If you knew what were my feelings whilst writing this you would pity me. I wish to write the truth and give you satisfaction, yet fear to go too far, and exceed the bounds of propriety. But whatever I may say or write I will never deceive you, or exceed the truth.87
By 5 September she felt emboldened enough to tease Patrick a little: ‘I do, indeed, sometimes think of you, but I will not say how often, lest I raise your vanity.’ She was worried by Patrick’s haste in announcing his engagement to his friends, particularly as she had not yet told the Fennells:
But I think there is no need, as by some means or other they seem to have a pretty correct notion how matters stand betwixt us; and as their hints, etc., meet with no contradiction from me, my silence passes for confirmation. Mr Fennell has not neglected to give me some serious and encouraging advice, and my aunt takes frequent opportunities of dropping little sentences which I may turn to some advantage. I have long had reason to know that the present state of things would give pleasure to all parties.88
Toiling up the hill from Woodhouse Grove to take tea at Mr Tatham’s she thought about
the evening when I first took the same walk with you, and on the change which had taken place in my circumstances and views since then – not wholly without a wish that I had your arm to assist me, and your conversation to shorten the walk.89
Six days later, she gave him a half-jocular berating for forgetting to pass on a note from Jane to William Morgan.90 Patrick was apparently visiting fairly regularly at this time, walking the dozen or so miles in each direction in the day. The journey was not without hazard, as there were still ominous rumblings from the Luddites. John Abbott, who lived at Woodhouse Grove at this time and was, as he said, intimately acquainted with both Patrick and Maria, recalled the scares and alarms of those days:
I well remember how frightened she was when one night on my return from Leeds on foot – a walk of eleven miles I told her and her cousin Jane Fennel, afterwards Mrs Morgan, how that I had been met on my way and stopped by a regularly organised body of men (Luddites) marching along with military precision. As I approached it, a man in command gave the word ‘halt’ when the the [sic] moving body, it was too dark to distinguish individuals, became stationary and the man stepped out from it to confront me asking, in a harsh rough voice, as he did so, ‘who goes there?’
‘A friend’, was the ready, and, under the circumstances of the case, the most prudent answer to the challenge
‘Pass friend’, was the instant rejoinder, followed without even so much as a ‘comma’s’ pause, with the word of command, ‘quick march’! and the black mass of men with still blacker hearts moved on91
Sometimes Patrick would stay overnight or longer, as, for instance, in September, so that he could join the party in a walk along the banks of the River Aire to Kirkstall Abbey on the 16th.92 Two days afterwards, Maria wrote again, feeling the need to explain her position to him. Like Emma Woodhouse, she had been accustomed to independence and reliance on her own judgement.
For some years I have been perfectly my own mistress, subject to no control whatever – so far from it, that my sisters who are many years older than myself, and even my dear mother, used to consult me in every case of importance, and scarcely ever doubted the propriety of my opinions and actions.93
Unlike Jane Austen’s heroine, however, Maria had no confidence in her own judgement: she had
deeply felt the want of a guide and instructor. At such times I have seen and felt the necessity of supernatural aid, and by fervent applications to a throne of grace I have experienced that my heavenly Father is able and willing to supply the place of every earthly friend. I shall now no longer feel this want, this sense of helpless weakness, for I believe a kind Providence has intended that I shall find in you every earthly friend united; nor do I fear to trust myself under your protection, or shrink from your control. It is pleasant to be subject to those we love, especially when they never exert their authority but for the good of the subject.94
For the second time, Patrick was taken to task for failing to deliver a message, this time to the Fennells. In an attempt to get work for his parish and to help his friends, he had acted as an intermediary to place an order for blankets for the school. The Bedfords, with whom he still lodged, had been over to Woodhouse Grove to discuss the order and, because Patrick had forgotten to forewarn the Fennells, had found no one there. The Fennells, with affectionate indulgence, accused Patrick of being ‘mazed’ with love and talked of sending him to York Lunatic Asylum.95
Maria at last plucked up the courage to tell her sisters of her engagement:
Mr Fennell has crossed my letter to my sisters. With his usual goodness he has supplied my deficiencies, and spoken of me in terms of commendation of which I wish I were more worthy. Your character he has likewise displayed in the most favourable light; and I am sure they will not fail to love and esteem you though unknown.96
By the end of September the lovers were planning where they were to live. Patrick had intended to take a house but then decided that, with some alteration, his present lodgings would be adequate. Maria willingly acquiesced in his arrangements. ‘My heart earnestly joins in your comprehensive prayers’, she added, ‘I trust they will unitedly ascend to a throne of grace, and through the Redeemer’s merits procure for us peace and happiness here and a life of eternal felicity hereafter. Oh, what sacred pleasure there is in the idea of spending an eternity together in perfect and uninterrupted bliss!’97
Ten days later she took herself to task for writing anxiously and at length because she had not had a hoped-for letter from Patrick.
But what nonsense am I writing! Surely after this you can have no doubt that you possess all my heart. Two months ago I could not possibly have believed that you would ever engross so much of my thoughts and affections, and far less could I have thought that I should be so forward as to tell you so. I believe I must forbid you to come here again unless you can assure me that you will not steal any more of my regard. Enough of this; I must bring my pen to order, for if I were to suffer myself to revise what I have written I should be tempted to throw it in the fire … I trust in your hours of retirement you will not forget to pray for me. I assure you I need every assistance to help me forward; I feel that my heart is more ready to attach itself to earth than heaven. I sometimes think there never was a mind so dull and inactive as mine is with regard to spiritual things.98
At the beginning of October there was another walk to Kirkstall Abbey, this time to celebrate Jane Fennell’s twenty-first birthday. Patrick was invited to stay for a few days at Woodhouse Grove and Jane demanded a long poem in honour of her birthday, no doubt having read Patrick’s verses sent to a lady on her eighteenth birthday in his Cottage Poems.99 This visit gave Maria renewed confidence in the man she called ‘him whom I love beyond all others’. ‘Unless my love for you were very great’, she reassured him,
how could I so contentedly give up my home and all my friends – a home I loved so much that I have often thought nothing could bribe me to renounce it for any great length of time together, and friends with whom I have been so long accustomed to share all the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow? Yet these have lost their weight, and though I cannot always think of them without a sigh, yet the anticipation of sharing with you all the pleasures and pains, the cares and anxieties of life, of contributing to your comfort and becoming the companion of your pilgrimage, is more delightful to me than any other prospect which this world can possibly present.100
Patrick and Maria’s next meeting was in Bradford, where Maria was on a short visit and Patrick had to address the first anniversary meeting of the Bradford Auxiliary Bible Society. Over £150 had been raised in subscriptions throughout the year, half of which had been used to purchase bibles for free distribution among the poor of the neighbourhood.101 The society was interdenominational but four Evangelicals, John Crosse, Patrick Brontë, William Morgan and Samuel Redhead, the last of whom was to reappear many times i
n Patrick’s life, were among the chosen speakers. They declared, with pardonable exaggeration, that the society was ‘one of the most pious, liberal, and useful Institutions, that have attracted the notice of mankind since the creation of the world, till the present moment’.102
In her next letter, Maria Branwell addressed this eminent divine as ‘My dear saucy Pat’, commenting naughtily, ‘Both the Dr [William Morgan] and his lady very much wish to know what kind of address we make use of in our letters to each other – I think they would scarcely hit on this!!’ She and Patrick had enjoyed a lovers’ dispute as to which one loved the other more: ‘I firmly believe the Almighty has set us apart for each other –’, she told him, ‘may we by earnest, frequent prayer, & every possible exertion, endeavour to fulfill his will in all things! I do not, cannot, doubt your love, & here, I freely declare, I love you above all the world besides!’103 She went on to tell him that disaster had struck for the first time since she had left her home in Penzance.
I suppose you never expected to be much the richer for me but I am sorry to inform you that I am still poorer than I thought myself. – I mentioned having sent for my books clothes &c On Saturday evg about the time when you were writing the description of your imaginary shipwreck, I was reading
By the time Maria wrote her last letter, on 5 December, the wedding date had been set for the 29th of the month and the ladies were about to make the cakes: Mrs Bedford was asked to make another one for distribution among the ‘fifteen or twenty’ people in the Hartshead area on Patrick’s list.105 For this was to be no ordinary wedding, but a double one, shared with Jane Fennell and William Morgan, for which a special licence had to be procured: John Fennell would give away his daughter and his niece, the two clergymen would act alternately as bridegroom and officiating minister and the two cousins would be both bridesmaid and bride.
With the wedding imminent, Maria gave way to a classic state of premarital nerves. ‘So you thought that perhaps I might expect to hear from you’, she lashed her fiancé with unexpected ferocity.
As the case was so doubtful, and you were in such great haste, you might as well have deferred writing a few days longer, for you seem to suppose it is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether I hear from you or not. I believe I once requested you to judge of my feelings by your own – am I to think that you are thus indifferent?
Perceiving that she had over-reacted, she was immediately contrite. ‘I am too serious on the subject’, she confessed;
I only meant to rally you a little on the beginning of your last, and to tell you that I fancied there was a coolness in it which none of your former letters had contained. If this fancy was groundless, forgive me for having indulged it, and let it serve to convince you of the sincerity and warmth of my affection. Real love is ever apt to suspect that it meets not with an equal return; you must not wonder then that my fears are sometimes excited. My pride cannot bear the idea of a diminution of your attachment, or to think that it is stronger on my side than yours … I am certain no one ever loved you with an affection more pure, constant, tender, and ardent than that which I feel. Surely this is not saying too much; it is the truth, and I trust you are worthy to know it. I long to improve in every religious and moral quality, that I may be a help, and if possible an ornament to you. Oh let us pray much for wisdom and grace to fill our appointed stations with propriety, that we may enjoy satisfaction in our own souls, edify others, and bring glory to the name of Him who has so wonderfully preserved, blessed, and brought us together.106
Who could doubt, on reading this letter, that Patrick had won a woman of superlative qualities?
The momentous year of 1812 drew to a close, a year which had seen riots at home and, abroad, war on two fronts, against France and the United States. During the months of Patrick’s courtship of Maria, Napoleon had invaded Russia, marched in triumph on Moscow and, his fortunes changing at last, retreated in disastrous disarray. It was hardly an auspicious time to get married but, on 29 December 1812, in the ancient parish church at Guiseley, Patrick Brontë married Maria Branwell; immediately afterwards he officiated at the wedding of William Morgan and Jane Branwell Fennell. Maria had to borrow her white lace bridal veil as her own had been among the items lost at sea.107 Their wedding breakfast, though undocumented, must have taken place at Woodhouse Grove before the newlyweds departed, the Morgans to Bierley, where Morgan had just been appointed incumbent, and the Brontës to Hartshead. It cannot have simply been a coincidence in such a closely knit family that on exactly the same day there was another Branwell marriage. Far away in Penzance, Charlotte and Joseph Branwell were married at Madron Church, on the hill overlooking the bay.108
Married life at Hartshead must have been very different from Patrick’s bachelor days, though his new bride seems to have made no impression on folk memory there.109 They were not as comfortably off as perhaps they could have wished: Patrick’s living was worth only sixty-five pounds a year110 but Maria had her annuity of fifty pounds, enough to make them modestly respectable. At some stage, either on their marriage or possibly before the birth of their first child, they moved from Lousy Thorn to a home of their own. Clough House was at Hightown, nearly a mile away from Hartshead Church; built of stone, with a central door and two windows on each of its three storeys, the house was a small but comfortable gentleman’s residence. It stood opposite the top of Clough Lane, which wound steeply down one hill and then up the next before eventually reaching the church, so it was not a particularly convenient location for conducting the services and offices. On the other hand, unlike Lousy Thorn, it was in the village of Hightown so Maria was not isolated and would have the opportunity of easily visiting her neighbours and the parish sick.111
Patrick’s personal happiness during his courtship and the first months of his marriage was reflected in his next literary venture, The Rural Minstrel: A Miscellany of Descriptive Poems, which was printed and published for the author in September 1813 by P. K. Holden of Halifax. As with Cottage Poems, Patrick had again endeavoured to write a book
which, from its size, the nature and manner of its composition, and the matter it contained, would have some tendency to convey useful instruction, in a mode not unacceptable, and which, in the perusal and purchase, would require no great portion of money or time.112
The little book contained eleven poems of a much higher standard than those in Cottage Poems. This was partly because they had been written over a two-year period, whenever inspiration had struck, rather than specifically for the publication. The poems are again didactic homilies but the moral is not thrust down the reader’s throat, as in his former work, but more attractively clad in descriptive verse which sugars the pill without detracting from its purpose. Even the message itself is more subtly expressed. Instead of pictures of impoverished but happy cottagers, we now, more realistically, have deathbed scenes. In one the good man has succumbed to disease and penury but comfort is offered to his widow and children in the assurance of his eternal salvation and the knowledge that God, not man, will now be their protector. The same message is pushed in another poem, ‘Winter’, which also includes an impassioned appeal to God for the physical relief of the distressed and suffering poor.113
The whole tone is much more sympathetic and sensitive to the plight of the poor; it seems that the terrible winters of 1811 and 1812 had left their mark on Patrick and influenced his poetry as well as his heart. The ephemeral nature of life is frequently touched upon and in several poems the sinner is warned, through hearing the Sabbath bell or the song of the Harper of Erin, for instance, that life is short and he must make time to repent his sins if he is to win e
ternal life.114
Two poems are much more personal: ‘Kirkstall Abbey’, which appears to have been part of a longer, possibly prose, tale which Patrick had contemplated writing, and ‘Lines addressed to a lady on her birthday’. Kirkstall Abbey had been the objective of several of the family walks which Patrick had enjoyed during his courtship of Maria. The ruin of a medieval Cistercian abbey on the banks of the River Aire, it was a romantic and beautiful place in its own right but it is also said to be the place where Patrick actually proposed to Maria, so it had particularly happy associations for him.115 The birthday verses, written only a few months after their marriage, were addressed to Maria, who was thirty on 15 April 1813. The poem is a rapturous description of the beauties of an April morning:
Maria, let us walk, and breathe, the morning air,
And hear the cuckoo sing, –
And every tuneful bird, that woos the gentle spring.
Throughout the budding grove,
Softly coos the turtle-dove,
The primrose pale,
Perfumes the gale,
The modest daisy, and the violet blue,
Inviting, spread their charms for you.
How much enhanced is all this bliss to me,
Since it is shared, in mutual joy with thee!116
Echoing the sentiments expressed by Maria in her letters to him before they were married, Patrick ended the poem with a prayer that the rest of their lives should be spent with ‘undivided heart’ under the influence of pure religion, followed by ‘endless bliss, without alloy’ together in heaven.
In all these poems, whatever their subject, Patrick’s love of the natural world shines through:
With heart enraptured, oft have I surveyed,
The vast, and bounteous works, that God has made.
Brontës Page 10
