Brontës
Page 49
Charlotte’s second adventure, her holiday with Ellen, was beset with setbacks and difficulties. She could not get herself over to Leeds in time for the day Ellen first proposed and then, when another had been fixed and all seemed settled, she discovered that the only gig let out on hire in Haworth was in Harrogate and she had no means of getting to Birstall for the next two weeks. Her father, quite rightly, objected to her travelling by coach and walking to Birstall and her aunt ‘exclaims against the weather and the roads and the four winds of Heaven’. Now that there was a real difficulty in getting there, the elders were more decidedly opposed to a trip of which they had never really approved.
Papa indeed would willingly indulge me, but this very kindness of his makes me doubt whether I ought to draw upon it – & though I could battle out Aunt’s discontent I yield to Papa’s indulgence – He does not say so but I know he would rather I stayed at home –106
In the end, and to the surprise of everyone concerned, Ellen acted with uncharacteristic determination and carried the day. She borrowed her brother’s carriage, drove over to Haworth and arrived on the parsonage doorstep, ready to carry Charlotte off. Branwell praised Ellen’s courage: ‘it was a brave defeat’, he declared, ‘that the doubters were fairly taken aback’.107
The journey to Bridlington did not pass without incident, justifying her father’s and aunt’s concern about two unaccompanied young ladies travelling by public transport. The first part of the journey, from Leeds to York, was by railway – Charlotte’s first experience of this new mode of transport – but the rest of the way had to be travelled by stagecoach. Unfortunately the coach was full, and though Ellen and Charlotte were sent on in an open fly, Mr and Mrs Hudson, friends of Henry Nussey who were waiting to meet them, missed them. They therefore left orders at the hotel where the fly was due to arrive that the two young ladies should be sent on in a post chaise to their own home, Easton Farm, which lay two or three miles from Bridlington. To their intense frustration, Charlotte and Ellen found themselves being driven away from the seaside, the principal object of their holiday, to the Hudsons’ farm where they were ‘detained’ for a whole month. Though hospitably entertained and being held as ‘captive guests’ from the best possible motives, their chagrin was immense. Two days after their arrival, they walked to the coast and there Charlotte had her first glimpse of the sea. The emotion of this longed-for moment overpowered her, rendering her speechless and reducing her to tears.108 Weeks later, she still fed on the vision:
Have you forgot the Sea by this time Ellen? is it grown dim in your mind? or you can still see it dark blue and green and foam-white and hear it – roaring roughly when the wind is high or rushing softly when it is calm?109
Even when writing to Henry Nussey, to congratulate him on his having at last secured a bride, she could not resist dwelling on the thought of the sea.
I will not tell you what I thought of the Sea – because I should fall into my besetting sin of enthusiasm. I may however say that its glorious changes – its ebb and flow – the sound of its restless waves – formed a subject for Contemplation that never wearied either the eye – the ear or the mind[.]110
The month at Easton Farm passed pleasantly enough, with long walks through Harlequin Wood, to Boynton and the sea. Charlotte even whiled away part of the time by painting a watercolour of their hosts sitting in front of Easton Farm and a portrait of Mrs Hudson.111
This was all very well, but it was not what Charlotte and Ellen had intended; they were anxious to be independent and they wanted to be by the sea. Eventually they managed to persuade their over-zealous hosts to let them go into lodgings for a week in Bridlington. The rooms they chose were in Garrison Street at Bridlington Quay, ‘a neat handsome little town’ about a mile from Bridlington itself. The Quay enjoyed direct access to the harbour, its northernmost pier commanded beautiful views of Flamborough Head and its mineral springs were highly regarded for their health-giving properties. It was the ideal place ‘for persons who have a taste for the peaceful and sequestered scenes of life’.112 They soon learnt the hard way how well they had been looked after at Easton Farm. Despite daily visits from the Hudsons, bearing gifts from their dairy, the bill for only a week’s lodgings used up their entire stock of funds. Nevertheless, this part of the holiday lived up to all their expectations. The sea was on hand for endless contemplation and Charlotte also took great pleasure in watching the seaside visitors. The evening ritual of the promenade greatly amused her, as so many people crowded on to the little pier that they had to march round in regular file in order to be able to walk at all. Typically, too, when they returned to their lodgings one evening and heard a Ranters’ meeting in full flow in the chapel opposite, Charlotte was ‘wild’ to go in and see what they were about. She was only restrained by the reflection, probably uttered by the more prudent Ellen, that it was wrong to criticize or ridicule people acting on a religious impulse.113
Charlotte returned to Haworth in mid-October, invigorated by her holiday and ‘very fat’, her usual description for being in good health.’114 The rest of the autumn she passed quietly enough, like Emily, deeply absorbed in her writing. Emily had written prolifically since leaving Law Hill, developing particularly her interest in the doomed Byronic characters which prefigured the creation of Heathcliff.
I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no
I’ve never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born
In secret pleasure – secret tears
This changful life has slipped away
As freindless after 18 years
As lone as on my natal day115
Another vivid poem describes how the cheerful welcome a shepherd family gives to a stranger fades into gloom, their ‘hospitable joy’ frozen by his cold manner and his ‘basilisk’ gaze.
… there was something in his face
Some namless thing they could not trace
And something in his voices tone
Which turned their blood as chill as stone
The ringlets of his long black hair
Fell o’er a cheek most ghastly fair
Youthful he seemed – but worn as they
Who spend too soon their youthful day
When his glance drooped ’twas hard to quell
Unbidden feelings sudden swell
And pity scearce her tears could hide
So sweet that brow with all its pride
But when upraised his eye would dart
An icey shudder through the heart
Compassion changed to horror then
And fear to meet that gaze again116
One other poem deserves special notice, not least because it is frequently cited as an expression of Emily’s attitude towards her brother, ‘proving’ that she was more tolerant of his faults than her sisters.
Do I despise the timid deer
Because his limbs are fleet with fear?
Or would I mock the wolf’s death-howl
Because his form is gaunt and foul?
Or hear with joy the lever [e]ts cry
Because it cannot bravely die?
No – then above his memory
Let pity’s
Say ‘Earth, lie lightly on that breast,
‘And Kind Heaven, grant that spirit rest!’117
Quite apart from the fact that it precedes Branwell’s downfall by some six years, the poem has an obvious Gondal context and one should never make the mistake of assuming that sentiments expressed by Gondal characters are inevitably those of the author.
While Emily and Charlotte buried themselves in their imaginary worlds, Patrick was having to face up to unpleasant realities. In July the Simeon trustees had announced the appointment of the Reverend Dr Scoresby, an eminent scientist and Arctic explorer from Whitby in North Yorkshire, as the new vicar of Bradford.118 Dr Scoresby did not take up residence in Bradford until October, but his arr
ival heralded a new era of change and confrontation in the parish. His first vestry meeting to lay a church rate set the pattern for the future. The Dissenters had brought in their champion, John Winterbotham, who denounced the new vicar for oppressing the poor of Haworth and abused the practice as ‘the old dirty path of the Catholic Church’.119 The Dissenters triumphantly forced the church rate to be voted down and Scoresby had his first taste of the problems Patrick had faced for so long in Haworth.
Scoresby was a different man from Patrick or his own predecessor, Henry Heap, however, a stickler for his rights who would not go down without a fight. The bishop’s scheme for Haworth to be separated from the parish of Bradford was now effectively scotched and, within six months of taking office, Scoresby had drawn up a new plan to reorganize his parish into smaller districts, based on a population of about 3,000 each, with plans to build three new churches immediately and six more in future. This was all very well for the vicar of Bradford, who reserved the right of marriage to himself alone and ensured that his own income remained adequate, but it met with immense opposition from the districts which faced a huge increase in church rates to pay for these ambitious schemes. Clergymen such as William Morgan, who by the beginning of January 1840 was not even on speaking terms with his vicar, found that their cures would be arbitrarily divided with a subsequent loss of income to themselves.120 A similar prospect faced Patrick, whose own chapelry, one of the largest in the whole parish, now extended to over 6,000 souls. The only bright spot in an otherwise gloomy prospect was that Patrick had at last secured the services of a curate, William Weightman, who promised to fulfil all Patrick’s hopes for his assistant.121
The year 1839 drew to a rather depressing close. At the end of November, the Brontës’ faithful old servant, Tabby Aykroyd, had at last been obliged to leave them. The leg she had broken three years before had become so badly ulcerated that she was too lame to work. She had bought a little house with her sister, Susanna Wood, and retired there very comfortably on her savings.122 Apart from a servant girl, Martha Brown, the eleven-year-old daughter of the Haworth sexton who ran errands for them, the whole work of the household devolved on Charlotte and Emily.
I manage the ironing and keep the rooms clean – Emily does the baking and attends to the Kitchen – We are such odd animals that we prefer this mode of contrivance to having a new face among us. Besides we do not despair of Tabby’s return and she shall not be supplanted by a stranger in her absence.
I excited Aunt’s wrath very much by burning the clothes the first time I attempted to Iron but I do better now. Human feelings are queer things – I
Assistance arrived from an unexpected quarter. Anne returned home from Blake Hall for her Christmas holidays only to report that she had been dismissed. Despite having done her best to instil some order and learning into her charges, the Inghams had found no visible improvement in them and held Anne responsible.124 Christmas 1839 therefore saw the whole Brontë family reunited in Haworth, all four children having failed to hold a job and all four now unemployed.
Chapter Twelve
PATRICK BOANERGES
TUITION. – WANTED, in a small Town in the Neighbourhood of the Lakes, A PRIVATE TUTOR, competent to instruct Two Boys, Ten & Eleven Years old, in a general Course of Education, including the Classics, with the strictest attention to Grammar. Apply to MR STEPHEN SOULBY, Bookseller, Ulverston. Dec 20, 18391
This advertisement must have leapt off the front page of the Leeds Intelligencer when Branwell picked up the newspaper on 21 December. Here, surely, was the ideal job for him, with its emphasis on the classics and its location in that haven of poets and writers, the Lake District. Though he had had no luck in finding a place since his return from Bradford, he had embarked on a reading scheme with his father the previous summer in anticipation of just such an appointment. Patrick had drawn up a plan of action on the fly leaves of his little concordance to the Holy Scriptures.
In June 1839 – I agreed with Branwell, that, under Providence, we should thoroughly read together, the following classics, in the following order only –
1st the first 6 Books of the Aeneid – and the four Gospels – in Greek.
& 2ndly the first 3
and some of the first Odes of Horace, and the Art of Poetry – besides – translating some English into Latin – The progress of the reading, is to be reguarly set down in this, and the following pages. B.2
This was not, as one might suspect, an attempt to brush up Branwell’s classical education, for Branwell had never abandoned his Latin and Greek, which had remained a consuming passion. A year earlier, for instance, he had been translating Horace’s Odes simply for pleasure.3 It was, however, an attempt to study the classics in a systematic way and its benefit was apparent when Branwell wrote for and immediately obtained the post.
His sisters were flung into a frenzy of activity, shirt-making and collar-stitching ready for his departure on 31 December. Charlotte, having experienced the difficulties of private tutoring at first hand, expressed her own reservations about Branwell’s suitability for the post to Ellen.
How he will like, or settle remains yet to be seen, at present he is full of Hope and resolution.
I who know his variable nature, and his strong turn for active life, dare not be too sanguine.4
Branwell had already paid his last – and only – visit of that year to the Three Graces Lodge on 16 December 1839.5 All that remained was for him to say goodbye to his family and set off on the coach from Keighley to Kirkby Lonsdale, where, as he later told his friend John Brown, he spent the last night of the old year in a riotous drinking session.
I took a half years farewell of old friend whisky at K[irkby Lonsdale] on the night after I left – there was a party of gentlemen at the Royal Hotel, and I joined them, we ordered in Supper and whisky-toddy as ‘hot as hell!’. They thought I was a P[h]ysician! and put me into the chair – I gave some stiffish toasts – [lacuna] sort, they gave c[un]t & pill[oc]k &c washing [it] down at the same time till the room spun round and the candles danced in our eyes. One of the guests was a respectable old Gentleman with powdered head, rosy cheeks, fat paunch, and ringed fingers – I gave ‘may the front door of women ever be open, & the porter Roger ever at his post’ after which he brayed off with a speech and in two minutes, in the middle of a grand sentence he stopped, wiped his head, looked wildly round, stammered, coughed, stopped again and called for his slippers. The waiter helped him to bed. Next a tall Irish squire and a native of the land of Israel began to quarrel about their countries and in the warmth of argument, discharged their glasses each at his neighbours throat instead of his own. I recommended purging and bleeding, but they administered each other a real ‘Jem Warder’, so I flung my tumbler on the floor and swore I’d join ‘Old Ireland!’ A regular rumpus ensued – but we were tamed at last. I found myself in bed next morning with a bottle of porter, a glass, and a corkscrew beside me. Since then I have not tasted anything stronger than milk-and-water, nor, I hope, shall, till I return at Midsummer; when we shall see about it.6
No doubt in bragging about his exploits, the twenty-year-old Branwell exaggerated them to suit the older and more worldly John Brown: indeed, the whole account sounds suspiciously like one of the bar-room brawls in his Angrian tales.7
If it was true then Branwell must have regretted the amount he had drunk as he travelled the last tortuous thirty miles of the mountainous southern Lakeland road between Kirkby Lonsdale and Ulverston in a stagecoach with a hangover. At the end of that journey he had still a further ten miles to travel before he arrived at his destination, Broughton-in-Furness, a small market town on the River Duddon estuary.
His new employer, Robert Postlethwaite, was about fifty years old, ‘a retired County magistrate, a large landowner, and of a rig
ht hearty and generous disposition.’ Though not of an old-established county family, he was the second largest landowner in the area. His father, a successful merchant who had risen to the office of deputy lieutenant of Cumberland, had built Broughton House in the centre of the town in 1780 and his son continued to live there. From being shipbuilders and timber merchants the family had progressed to partnership in the banking firm of Petty and Postlethwaite in Ulverston and they retained substantial business interests in the town. Robert Postlethwaite’s wife, Agnes, was ‘a quiet, silent, and amiable woman’ and her two sons, his charges, John and William, ‘two fine, spirited lads’.8
Broughton today is still recognizably the Broughton of Branwell’s day. Hidden just below the brow of High Duddon and barely visible from any approach, it is a neat and compact little town which has grown up round the three main roads which meet there. Most of the houses date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the town was a prosperous centre of the hand loom weaving trade.9 Virtually all are built in distinctive Lakeland blue-grey stone, though some have been colour-washed and the surrounds of their square sash windows picked out in contrasting colours. Most are only two storeys high and built in terraces straight on to the narrow streets. Round the incongruously large market square, with its obelisk to commemorate the golden jubilee of George III, the cottages are three storeys high but only a single room in width. Above the market square and across a protective belt of parkland is Broughton Tower, a fourteenth-century pele tower which then belonged to the Sawrey family who were lords of the manor.
The main part of the town lies below the market square, down the gentle incline of Griffin Street. At the bottom of the street, on a corner facing the Old King’s Head, a splendid seventeenth-century inn, lies the solid and impressive mass of Broughton House. Having only a narrow strip of garden to separate it from the road and being hemmed in by cottages on all sides, the house stands out only because of its exceptional size. Turning the corner, the road winds up a steep hill, past cottages and farmhouses, before opening out into fields. Close to the brow of the hill and virtually the last house in the village is High Syke House, a long low farmhouse with small, cramped rooms, built in 1753. This was where Branwell took lodgings with the family of Edward Fish. His landlord was one of the two town surgeons and Branwell described him as being ‘two days out of every seven … as drunk as a lord’. His wife Ann was ‘a bustling, chattering, kind-hearted soul’ and he had a decidedly pretty eighteen-year-old daughter, Margaret, of whom Branwell could only say ‘oh! death and damnation’. There were two younger children also, whom Branwell did not mention, the twelve-year-old John Hardy and his nine-year-old sister, Harriet.10