Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  52. CDSAR, nos. 17 and 18.

  53. See, for example, those for daughters of two of Patrick’s friends: Margaret Plummer, aged 14, ‘Reads very badly – Writes badly – Ciphers very little – Works pretty well – Knows nothing of Grammar, Geography, History, French, Music or Drawing’; her sister, Mary, who entered the school in 1828 aged 15 ‘Reads, spells, & writes very badly – works badly – Knows nothing else’; similarly, 10–year-old Harriet Jenkins ‘Reads badly – Writes none – Ciphers none – Works but little – Knows nothing of Grammar, Geography, History or Accomplishments’: ibid., nos. 9, 14 and 132.

  54. ‘A.H.’, Littell’s Living Age, 15 Sept 1855 [BST:16:83:209]; CDSAR, nos 17 and 18; Ledger of the Clergy Daughters’ School, 26 Jan 1825: MS WDS/38/1 p.13, CRO, Kendal; PB to ECG, 20 June 1855: MS EL B121 p.4, Rylands [LRPB, 234].

  55. CDSAR no. 9 and 14. Thomas Plummer had officiated at baptisms and burials in May 1819 after Charnock’s death and as recently as 23 May 1824 had baptized 3 chil-dren for Patrick: Baptisms, Haworth; Burials, Haworth; he is listed as headmaster of the Free Grammar School in Keighley in Pigot & Co.’s National Commercial Directory (1828–9), 989. Maria gave a ‘small needlework’ to ‘my cousin Margaret’ when they were both at ‘Casterton’ (the later name of the Clergy Daughters’ School), according to Miss Dixon to Mr Butler Wood, 21 Oct 1895: MS DB 28/23, WYAS, Bradford. Margaret Plummer is the only pupil with that forename in CDSAR. The present is described as a needlecase in F.C. Galloway, A Descriptive Catalogue of Objects in the Museum of the Brontë Society at Haworth (Bradford, 1896), 27.

  56. CDSAR no. 30; ‘A.H.’, Littell’s Living Age, 15 Sept 1855 [BST:16:83:209]; ‘My father and mother called to see them at school at Casterton [see above n.55] on their wedding tour Sept 1824 and in my mother’s account book at that time is entered 3Miss Brontes 2/6 [2s. 6d.] each’: Elizabeth Franks note, n.d.: MS 58 C.i, University of Sheffield.

  57. [Report of the] School for Clergymen’s Daughters, 5. Five weeks in the summer was standard for boarding schools as parents could not afford to bring their children long distances home more than once a year: even then, as at Cowan Bridge, some had to be left at school throughout the annual holiday, for which they were charged a guinea: Ibid., 5; Slugg, 125. The overlooking of the quarterly letter home was also standard practice: ibid., 168.

  58. CDSAR, no.30.

  59. CB to WSW, 5Nov 1849: MS n.l. [LCB, ii, 279]; ‘A.H.’, Littell’s Living Age, 15 Sept 1855 [BST:16:83:210].

  60. Ibid., 209. Andrews had, of course, the benefit of hindsight and a desire to clear the school of any suggestion of mistreatment of its most famous pupil.

  61. LM, 4 Sept 1824 p.3.

  62. PB, A Sermon Preached in the Church of Haworth … in Reference to an Earthquake (Bradford, T. Inkersley, 1824), 5–6[Brontëana, 211–12].

  63. Mrs H. Rhodes to J.A. Erskine Stuart, [1887]: MS BS xi, 49 pp.1–2, BPM.

  64. LM, 11 Sept 1824 p.3.

  65. PB, A Sermon Preached in the Church of Haworth … in Reference to an Earthquake, 11 [Brontëana, 215].

  66. LI, 9 Sept 1824 p.2 and LM, 11 Sept 1824 p.3, both quoting letters received from Patrick.

  67. Ibid.

  68. Ibid.; LI, 22 Sept 1824 p.3 more conservatively, and probably more accurately, says that 200 horses passed through the Stanbury toll-bar on their way to Crow Hill on 12 September.

  69. PB, LM, 18 Sept 1824 p.4. Patrick also wrote on 13 September to the Leeds Intelligencer on the same lines but suggesting that the land at Crow Hill was continuing to sink and the cavity was now nearly a mile across: PB, LI, 16 Sept 1824 p.3[LRPB, 52–4]. LRPB omits Patrick’s other published letters on this subject.

  70. PB, A Sermon Preached in the Church of Haworth … in Reference to an Earthquake, 5, 15 [Brontëana, 211, 218].

  71. ‘JPJ’, Liverpool Mercury, reprinted in the Westmoreland Advertiser & Kendal Chronicle, 25 Sept 1824 p.4. The latter had also reprinted on 11 Sept 1824 Patrick’s original account from LI, 9Sept 1824 p.2. As it was the local paper for Cowan Bridge, one wonders whether Wilson saw it and used it as an ‘improving example’ to the girls in the school.

  72. Inkersley had printed Patrick’s The Cottage in the Wood and The Maid of Killarney, Buckworth’s Cottage Magazine, Morgan’s Pastoral Visitor and Fennell’s A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Rev. John Crosse. A story that the young Charlotte accompanied Patrick to Inkersley’s and corrected his proofs while he talked politics with the printer is apocryphal as she was then away at school: Scruton, 66–7.

  73. PB, The Phenomenon, or, An Account in Verse, of the Extraordinary Disruption of a Bog (Bradford, T. Inkersley, 1824), 12 [Brontëana, 208]. Patrick’s benevolent view of divine judgement contrasts sharply with Wilson’s terrible and terrifying doctrine: both were writing for children yet the difference in emphasis is almost irreconcilable. See below, p.158 for one of Wilson’s stories.

  74. EJB, ‘High waving heather, ’neath stormy blasts bending’, MS Bon 127 p.18, BPM [JB SP, 42, 120–1].

  75. PB to Mr Mariner, 10 Nov 1824: MS n.l. [LRPB, 54].

  76. [Nancy Garrs], IllustratedWeeklyTelegraph, 10 Jan 1885 p.1.

  77. Herbert, ‘Charlotte Brontë: Pleasant Interview with the Old French Governess of This Famous Author’: special correspondence to ‘The Post’: typescript of original cutting from scrapbook of Mary Stull, a descendant of Sarah Garrs. BPM; the locks of hair, mounted on a board, are HAOBP:J81, BPM. Mrs Brontë’s is dark brown with a tinge of auburn, Branwell’s distinctly ginger and Patrick’s, added in 1861, is white.

  78. CDSAR no.44; ‘A.H.’, Littell’s Living Age, 15 Sept 1855 [BST:16:83:209]. WG CB, 10 and WG EB, 7 suggest Emily travelled alone in the company of the coach guard like the young Jane Eyre. It is inherently improbable that Patrick would consign his youngest schoolage child to the care of a guard when he had personally taken the older girls. On 25 November, the day Emily entered the school, there was a burial and baptism at Haworth church and for the first time since July, Patrick did not officiate, securing the services of Revd Bernard Greenwood, headmaster of Oxenhope Grammar School, in his stead. This suggests to me that he had off-loaded his duties so that he could escort Emily himself: Burials, Haworth; Baptisms, Haworth.

  79. ECG, Life, 61 quoting Miss Evans; Miss Evans to PB, 23 Sept 1825: MS p.1 in private hands; CDSAR no.44; Ledger of the Clergy Daughters’ School, 26 Nov 1824: MS WDS/38/1p.13, CRO, Kendal.

  80. CB, Jane Eyre, 60; ‘CMR’ to ABN, 26 May 1857: MS in private hands. The list of clothes in the Entrance Rules does not include boots, only shoes and pattens; gloves (which Jane Eyre did not have) were also on the list: [Report on the] School for Clergymen’s Daughters, 5. Attendance at Tunstall chapel was ended the year after the Brontës left, the girls transferring to the newly refurbished Leck chapel which was only half a mile from the school: Chadwick, 80.

  81. ‘CMR’ to ABN, 26 May 1857: MS p.2, in private hands.

  82. CB to WSW, 28 Oct 1847: MS MA 2696 R-V p.2, PM [LCB, i, 553]. When Gaskell visited Charlotte in September 1853 ‘We talked over the old times of her childhood; of her elder sister’s (Maria’s) death –/ just like that of Helen Burns in “Jane Eyre;” of those strange starved days at school;’: ECG to unidentified, [end Sept 1853]: [C&P, 249].

  83. CB, Jane Eyre, 56.

  84. ECG, Life, 58. A blister was an application which literally brought the skin out in blisters; it was intended to draw internal poisons to the surface and was widely used in consumptive cases. The informant was surely Charlotte herself: see above, n.82.

  85. ‘CMR’ to ABN, 26 May 1857: MS p.3, in private hands. For those who were grateful to Wilson see Sarah Baldwin to HG, 13 June 1857 p.6 and Maria Gauntlett who, despite complaining so much about the food, declared herself ‘under great obligations to the School for the sound education she received & the judicious discipline, moral & intellectual, under which the pupils were placed and that she always expresses herself grateful to Mr Wilson for much personal kindness’ ‘Clericus’
to ABN, July 1857: MS p.4, in private hands.

  86. Wilson had been warned as early as 1815 by no less a person than Charles Simeon that his views were ‘unduly Calvinstic’ and had been refused ordination by the bishop of Chester on those grounds: CB, Jane Eyre, Clarendon Edn., ii, 621; Pollard and Hennell, Charles Simeon (1759–1836), 164.

  87. William Carus Wilson, The Child’s First Tales (Kirkby Lonsdale, 1836), 47. The story is a peculiarly apt one for the rebellious Jane and her equally passionate creator but such exemplary horror stories were not uncommon at the time and are still published by some Evangelicals today.

  88. William Carus Wilson, The Children’s Friend (Dec 1826).

  89. The Cowan Bridge copy of Richard Baxter, Dying Thoughts, with Meditations from Owen (London, 1822), inscribed on flyleaf ‘No 15 Library Clergy School 5 March 1825’ is MS WDS/38/4, CRO, Kendal.

  90. Hymns for Infant Minds, by the authors of ‘Original Poems’, ‘Rhymes for the Nursery’ &c (London, 1825), inscribed on the flyleaf ‘To Miss Turner For attention to Spelling 2nd Class. December 19th 1826’: HAOBP: bb198, BPM.

  91. CDSAR, no.17. The ledger shows a charge of 8½d. for a letter on 21 February 1825 though it presumably dates back before Maria’s removal from the school on 14 February: Ledger of the Clergy Daughters’ School, 21 Feb 1825: MS WDS/38/1 p.13, CRO, Kendal.

  92. This quotation from a letter from Patrick is recorded in the margin of CDSAR no.17.

  93. Burials, Haworth. Patrick did not cease taking duty as he had done after his wife’s death: he performed burials on 7 and 10 May, between Maria’s death and funeral, and resumed his ordinary duties with a burial the day after her funeral: ibid. Maria’s death is noticed in LM, 14 May 1825 p.3.

  94. Chadwick, 78 quoting a relative of Wilson; CB, Jane Eyre (Clarendon Edn), ii, 616.

  95. Ledger of the Clergy Daughters’ School, 31 May 1825: MS WDS/38/1p.13, CRO, Kendal. Elizabeth’s fare cost 16s. There is no record of any letter, so presumably Patrick was not informed that his daughter was coming home; had he known he could have arranged for Charlotte and Emily to accompany her instead of having to travel up to fetch them himself the next day.

  96. Chadwick, 78; CDSAR nos.30 and 44. Gaskell mistakenly believed Patrick had sent Charlotte and Emily back to school after the deaths of their sisters which did nothing to improve her already dim view of his parental role: ECG, Life, 58, 62.

  97. CDSAR no.18; LM, 18 June 1825 p.3 where it says she died of an ‘affection [sic] of the lungs’; Burials, Haworth.

  98. CB, Shirley, 448. Emma’s status is not clear but Charlotte originally intended her to be an orphan.

  99. See, for example, EJB, Wuthering Heights, 242.

  100. Her father, an alcoholic, dies in the course of the novel, having shown no inter-est in her: AB, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 256.

  101. PBB to Editor of BM, [8] Dec 1835: MS 4040 pp.1–2, NLS [L&L, i, 153]. Branwell remembered incorrectly: the passage was from ‘Christmas Dreams’ which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine in January 1828, two and a half years after his sisters’ deaths. I suspect he confused the timing of the article with that of ‘The Twin Sisters’, a somewhat turgid poem on the death from consumption of a girl coincidentally named Maria, whose twin sister Anna, unable to bear life without her, also dies. This poem was published in BM, xvii (1825), 532–3the month Maria Brontë died. As the Brontës probably did not see the issue immediately, the poem would have been even more appropriate to their situation when Elizabeth was sent home to die at the end of the month.

  102. PBB, ‘Calm and clear the day, declining’, [1845]: part in MS 130, BPM [Leyland, ii, 218, 221]. This is part of a sequence of poems including ‘Harriet’, ‘Caroline’ and ‘Sir Henry Tunstall’: the dead child was golden haired (Maria was dark), was buried in a churchyard (Maria was buried in the family vault under the church) and her parents were both alive (Maria’s mother was dead).

  103. MT to ECG, 18 Jan 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 159–60].

  104. CB to WSW, 5 Nov 1849: MS n.l. [LCB, ii, 279].

  105. ECG, Life, 61 quoting Miss Evans.

  106. Miss Evans to PB, 23 Sept 1825: MS p.2, in private hands.

  107. Ibid., pp.2, 1.

  CHAPTER SIX: SCRIBBLEMANIA

  Title: ‘Wiggins might indeed talk of [scribble-mania] if he were to see me just now’: CB, ‘I’m just going to write because I cannot help it’ [RHJ], c.Oct 1836: MS Bon 98(7) p.1, BPM [Glen, 456].

  1. PB to Richard Burn, 25 Aug 1825: MS: QAB File F 2149, CERC [LRPB, 55–7].

  2. PB to Richard Burn, 1 Dec 1825: MS: QAB File F 2149, CERC [LRPB, 58–60].

  3. Bradford & Wakefield Chronicle, 24 Sept 1825 p.2.

  4. PB to the Secretary, British and Foreign Bible Society, 3 Oct 1825: MS in archives of the Bible Society, ULC [LRPB, 58].

  5. LM, 3Dec 1825 p.3. In the end the election was uncontested so 2 Tories (including Wilson) and 2Whigs were returned to Parliament for the county: ibid., 24 June 1826 p.3.

  6. Bradford & Wakefield Chronicle, 10 Sept 1826 p.4; LM, 17 Sept 1825 p.3and 21 Jan 1826 p.3.

  7. Ibid., 20 May 1826 p.3; 22 July 1826 p.2; 13 May 1826 p.3and 20 May 1826 p.3. Haworth would have had a share in the £1500 sent by the London Committee for the Relief of the Distressed Poor for distribution within the parish of Bradford.

  8. PB to Mrs Taylor, 12 Apr 1826: MS RMP 792, WYAS, Calderdale [LRPB, 60].

  9. See, for instance, Bradford & Wakefield Chronicle, 6 Aug 1825 p.4; LM, 1July 1826 p.3. Dury was a wealthy man in his own right but had married Anne Greenwood, daughter of a successful Keighley manufacturer. John Buckworth was similarly placed, being married to Rachel Halliley whose father, a manufacturer, was rich enough to leave £4000 to each of his daughters: John Brooke, Renunciation of Probate and Trusteeship, 1Jan 1833: MS in WYAS, Bradford. James Clarke Franks, Hammond Roberson and Thomas Atkinson all enjoyed large private incomes and had monied wives. Patrick seems to have been unusual in having only his own salary for income.

  10. LM, 15 July 1826 p.2; 21 Oct 1826 p.3; LI, 25 Oct 1827 p.3where Patrick is not listed as either speaking or present.

  11. LM, 8 July 1826 p.2; 28 Oct 1826 p.3; Burials, Haworth; LM, 9Dec 1826 p.3.

  12. Ibid., 16 Dec 1826 p.3where the name is given as Burran. It is Burwin in Burials, Haworth where the burials are recorded between 16 Sept and 6Dec 1826; LM, 17 Feb 1827 p.3.

  13. Ibid., 21 July 1827 p.3

  14. LI, 26 July 1826 p.3; Haworth Church Hymnsheet, 22 July 1827: MS BS x, H, BPM.

  15. LM, 16 Aug 1827 p.2; see, for example, the arrival by balloon of the little king and queens at Strathfieldsaye: CB, Tales of the Islanders, ii, 6Oct 1829: MS p.3, Berg [JB CBJ, 18].

  16. Thomas Salmon, A New Geographical & Historical Grammar (Edinburgh, 1771): HAOBP:bb204, BPM; the Brontës’ copy of Oliver Goldsmith’s History of England, heavily annotated by Patrick, was shown to Charles Hale by William Wood on 8Nov 1861: Wood had bought it for 18d. a month earlier at the parsonage sale: [Charles Hale], ‘An American Visitor at Haworth, 1861’, BST:15:77:132; Haworth Parsonage Sale Catalogue, 2Oct 1861: MS BS x, H, lot 106, BPM; Rollins’ History (no publication details given) was sold on the second day of the sale for 3s. 6d.: ibid., lot 49. J. Goldsmith, A Grammar of General Geography (London, 1823): HAOBP:bb217, BPM. There was at least one other geography book. In 1829 Charlotte wrote that she had in front of her an ‘old Geography’, 120 years old, on a blank leaf of which her sister Maria had written ‘papa lent me this Book’: CB, The History of the Year, 12 Mar 1829: MS Bon 80(11) p.1, BPM [JB CBJ, 2].

  17. Hannah More, Moral Sketches of Prevailing Opinions and Manners (London, 1784): the inscription on the flyleaf has been virtually erased but includes Patrick’s signature and the dates ‘1819’ and ‘March, 1820’: HAOBP:bb59, BPM.

  18. ‘A copy of “Pilgrim’s Progress”, dated 1743, belonging to the Brontë family’ and Isaac Watts’ The Doctrine of the Passions (Berwick, 1791), signed in Charlotte’s auto-graph were sold at the Sotheby’s sale of
the contents of Robinson Brown’s Museum of Brontë Relics on 2July 1898, lots 58 and 59; the latter is now HAOBP:bb66, BPM. John Milton, Paradise Lost (Glasgow, 1797) with Charlotte’s autograph on the title page is HAOBP:bb39, BPM. For their influence on the Brontës see CA, EW, 18, 118, 132, 283, 296.

  19. Thomas à Kempis, Extract of the Christian’s Pattern (London, n.d.): the original flyleaf with Maria’s signature is missing though someone else has apparently copied ‘M. Branwell July 1807’ from it on to the inside front cover: HAOBP:bb212, BPM; James Thomson, The Seasons (London, 1803), signed ‘Maria Branwell 1804 Penzance’ inside front cover and ‘M. Branwell’ on title page is HAOBP:bb213, BPM; Thomas Browne, The Union Dictionary (London, 1806), signed ‘M Branwell Feby 91808’ and ‘C Bronte’ on title page, is HAOBP:bb196, BPM.

  20. CB to Hartley Coleridge, 10 Dec 1840: MS in Texas [LCB, i, 240]; CB, draft of the same letter, [Dec 1840]: MS MA 2696 R-V p.2, PM [ibid., 237].

  21. CB, Shirley, 389, where Caroline’s Aunt Mary also possesses copies of the Lady’s Magazine which had ‘undergone a storm, and whose pages were stained with salt water’.

  22. Bible (Oxford, 1825), inscribed on flyleaf ‘To Emily Jane Brontë, by her affectionate Father, Feb 13th, 1827’: Sotheby’s Sale of Arthur Bell Nicholls’ Books and Manuscripts, 26 July 1907, lot 11; The Book of Common Prayer (Oxford, 1823), inscribed by Patrick ‘Miss Outhwaite, to her God daughter Anne Brontê – Feby. 13th: 1827’: HAOBP:bb48, BPM. I have not been able to identify why the date was special: one would have expected it to be the girls’ confirmation. Bible (no place of publication, 1821) inscribed ‘To Anne Brontë, with the love and best wishes of hr godmother Eliz. Firth, Oct. 1823’, underneath which Patrick wrote ‘To read it and keep it for the sake of the donor.’: Sotheby’s Sale of Arthur Bell Nicholls’ Books and Manuscripts, 26 July 1907, lot 12. At the same sale were also sold Charlotte’s New Testament (Cambridge, 1823) ‘with inscription from Mr and Mrs Morgan’ (lot 13) and a Greek Prayer Book inscribed ‘J[ane] B[ranwell] Morgan, 1813. A Memorial of Mrs Morgan, presented to Rev P Brontë, B.A. Haworth, Sept 29 1827; presented by the Rev Wm Morgan, B.D. Oct 2, 1827’ (lot 5). Jane Branwell Morgan is buried next to her parents in the churchyard at Cross Stone which was converted into housing in 1989: their gravestones are preserved in BPM. Register of Burials, 1813–32, Cross Stone Church: MS p.147 no 1172 [27 Sept 1827]: Microfilm in WYAS, Calderdale. For the influence of the Bible on the Brontës’ writings see CA, EW, 18, 240–3.