In Search of Anne Brontë

by Nick Holland

  In order to obtain the proper temperatures for this operation, iron stoves are fixed in the rooms where it is carried on, which are kept alight day and night and the windows are seldom, if ever, opened. In some cases, I found that the business was carried on in bedrooms, which consequently became very close and unhealthy from the high temperature maintained by the stoves and the want of ventilation.6

  Often a house would be shared, with large families living in just one room. Babbage found a cellar dwelling where one family of seven shared two beds in a room that also passed as a wool comber’s shop. In circumstances such as these, it’s little wonder that Haworth became a kingdom where disease and death held sway.

  There were regular epidemics of typhus, cholera and whooping cough that swept through Haworth on an annual basis, and simply to live in the village was to be surrounded by people who had a collection of contagious and deadly diseases. The Brontës themselves were in a more privileged position than most, as the parsonage was one of only twenty-four dwellings that had its own privy, and it was also one of only two buildings that had access to its own water supply via a spring. Nevertheless, the threat of disease and infection was never far away.

  Haworth was a bustling and ever growing village, with the expanding town of Keighley just 4 miles beyond it and Bradford beyond that. It would be a mistake, however, to think that this proximity of urban centres, and the industrial growth of Haworth itself, meant that the Brontë sisters did not live in a form of isolation compared to our modern way of living. Whilst Keighley was nearby, the 4 miles to it cannot be measured in modern terms. In the first half of the nineteenth century even such a short journey across the hilly, moor-clad surrounds of Haworth could be arduous and problematic.

  There would, of course, have been many visitors to the parsonage, even though Patrick Brontë became more insular as he got older. That does not, however, mean that the Brontë children would have come into any meaningful contact with them, other than faces half glimpsed as they went by windows or doorways, or sitting nearby during church services.

  Anne gives an indication of this in the first chapter of Agnes Grey:

  We never even went to school; and, as there was no society in the neighbourhood, our only intercourse with the world consisted in a stately tea-party, now and then, with the principle farmers and tradespeople of the vicinity (just to avoid being stigmatised as too proud to consort with our neighbours).7

  As daughters of the parson, it may be that from time to time as they got older the daughters would have been called upon to carry out some of the social duties that would in other circumstances have been expected to fall on their mother. As the oldest daughter, it’s likely that Charlotte would have been first choice for such duties, and whilst she, like her sisters, could be very shy, she would always strive to overcome it.

  Emily would have been the next in line, but it was a task for which she was completely unsuited. Emily could be paralysed by timidity when in the company of people she did not know. It has been said that sometimes when people spoke to her she would stand in complete silence, unable to speak or move. Whenever Charlotte heard that Emily had been out in company, her first concerned questions would always be to ask how she had behaved.

  In these circumstances Anne may have been preferred to carry out occasional duties as she got older, particularly when Charlotte was away at school. These may have included carrying messages to and from the parsonage or even visiting sick parishioners with her father. Whilst Anne too was painfully shy, she always put her sense of duty first, as her later actions show. In fact, out of all the Brontë children, Anne was to be the only one who would successfully hold on to a job for any length of time, even though she sometimes found it a dreadful ordeal to do so.

  There were, however, certain members of Haworth society that Anne, Charlotte, Emily and Branwell would become acquainted with. Foremost among these was their servant Tabby Aykroyd. It is clear that between children and servant there developed a close bond. Unlike their strict aunt, Tabby would indulge their childish play and curiosity, and they found love and happiness in her company. Anne, Charlotte and Emily would gather round her as she prepared meals or did the housework, and she would relate tales that they listened to enthralled. Tabby’s tales were not only the everyday gossip of Haworth and its surrounds but also the Yorkshire fairy stories and myths that had been passed on verbally for centuries.

  At Tabby’s feet, the children would hear about ghosts roaming the moors, about fairies, known as feys, who would snatch children away and replace them with goblins and sprites, and about strange creatures who had come straight from hell itself. She claimed to know people who had met feys and lived to tell the tale, but she said that increasing industrialisation had driven many of the ‘little folk’ away. In the children’s young writing, and in Wuthering Heights especially among their adult work, we can see what a profound and positive influence Tabby’s storytelling had.

  Tabby grew old in the parsonage surrounded by love and respect. This is demonstrated by an incident of December 1836. Haworth’s Main Street could be treacherous in winter, and it was cobbled to give both human feet and horse hooves more grip in such conditions. Nevertheless, Tabby slipped on the ice and broke her leg. By this time she was 65 years old; Aunt Branwell insisted that they get rid of Tabby as she was a burden on the family and no longer able to do her work. The teenage Brontë children fiercely resisted this, insisting that they would look after her just as she had looked after them. They even refused to eat until the decision was reversed, and under these circumstances Tabby was allowed to stay.8

  Tabby stayed in the employ of the parsonage for the rest of her life, outliving all the children except Charlotte, and she is now buried at the foot of the parsonage garden. As Tabby’s leg would never fully heal and her movements were often restricted, Emily took on much of the day-to-day running of the house, including baking bread that the villagers said was the best they had ever tasted.

  A new servant was brought in to help in 1839, Martha Brown. She was the 11-year-old daughter of John Brown, the sexton who had painted the tree that the Brontë children damaged during their play. John Brown had inherited the role of sexton from his father, and it was an essential job that was traditionally passed among the Brown family of Haworth. He lived in Sexton House, a short stroll from the parsonage itself.

  John was a very hard-working man, as he had to be organising and preparing the huge number of burials that Haworth endured on a yearly basis. Like many working men of the time, he found solace in ale, and he was to become a regular drinking partner of Branwell. There was no shortage of places to enjoy their recreation. Right next to the church itself was the Black Bull Inn, while just as close to the parsonage on the other side was the White Lion Inn, run by William Garnett. Across from The White Lion Inn was the King’s Arms, which at one point was run by Branwell’s friend Enoch Thomas. It doubled as the site of the Manorial Courts, and its cellars held coffins waiting to be interred as well as kegs of ale, stout and porter. Just a short walk down Main Street was the Fleece Inn, and further hostelries could be found on West Street.

  Spirits were also dispensed at shops along Main Street, which gave the streets making up the Pick their alternative name of ‘Brandy Row’. Spirits and wine weren’t only used as an inebriating drink, they were also considered to be a primary medicine. Adults and children alike were given wine or port to drink to ward off all manner of illnesses, so it’s likely that Anne herself would often have been given it as treatment for her asthma and her regular attacks of cold and influenza.

  People with illnesses of all kinds could also find cures at the apothecary shop on Main Street, near to the entrance to the Pick. Whilst medical knowledge and understanding was growing at this time, many of the treatments would amaze us today, especially the ubiquitous use of cocaine, morphine and opium, a forerunner of heroin. Laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol, was often used to help children sleep, as well as being used to treat eve
rything from toothache to cholera. It’s a highly addictive combination, and one that Branwell Brontë was to fight a losing battle against.

  Away from the village of Haworth itself, the moors stretched out invitingly into the distance, in the summer months taking on a beautiful purple hue thanks to the predominant heather, while in other seasons being bare and brown or white with snow. Some of the locations found on the moors today have become particularly associated with the Brontës, including the abandoned farmhouse known as Top Withens, often spoken of as a possible inspiration for Wuthering Heights in the novel of the same name. Around a mile and a half across the moors from the parsonage is what is now known as the Brontë Falls. This waterfall can be a spectacular sight after heavy rain, and Emily and Anne loved to sit here and watch the water thundering by. The stone where they sat has been worn naturally into a chair-like appearance and is now known as the Brontë Seat. It is here that the two sisters would have discussed plots for their Gondal stories and their plans for the future. They would also gather plants and flowers, and as Anne revealed in her poem ‘Memory’ it was primroses, that ‘source of strange delight’, that she held a special love for.

  It is primroses too that Anne’s heroine Agnes Grey longs for as she walks through a beautiful countryside that, alas, is unlike the moors of home that she left behind:

  As my eyes wandered over the steep banks covered with young grass and green-leaved plants, and surmounted by budding hedges, I longed intensely for some familiar flower that might recall the woody dales or green hillsides of home: the brown moor-lands, of course, were out of the question. Such a discovery would make my eyes gush out with water, no doubt; but that was one of my greatest enjoyments now. At length I decried, high up between the twisted roots of an oak, three lovely primroses, peeping so sweetly from their hiding-place that the tears already started at the sight.9

  Whilst Top Withens was already falling into disrepair at the time of the Brontës, there was another building on the moors that was anything but. It was the impressive and imposing Ponden Hall, seat of the grand Heaton family, and a place that Anne and Emily would often visit on their travels. The Heatons were at the very summit of society in the Haworth area, and although the Brontës could not match up to them socially, they were always welcome visitors owing to the father’s position as head of the church.

  The Heatons weren’t just wealthy landowners, they were also entitled to be trustees and church wardens of St Michael & All Angels’ church. They were a learned family, and their library held thousands of books, many of them rare. It’s for this reason that Emily in particular spent time there, especially after Anne followed Charlotte to school. Ponden Hall shares many features given to Wildfell Hall in Anne’s second novel, including its central portico beneath a date plaque and the tall latticed windows, making it the likely inspiration for the home of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, although she moved the setting of Wildfell Hall to a coastal region reminiscent of Scarborough for the novel’s purposes.

  The Heaton family were firm followers of the Church of England in Haworth at the time of the Brontës, but you may be surprised to hear that they were in the minority. Haworth’s church had gained great prominence and celebrity thanks to its incumbent priest from 1742 to 1763: William Grimshaw. Grimshaw was at the forefront of the evangelical movement that transformed the Church of England in the eighteenth century, alongside the famous brothers John and Charles Wesley. Grimshaw often preached on the moors outside Haworth to crowds of thousands, and his lasting fame meant that it was a very prestigious position to be given, even though it wasn’t a lucrative one, as church statutes required that some of the income from the parish had to be paid as dues to the vicar of Bradford.

  The movement founded by Grimshaw, George Whitefield and the Wesleys became known as Methodism. When Anne was young, Methodism was still ostensibly part of the Church of England, but it was becoming increasingly separate. New Methodist churches were built in Haworth, as were churches for the increasingly popular Baptist movement. An ecclesiastical survey of March 1851 found that only 15 per cent of the village’s church goers went to the official Church of England church, St Michael’s & All Angels’, compared to 16 per cent who went to the Lower Town Wesleyan Methodists church and 35 per cent who went to the Hall Green Baptists church, with the remainder attending other Baptist and Methodist churches.10

  Thus the traditional Church of England was in a tiny minority, yet all residents had by law to contribute to the church rates for St Michael’s & All Angels’. This proved to be highly controversial, often bordering on inflammatory, and it was only Patrick’s force of character, and respect within the community, that stopped the regular stand-offs erupting into violence.

  As the attack on Rawfolds Mill in 1812 had demonstrated, the West Riding of Yorkshire was a tinderbox waiting for a spark. The Luddites were replaced in turn by Chartists seeking social and political reform. The threat of danger always hung in the air, and Patrick Brontë himself always kept two loaded pistols by his bedside. Once loaded, the pistols could not be unloaded again, and it was deemed unsafe to keep them primed and ready during the day, so every morning Patrick would discharge them by firing them out of his window at the church clock tower. It still bears shot marks today, and as well as providing a practical purpose it served as a reminder to the residents of Haworth that here was a priest and a family that wasn’t to be messed with. In later years, with Branwell either unwilling or unfit to take on the mantle, Patrick taught Emily how to shoot pistols, and he was impressed by how expert she became.

  The Haworth stationer John Greenwood, well known to the family, records how this went:

  Patrick had such unbounded confidence in his daughter Emily that he resolved to learn her to shoot too. They used to practice with pistols. Let her be ever so busy in her domestic duties, whether in the kitchen baking bread at which she had such a dainty hand, or at her studies, rapt in a world of her own creating – it mattered not; if he called upon her to take a lesson, she would put all down. His tender and affectionate ‘Now, my dear girl, let me see how well you can shoot today’, was irresistible to her filial nature and her most winning and musical voice would be heard to ring through the house in response, ‘Yes, papa’ and away she would run with such a hearty good will taking the board from him, and tripping like a fairy to the bottom of the garden, putting it in its proper position, then returning to her dear revered parent, take the pistol which he had primed and loaded for her … She would take the weapon with as firm a hand, and as steady an eye as any veteran of the camp, and fire. Then she would run to fetch the board for him to see how she had succeeded. And she did get so proficient, that she was rarely far from the mark. His ‘how cleverly you have done, my dear girl’, was all she cared for. ‘Oh!’ He would exclaim, ‘she is a brave and noble girl. She is my right-hand, nay the very apple of my eye!’11

  Whilst Haworth today is very different to the Haworth that Anne Brontë knew, the parsonage itself is very similar in all but three aspects. John Wade, the priest who succeeded Patrick Brontë in 1861, added a new wing to the parsonage building, but the main part of the parsonage still contains many of the items that would have been there at the time of Anne, from the upright piano that she loved to play, to the dining table that the sisters wrote at, and upon which Emily has scratched her initial.

  One thing it has today that it did not have during much of Anne’s time there is curtains. Patrick had a phobia about house fires and thought that curtains were a major contributor to them. For this reason he insisted that all the windows remained bare, although Charlotte later persuaded him to allow curtains to be used. He had also had to bury many girls who had died after their dresses had caught fire, a common occurrence in days when cooking and heating were both provided by open flames. This is why Patrick always insisted, despite his financial constraints, that his daughters wore silk clothing that was less combustible than wool or linen.

  In the time that Anne lived there, the hous
e would also be filled with pets. Anne and Emily especially loved animals, and their keeping of pets was another victory they enjoyed over Aunt Branwell, who disapproved of having animals in their home. Together they raised a hawk, called Nero, which they had found injured on the moors, and they also had geese named Adelaide and Victoria after the royal princesses. Over the years they also had pheasants, rabbits, a canary called Little Dick, a cat called Tom and, of course, the most famous Brontë pets of them all, Emily’s dogs Grasper and Keeper and Anne’s dog, Flossy.

  At four-yearly intervals Anne and Emily would write diary papers detailing a day in their lives. The first we have a record of was composed jointly by them on 24 November 1834, and although hastily written, and full of the spelling mistakes that characterised their early writing, it provides a glimpse of their domestic lives:

  I fed Rainbow, Diamond, Snowflake, Jasper, Pheasent. Anne and I have been peeling apples for Charlotte to make an apple pudding … Tabby said just now come Anne pilloputate (ie pill a potato) Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said ‘where are your feet Anne?’ Anne answered ‘On the floor Aunt’… The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine, Sally Mosley is washing in the back kitchin.

  It is past twelve o’clock Anne and I have not tided ourselves, done our bed work done our lessons and we want to go out to play. We are going to have for dinner boiled beef, turnips, potato’s and apple pudding, the kitchin is in a very untidy state. Anne and I have not done our music exercise which consists of b major. Tabby said on my putting a pen in her face ‘Ya pitter pottering there instead of pilling a potate’, I answered ‘O Dear, O Dear, O Dear, I will directly’. With that I get up, take a knife and begin pilling.12