In Search of Anne Brontë

by Nick Holland

  There were many reasons for Anne to remain at home, but she secretly yearned to try the life of a governess again. Her family may not have judged her as a failure, but this was still the opinion she kept within her own heart, and other than the final one which would one day come, this was the only judgement that would ever matter to her. As the months passed by since her departure from Blake Hall, she began to take a more dispassionate view of events there. Surely the monstrous children she had taught were one-offs? In another position, so she told herself, she was likely to find charges with a completely different nature.

  Anne reveals this reasoning in the sixth chapter of Agnes Grey, entitled ‘The Parsonage Again’:

  I’m sure all children are not like theirs … However, even if I should stumble on such a family again, which is quite unlikely, I have all this experience to begin with, and I should manage better another time; and the end and aim of this preamble is, let me try again.3

  Her family were astonished at her decision, and her conviction, but they had already learned that their quiet little Anne could not easily be dissuaded once she had set her heart on something. And, indeed, as Agnes’ father acknowledges, her skills were not commonly found in other parsons’ daughters.

  Anne now had concrete experience of looking after children, and she had departed from Mrs Ingham on good enough terms to ensure she could receive a fair character reference from her. Her academic ability was well above what would be expected of a governess, her knowledge of Latin especially was excellent and she spoke and read it better than either of her sisters. She was well versed in the scriptures. She had the necessary attainments at needlework and was a fine painter, and she could also play the piano and sing well. Out of all the children, much against initial expectations, it was Anne who was the one most equipped to succeed in the role of governess.

  In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë tells how the young Jane, who by then has graduated to being a teacher at Lowood School, decided that she would like to be a governess. To chase this dream she places an advertisement in a local paper. Similarly, when Jane announces that she must quit Rochester and Thornfield Hall, he asks her how she will find a position. She answers, ‘I will advertise’. We don’t have to look far to find where Charlotte got her inspiration from, as this was exactly what Anne did in early 1840.

  Advertisements for situations wanted at the time were often placed under pseudonyms or, alternatively, respondents were asked to contact the newspaper directly, so it can be difficult to trace the existence or otherwise of a particular advertisement. One advertisement from The Leeds Mercury, a paper that we know the Brontës took, of 15 February 1840, however, catches the eye. Could this be the advertisement that Anne placed?

  A young lady, in her 21st year, is anxious to re-engage herself as GOVERNESS in a private family. She is competent to give instruction in French and Music, with the several branches of a solid and polite education. She has no objection to travel. Salary not so much considered as a comfortable home.4

  The advert succinctly stated Anne’s qualifications and merits, and it bore fruit. In the spring of 1840 she was contacted by the Robinson family of the North Riding of Yorkshire. They owned Thorp Green Hall, a mansion situated in Little Ouseburn, a dozen miles from the city of York itself. They had four girls and one boy aged between 9 and 15 years old, and a baby daughter, and they came from exalted stock, being related to the Marquis of Ripon. Mr Edmund Robinson himself was a reverend, having taken holy orders, although he wasn’t a practising priest.

  This position must have seemed very propitious to Anne. The fact that the master of the household was also a clergyman would have vouched for his good character, as far as Anne was concerned, and she would also have been pleased that the children were older than those she had encountered at Blake Hall. Surely by their ages they would already have a decent basic education and be more morally disciplined, and thus Anne could use her time constructively in furthering their achievements?

  Thorp Green Hall was much further away from Haworth than Mirfield was, at a distance of around 40 miles, but this in itself would serve to strengthen her resolve to stay once she had arrived. There was also the attraction of nearby York and the beautiful York Minster that she had heard about from her father and which she longed to see for herself. One final advantage was that she was offered a wage of £50 per year, double what she had been paid by the Ingham family; this meant that she would be able to send money back to her family, as well as allowing herself the occasional luxury such as purchases of sheet music. She accepted the position and commenced her duties on 8 May 1840.

  If the first part of Agnes Grey is inspired by Anne’s memories of Blake Hall, the second part is inspired by Anne’s time at Thorp Green Hall. We have to be careful not to take Agnes Grey as autobiographical in its entirety – Anne is a masterful creator of fiction after all – yet we do ourselves and Anne a disservice if we fail to discern the truth that is hidden within it. For Horton Lodge and its comings and goings within Agnes Grey we can read Thorp Green Hall, and for the Murray family of the novel, the Robinsons of the real world.

  There are many aspects of the novel that are copied straight from the daily life that Anne encountered at Little Ouseburn and beyond: the location and setting of the hall, the number of children and their ages, the character and history of the master and mistress of the house, the sojourns to the seaside. There are also scattered clues as to Anne’s life while a governess for the Robinson family, and it was a life of deep contrasts, from swooping highs to crashing lows.

  Thorp Green Hall itself was a large and imposing building that had been through various guises since it was built in Tudor times. It had large and beautifully manicured gardens, and winding pathways that led past gently rolling water features. The grounds had once been home to a monastery, but all that remained of it by the time Anne arrived in May 1840 was a solitary building known as the Monk’s Lodge. It should not be thought that this ‘lodge’ is a tiny, cloistered hut, as it is a fine and spacious property in its own right. It is all that is left of the buildings that Anne would have known during her five years of service with the Robinsons, and it was also to become very familiar to another of the Brontës, as we shall later see. On the site of the once grand hall itself now stands a newer building called Thorp Underwood Hall. It has long been claimed that a fire destroyed the original building, but recent research by architectural historian Helier Hibbs concludes that the hall was demolished by its then owner Mr Slingsby to make way for his new residence, the construction of which began in 1902.5

  Whilst many may find the gentrified countryside around Little Ouseburn charming, it was utterly at odds with Anne’s tastes. It is completely flat for miles around, offering uninterrupted views of grassy glades and pastures, but there are no hills to climb and no moors to explore. Running alongside Thorp Green Hall is Moss Hill Lane, and it would be harder to imagine a greater misnomer for any street.

  Anne would have noticed the isolation of Thorp Green Hall as she approached it in the carriage carrying her and her meagre belongings of clothing, writing materials and perhaps her favourite music scores. The charming village of Whixley is passed and there then follows 2 miles of level nothingness, broken only by sporadic cottages belonging to agricultural labourers.

  If the terrain did little to cheer Anne, she hoped that the company of Mr and Mrs Robinson themselves would be much more agreeable. These were people with aristocratic breeding, as opposed to the trade inspired riches of the Inghams. Anne was convinced that they would know how to treat a governess well, with respect and propriety, and with an acknowledgement that she was not to be treated like the other servants. On this count she was to be badly wrong.

  Edmund Robinson was not a man who appreciated the subtleties of social distinctions. For him there was his family and those of a similar or higher social strata, and little else mattered. He loved the country pursuits of hunting, fishing and riding, and these he would in turn pass on to his children. W
hilst he had obtained holy orders, he did nothing to exercise the duties that he was entitled to. The church records of Holy Trinity, Little Ouseburn show that he only officiated there on six occasions, five of which were for the christenings of his own children. In his absence, the incumbent of the church was a Reverend Edward Lascelles. Lascelles was a vain and uncompromising vicar, giving glory to himself as much as to God, and as such he was unpopular with the local churchgoers.

  Edmund Robinson, a 41-year-old country squire, was the undoubted master of this little corner of the North Riding of Yorkshire. He was a loud, confident man who insisted on getting his own way, and as such he needed a wife that corresponded to a man of his stature. He thought he had found just the woman in Lydia Gisborne. Lydia was from a distinguished Lichfield family and had been a highly sought after bride. As she was later to impress on her daughters, she believed it was essential to pick a husband with your head, based upon his wealth and social standing, rather than your heart. In this sense at least, Mr and Mrs Robinson were perfectly matched.

  Mrs Robinson was the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Gisborne, the Canon of Durham and a man who possessed significant personal wealth. She was praised for her beauty as a young woman, and her looks could still catch eyes and break hearts decades later. Anne describes the character Mrs Murray, without doubt based upon her, as a ‘handsome, dashing, lady of forty, who certainly required neither rouge nor padding to add to her charms’.6 The veracity of this description can be seen in a surviving portrait of Mrs Robinson. She looks coyly to the left, but a smile plays upon her lips and her averted eyes glimmer. Her neckline is daringly open, and diamond earrings hang on either side of her fine face. This is a woman who could be the hunter rather than the hunted, when she chose to be so.

  Upon Anne’s arrival at Thorp Green Hall they greeted her not with the bonhomie she had hoped for and expected, but with a cool reserve. Tired after a long journey Anne was shown up to her room, where she spent the night alone and in tears. The die had been cast, she must make the best she could of things, come what may.

  In the morning, Anne descended the sweeping staircase and was introduced to the Robinson children. The eldest girl, Lydia, was nearly 15 and already full of the vanity and self-regard that possessed her mother. Next came Elizabeth, known as Bessie, aged 13. As Lydia took after her mother, Bessie took after her father. She loved to ride and to feel the wind blowing through her hair. There next came the daughter Mary, aged 12, who would spend most time as a pupil of Anne’s during her time at Thorp Green, and then there was the only son, 8-year-old Edmund. Anne’s duty would be to teach him Latin so that he could pass an entrance exam before entering formal schooling.

  There was also a baby, the 2-year-old Georgiana Jane. Anne would have loved nothing more than to dote on such a young child, equating the innocence of the very young to the innocence of the animals she adored, but it was not to be. Tragedy struck within the first months of Anne’s tenure, and little Georgiana died on 15 March 1841.

  Anne had been right to assume that other children could not be like the Inghams. In their own way, the Robinson troupe, who had an ingrained sense of their own superiority, could be difficult, but they were not cruel and vicious as Cunliffe and Mary had been at Blake Hall. Nevertheless, Anne despaired of them from the first.

  She had expected children of their ages to be much more advanced at their lessons than they actually were, but they possessed only rudimentary skills when it came to reading and writing, and they had little knowledge of the wider world around them. Rather than being engaged to tackle this ignorance, she was encouraged to preserve it. Mrs Robinson wanted her girls to learn perfect needlework, art, singing and music. These were all subjects that Anne could, and did, tutor them in, but she had hoped to teach them about history and geography, literature, languages and religion too. These were deemed superfluous skills in the hunt for a distinguished husband and so were made to play second fiddle to more superficial studies.

  If Anne was disappointed at their educational accomplishments, she was even more disappointed at their moral accomplishments. She wanted young girls to be quiet, serious, thoughtful, caring and concerned with the world to come as much as the one they were living in. In short, she wanted them to be as she had been just a few years previously, but the Robinsons could hardly have been more different.

  They loved the frivolous things in life, and serious things could be hanged. They thought nothing of flirting with men, and Lydia junior’s primary concern was her appearance and Bessie’s, doing whatever she pleased, whenever she pleased. These characteristics were anathema to Anne and were reproduced in the characters of Rosalie and Matilda in Agnes Grey.

  Although not acting deliberately to make the life of their governess as difficult as possible, as her previous charges in Mirfield had, nevertheless they could not to be kept to a regular timetable. Lessons were held whenever the children felt they had nothing better to do. Anne was left in little doubt that it was the children who were in charge of the governess, rather than the governess in charge of the children. At times they would insist on being taught outside, where Anne would have to sit on the wet grass. This caused her to catch frequent colds, a condition she would always be susceptible to, which in turn exacerbated her asthma. With characteristic reserve and self-denial, Anne never complained about this treatment, but what hurt her most was that the children did not even realise they were being unfair or self-centred.

  In these early days and months at Thorp Green, Anne felt the black clouds of despair descend once more. Although unfortunately the letters no longer remain, she must have written of these feelings to Charlotte and Emily, for we have letters from Charlotte to Ellen and others that talk of how Anne is being treated like a slave by the Robinsons and expressing her concerns for her health.

  One direct correspondence we do have on this matter is Anne’s diary paper of 30 July 1841. It was Emily’s birthday, but the two sisters were apart and for the first time wrote separate diary papers to mark the occasion. Emily’s piece is upbeat and talks of future plans being hatched for the sisters as a whole, as well as containing updates from Gondal. She closes by ‘sending from far an exhortation of courage, boys, courage, to exiled and harassed Anne, wishing she was here’.7

  Anne’s diary paper is a very different matter. It is an epistle of despair, weighed down by the concerns of today and fears for tomorrow. Looking back to the last diary paper, written as their tradition dictated, four years earlier, Anne writes:

  What will the next 4 years bring forth? Providence only knows. But we ourselves have sustained very little alteration since that time. I have the same faults that I had then, only I have more wisdom and experience, and a little more self-possession than I then enjoyed.8

  She also notes that she has ‘seen the sea and York Minster’, these being the highlights of that four-year period. These indeed, were things that Anne loved greatly. York Minster is a vast cathedral that dates from the eleventh century, although frequently remodelled and expanded in the centuries that followed. It was home to the Archbishop of York, the second highest figure in the Church of England. At that time the archbishop was the aristocratic Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, a man in his late eighties who had already been in the seat for thirty-four years and who had often been in correspondence with Patrick Brontë on religious and social matters.

  York Minster is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, and the exterior must have been staggering to a young woman who had never seen anything approaching such size before. The interior is even more awe inspiring, and it can be as breathtaking to tourists today as it was to Anne in 1841. She would sit quietly on a bench at the rear of the church, looking up to the lavishly embossed and decorated ceiling, and the stained glass windows depicting biblical scenes. This was an earthly depiction of heaven, and as Anne sat transfixed in silent wonder it would often bring tears to her eyes.

  The summer of 1840 was the first time that Anne accompanied the Robinson fami
ly on their annual sojourn to Scarborough, and the first time she had seen the sea. It was to capture her mind and heart in the same way that the moors captured Emily’s, and it was to remain a spiritual ideal for Anne right up until the very last moment.

  In the year leading up to the 1841 diary paper, Anne had made significant progress at Thorp Green Hall. She had enough money to buy the music that she so loved, she had seen the wonders of York Minster and fallen in love with the sea at Scarborough. Edmund and Lydia Robinson, while still retaining the reserve they thought proper owing to the difference in class, were genuinely impressed with their new governess. This is evidenced by them agreeing to her later suggestion that Branwell could be brought in as a new tutor for their son, with all the dreadful consequences that would bring. She was even making headway with the girls, both in terms of their education and their behaviour, forging the moral backbone that Anne was so keen on establishing.

  At the close of chapter seven of Agnes Grey, she says that the girls had become less insolent and had begun to show some signs of esteem. There then follows a section that is very telling, and very different to anything else in the writing of Anne or either of her sisters:

  Miss Grey was a queer creature. She never flattered, and did not praise them half enough; but whenever she did speak favourably of them, or anything belonging to them, they could be quite sure her approbation was sincere. She was very obliging, quiet, and peaceable in the main, but there were some things that put her out of temper: they did not care much for that, to be sure, but still it was better to keep her in tune; as when she was in a good humour she would talk to them, and be very agreeable and amusing sometimes, in her way; which was quite different to mamma’s, but still very well for a change. She had her own opinions on every subject, and kept steadily to them – very tiresome opinions they often were; as she was always thinking of what was right and what was wrong, and had a strange reverence for matters connected with religion, and an unaccountable liking to good people.9