moments of a young girl’s education at that time was the sampler. It is a piece of hand-stitched embroidery containing the letters of the alphabet, numbers and a piece of scripture accompanied by decorative flourishes. It was effectively a sewing graduation piece, showing that a girl had mastered the craft and demonstrating what she could do.
Anne’s sampler is now one of the treasures held at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. It is intricate and delicately finished, and her two selections of scripture reveal a lot about Anne as a girl, and the woman she would grow up to be. The first is from Psalm 118: ‘It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.’ Her second choice, from the book of Numbers, is moving and appropriate: ‘Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.’ Underneath this, Anne adds her embroidered signature, ‘Anne Bronte: Finished this sampler Nov 28, 1828.’
Reading lessons would be centred upon the Bible, yet
the children were fortunate in that their aunt, whilst often strict and unbending, was just as much a lover of literature as their father, so she would also encourage them to develop more extensive reading habits.
Supplemental lessons to those given by their aunt would be provided by Patrick Brontë himself. It was he who taught them languages, history and their particular favourite, geography, sometimes allowing them to sit in on the lessons that were given to their brother Branwell. All in all, under the constrained circumstances that had fallen on them, it was as full and rounded an education as they could have had.
Patrick delighted in seeing his daughters happy, and he would indulge them as much as his money allowed. Proof of this can be found in the extra-curricular teaching that he arranged for them. Drawing and painting was a valuable skill for a future governess to have, and from an early age the children displayed a joy of painting and a real talent for it. Recognising this, Patrick arranged for all four of his children to receive tuition from John Bradley, an accomplished painter and art tutor based in Keighley. The results can be seen in some of the fine drawings and sketches that all three sisters left us, as well as in Branwell’s future choice of portrait artist as his career.
The children would have been taught to copy popular paintings of the day, as well as drawing still life and from nature. Anne’s drawings show a particular talent for capturing the personality of the subject, drawing the truth rather than the stylised ideal often portrayed at the time. Still other pictures take on a symbolic nature, showing that Anne was using her drawing to interpret her inner feelings rather than being purely representational.
The sisters also displayed an early appreciation of music. Their father would sometimes take them to listen to concerts put on by the Haworth Operatic Society, as well as to musical concerts in nearby Keighley. Anne and Emily especially had a love of music, and we can imagine their delight when, in late 1833 or during 1834, Patrick Brontë took delivery, much to their surprise, of an upright cabinet piano made by John Green of Soho Square, London. Again, as with many of the material acquisitions of the parsonage, it is likely that a kindly godparent or two helped with the cost of this purchase.
Branwell was already an accomplished player, being used as the organist at the parish church as well as being a keen flautist, and he would have been delighted to teach his sisters. The role of tutor appealed to his pride, and the compliments his sisters would have paid him as he showed off his skills would have been the greatest payment he could have asked for. Soon, however, both Anne and Emily were as proficient at the piano as he was.
Emily in particular was said to be a very accomplished pianist for one who was largely self-taught, although a tutor known to Patrick did provide them occasional music lessons in the parsonage. Ellen Nussey, always one who was moderate and precise in her judgements on people, was so impressed that she described Emily as playing ‘with brilliance and precision’.3 Ellen then described Anne: ‘She also played, but preferred soft melodies and vocal music. She sang a little; her voice was weak, but very sweet in tone.’4
It’s easy to imagine the happy times that the two sisters, who loved each other’s company so much, must have spent playing the piano together, Emily playing the left side of the keyboard and Anne the right. When we read Ellen’s assessment of both Emily and Anne’s prowess, it’s worth remembering that standards of piano playing among the public, or at least the portion of the public who could afford a piano, were much greater then than they are today. Therefore the ability of both girls would probably be viewed as exceptional to a modern listener. Charlotte, alas, was never to master the piano, as her poor eyesight made it difficult for her to read the music as she played, even when wearing the small circular glasses that she would adopt when not in company.
Whilst Emily was the better pianist, it was Anne who was the true music lover of the family. Throughout her later days as a governess, she would spend any money that she deemed spare on sheet music, so that she had an ever-expanding repertoire. She copied many of these scores by hand, and we still have her music books full of her notations. The music that she played, and her understanding and adaptation of it, shows that her skills were far above what could be called ‘ordinary’. She had a particular love for light opera, which required skill and delicacy from both the pianist and the singer, and we can see that among her very favourite composers were Rossini, Weber and Mozart.
As Ellen has confirmed, Anne did not simply play, she sang along as well. Always a quiet speaker, as a result of the shyness that she fought so hard to overcome, she was a quiet singer too, so would have modulated the volume of her piano playing accordingly. Quiet though Anne was, she was also a beautifully melodic singer. Patrick in particular would love to listen to his youngest daughter sing, and he would often call for it at the end of hard and wearing days.
We see Anne’s love for these activities, and the appreciation of her father, in Agnes Grey when she describes the heroine’s melancholy preparation for leaving home: ‘I had played my last tune on the old familiar piano, and sung my last song to papa.’5
By this time, the girls were in their teens and were adequate sewers and dressmakers, excellent at drawing, had well-developed musical talents, were avid readers and very keen writers, and had at least a basic knowledge of all the subjects they could be expected to know. Nonetheless, Patrick still worried that without at least some formal education they might struggle in their future pursuit of a life as a governess.
By 1831, six years had passed since the deaths of Maria and Elizabeth. The scars still ran deep, but time can be a great healer. When the Atkinsons suggested that they would like to pay for their goddaughter Charlotte to go to boarding school, he considered it seriously. He researched it thoroughly, and found that the suggested school, Roe Head, was very different to Cowan Bridge. The woman in charge of the school, Miss Margaret Wooler, was a caring and enlightened woman. The school itself was well maintained, with adequate provisions given to the pupils. Best of all it was situated in the hills above the village of Mirfield, a short walk from Hartshead where Patrick had once been priest and where his daughters Maria and Elizabeth had been born. Patrick knew the local clergy, and his good friends the Franks were also nearby and could be relied upon to keep a close eye on his daughter.
Thus it was that in July 1831 Charlotte made the journey to her second school, and she would find it very different to her first. It was a place where girls were encouraged to learn, free from the fear of physical punishment and, even more importantly, free from the physical hunger and risk of disease that always hung over Cowan Bridge.
Charlotte left the school in 1832 and returned to Haworth, but in her year at Roe Head she had studied diligently and learned a lot that she would later pass on to her sisters. There were only nine other pupils at the time Charlotte was in attendance, but two of them, Ellen Nussey of Birstall and Mary Taylor of Gomersal, would go on to be her lifelong friends.
Ellen Nussey would become a regular visitor to the Haworth Parsonage, and in time she would become a close confidante of Anne and Emily as well as Charlotte. Ellen herself had much in common with the Brontës: she was a thoughtful, intelligent woman from a large middle-class family whose fortune was rather less than outward appearances suggested. She had only one living parent, as her father had died when she was young. She too had a brother who would suffer from alcohol and drug addiction, and he would spend long periods in a mental asylum. Although described as being pretty, she never married and seems to have had a pact with Charlotte that they would grow old together as ‘old maids’. It is this in part that explains her fury when Charlotte later became engaged, an event that created a year-long hiatus in their communications, which had otherwise been conducted on an almost daily basis. She lived to the ripe old age of 80, and it is largely thanks to her collection of letters and loyalty to the Brontës that we know so much about them.
Ellen made her first visit to see Charlotte in Haworth in July 1833, and she would sta
y for three weeks. Her record of the event is detailed and illuminating. Here is her description of the parsonage itself, reflecting Patrick’s distrust of curtains and drapery:
There was not much carpet anywhere except in the sitting room, and on the centre of the study floor. The hall floors and stairs were done with sand stone, always beautifully clean as everything about the house was … Scant and bare indeed many will say, yet it was not a scantness that made itself felt. Mind and thought, I had almost said elegance, but certainly refinement, diffused themselves over all, and made nothing really wanting.6
Ellen also described the gardens, again noting how bare it was, except for a ‘few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their own fruit garden’.7
She was a very clear and perceptive judge of character, and she noted how methodical Patrick could be. At eight every night he would gather the family for prayers. At nine he locked the front door and went to bed, always pausing to wind up the majestic grandfather clock on the middle of the stairs. His last call would be to his children, who stayed up later than him, telling them not to be late to bed. Ellen noted how cold and stern Reverend Brontë could appear, but she detected the warmth that he hid underneath this front. In Ellen’s view it was a tragedy that Patrick had become a priest, when he would have been more suited as a soldier. She was less forgiving in her opinion of Aunt Branwell, although she did note that she treated her favourite niece Anne kindly.
Of Emily, then just turning 15, Ellen reveals:
Emily had by this time acquired a lithesome, graceful figure. She was the tallest person in the house, except her father. Her hair, which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte’s, was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes, kind, kindling, liquid eyes; but she did not often look at you: she was too reserved. She talked very little.8