Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  The priest who could win such accolades from so stern a judge as Patrick Brontë hardly conforms to Charlotte’s jaundiced image of a man who ‘ought not to have been a parson’.

  Patrick’s good fortune in possessing a curate of Weightman’s abilities was underlined in the autumn of 1840 by the upheavals taking place within the parish of Bradford. The vicar, Dr Scoresby, in his efforts to increase the number of churches within the parish without diminishing his own income, had insisted on his right to retain half the fees due to their incumbents for performance of church offices. This had led to a tremendous clash of wills, particularly in those churches where Henry Heap had never enforced his claims. Prominent among those in the losing battle against Scoresby were Patrick’s friends, William Morgan and George Bull. The latter, known in the local press as the ‘pugnacious parson’ and ‘the Factory Child’s Friend’, was so incensed that, to the infinite loss of the parish, he tendered his resignation. Where Patrick’s sympathies lay is virtually impossible to ascertain, though he is likely to have sided with his colleagues against the vicar. Certainly he was prominent in supporting Bull, being the first to sign a testimonial on his behalf which was publicly presented to him before his departure for Birmingham in September. Another, newer friend, James Bardsley, who had nearly been Patrick’s first curate, was also driven to resign when Scoresby refused to nominate him to the newly built church at Bowling, a post which had been promised to him.76

  There were troubles in Keighley, too. After twenty-six years as vicar, the much-loved and respected Theodore Dury had decided to give up his rapidly expanding, industrial parish in favour of a smaller, rural one in his native Hertfordshire. Patrick had therefore to say goodbye to an old and valued friend whom he had known and worked with for over twenty years. In his place came William Busfeild, like Scoresby a disciple of the new and abrasive school of clergymen, who had wealthy and powerful connections with the Ferrand family of Harden Grange, near Bingley.77 His arrival coincided with two scandals in Keighley, though Busfeild appears to have been unaware of the second. On 31 August, James Robinson, the parish clerk, a man of dissipated habits who secretly indulged in excessive drinking, committed suicide.78 Less than three months later, Patrick had a visit from Mrs Collins, wife of Busfeild’s curate in Keighley, who had been on friendly terms with the Brontës. She had a terrible tale to tell

  of her wretched husband’s drunken, extravagant, profligate habits. She asked Papa’s advice; there was nothing, she said, but ruin before them. They owed debts which they could never pay. She expected Mr C—’s immediate dismissal from his curacy; she knew, from bitter experience, that his vices were utterly hopeless. He treated her and her child savagely; with much more to the same effect. Papa advised her to leave him for ever, and go home, if she had a home to go to. She said this was what she had long resolved to do; and she would leave him directly, as soon as Mr B dismissed him.79

  Mrs Collins does not appear to have followed Patrick’s unequivocal and startlingly unconventional advice, perhaps because her resolve weakened when Busfeild failed to recognize the depravity of his curate and dismiss him.80 The story had an interesting sequel when, six and a half years later, in April 1847, the Brontës had an unexpected visitor at the parsonage. ‘Do you remember my telling you or did I ever tell you about that wretched and most criminal Mr Collins’, Charlotte asked Ellen then,

  – after running an infamous career of vice both in England and France – abandoning his wife to disease and total destitution in Manchester – with two children and without a farthing in a strange lodging-house –? Yesterday evening Martha came up stairs to say – that a woman – ‘rather lady like’ as she said wished to speak to me in the kitchen – I went down – there stood Mrs Collins pale and worn but still interesting looking and cleanly and neatly dressed as was her little girl who was with her – I kissed her heartily – I could almost have cryed to see her for I had pitied her with my whole soul – when I heard of her undeserved sufferings, agonies and physical degradation – She took tea with us stayed about two hours and entered frankly into the narrative of her appalling distresses – her constitution has triumphed over the hideous disease – and her excellent sense – her activity and perseverance have enabled her to regain a decent position in society and to procure a respectable maintenance for herself and her children – She keeps a lodging-house in a very eligible part of the suburbs of Manchester (which I know) and is doing very well – she does not know where Mr Collins is and of course can never more endure to see him – She is now staying for a few days at Eastwood House with the Sugdens who I believe have been all along very kind to her – and the circumstance is greatly to their credit –81

  Mrs Collins’ terrible ordeal at the hands of her husband, which seems to have included his giving her venereal disease, appears to have inspired Anne Brontës second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which similarly dealt with a woman’s flight from her debauched husband. At the time of Mrs Collins’ first visit, though, Anne was still away from home at Thorp Green, where she was struggling against homesickness and finding some relief in poetry.

  In one poem, ‘The Bluebell’, the poet sees a solitary harebell, growing on a grassy bank, which reminds her poignantly of home.

  Whence came that rising in my throat

  That dimness in my eyes?

  Why did those burning drops distill –

  Those bitter feelings rise?

  O, that lone flower recalled to me

  My happy childhood’s hours

  When blue bells seemed like fairy gifts

  A prize among the flowers

  Those sunny days of merriment

  When heart and soul were free

  And when I dwelt with kindred hearts

  That loved and cared for me

  I had not then mid heartless crowds

  To spend a thank[l]ess life

  In seeking after others’ weal

  With anxious toil and strife

  ‘Sad wanderer weep those blissful times

  That never may return!’

  The lovely floweret seemed to say

  And thus it made me mourn82

  Another poem, written six days later, on 28 August, was more succinct.

  O! I am very weary

  Though tears no longer flow

  My eyes are tired of weeping

  My heart is sick of wo[e]

  My life is very lonely

  My days pass heavily

  I’m weary of repining

  Wilt thou not come to me?

  Oh didst thou know my longings

  For thee from day to day.

  My hopes so often blighted

  Thou wouldst not thus delay83

  Though it is the accepted view that these poems are autobiographical, a cautionary note should be sounded. Both poems are typical of Gondal, expressing the usual longings of exiled characters who have been torn from their families. ‘The Bluebell’, with its allusions to the sea, is usually taken to be a reference to Anne’s first visit to Scarborough with the Robinsons, but there is actually no evidence that the Robinsons began to take their annual holidays there until the following year.84 Nor can one presume that the absent loved one, who is urged to hasten to the poet’s side, was indeed the curate of Haworth. Again, this is a typical Gondal scenario, so much so that Emily, comfortably ensconced at home, had written a similar poem with the same title, ‘Appeal’, only three months before.

  If greif for greif can touch thee,

  If answering woe for woe,

  If any ruth can melt thee

  Come to me now!

  I cannot be more lonley,

  More drear I cannot be!

  My worn heart throbs so wildly

  ’Twill break for thee –

  And when the world despises –

  When Heaven repells my prayer

  Will not mine angel comfort?

  Mine idol hear?

  Yes by the tears I’v
e poured,

  By all my hours of pain

  O I shall surely win thee

  Beloved, again!85

  The strong likelihood is that Anne’s two poems were not strictly autobiographical. At most, all one can say is that the choice of subject probably reflected her own undoubted sense of isolation and unhappiness at Thorp Green.

  Charlotte, still seeking a post, had had an offer from Mrs Thomas Brooke of Huddersfield, apparently through Miss Wooler, and there followed an interchange of letters.

  She expressed herself pleased with the style of my application, with its candour, &c. (I took care to tell her that if she wanted a showy, elegant, fashionable personage, I was not the man for her,) but she wants music and singing. I can’t give her music and singing; so of course the negotiation is null and void;86

  Charlotte seemed more troubled by the fact that she was unable to assist Miss Wooler in securing more pupils for her school, which was ‘in a consumptive state’, than about her own failure to secure another job.87 In fact, she seems to have been rather too comfortable at home, as the cheerful, gossipy tone of her letters to Ellen suggests. She had, too, since the arrival of William Weightman, fallen into the habit of using jocose nicknames for herself and others. As well as calling Weightman ‘Celia Amelia’, Ellen ‘Mrs Menelaus’ and Emily ‘The Major’, she now took to signing herself off under various, sometimes telling pseudonyms. In March, when Ellen annoyed her by telling Martha Taylor about the Weightman Valentines, she was ‘Charivari’, an unpleasant cacophony of sound used to deride unpopular weddings and people in France, which was also the name of a satirical French journal. In June, telling Ellen about Weightman’s lady friends, she was ‘Ça ira, the title of a French revolutionary song suggesting that the aristocrats should go to the guillotine. Most revealing of all, in August, when she despaired of Weightman’s return, she became ‘Caliban, the misshapen and ill-natured monster enslaved by Prospero in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.88

  Apart from the endless material to be got from Weightman, there was an interesting diversion from the usual routine when the Brontës received a visit from what Ellen punningly called their ‘August relations’. In one of the very rare recorded instances of contact with Mrs Brontës family, her cousin John Branwell Williams, his wife and daughter arrived in Haworth to spend a day at the parsonage. They were actually staying for a month with John Fennell, Mrs Brontës uncle, at Cross Stone, just across the moors in the Calder Valley. Charlotte was unimpressed, considering that they gave themselves airs and lambasting them with her sarcasm.

  They reckon to be very grand folks indeed – and talk largely – I thought assumingly I cannot say I much admired them – To my eyes there seemed to be an attempt to play the great Mogul down in Yorkshire – Mr Williams himself was much less assuming than the womenites – he seemed a frank, sagacious kind of man – very tall and vigorous with a keen active look – the moment he saw me he exclaimed that I was the very image of my Aunt Charlotte. Mrs Williams sets up for being a woman of great talents, tact and accomplishment – I thought there was much more noise than work. my Cousin Eliza is a young lady intended by nature to be a bouncing good-looking girl Art has trained her to be a languishing affected piece of goods.89

  Despite her acid comments, such entertainment was grist to Charlotte’s mill. She had no incentive at all to leave home and seemed to be happy to sit back and wait for Miss Wooler to find her a new post.

  It was, in fact, Branwell who had once more gone out in search of employment and found it in a totally new field. For the last two years, work had been progressing on a new railway which would link the West Riding town of Leeds with the Lancashire town of Manchester. At the end of August 1840, it was announced that the twenty-seven-mile section of the railway from Leeds to Hebden Bridge would open on 5 October, leaving only the difficult trans-Pennine connection between Hebden Bridge and Littleborough still to be completed.90 Branwell had taken a great interest in the construction of the railway and leapt at the opportunity to work on it. It may seem strange today that anyone should have found the prospect of working on the railways exciting, but it is forgotten what an immense and pioneering project it was. The building of the Summit Tunnel under Blackstone Edge, between Hebden Bridge and Littleborough, was a major feat of engineering and would mark yet another pinnacle of technical achievement. No doubt it was in these terms that Branwell had to defend his new job against his sister’s sarcasms. Keeping up the habit she had recently begun of using nicknames, she referred to Branwell as ‘Boanerges’, the title, meaning ‘sons of Thunder’, given by Jesus to his disciples James and John: the name ‘Bronte’, of course, itself meant ‘Thunder’ in Greek. Tadmor, continuing the biblical allusion, was a city built in the wilderness by Solomon. In these mockingly grandiose terms she informed Ellen of Branwell’s appointment.

  A distant relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, has set off to seek his fortune, in the wild, wandering, adventurous, romantic, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railroad. Leeds and Manchester, where are they? Cities in the wilderness – like Tadmor, alias Palmyra – are they not?91

  Despite Charlotte’s derision, Branwell had at least secured a job. He had once hoped for a post as a clerk in a respectable bank: now he was to join the Leeds and Manchester Railway as the ‘assistant clerk-in-charge’ at the new station of Sowerby Bridge, a small textile town four miles outside Halifax. His appointment was confirmed at a board meeting at Hunt’s Bank, Manchester on 31 August, when his annual salary was fixed at £75, rising by ten pounds per year to a maximum of £105. Though Branwell’s starting salary was rather less than he could expect to earn as a private tutor, his prospects, assuming promotion, were much better. The confidence his family had in him was reflected in the fact that both Patrick and Aunt Branwell were prepared to stand surety for him for the vast sum of £210, which was considerably more than Patrick’s annual income.92

  Branwell was at his post in time for the official grand opening of the railway on 5 October 1840. The excitement aroused by this event was attested by the thousands of spectators who lined the tracks waiting for a view of the first train. The crowds waved flags and banners, bunting decorated the new stations and at Sowerby Bridge, the second to last station on the line and still based in temporary buildings, ‘an immense number of persons were congregated’. A few months later, on 16 December, the last brick was laid to complete the Summit Tunnel (a project which had taken two and a quarter years and cost a number of lives), in a torch-lit ceremony performed by Barnard Dickinson, the resident engineer, before a large crowd of ladies and gentlemen. While they then proceeded to dine at the Summit Inn, the workmen ‘were regaled’ within the tunnel itself. This was followed, on 1 March 1841, by a visit from George Stephenson, the great railway pioneer himself, who with some of the shareholders took a special trip along the length of the line from Manchester to Normanton to observe the Summit Tunnel, the train passing through Sowerby Bridge both ways.93

  After the excitement of the official openings, things quietened down in Sowerby Bridge, but not to the extent so often suggested by biographers. It is true that only three trains ran daily each way along the line at the beginning, but by 1 March 1841, when the Summit Tunnel was open and that part of the journey no longer had to be made by omnibus, this had increased to twelve trains each way, a total of twenty-four passing through Sowerby Bridge every day.94 The clerk and his assistant were therefore kept busy logging the trains and their cargoes, organizing and co-ordinating the loading and unloading of waggons and supervising the safety of passengers. As Sowerby Bridge was the nearest station to Halifax, this was a not inconsiderable task. The Halifax Guardian complained that

  Since the opening of the Railway, Sowerby Bridge has been one continued scene of battle occasioned by the passing and re-passing of the Omnibuses etc. Opposition has already commenced, and the public may now have a cheap ride to or from that place.95

  The dangers of horse-drawn omnib
uses racing each other up and down the perilously steep hill between the competing inns of Halifax and Sowerby Bridge in an attempt to be the first and cheapest service to get their passengers to the station added to the bustle and excitement in Sowerby Bridge. The town was already a thriving industrial centre of about 5,000 inhabitants, which owed its wealth to its position at a crossing of the River Calder at the foot of the Pennines. The precipitous hills surrounding the town provided a plentiful supply of water to run a large number of cotton, woollen, worsted and corn mills in the valley bottom. The Rochdale canal, built in the late eighteenth century, added to the town’s prosperity and now extended along the length of the Aire and Calder Navigation to the heartlands of industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire ending, in the extreme east, at the flourishing port of Goole. Sowerby Bridge had therefore developed long and busy wharves to deal with the canal traffic and a gas works, chemical works and iron foundries had grown up along the banks of the canal.96

  According to local tradition, Branwell lodged at the Pear Tree Inn in Sowerby Street, overlooking the railway. This seems inherently unlikely. In 1841, there was no Pear Tree Inn in Sowerby Bridge and the site was occupied by a beer house, the lowest form of drinking establishment.97 However great his supposed propensity for alcohol, Branwell was still a gentleman and a comparatively well paid one at that. No gentleman would have been seen lodging in a beer house: he might possibly have lodged at any one of the six inns in the town, but he is more likely to have rented a suite of rooms with a respectable family as he had already done in Bradford and Broughton and was to do at Luddenden.

  For Branwell the chief merit of his new job was his proximity to the literary, artistic and musical circles of Halifax, a town long renowned for its culture. John Frobisher, the organist at Halifax Parish Church, was a prolific organizer of concerts for the Quarterly Choral Society; there were regular, if sometimes bizarre, lectures in the town and, in December, a newly refurbished and reorganized Halifax Theatre opened, offering two different plays every night of the week.98 In addition, Branwell had old friends in the town. Within a few weeks of his arrival he had already had at least one visit from Joseph Bentley Leyland, the sculptor, who had his studio and marble works at The Square in Halifax town centre. He brought with him his brother, Francis, an antiquarian who ran a bookshop and circulating library from his father’s premises, Roberts Leyland & Son, at 15 Cornmarket, again in the centre of Halifax. Francis Leyland’s first impressions of Branwell are instructive.