Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  … ’Tis right for good winebibbing people,

  Not to let the jug pace round the board like a cripple;

  But gaily to chat while discussing their tipple.105

  The main protagonists kept up their heavy drinking image in other contributions to the magazine, including, most famously, Morgan O’Doherty’s 142 ‘Maxims’, which are almost exclusively on drinking.106 In classical poetry, too, the ancient Greeks and Romans found inspiration in the wine cup; drinking was supposed to induce the poetic muse and drunkenness betokened possession by poetic frenzy. Perhaps surprisingly, it was Charlotte who was most drawn to this type of poetry, producing several poems extolling the virtues of wine and brandy, including one, ‘Haste bring us the wine cup’, which is an imitation of the classical format.107

  The children’s education at this time permeated their juvenile writings. Branwell flaunted his knowledge of Latin and Greek in his pseudo-scholarly notes to the works of Young Soult and Sergeant Bud,108 but Charlotte was equally at home with the classics. Her stories and poems, too, are peppered with casual references to Scipio Africanus, Socrates, Ovid, Virgil’s Eclogues and Herodotus and it is clear from their context that she knew more about them than simply their brief entries in her father’s Lemprière’s Bibliotheca Classica.109 ‘The Violet’, for instance, a long poem written on 14 November 1830, is full of allusions to not only the greatest literary men but also the landscape of ancient Greece and Rome. In the poem Charlotte seeks the gift of poetic inspiration and is given a violet, rather than the customary laurel, as a symbol that she will have that gift but only to a lesser degree than the ancients.110

  The children were also beginning to study French. France and all things connected with Napoleon had long held a fascination for them. Their eldest sister, Maria, could read French by the time she went to the Clergy Daughters’ School, but Charlotte was fourteen before she began to make a serious study of the language. It is interesting to speculate who taught the children French. Patrick’s knowledge of the language would seem to have been fairly basic: in 1842, when he had to escort his daughters to Belgium, he drew up a book of simple phrases of the most elementary kind to assist him.111 Aunt Branwell, however, was well read and had had the conventional education of her day. It seems very likely that she shared the predilection for French novels of her sex, generation and class and so it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that she was responsible for instructing her nieces in the language. Charlotte was sufficiently interested to spend three shillings of her precious money on a copy of Voltaire’s epic poem La Henriade, which she bought in May 1830. On 11 August she translated the first book, transcribing it into one of her own miniature books.112 The exercise inspired her to include more French in her writings, as two days later she began a new series in her ‘Young Men’s Magazine’ entitled ‘Journal of a Frenchman’, in which her characters converse in French – except when the vocabulary was beyond her.113

  The activities of the real world were not always reflected in the children’s writing, even when they were unusual. A major concert of sacred music in Haworth Church on 20 July 1829 left no impression, even though there was an orchestra of eighty, conducted by Mr White, and performances from some of the most famous professional singers in Yorkshire, including Thomas Parker, the tenor from Haworth itself, and Master Wilde, from York.114 Similarly, a visit away from home, with all the excitement of its new experiences, passed unnoticed. Accompanied by Aunt Branwell, the four children spent a few days in September at the parsonage at Cross Stone with the recently widowed John Fennell.115 The weather was poor so they were not able to explore the dramatic hills and valleys between Hebden Bridge and Todmorden but, from the tiny parsonage perched on the hillside, the young Brontës looked straight across the valley to Stoodley Pike, a huge stone obelisk built as a memorial to the Allies’ seizure of Paris and the victory of Waterloo: a visible symbol of the Duke of Wellington’s success. Charlotte wrote a letter to her father, which he lovingly endorsed ‘Charlotte’s First Letter’ and carefully preserved, describing how they had spent their time:

  very pleasantly, between reading, working, and learning our lessons, which Uncle Fenell has been so kind as to teach us every day. Branwell has taken two sketches from nature, & Emily, Anne & myself have likewise each of us drawn a piece from some views of the lakes which Mr Fenell brought with him from Westmoreland.116

  The day she returned home, in some sort of bizarre ritual, Charlotte recorded on a tiny scrap of folded paper, ‘on September the 25 I put in the Life of the Duke of W a piece of paper burnt at one end and on it was inscribed – Charles & Arthur Charlotte Brontē Sept 25 1829’. The act perhaps symbolized her return to the imaginary world.117

  Patrick, too, was busy, campaigning for reform at home and abroad. In November he returned to his attack on the criminal code, writing yet again to the Leeds Mercury and calling on all men to work for the abolition of the death penalty except for murder, so that ‘the scales of justice and mercy are poised with even hand, and cruelty and oppression can nowhere be found’.118 Disappointingly, there was no response, but with characteristic persistence, Patrick did not give up. The following April, in common with Evangelicals all over the country, he organized petitions for the abolition of slavery to both Houses of Parliament. Unlike any of his fellow ministers, he also took the opportunity to raise petitions for the revision and mitigation of the criminal code.119 Having got nowhere with the supposedly reforming Leeds Mercury he wrote to the Leeds Intelligencer, pointing out that

  all the Dissenting and Methodist ministers in the parish gave their consent and assistance with a cheerful alacrity that did credit alike to their piety, good sense, and humanity; and out of a population of more than four thousand, not one objected to – but all approved of, those measures of mercy and justice which we had in contemplation.120

  Once again, Patrick’s clarion call for liberalization of the criminal law fell on deaf ears. Worn out by his campaigning efforts, by an unpleasant contested election for the post of parish overseer and the relentless round of parish duties,121 he fell seriously ill for the first time in his career. An inflammation of the lungs, neglected at first, reduced him to such a state that for three weeks in June and July he was too ill to get out of bed and his life was held to be in imminent danger. The duties that he was so reluctant to neglect were taken by Thomas Plummer, headmaster of the grammar school at Keighley.122 The children were alarmed by their father’s sudden weakness. One incident impressed itself so deeply on Charlotte that she broke off from her Glasstown imaginings to record it.

  The following strange occurrence happened on the 22 of June 1830. at that time papa was very ill confined to his bed & so weak that he could not rise without assistance. Taby & I were alone in the Kitchen, about half past 9 anti-meridian. suddenly we heard a knock at the door, Taby rose & opened it, an old man appeared standing without, who accosted her thus,

  OM does the parson live here?

  T yes,

  OM I wish to see him,

  T he is poorly in bed.

  OM indeed I have [a] message for him.

  T who from?

  OM from the LORD.

  T who?

  OM, the LORD, he desires me to say that the bridegroom is coming & that he must prepare to meet him; that the cords are about to be loosed & the golden Bowl broken, the Pitcher broken at the fountain & the wheel stopped at the cistern.

  here he concluded his discourse & abruptly went away. as Taby closed the door I asked her if she knew him, her reply was that she had never seen him before nor any one like him. Though I am fully persuaded that he was some fanatical enthusiast well-meaning perhaps but utterly ignorant of true piety, yet I could not forbear weeping at his words spoken so unexpectedly at that particular period.

  Charlotte Brontē

  June the 22 1830

  6 o’clock pm.

  Haworth near Bradford123

  Charlotte, obsessed with tales of supernatural apparitions and
omens, was particularly vulnerable to the implicit threat in the visitor’s prophecy, but Patrick’s illness must have shaken the whole household out of its ordinary routine. Though the immediate danger passed, Patrick remained physically weak and consequently very depressed in spirits for six months, finding his return to his duties a constant struggle.124 He was fifty-three years old and he could not live for ever. On his death his children would lose everything, even the roof over their heads. Aunt Branwell, though now permanently established with the Brontës at Haworth, was in no position to support them financially. The problem of providing for the future of his children loomed large again, no doubt adding to Patrick’s depression. The eldest, Charlotte, was already fourteen and in a few years’ time would be capable of earning her own living. As yet she had had only one year’s schooling, which could hardly equip her to find a good post as a teacher or governess. Whatever the advantages of the wide-ranging education she had had at home, any future employer would expect at least some formal qualifications. It was time for her to go to school again.

  Chapter Seven

  EMULATION REWARDED

  Roe Head School was everything that the Clergy Daughters’ School was not. It was based in a large house on the outskirts of Mirfield, about half a mile down the hill from Patrick’s old church at Hartshead. A rather grand three-storey grey stone building, with an unusual double-bowed frontage, it had been built for the Marriott family in 1740. The original house still stands though it is now dwarfed by the more mundane buildings of the much larger school it has become.1 It has retained some of its large and pleasant gardens, with lawns to the front and woods and shrubbery at the rear and side to screen it from the road into Mirfield and Dewsbury beyond. Though lower than Hartshead, its elevated site gives spectacular views over the wooded grounds of Kirklees Hall. The stark outlines of the surrounding hills are broken only by the hill villages lying between Huddersfield and Halifax. Down in the valley bottom to the left can be seen the mills of Mirfield, the nearest town, which like Brighouse and Rastrick to the right, has spilt out beyond its nineteenth-century limits.

  Roe Head had been taken over from the Marriotts in 1830 by Miss Margaret Wooler and her sisters, Catherine, Susan, Marianne and Eliza. Unfortunately, there are almost no relevant records, so it is impossible to tell whether this represented the actual setting up of their school or whether they had moved from another house in the area. By 1831 it had established a reputation and attracted as pupils the daughters of some of the leading manufacturers in the area. Among them were families well known to Patrick: the Brookes, granddaughters of John Halliley of Dewsbury, for instance, and the Haighs, who were friends or relations of the Firths of Thornton.2 The school had only a very small number of pupils, apparently between seven and ten at a time, and there was no great disparity in their ages. Most of the girls, like Charlotte, seem to have been in their early teens and there were no infants as there had been at Cowan Bridge. All appear to have been boarders, though most of them came from within a radius of a few miles of the school, Charlotte being the exception in that her home was some twenty miles from Roe Head.3

  The school was run as well as owned by Miss Margaret Wooler and her sisters. It says much for the character of Margaret Wooler that Patrick described her as a ‘clever, decent and motherly woman’ and that she became Charlotte’s lifelong friend. In appearance she was short and stout, but graceful in her movements; her voice was sweet and she was fluent in conversation. One of her pupils described her as being like a lady abbess, dressed in white robes, with her hair bound into a plaited coronet and falling in ringlets to her shoulders. Catherine Wooler, whose disposition Charlotte thought had been soured by her continuing spinsterhood, was equally cultivated and intellectual in her tastes.4 The regime they had instituted at Roe Head was disciplined but kindly. With so few pupils it was possible to take into account each girl’s foibles and capabilities and there is no doubt that Charlotte not only benefited from the education offered, but also actually enjoyed her time at the school.

  The choice of Roe Head seems odd at first. There were many schools closer to Haworth: Keighley, for instance, had two ladies’ boarding schools and there were plenty of others in Bradford and Halifax.5 Although the scale of its fees is not known, there is no reason to suppose it was any cheaper than those, more convenient schools. The choice must have been dictated by Patrick’s personal knowledge of the place. He had walked past the building many times on his parish rounds at Dewsbury and Hartshead, so he was aware that it was in a healthy and open position. He knew the parents of some of the pupils and that they were men wealthy and powerful enough to pick and choose the education offered to their daughters, unlike the poor clergymen of Cowan Bridge. He knew that Charlotte’s godparents, the Reverend Thomas Atkinson and his wife, the former Frances Walker, lived at Green House in Mirfield, less than a mile from the school, and that the Reverend James Clarke Franks and his wife, the former Elizabeth Firth, lived at the vicarage in Huddersfield a few miles further away. Both Mrs Atkinson and Mrs Franks were acquainted with the pupils, their families and also the Misses Wooler who ran the school.6 It is possible that Frances Atkinson actually suggested Roe Head to Patrick, as her own niece Amelia Walker was already at the school. The story that she paid the fees for her goddaughter seems to be apocryphal,7 but she did keep a watchful eye over Charlotte’s progress there. This time Patrick would not be left in ignorance of his daughter’s welfare.

  On 17 January 1831 Charlotte Brontë began the new term at Roe Head School. Mary Taylor, who was to become a lifelong friend, described her arrival:

  I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She was coming to school at Miss Wooler’s. When she appeared in the schoolroom her dress was changed, but just as old. She looked a little, old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent.8

  A week later, the strangeness of her surroundings had still not worn off. Charlotte was homesick and lonely, missing the closeness of her family life and finding it difficult to mix with her school-fellows, who found her eccentric and something of an object of fun. It was therefore opportune that eight days after her own arrival, another new girl arrived. Ellen Nussey was almost exactly a year younger than Charlotte, her birthday being the day after Charlotte’s. A quiet and gentle girl herself, she was immediately drawn to the girl she found shrinking into the bay window of the schoolroom and weeping silently while the others played outside. A mutual sense of being new and out of place played its part in bringing them together, as did their shared homesickness.9

  Charlotte was immediately marked out as different from her fellow pupils, not just by her old-fashioned clothes and odd Irish accent, but also by her appearance and mannerisms. Mary Taylor, never one to mince her words, told her directly that she was very ugly. Ellen Nussey’s judgement was kinder.

  She never seemed to me the unattractive little person others designated her, but certainly she was at this time anything but pretty; even her good points were lost. Her naturally beautiful hair of soft silky brown being then dry and frizzy-looking, screwed up in tight little curls, showing features that were all the plainer from her exceeding thinness and want of complexion, she looked ‘dried in.’ A dark, rusty green stuff dress of old-fashioned make detracted still more from her appearance10

  The girls found her short-sightedness a particular source of amusement: ‘When a book was given her she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched it, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing.’ Though the girls urged her to join in the more active outdoor games, it was soon discovered that she could not see the ball and she was unceremoniously ‘put out’ again and left to her own devices. In any case, Charlotte was happier sitting or standing und
er the trees in the playground.

  She endeavoured to explain this, pointing out the shadows, the peeps of sky, etc. We understood but little of it. She said that at Cowan Bridge she used to stand in the burn, on a stone, to watch the water flow by. I told her she should have gone fishing; she said she never wanted.11

  The energetic and boisterous Mary Taylor found Charlotte physically feeble in everything. Not only did she not play games but she refused to eat any animal food, remembering the horrors of the meat at Cowan Bridge. Her foibles were accepted at Roe Head, however, and something was always specially provided for her to eat. Gradually, as she grew more confident and happy, she was persuaded to try gravy with her vegetables and was eventually won round to the normal school diet.12

  If her fellow pupils were swift to notice Charlotte’s oddities, they were soon forced to recognize her unusually brilliant mind. At first the general impression, typified by Mary Taylor’s comments, was remarkably similar to her entry in the register of the Clergy Daughters’ School seven years before: ‘We thought her very ignorant, for she had never learnt grammar at all, and very little geography.’ It was soon realized that her knowledge and abilities were of quite a different sort.