Brontës
Page 18
But what of the children themselves? Most of the biographers would have us believe that their childhood was no childhood: no toys, no children’s books, no playmates; only newspapers to read and their own precocious, vivid imaginations to amuse them. Mrs Gaskell set the trend when she described them as ‘grave and silent beyond their years’ and quoted their mother’s nurse: ‘You would not have known there was a child in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures … I used to think them spiritless, they were so different to any children I had ever seen.’72
Martha Wright, however, as Nancy and Sarah Garrs were quick to point out, seems to have borne a grudge about her dismissal. Though she may have left simply because Aunt Branwell arrived, the Garrs sisters said that she was ‘sent away by Mr Bronte for reasons which he thought sufficient’. Perhaps, like Mrs Gamp, she had helped herself too frequently to the beer which Aunt Branwell kept under lock and key in the cellar.73 It was certainly Patrick who bore the brunt of her vitriolic accounts of life in the parsonage during Maria’s illness. She blamed him for the supposed listlessness of his children:
I set it down to a fancy Mr Brontë had of not letting them have flesh-meat to eat. It was from no wish for saving, for there was plenty and even waste in the house, with young servants and no mistress to see after them; but he thought that children should be brought up simply and hardily: so they had nothing but potatoes for their dinner.74
Patrick, in a letter to Mrs Gaskell, called this ‘the principal mistake in the memoir’ and flatly denied that he restricted his children to a vegetable diet. He was backed up by his cook, Nancy Garrs, who pointed out to visitors the meat jack from the parsonage which Patrick had requested should be sent to her on his death and stated categorically that the children had had meat to eat every day of their lives.75 References in the Brontës’ letters and diary notes to cooking meals confirm that their diet consisted of oatmeal porridge for breakfast, meat, vegetables and a milk pudding or fruit pie for dinner and bread and butter, with fruit preserve, for tea.76 If the children were at all pale and subdued while the nurse was at the Parsonage it was probably because they were just recovering from scarlet fever; they must have been anxious about their mother, too. Even so, Patrick’s reference to ‘the innocent, yet distressing prattle of my children’ in the couple of months following Maria’s death suggests that the young Brontës were perfectly normal, noisy young children.
Mrs Gaskell explained her inclusion of the sensational stories about Patrick’s ‘eccentricities’ by saying, ‘I hold the knowledge of them to be necessary for a right understanding of the life of his daughter.’77 Yet those who knew Patrick well, including his friends and his servants, did not recognize him in Mrs Gaskell’s portrait: the words they used to describe him were uniformly ‘kind’, ‘affable’, ‘considerate’ and ‘genial’. Like her picture of ‘barbaric’ Haworth, Mrs Gaskell’s portrayal of Patrick as a half-mad recluse who wanted nothing to do with his children was intended to explain away those characteristics of his daughter’s writings which the Victorians found unacceptable.
Most of the stories were completely untrue, including those illustrative of Patrick’s supposedly explosive temperament. Again, they came from Martha Wright, the nurse who had been dismissed, embellished, no doubt, by Lady Kay Shuttleworth, who knew her and reported back to Mrs Gaskell with all the malicious glee of a sitting-room gossip. Both Patrick and Nancy Garrs denied that there was any foundation in fact to the ‘Eccentrick Movements’ of sawing the backs off chairs and burning hearth rugs in the heat of his Irish temper and Mrs Gaskell was compelled, albeit reluctantly, to remove the accounts from her third edition of The Life of Charlotte Brontë.78
Nancy also declared that the story of Patrick’s burning the coloured boots put out by the nurse for his children to wear because they were ‘too gay and luxurious for his children, and would foster a love of dress’ was simply untrue: the incident could not have happened without Nancy’s knowledge as she was seldom absent from the kitchen for more than five minutes. She also denied that Patrick ‘worked off his volcanic wrath by firing pistols out of the back-door in rapid succession’. Patrick only carried loaded pistols when he took the long and lonely walk across the moors from Thornton to Haworth during periods of popular unrest and, since the bullets could not be removed any other way, would discharge them before entering the house simply to make them safe.79
The only story to which Nancy gave any credence at all – and its tone she hotly denied – was that Patrick had cut one of his wife’s dresses into ribbons because it was ‘not according to his consistent notions of propriety’. Nancy’s version of the story was that Patrick had bantered his wife good-humouredly on a new dress, ‘commenting with special awe and wonder on the marvellous expanse of sleeves’. Maria took the dress off, but when she later returned to her room she found that Patrick had been there before her and cut off the sleeves. Maria gave the dress to Nancy and, soon afterwards, Patrick came into the kitchen bearing a new silk dress which he had gone to Keighley to buy for his wife.80
If Patrick was not the half-mad and violent eccentric described by Mrs Gaskell, neither was he a weird recluse who ‘did not require companionship, therefore he did not seek it’.81 Though this has again become part of Brontë mythology, it was not true that, during his wife’s illness, Patrick shut himself away in his study and began a lifelong habit of taking his meals in there alone. A schoolmaster friend of Patrick and Branwell, William Dearden, interviewed Nancy on the point and was roundly informed ‘Whether Mr Bronté was troubled with indigestion or not, Nancy says she cannot tell, as she never heard him complain on that score; but, up to the time of her leaving his service, she declares that he dined with his family every day.’82
Dearden also drew on his own intimacy with the family to take up the cudgels on behalf of Patrick’s role as a father. ‘His children were the frequent companions of his walks’, Dearden insisted. ‘I have seen him, more than once, conversing kindly and affably with them in the studio of a clever artist who resided in Keighley; and many others, both in that town and in Haworth, can bear testimony to the fact of his having been often seen accompanied by his young family in his visits to friends, and in his rambles among the hills.’83
It is difficult to recognize in this picture the same ‘domestic hyena’84 described by Mrs Gaskell which sadly remains the popular image of the father of the Brontës. Yet it is entirely consistent with everything we can learn of the man through his life and his work. Patrick was clearly not only concerned for, but interested in, his children. William Dearden is the witness on his behalf again:
We are led to infer from Mrs Gaskell’s narrative, that their father – if he felt – at least, did nor manifest much anxiety about their physical and mental welfare; and we are told that the eldest of the motherless group, then at home, by a sort of premature inspiration, under the feeble wing of a maiden aunt, undertook their almost entire supervision. Branwell … told me, when accidentally alluding to this mournful period in the history of his family, that his father watched over his little bereaved flock with truly paternal solicitude and affection – that he was their constant guardian and instructor – and that he took a lively interest in all their innocent amusements.85
The truth of this remark is borne out by Patrick himself in the letters he wrote to Mrs Gaskell as she was preparing her biography of Charlotte, which she actually quoted in the book.
When mere children, as soon as they could read and write, Charlotte and her brother and sisters, used to invent and act little plays of their own, in which the Duke of Wellington my Daughter Charlotte’s Hero, was sure to come off, the conquering hero – when a dispute [would] not infrequently [arise] amongst them regarding [the] comparative merits of him, Buonaparte, Hannibal, and Caesar – When the argument got warm, and rose to its height, as their mother was then dead, I had sometimes to come in as arbitrator, and settle the dispute, according to the best of my judgement.86
T
he children clearly had no fear of dragging their supposedly ferocious and reclusive father into their games. Equally, Patrick was interested enough to break off from his own demanding work to enter into the spirit of the thing, listening to the arguments and weighing their merits. On another occasion, Patrick ‘just happened’ to have a mask in the house:
When my children were very young, when as far as I can rem[em]ber, the oldest was about ten years of age and the youngest about four – thinking that they knew more, than I had yet discover’d, in order to make them speak with less timidity, I deem’d that if they were put under a sort of cover, I might gain my end – and happen [in] g to have a mask in the house, I told them all to stand, and speak boldly from under cover of/ the mask – I began with the youngest – I asked what a child like her most wanted – She answer’d, age and experience – I asked the next what I had best do with her brother Branwell, who was sometimes, a naughty boy, She answered, reason with him, and when he won’t listen to reason whip him – I asked Branwell, what was the best way of knowing the difference between the intellects, of men and women – he answer’d by considering the difference between them as to their bodies – I then asked Charlotte, what was the best Book in the world, she answered, the Bible – and what was the next best, she answer’d the Book of Nature – I then asked the next, what was the best mode of education for a woman, she answered, that which would make her rule her house well – Lastly I asked the oldest, what
Though the anecdote is usually cited as an example of the young Brontës’ undoubted precocity, it also demonstrates once more that their father took a keen interest in their personal and intellectual development. One more story, narrated this time by Sarah Garrs, shows that the children enjoyed the usual escapades of childhood: Sarah had been roped into playing a part in one of their plays:
As an escaping Prince, with a counterpane for a robe, I stepped from a window on the limb of a cherry-tree, which broke and let me down. There was great consternation among the children, as it was Mr Brontës favourite tree, under which he often sat. I carried off the branch and blackened the place with soot, but the next day, Mr Brontë detained them a moment and began with the youngest, asking each pleasantly, ‘Who spoiled my tree?’ The answer was, ‘Not I,’ until it came to my turn. They were always loyal and true.88
This again is a far cry from Mrs Gaskell’s picture of the subdued children closeted in their ‘study’, listening to the seven-year-old Maria reading the newspapers. If Mrs Gaskell, and those who have followed in her path, are so wide of the mark in their description of the Brontës’ childhood, what then was life at Haworth parsonage really like at this time? Fortunately, Sarah Garrs, the person who was probably most involved in their day-to-day care, has left her own account of a typical day.89
After the children had been washed and dressed, the day began with the whole family, including the servants, assembling in Patrick’s study for prayers. The children then accompanied him across the hall for a ‘plain but abundant’ breakfast of porridge and milk, bread and butter. Apart from the baby, Anne, they then returned to the study for a morning session of lessons with their father. Once that was over, they were then committed to Sarah’s care till dinner-time: she taught the girls how to sew and, by the age of five, Charlotte had made a linen chemise for her own wear, aided only in the cutting out and basting by Sarah. The children dined at two o’clock with their father. They were given plain roast or boiled meat and for dessert there were bread and rice puddings, custards and other slightly sweetened preparations of eggs and milk. While Patrick went out to do his parish visiting in the afternoons, the children walked out on the moors every day unless the weather was too bad. These walks were the highlight of their day:
Their afternoon walks, as they sallied forth, each neatly and comfortably clad, were a joy. Their fun knew no bounds. It never was expressed wildly. Bright and often dry, but deep, it occasioned many a merry burst of laughter. They enjoyed a game of romps, and played with zest.
On their return home they found tea waiting for them in the kitchen. Patrick came in later and took his tea in his study. When the tea-tray was removed, he gathered the children about him ‘for recitation and talk, giving them oral lessons in history, biography or travel’ while the girls sewed.90 While their mother was still alive and able to listen to them, the children said their nightly prayers at her bedside, kissed her goodnight and went to their own ‘warm clean beds’. On Sunday evenings, the whole family gathered in Patrick’s study once more for Bible study and catechism: the servants were again included but, as Sarah noted, they were always treated as superiors in the presence of the children.91
Sarah’s account would suggest that the Brontës had a perfectly normal childhood. Though the loss of their mother at such an early age could not be anything other than a personal tragedy for the children she left behind, its importance should not be exaggerated. It was, after all, a commonplace occurrence – much more commonplace than it is today – and therefore accepted more readily. In a more pious age, too, there was the comfort of knowing that she had gone to a better place and that her soul, if not her body, was immortal. In later life, Charlotte, who always said that she began to observe and analyse character at five years old, had no more than two or three memories of her mother, including one of her playing with Branwell in the parlour one evening.92 Though she and her brother and sisters felt the lack of a mother figure, their real mother, as a person, was someone the younger four simply did not remember. Her loss, terrible though it may have been at the time, did not permanently blight their young lives.
Their home life was secure and stable, with their father always ready to spend time with them, despite the pressures of his own work. Their aunt, too, was an ‘affectionate mother’, supervising their lessons and their household work and nursing the infant Anne.93 Nancy and Sarah Garrs were playmates and confidantes, closely involved, as we have seen, in the children’s games.
Like all large families, particularly those with children close together in age, the Brontës were self-sufficient. They had no need to seek friends of their own age in the town when they had companions with the same tastes and enthusiasms in their own home. Maria, as the eldest, seems to have taken the lead. Sarah Garrs tells us that ‘Their “games” were founded upon what Maria read to them from the newspapers, and the tales brought forth from the father’s mines of tradition, history, and romance. Nothing escaped them.’94
Mrs Gaskell found the idea of small children reading the newspapers unnerving in its precocity and later biographers have assumed that they read newspapers because they had no other, more suitable books.95 In fact, the local newspapers of this period, such as the Leeds Mercury and the Leeds Intelligencer, were a fascinating source of information and had plenty to interest bright young children. The political reports and coverage of parliamentary debates were written in a lively – sometimes even libellous – strain that brought the characters vividly to life. There was no nonsense about editorial fairhandedness and political neutrality: the papers screamed their political affiliation from every page with a savagery that sometimes amounted to hysteria. Though Patrick and his family were Tory, they took or had access to Whig papers too, so that the children were able to recognize political bias and see the arguments from both ends of the spectrum. Patrick used to say that he could converse with Maria on any of the leading topics of the day as freely and with as much pleasure as with any adult.96
Though the newspapers undoubtedly provided the political raw material which was to feed the Brontës’ hero-worship of men like the Duke of Wellington, they had many other elements too. They carried reviews of books and magazines, including extensive quotation of interesting incidents from new works and old. There were descriptions of the latest fash
ions and accounts of life in high society, complete with all its scandal and gossip. There was also the local news where, sandwiched between the lurid detail of the criminal courts and the trivia of outsize mushrooms and other ‘amazing phenomena’, the Brontës would frequently see their father’s name. Here was endless material for the children’s plays and stories.