Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  Though confined to bed, Patrick remained ‘on the whole pretty well’ throughout the winter of i860, but as the new year turned he suffered a severe relapse. Though recovery was not expected, his astonishingly tough physique pulled him through yet again.49 His decline was now steady. So much of Martha’s time was now taken up in looking after the invalid that her sister Eliza was hired again on 1 February to assist in running the house.50 The weather was extremely severe throughout the early months of 18 61, the roads between Skipton and Keighley becoming impassable as the snow drifted as high as the tops of the walls. Dr Cartman proved his friendship and showed considerable determination in getting through to Haworth for Patrick’s eighty-fourth birthday on 17 March 1861: he also made himself useful by preaching two sermons in the church the same day.51 On 4 April, Arthur reported to George Smith that ‘Mr Brontë continues pretty well – He has been confined to bed for some months, and seems to lose strength very gradually; his mental faculties however remain quite unimpaired –’. About a fortnight later there came sad news from Suffolk: Patrick’s old friend John Nunn had died on 16 April, at the age of seventy-nine.52 Patrick himself was soon to follow.

  About six o’clock on the morning of 7 June 1861, Patrick was seized with convulsions: before Arthur could get to him he was unconscious. Even then, death would not come swiftly to take the last Brontë who, of all his family, was the one most glad to die. He lingered, in a state of unconsciousness, with Arthur and Martha in constant attendance, until between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, his spirit went rejoicing to meet its Maker.53 He had served his God and his church faithfully for fifty-five years, forty-one of them in Haworth. Many of the inhabitants of his far-flung chapelry had known no other incumbent and they came in their hundreds to pay their last respects. On 12 June 18 61, the day of the funeral, all the shops in Haworth voluntarily closed, the unaccustomed ‘silence and solemnity that reigned around’ proving ‘the deep estimation in which the venerable incumbent was held’. In the church every pew and available space was taken and several hundred people were forced to remain outside in the churchyard.54

  In accordance with Patrick’s wishes, Arthur had arranged everything with unostentatious simplicity. There was no passing bell and no psalms were sung. The coffin, preceded by Dr Burnett, vicar of Bradford, and William Cartman, who jointly conducted the burial service, was carried from the parsonage to the church and then to the family vault by six of Patrick’s closest friends and neighbours, all clergymen: Joseph Grant from Oxenhope, J.H. Mitchell from Cullingworth, H. Taylor from Newsholme, William Fawcett from Morton, John Smith from Oakworth and John Mayne from Keighley. Arthur followed the coffin, accompanied by Martha and Eliza Brown, their mother and Nancy Garrs: Sutcliffe Sowden, too, was among the crowd of mourners. Anyone who might have doubted the personal affection which had arisen between Patrick and his son-in-law had only to observe Arthur’s conduct: he was so ‘deeply affected’ that he had to be physically supported by William Cartman.55 Patrick’s body was placed in the family vault and the last name was then added to the memorial tablet in the church, above the inscription from I Corinthians, Chapter xv, verses 56–7: ‘The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’56

  For Arthur, however, the sting of death was to be terrible indeed. He was too prostrate with grief to note the fact that the church trustees had held a meeting on the day of Patrick’s funeral to decide what course of action they should take over the appointment of a new incumbent. Patrick had outlived all the twelve trustees who had appointed him in 1820 and it was their descendants, at least two of whom were not even resident in the district, who had inherited the right to decide who should replace him. This first meeting was adjourned because it was deemed inappropriate to discuss the subject with the former incumbent not yet cold in his grave.57

  The deferral several months forward of the next trustees’ meeting seemed to confirm the general expectation that this was simply a formality and that Arthur would succeed his father-in-law. He had, after all, been incumbent of the parish in all but name for the previous six years, carrying out all the duties virtually singlehandedly. A few days after Patrick’s funeral, Arthur resumed his pastoral role, teaching in the schools, performing the duties and preaching at the Sunday services. He also read the evening prayers ‘with great solemnity’ on 23 June, when Dr Burnett returned to Haworth to preach Patrick’s funeral sermon to a packed church.58 On 13 August he had to officiate on an even more traumatic occasion: the funeral of his closest friend, Sutcliffe Sowden. His death had been sudden and tragic: coming home from a parish visit at half past ten on the dark and stormy night of 8 August, he had had some sort of a fit, fallen into the canal at Hebden Bridge and drowned. ‘Of a quiet and somewhat retiring disposition’, he had been universally liked and respected. Almost exactly two months to the day after Patrick’s funeral there was a second impressive gathering for the burial of a beloved clergyman. The shops and mills in Hebden Bridge closed for the day, the crowds lined the streets to pay their last respects, the Sunday school teachers and children carried posies of flowers, which they scattered on the coffin in the open grave. Joseph Grant of Oxenhope and William Baldwin, the rector of Mytholmroyd, were among the mourners, but it fell to Arthur, ‘between whom and the deceased there had existed a brotherhood of 14 years standing’, to read the burial service. Overcome with emotion at this second loss in such a short time, Arthur was ‘so deeply affected as to be often wholly inaudible’.59 He had lost not only a friend but also another precious link with his wife.

  One crumb of comfort at this time was that Archdeacon Musgrave, in a gesture that was welcomed as a fitting tribute to Sutcliffe Sowden himself, appointed his younger brother, George, to the incumbency of Hebden Bridge.60 Such comfort was to be denied Arthur Nicholls at Haworth.

  At a second meeting attended by ten of the twelve trustees, his name was put forward for the incumbency. Only four trustees, including the chairman, voted in his favour; five voted against him and one, the Dissenter, abstained. On this narrowest of margins, Arthur effectively lost the appointment. Consultations with Dr Burnett were evidently held for, at a third meeting, when all the trustees were present, his candidate, John Wade, won the vote by seven votes to Arthur’s five.61

  That the candidate of the vicar of Bradford should have been preferred before the man who had been curate of the parish for sixteen years requires some explanation. Two reasons are usually cited: that there was a general antipathy towards him in Haworth, caused by what Mrs Gaskell calls his ‘aversion’ to having anyone pay reverence to his wife’s memory, and that he had antagonized the church trustees by refusing to arrange for the late chairman, Michael Heaton, to be buried with his wife in a part of the churchyard that had been closed.62 Neither reason stands up to close scrutiny.

  There are only three contemporary sources which mention Arthur’s unpopularity in the township: Mrs Gaskell, her daughter Meta, and Charles Hale, an American who visited Haworth in November 1861.63 The Gaskells’ source of information was John Greenwood, who seems to have been at loggerheads with Arthur since the latter discovered his unwarranted interference and claims to friendship with Charlotte after her death; the baptizing of his child had simply been the latest in a series of incidents which had given Greenwood good reason to dislike the curate and to interpret his actions as hostility to his wife’s literary reputation. The corroborative evidence from Charles Hale proves doubly fallacious. Not only was he a personal friend of Mrs Gaskell, who wrote his account of his visit from her home at Plymouth Grove, but he too quotes the Brontë Greenwood story as evidence, confusing the Greenwoods with the Browns in the process; more importantly, he himself states that he got the story not from the principals involved, but from Mrs Gaskell. ‘General aversion’, therefore, becomes one parishioner with a grudge and literary contacts who perpetuated his claims.

  The overwhelming evidence of all
those who wrote accounts of meeting Arthur when they visited Haworth was entirely favourable: he impressed his wife’s admirers as quiet, courteous and kind. More significantly, the reminiscences of those who had lived in the chapelry during his curacy, especially those who had been taught by him in the schools, give the impression of a man who was not merely respected but also well liked and whose departure was genuinely regretted.64

  The story about Michael Heaton was equally bizarre. The fact that he was buried by Joseph Grant is of no significance, for Grant was sometimes called upon to officiate in Arthur’s absence. Similarly, the fact that the faculty for his burial was obtained by the family rather than the minister is irrelevant: Arthur’s own application on Patrick’s behalf was made not in his public but his private capacity as the deceased’s son-in-law. Moreover, the fact that the chairman of the trustees was one of those who voted for Arthur rather than John Wade65 suggests that if there was any truth in the incident at all, the matter had been forgiven and forgotten by those most concerned.

  We are therefore left with the problem of finding an explanation for Arthur’s rejection. That the margin was as narrow as one on the first occasion and two on the second is an indication that the issue was not clear cut, even in the trustees’ minds.

  One factor may have been a wish to end the Brontë associations with the church and appoint a minister who would not be a celebrity because of his personal connections. Another may have been the desire to avoid continuing the position in which the new incumbent, like Patrick, was totally dependent on his salary for his income, which meant pressure on the trustees to find funds for extraordinary expenses, such as repairs to the church and parsonage. A more compelling reason may have been that, despite his personal qualities as a parish priest, Arthur’s High Church Puseyite leanings were not in sympathy with an area which had a strong dissenting tradition and a church which had always favoured a more austere form of worship. The trustees may have feared that, without Patrick to overrule him, he would introduce Catholic rituals and vestments to church services, thus alienating his congregation. In all these areas, John Wade was a preferable candidate; he was unsympathetic, if not actually hostile, towards the Brontës and possessed of independent means, which enabled him to contribute towards the parish funds rather than be a drain on them. On the other hand he was tainted by being the vicar of Bradford’s candidate and, more importantly, by his having been rejected by the Simeon trustees for the incumbency of Girlington only eighteen months before on unspecified grounds about which dark hints were thrown. Dr Burnett had pushed his candidacy for that post too and, when he was rejected, had felt obliged to defend his choice against the Simeon trustees’ accusations and offer him a curacy at the parish church until a new vacancy turned up.66 He was therefore especially anxious to secure Wade a new post and may have suggested that his successful candidacy would ensure that the long-discussed creation of Haworth as an independent parish would meet a favourable reception. This is supposition, but the Orders in Council which eventually gave Haworth its independence from Bradford were finally signed on 30 August 1864, only three years after Wade’s appointment.67

  Ultimately, however, the trustees’ choice of John Wade in preference to Arthur Nicholls seems attributable chiefly to that bloody-mindedness which is characteristic of Yorkshiremen and more especially of the people of Haworth. They seem to have wished to assert their own authority in the face of a general expectation that they would prefer the curate. Even Arthur seems to have laboured under this same delusion: from the day he resumed his duties after Patrick’s funeral he signed the parish registers as ‘Officiating Minister’, rather than ‘Curate’. This may have been technically correct, but it implied a presumption guaranteed to infuriate the trustees, who were just as sensitive about their right to appoint the incumbent as their forebears. Nor was Arthur’s case helped by newspaper reports that his appointment was expected and that the vicar of Bradford had promised him the place on his marriage.68

  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the trustees’ choice, their deliberations were held in secret and their decision was not made public until 18 September, three months after Patrick’s funeral. Arthur had reverted to signing himself’Curate’ as early as 4 August, suggesting that he had already been informed by then that his candidacy was unacceptable to the trustees.69 Having lost his wife, his father-in-law and his closest friend, Arthur was now to be deprived of his home and his employment. Clearly he could not remain as curate when the trustees had so publicly displayed their lack of confidence in him: he handed in his resignation immediately and prepared to vacate the parsonage, which would now have to be handed over to the new incumbent.

  Despite the bitterness he must have felt, Arthur maintained a dignified silence and made no public comment. It was left to the editor of the Bradford Observer, himself a Dissenter, to denounce the ‘shabbiness and heartlessness’ of the decision:

  the trustees will be asked by the country not whether their choice is a better man, but whether Mr Nicholls is unfit for the incumbency of Haworth? They are responsible, first to the parishioners, and next to all England for an answer. Have they interpreted the feelings of the parishioners correctly? Is it possible that the people of Haworth wished to turn adrift in a thankless manner a gentleman, no longer young, who had been for so many years their teacher in divine things?

  The Bradford Observer’s advocacy was a two-edged sword, however, its reasons for supporting Arthur being, in all probability, precisely those which had caused his rejection.

  It is not many months ago since Patrick Brontë went down to the grave in ripe old age; he was the last of his race, but he wanted not in his latter helpless years the watchful kindness of a son. Mr Nicholls, his curate, and the widowed husband of Charlotte, smoothed the old man’s dying bed, and saw his head laid in the grave. He had for many years laboured in every sense as the Pastor of Haworth. His character is above reproach, and his faithful discharge of the duties of his office well known. What was more natural than that the people of Haworth would wish the incumbency to be conferred on the man that had gone out and in before them for such a long time, and who stood in the relation of husband to her that first made their district known to fame. Outsiders never doubted for a moment but that the congregation would do all in their power to perpetuate by the only remaining link the connection that fortune had formed between them and a child of genius. It is therefore with a feeling different from surprise that we now learn the unexpected issue.70

  Though well-meant, such expressions of support could only rub salt in Arthur’s wounds: if the trustees did not see fit to appoint him on his own merits why should they do so solely because he had been briefly married to Charlotte Brontë?

  The new incumbent made his presence felt with unseemly haste. Only four days after the announcement of his appointment, he officiated in the church on Sunday and baptized his first Haworth infants.71 Arthur literally had only days to pack up his belongings and leave the parsonage. Apart from the vault containing the mortal remains of the woman he loved, there was nothing to keep him in Haworth or its neighbourhood. Still raw with grief at his recent bereavements and devastated by his humiliating rejection by the church trustees, he had no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Only his old home in Ireland offered sanctuary. It was impossible for him to take all the contents of the parsonage with him, but he was determined to keep everything of personal or sentimental value: all the family manuscripts, most of the Brontës’ signed books, their writing desks, even items of his wife’s clothing, he packed up and took with him to Ireland. The larger items of household furniture, the contents of the kitchen, some of the pictures and books had to be left behind. Mr Cragg, the local auctioneer, was called in and over the course of two days, on 1 and 2 October, he sold off 485 lots and raised £11513s. ud.72 To an intensely private man like Arthur Nicholls, the sight of souvenir and bargain hunters going through the Brontës’ possessions and the dispersal of the contents of their home, must have been
a traumatic experience.

  There was no point in linGéring. Less than a month after John Wade’s appointment, Arthur quietly and without ceremony departed from Haworth.73 This time there was no public testimonial, no parting gift from a grateful Sunday school and congregation. His departure was not even noticed in the local papers. He was accompanied only by Patrick’s dogs, Plato and Cato, and more surprisingly, by Martha Brown. From initial hostility towards the man who had presumed to love her mistress, she had been won to such a pitch of loyalty and devotion that, when Arthur offered her the chance to continue in his employment, she left her home and her family for the unknown and life among strangers in Ireland. She returned to Haworth two years later, but remained in Arthur’s service and thereafter divided her time between Yorkshire and Ireland. She died on 19 January 1880, aged fifty-one, and was buried in Haworth churchyard only a stone’s throw from the parsonage.74

  Arthur returned to Banagher to live with his aunt, Mrs Bell, and her daughter, who had moved from Cuba House, where he had brought Charlotte as a bride, to a somewhat smaller residence on the top of the hill above the town and overlooking the Shannon.75 Whether he intended his flight to Ireland to be temporary or permanent is not known, but in this quiet rural backwater, far from Haworth and everything to do with the Brontës, Arthur soon settled into the peaceful obscurity which he had always craved. Martha Brown, with her Yorkshire accent and her famous sponge cakes, was more of a celebrity than her master. Well liked and respected by all his neighbours, particularly the children, Arthur became a stalwart of the local community. The only manifestation of his bitterness at his treatment by the Haworth church trustees was that he never again sought or obtained a clerical appointment: in his new life he would be a farmer. The money he had inherited from the Brontës was not enough for him to live on – despite Ellen Nussey’s hysterical accusations that he had enriched himself at their expense – and he gradually subsided into genteel poverty.