Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  Keighley was an increasingly prosperous town and in the 1830s it was expanding rapidly. A new market place, with handsome buildings round it, was begun in 1833 and a new National Church Sunday School and Mechanics’ Institute in 1834.36 The place had much to offer the Brontës by way of entertainment. In addition to its concerts and circulating libraries, the town held regular lectures, mostly sponsored by the Mechanics’ Institute, of which Patrick became a member after Charlotte’s return from Roe Head. The lectures were increasingly varied in subject matter by this time and were a more attractive prospect than the purely scientific ones of the early days. One of the most popular was a course of lectures in 1832 on ancient British poetry. Again, the Brontës are likely to have attended as the subject was one in which they were keenly interested and the lectures were given by a former schoolmaster of Keighley, William Dearden, who was an old family friend. By the winter season of 1835, free lectures were being given fortnightly in the new Mechanics’ Institute on subjects as diverse as Napoleon, geography and Poland, and Patrick himself had been enlisted as one of the lecturers.37

  Keighley was also home to the artist John Bradley, who had given lessons in drawing and painting to the Brontë children for at least the period 1828–29 to 1831, if not longer.38 His encouragement, as much as his example, inspired both Branwell and, more surprisingly, Charlotte to dream of careers as professional artists. To this end, on her return from Roe Head Charlotte had immersed herself in her art, copying in minute detail the plates and engravings which appeared in annuals and albums such as Friendship’s Offering and The Keepsake. Many of these were pencil and watercolour portraits which are particularly interesting because they are all, without exception, of young and beautiful people in romantic poses – a poignant preoccupation given Charlotte’s obsession with the notion of her own physical unattractiveness.

  Byron’s influence was as evident on her art as in her writing: she copied portraits of the poet himself, his patroness the beautiful Countess of Blessington, the equally lovely Lady Jersey, whose picture had appeared in Moore’s Life of Byron, and even illustrations of characters from his poems, such as ‘The Maid of Saragoza’. The women are invariably large-eyed, long-necked, ringleted and bejewelled; the men are effete in feature and form, with elaborately curled hair and military dress. Undoubtedly these idealized portraits represented the heroes and heroines of Charlotte’s imaginary world as well as being a serious exercise in draughtsmanship.39

  Equally numerous, however, are what Mrs Gaskell called Charlotte’s copies of ‘nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings’ of landscapes such as ‘Santa Maura’ and ‘Geneva’ which had been engraved by Edward Finden as illustrations to editions of Byron’s letters and journals. These Charlotte lovingly and laboriously reproduced in pencil, drawing in dots instead of lines, ‘(‘stippling,’ don’t the artists call it?) every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving.’40 One such drawing, ‘Cockermouth’, she presented to Abraham Sunderland to thank him for his role in organising the inauguration of the new church organ but two others, ‘Bolton Abbey’ and ‘Kirkstall Abbey’ were destined for greater things. Perhaps inspired by Bradley, who had shown there regularly, Charlotte submitted them to the Royal Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for inclusion in its summer exhibition of 1834.4l

  The Society’s exhibitions had been held annually in Leeds since 1808 and drew together paintings of old masters in private collections and new works by contemporary artists such as Sir Thomas Lawrence, Richard Westall and J. M. W. Turner. Four hundred and sixty-four sculptures, paintings and drawings were exhibited in the summer of 1834 and listed in the catalogue among the items for sale were Charlotte’s two drawings. For an eighteen-year-old who had hero-worshipped artists since childhood this was a dream come true: her ambitions were about to be realized and the whole family was determined to share in her triumph. The Brontës were therefore among the 2,000 visitors to the exhibition where they saw Charlotte’s drawings displayed alongside works by J. M. W. Turner, William Robinson and the new enfant terrible of the art world, Joseph Bentley Leyland, a Halifax sculptor who made his dazzling public debut with a colossal head of Satan which went on to achieve great critical acclaim in London. Such success was not to be Charlotte’s lot: her pictures remained unnoticed and unsold, forcing her to abandon her ambition to be a professional artist.42

  It was therefore ironic that the same exhibition which ended her hopes put her brother firmly on the path to an artistic career. One of Charlotte’s fellow exhibitors was William Robinson, who had shown seven portraits ‘all largely partaking of the skill and care which distinguish the works of this excellent portrait painter’. A Royal Academician with a studio in Leeds, Robinson was in his mid-thirties, well-established and well-connected. He had been a free pupil of the great Sir Thomas Lawrence, an inn-keeper’s son who had himself studied at the Royal Academy and succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as Painter-in-Ordinary to the King until his death in 1830. Robinson had learned to imitate Lawrence’s style: even his most famous portrait, that of the Duke of Wellington, was merely an adaptation of one by Lawrence.43

  Having seen Robinson’s pictures at the exhibition, Patrick determined to procure his services as a tutor to his son, apparently paying the huge sum of two guineas a lesson for the privilege.44 What Patrick did not know was that Robinson’s reputation had not translated into a good living. He was probably already in financial difficulties as he died only a few years later, in 1838, leaving his widow and children in absolute penury. Perhaps more seriously, as Leyland’s brother Francis, who also frequented artistic circles, pointed out, Robinson failed to teach Branwell the correct way to mix his pigments and how to apply them properly. His pupil was therefore unable to depict the delicacy of fleshly tints and the variations of light and shade; the colours he used faded rapidly, leaving behind only the tint of the boiled oil with which he mixed his pigments. It is striking, too, that the hard features and sometimes wooden, formal poses of Branwell’s subjects are the very points on which Robinson himself was criticized.45

  That Branwell was going to be a professional artist – and a distinguished one at that – had long been assumed by his family. When Ellen Nussey visited in the summer of 1833 he was already preparing himself by painting in oils, possibly under Bradley’s tuition.46 Now, under Robinson’s instruction, he copied the works of other artists and, most famously, twice persuaded or bullied his sisters into sitting for him. Both oil paintings also included a self-portrait. In one, which Mrs Gaskell described as a ‘rough, common-looking oil-painting’, he immediately painted himself out again, probably because the composition was too cramped in the upright format he had chosen. The ghostly image of Branwell, together with the delicate pencil sketching which formed the basis of his portraits, is gradually re-emerging as the badly mixed paint becomes transparent with age. This is the famous ‘Three Sisters’ or ‘Pillar Portrait’ which, by an irony of fate, is now one of the most popular paintings in the National Portrait Gallery.47

  The second portrait was done in a landscape format, giving greater room for Branwell and his sisters. They are gathered round a table on which Branwell, gun in hand, has just placed his trophies of the day’s shoot. This portrait was described by one visitor to the parsonage in 1858, who saw it hanging in pride of place on the stairs, as ‘a shocking daub, not up to the rudest sign board style’. Though Charlotte’s husband, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, can hardly be said to have been a man of artistic judgement, it is worth noting that he destroyed this portrait on the grounds that the likenesses were so bad, keeping only the fragment which had the delicate and sensitive profile of Emily. The composition of the original picture is now only known from a photograph of it belonging to Martha Brown, the Brontës’ servant, and a set of tracings of the three girls made by John Greenwood, the Haworth stationer.48

  Whatever the merits of the paintings as art, they are invaluable, if
unflattering portrayals of the four Brontës as they were in 1834, a year after Ellen’s visit to Haworth. Charlotte, at eighteen, is the only one to wear her hair long and put up into a bun at the back, with long sausage shaped ringlets framing her face. As befits her age, she is also the only one to wear a high-collared dress. Her face is square-jawed, with a high forehead, large nose and prim mouth. Emily and Anne, at sixteen and fourteen, are physically more alike, with longer and thinner faces, and wearing their hair loosely curled at shoulder length. In the gun group they both wear the same unflattering scoop-neck dresses as Charlotte, but without her modest high-necked collar. In the other portrait they all wear simple V-necked dresses with large fichu-type collars. Branwell, who has significantly made himself appear the tallest in both portraits, though he was actually shorter than Emily, wears his bright red hair parted and artistically arranged in wisps and tendrils over his remarkably wide and high forehead. It says much for the closeness of the Brontë family that, even after Branwell’s downfall, they preferred to have on display the gun group, which included him, even though it was a poorer painting.

  Charlotte was also producing portraits from life at this time. Within fourteen months, between 17 April 1833 and 17 June 1834, she drew one delicate pencil portrait and two watercolour portraits of Anne. All are in profile, though in one watercolour the face is slightly turned towards the artist. They are recognizably the same person as Branwell’s portraits of Anne, with her long neck, thin features and pronounced mouth. Whatever the reason behind Charlotte’s sudden excursion into portrait painting, it seems that she was only able to persuade the more pliant Anne to sit for her as there are no known portraits of Emily by either of her sisters.49

  If 1833 and 1834 were busy years for the arts in Haworth, culminating in Branwell’s pupillage to William Robinson, they were also increasingly fraught on the political front. The Church of England was no longer the indissoluble and monopolist partner of the state: the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and the emancipation of Roman Catholics in 1829 had admitted Dissenters and, to a lesser degree, Catholics, to civil liberty and public office. Over the next decade, however, the cry would increasingly be for more rights and more equal status, particularly for Dissenters, who had the backing of the powerful and wealthy mercantile classes. Behind these demands and the outcry over the compulsory payment of church rates by all sects loomed the ultimate horror of the spectre of the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. The relations between the Established Church and Dissenters, which Patrick had always striven to keep open and mutually beneficial, gradually deteriorated over the decade in Haworth as elsewhere.

  A symptom of this was the declining fortunes of Patrick’s beloved Haworth Auxiliary of the Bible Society, which had relied heavily on the support and co-operation of the different sects in the township. On 3 September 1833 Patrick had to write to the society in London cancelling the visit of one of their speakers because he was unable to rouse sufficient interest for a meeting. This, he explained somewhat incoherently, was ‘owing to changes effected by death – in some cases, and by political, and Trades Unions, in others’.50 Patrick’s own health, as he explained, was still poor and he was not yet equal to the struggle of persuading his fellow ministers to put aside their differences and promote the interests of the society.

  Ill health, which had dogged Patrick since his dramatic collapse three years before, was also doubtless the reason why in July 1833 he tried to obtain his first curate for the parish. He prepared, but never completed, the nomination papers for a young man, James Bardsley, who had not yet been fully admitted to holy orders. The day before his ordination, the Archbishop of York, ‘for some private reason of his own’, refused to sanction the arrangement and assigned Bardsley instead to the curacy of Keighley. Nevertheless, Bardsley remained on friendly terms with the Brontës and frequently took his young wife to the parsonage on Saturday afternoons to drink tea.51 Thwarted in his plans to obtain more permanent help in the chapelry, Patrick must have been doubly grateful to visiting clergymen friends, such as Thomas Crowther and William Morgan, who preached the annual Sunday school sermons on his behalf.52

  At the beginning of 1834, Patrick landed himself in the middle of a furious and bitter row, which became increasingly characterized by personal invective. Towards the end of December 1833 there had been a number of meetings in Bradford of Dissenters from the independent and Baptist denominations, who were fiercely arguing for the removal of their grievances.53 In response to these meetings, which were reported in detail in the local press, Patrick wrote a series of three letters to the Leeds Intelligencer defending the Anglican Church establishment and attacking Dissenters’ proposals to remove the bishops from the House of Lords, abolish tithes and other Church dues and open the universities to non-Anglicans. The letters were written anonymously, perhaps in a fruitless attempt to avoid offending the strong dissenting element in Haworth, but signed with his initials.54 His authorship was soon discovered and brought to the attention of the Reverend John Winterbotham, minister of the Baptist chapel in West Lane at Haworth, who responded:

  I knew that very many people, both men and women, were seen to flock to the head inn, in this village, to hear, whilst some one read aloud, the wonderful discoveries which a learned gentleman had made concerning Dissenters, and that his College store of learned lore had found out that they were hypocrites, selfish persons, and, moreover, traitors to the King.55

  The correspondence, most of which was unfortunately published in the columns of the local newspapers, soon descended from the wider issues which had prompted it to local and personal accusation. Patrick poured scorn on the presumption of his uneducated colleague’s attempt to instruct Parliament and the clergy. If Winterbotham wanted the universities opening,

  I would seriously ask him, what good this opening would do to him? He seems not to be aware that, however the universities might be opened, it would be requisite, that before any one entered them, he should have at least a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin. When he went therefore to procure admission, the inexorable examiner would put Homer and Horace into his hands, and just then and there, alas! would for ever terminate the university peregrination of the Rev. John Winterbotham.56

  His opponent was not slow to respond, accusing him of ‘storms and rages’ which ‘in my estimation, resemble more the vapourings of an empty mind, than the sober language of a man of letters’. He pointed out that Patrick had obtained his present position and salary through ‘the kind influence of Dissenters’ and that his recent repairs to the church, which included a new roof, a new and ornamented under-drawing and complete painting and redecoration, had been paid for out of church rates imposed on Dissenters and Anglicans alike.57 Though the newspaper correspondence ended when Patrick, wisely, refused to be provoked into further replies, the matter did not stop there. Winterbotham was to be a vociferous opponent of church rates for many years to come and Patrick himself would return to the fray the following year in his pamphlet The Signs of the Times.58

  Patrick’s attack on the Dissenters does not seem to have soured his relations with the Church trustees, many of whom, by a curious irony, were non-Anglicans. Both clergyman and trustees seem to have been working to put things on a more formal and efficient footing. On 1 February 1834, they all signed a document agreeing to the appointment of four out of the twelve to be acting trustees in rotation, with Joseph Greenwood of Springhead, their chairman, present at all meetings to sign any necessary documents. In addition to creating a more manageable-sized committee, Patrick also initiated a reform in the payment of his salary: ten pounds a year was, in future, to be deducted before it was paid to him. This was to be used for the repair and upkeep of buildings on the Church lands, for which he was responsible. The fixed sum, and its prior deduction, would avoid arguments about the excessive amounts sometimes charged to him in the past and about reclaiming sums which had already been handed over.59

  Patrick’s good relations, wit
h Joseph Greenwood of Springhead extended beyond Church affairs. On 11 August 1834, he wrote to the Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding, the Earl of Harewood, requesting him, as a matter of urgency, to appoint a magistrate for the Haworth district because ‘Our neighbourhood, is populous, and in some parts, has been – and soon may be again, somewhat turbulent.’60 The suggestion was rejected as two new magistrates had recently been appointed for Keighley, but Patrick tried again in November after the dismissal of Lord Melbourne’s Whig ministry had put the Tory party back in office. Joseph Greenwood, being a major landowner, ‘warmly attached to the best Institutions of our Country, … of sound principles – and a regular Churchman’, was the obvious candidate for the magistracy, as Patrick pointed out in a letter soliciting his support, to Henry Heap, the vicar of Bradford. The application was again refused, though Greenwood was eventually appointed a magistrate for the area in 1836.61

  One of the reasons Patrick cited for needing a magistrate in Haworth itself was to enforce the new factory regulations of 1833 which restricted the hours children under eleven could work in the mills to a maximum of forty-eight, those under eighteen to a maximum of sixty-nine and insisted on a minimum of two hours’ schooling per day.62 Patrick is likely to have been a supporter not only of the Factory Act of 1833 but also of the Ten Hours lobby, which wanted further restrictions to be imposed. On 11 September 1834 he entertained the Reverend George Bull at the parsonage and, at very short notice, gave him a platform in the schoolroom to defend himself against accusations of being a ‘Tory Demagogue, under the MASK of pleading for the poor factory children’. Bull’s accuser was the splenetic Baptist minister, John Winterbotham, which may have increased Patrick’s sympathy for his clerical colleague, but the two men were already friends and Patrick greatly admired George Bull’s commitment to the cause of the Ten Hours bill.63