Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  73. [Nancy Garrs], IllustratedWeeklyTelegraph, 10 Jan 1885 p.1. Nancy said Aunt Branwell was a ‘bit of a tyke’, keeping the key to the cellar herself and personally dispensing a gill of beer to each servant daily: Helen Arnold, ‘The Reminiscences of Emma Huidekoper Cortazzo: A Friend of Ellen Nussey’, BST: 13:68:227.

  74. ECG, Life, 470. The Garrs sisters were so upset by Martha Wright’s accusations that they obtained a testimonial from Patrick stating that, whilst in his service, they ‘were kind to my children, and honest, and not wasteful’: PB to Whom it May Concern, 17 Aug 1857: MS BS 204, BPM [LRPB, 259].

  75. PB to Revd William Gaskell, 7Apr 1857: MS EL B121 p.1, Rylands [LRPB, 252]; [Nancy Garrs], Illustrated Weekly Telegraph, 10 Jan 1885 p.1; William Dearden, BO, 20 Aug 1857 p.8. A meat jack was the mechanism for turning a spit to roast meat.

  76. See, for example, EJB/AB, Diary Paper, 24 Nov 1834: MS Bon 131, BPM [JB BLL, 29–30]; CB to EJB, 1 Oct 1843: MS n.l. [LCB, i, 331]; EN, Reminiscences: MS p.62, KSC [LCB, i, 600].

  77. ECG, Life, 46.

  78. Ibid., 469–72; PB to Revd William Gaskell, 7Apr 1857: MS EL B121 p.3, Rylands [LRPB, 253]; [Nancy Garrs], Illustrated Weekly Telegraph, 10 Jan 1885 p.1. Lady Kay Shuttleworth, whose home at Gawthorpe Hall was close to Burnley, where Wright lived, passed on the anecdotes to Mrs Gaskell when she and Charlotte were her guests in the Lakes in 1850: ECG to Catherine Winkworth, [25 Aug 1850] [C&P, 124–5].

  79. William Dearden, BO, 20 Aug 1857 p.8; [Nancy Garrs], Illustrated Weekly Telegraph, 10 Jan 1885 p.1.

  80. William Dearden, BO, 20 Aug 1857 p.8. Though Gaskell protested that Charlotte herself had told her the anecdote, Patrick flatly denied it: ‘With respect to tearing my wife’s slik [sic] gown, my dear little daughter must have been misinform’d’, pointing out that he had always advised his children to wear silk or wool as being less flammable than cotton: PB to ECG, 30 July 1857: MS EL B121 p.2, Rylands [LRPB, 258].

  81. ECG, Life, 46.

  82. William Dearden, BO, 20 Aug 1857 p.8.

  83. William Dearden, BO, 27 June 1861 p.7.

  84. Ibid., 20 Aug 1857 p.8. Dearden quotes an American review of ECG, Life, which described Patrick as ‘this moody, wretched parson, a man who, like a mad dog, ought to have been shot, or like a victim of its bite, smothered between two feather beds. Society is far too tolerant of these domestic hyenas, who are perpetual glooms upon their households’; Maria is portrayed as ‘this poor, persecuted woman [who] died, a victim to the dogged, gloomy ascet[ic]ism of the believer in the Thirty-Nine Articles’. Though an extreme view, this review still represents the popular view of Patrick, derived from Gaskell, which persists today.

  85. William Dearden, BO, 27 June 1861 p.7.

  86. PB to ECG, 24 July 1855: MS EL B121 pp.2–3, Rylands [LRPB, 237]; ECG, Life, 47.

  87. PB to ECG, 30 July 1855: MS EL B121 pp.5–7, Rylands [LRPB, 239]; ECG, Life, 47–8.

  88. Marian Harland, Charlotte Brontë at Home (New York, 1899), 32 quoting Sarah Garrs.

  89. Ibid., 17–24.

  90. Chadwick, 63, possibly on the authority of Nancy Garrs, says that Patrick ‘made a practice of telling them stories to illustrate a geographical or history lesson, and they had to write it out the next morning. Consequently they thought it out in bed – a habit Charlotte continued all her life in connection with her stories.’ Dearden also says ‘Mr Bronté was in the habit of giving instruction to his children at stated times during the day, adapted to their respective ages and capacities. He had too high an appreciation of the value of education to neglect his duty in that particular, as a father of a family’: William Dearden, BO, 20 Aug 1857 p.8.

  91. Herbert, ‘Charlotte Brontë: Pleasant Interview with the Old French Governess of This Famous Author’: special correspondence to ‘The Post’: typescript of original cutting from scrapbook of Mary Stull, a descendant of Sarah Garrs. BPM.

  92. EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 593].

  93. PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821: The Cottage Magazine (1822), 245 [LRPB, 43]; ECG, Life, 50, 64, 95, 98.

  94. Harland, Charlotte Brontë at Home, 31–22 quoting Sarah Garrs. For the Brontë children’s books see below, p.173–4.

  95. ECG, Life, 43, 46; Harland, Charlotte Brontë at Home, 19–20; Peters, Unquiet Soul, 6–7.

  96. In 1829 Charlotte wrote that they took the Leeds Intelligencer (Tory) and the Leeds Mercury (Whig) and saw three other papers each week: CB, History of the Year, 12 Mar 1829: MS Bon 80(11), BPM [JB CBJ, 2]; ECG, Life, 69.

  97. LM, 20 July 1822 p.3. The exact date of the death of Patrick’s mother is not known though L&D, 25 say she died in 1822.

  98. LM, 21 Dec 1822 p.3. Wilson was founder and governor of the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, see below, pp.138 ff.

  99. LM, 8 Feb 1823 p.3.

  100. Isabella Dury to Miss Mariner, 14 Feb 1823: MS BS ix, D p.1, BPM [L&D, 237].

  101. PB to Mrs Burder, 21 Apr 1823: MS n.l. [LRPB, 45–6].

  102. MS Minute Book of the Wesleyan Academy, Woodhouse Grove: MS at WGS [11 Apr and July 1823]; Methodist Conference, 30 July 1823: Minutes of the Methodist Conferences (London, 1864), v, 419.

  103. PB to Mary Burder, 28 July 1823: MS n.l. [LRPB, 47–8].

  104. PB to Mary Burder, 1 Jan 1824: MS n.l. [LRPB, 49].

  105. Mary Burder to PB, 8Aug 1823: MS n.l. [L&L, i, 65–6].

  106. PB to Mary Burder, 1Jan 1824: MS n.l. [LRPB, 49].

  107. Ibid., 50.

  CHAPTER FIVE: CHARITY-CHILDREN

  Title: CB, Jane Eyre, 50.

  1. Firth, 4 and 6 Oct 1823.

  2. Though Florence Nightingale is famous for changing Victorian attitudes towards nursing, this was not to happen till the 1850s: at this period it was still a despised profession restricted exclusively to the working classes.

  3. PB, The Maid of Killarney, 115 [Brontëana, 178]. In fairness to Patrick it should be pointed out that he qualifies the remark by saying that although, as a general rule, women should not be educated like men, there were honourable exceptions. He also encouraged his own daughters in their pursuit of learning well beyond the standards of the day.

  4. Richmal Mangnall, Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People (London, 1813). The Brontës had their own copy of this book which Charlotte and Anne used at Roe Head: HAOBP:bb215, BPM.

  5. Obituary of Richmal Mangnall in LM, 13 May 1820 p.3.

  6. Elizabeth Firth, Prize Cards, 11 Apr 1811 and 25 Mar 1813: MS 58 C5.i and ii, University of Sheffield.

  7. Firth, 1812, 1813.

  8. See, for instance, WG AB, 17.

  9. PB to ECG, 20 June 1855: MS EL B121 p.4, Rylands [LRPB, 234].

  10. LI, 4Dec 1823 p.1. A pseudo-prospectus, drawn up as a joke and featuring a ‘Singing and Scourge-Mistress’, has unfortunately been accepted at face value by a number of biographers after it was published by Edith Weir, ‘Cowan Bridge: New Light from Old Documents’, BST:11:56:20–1. Its authenticity was first questioned by Myra Curtis, ‘Cowan Bridge School: An Old Prospectus Re-examined: BST:12:63:187–92.

  11. LI, 4Dec 1823 p.1.

  12. A typical school of this period, such as Robinson’s Academy for young ladies at Spring Wood Field near Huddersfield, cost £27 p.a., with an additional one guinea entrance fee and 14s. a quarter charge for laundry: Ibid., 1 June 1824 p.1.

  13. Ibid., 6 Nov 1823 p.3.

  14. Ibid., 22 Jan 1824 p.2.

  15. Charlotte may have read Charles Dickens’ savage indictment of Yorkshire schools in Nicholas Nickleby (1838–9) as she scrawled ‘Dotheboys Hall’ and ‘Squeers’ on the back of a ms: CB, ‘I have now written a great many books’, n.d. [c.1839]: MS Bon 125(1) verso, BPM.

  16. LI, 4 Dec 1823 p.1.

  17. Wilson preached regularly in Keighley, for instance, on behalf of the Bible Society, Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the Keighley National Schools and Sunday Schools: ibid., 30 Dec 1822 p.3; 25 Oct 1827 p.3; LM, 21 Oct 1826 p.3; 28 Oct 1826 p.3; 25 Oct 1828 p.3; 30 Oct 1
830 p.3.

  18. Dury was a trustee by 1827 and with his wife, sister and father, was also a donor or subscriber to the school: [Report on the] School for Clergymen’s Daughters (Kirby Lonsdale, 1827), 3, 14.

  19. See, for example, WG CB, 1–16; WG PBB, 9–10; Chitham, A Life of Emily Brontë, 29–47.

  20. ECG, Life, 51.

  21. CB to WSW, 4Jan 1848: MS HM 26008, Huntington [LCB, ii, 3–4].

  22. ECG, Life, 51.

  23. Ibid., 51–62.

  24. Ibid., 53–4; CB, Jane Eyre, 48. At Woodhouse Grove each boy also had ‘a piece of ground about three yards long and two yards and a half broad for a garden, which we are to cultivate ourselves’: John S. Stamp to his father, 29 Feb 1812 [Slugg, 340].

  25. See above, pp.61, 62.

  26. CB, Jane Eyre, 50.

  27. [Report on the] School for Clergymen’s Daughters (Kirby Lonsdale, 1827), 5.

  28. LI, 6Nov 1823 p.3; Slugg, 165 referring to 1822–8 when the boys were provided with a ‘seal-skin’ cap, dark blue cloth jacket and corduroy trousers which had to last the year.

  29. CDSAR, nos. 1–44 inclusive. Charlotte was no. 30, Emily no. 44. ECG, Life, 48 quoting Miss Evans, one of the superin-tendents of the school during the Brontë period.

  30. CDSAR, nos. 38 (Mellany Hane) and 37 (Charlotte Hane); PB to ECG, 30 July 1855: MS BL B121 p.1, Rylands [LRPB, 238–9]. ECG, Life, 61 wrongly states that Mellany’s fees were paid by her brother: according to the CDSAR, he only paid her sister’s: Mellany’s were paid by the Clergy Orphans’ Society. WG CB, 9 wrongly asserts that Charlotte was the youngest girl at the school: Elizabeth Hayes and Martha Thompson, both 6, were already there when Charlotte arrived; 2 months later she was joined by her own 6-year-old sister Emily and 3 other girls aged 8: CDSAR, nos. 16, 26, 35, 42, 43.

  31. CB, Jane Eyre, 52–3.

  32. LI, 22 Jan 1824 p.2. At Bowes school, 300 boys washed without running water in a single horse trough and shared 2towels between them: ibid., 6Nov 1823 p.3; Slugg, 22–3. At Woodhouse Grove in 1855–61 one boy complained that when the open-air water tank was low the washing water had ‘a number of grubs, worms and decaying leaves’ in it: C.W. Towlson, Woodhouse Grove School, 1812–1962 (Rawdon, 1962), 32.

  33. CB, Jane Eyre, 44–52.

  34. Guide leaflet, Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Tunstall, Cumbria.

  35. ‘CMR’ to ABN, 26 May 1857: MS p.4in private hands. I have been unable to iden-tify ‘CMR’: there are no girls with those initials or the initials ‘CM’ as forenames in CDSAR. She was living in Leeds when she wrote to Nicholls.

  36. ‘Clericus’ to ABN, July 1857: MS p.3in private hands. ‘Clericus’ was writing on behalf of his wife, Maria Gauntlett, see below n.41. It is worth noting that Charlotte’s supporters all used initials or pseudonyms rather than their own names. As Gaskell said, ‘many who are now offering me testimony in proof of my correctness are poor people, – I mean governesses, strug-gling surgeons’ wives, schoolmistresses &c. – who say I may make use of their names, if absolutely necessary – but that it may seriously injure them if I do. And of course I must do anything rather than bring them into trouble’: ECG to GS, 5June [1857] [C&P, 451].

  37. John S. Stamp to his father, 11 April 1812 [Slugg, 341–2].

  38. Towlson, Woodhouse Grove School, 1812–1962, 19, 23; Slugg, 77, 183; Firth, 1812–13.

  39. CB, Jane Eyre, 46, 51–2.

  40. ECG, Note to Third Edition of Life [CB, Jane Eyre, Clarendon Edn, 620]; ‘Clericus’ to ABN, July 1857: MS p.3in private hands.

  41. Ibid., p.2. When Nicholls quoted this letter in ABN, HG, 8July 1857 p.3, another former pupil, Sarah Baldwin, replied identifying the sisters as daughters of the vicar of Olney and quoted one of them, ‘E’, as authority for the fact that after this unfor-tunate incident Wilson allowed her bread and milk for breakfast: HG, 1 Aug 1857 p.6. From the CDSAR it is possible to identify them as Elizabeth and Maria, daughters of the Revd Henry Gauntlett, a former curate of Wellington, Shropshire and, since 1814, vicar of Olney. They were admitted to the school on 4 February 1826, aged 15 and 13 respectively, and both left on 21 June 1830. Elizabeth, the ‘E’ of Baldwin’s letter, became a private governess and Maria, the wife of ‘Clericus’, a teacher in a Manchester school: CDSAR nos. 81 and 82.

  42. ‘A.H.’, Littell’s Living Age, 15 Sept 1855 [BST:16:83:210]. Though ‘A.H.’ is frequently mistaken for Miss Evans, she was in fact Miss Andrews, a teacher who was temporarily superintendent until the appointment of Miss Evans. Nicholls and Gaskell identified her as the ‘Miss Scatcherd’ of Jane Eyre. She later married a Mr Hill and emigrated to the US. Though she does not appear to have recognized her own portrait in Jane Eyre, her son did and was furious. Miss Evans who, like her fictional character Miss Temple, left the school in 1826 to marry the Revd J. Connor of Melton Mowbray, died just before the publication of ECG, Life: Brett Harrison, ‘The Real “Miss Temple”‘, BST:16:85:361–4; Tom Winnifrith, ‘Miss Scatcherd’s Identity’: BST:16:85:364; ECG to GS, [mid Aug 1857] [C&P, 465].

  43. ABN, LI, 23 May 1857 p.7.

  44. ‘CMR’ to ABN, 26 May 1857: MS pp.1–3 in private hands. These sections of this letter were quoted, with her permission, in Nicholls’s letter of 29 May 1857, which was published in LM, 2 June 1857 p.1; LI, 6 June 1857 p.10 and HG, 6June 1857 p.7. The boys at Woodhouse Grove refused to eat for 3days after their cook was seen using the porridge ladle in the swill tub: Towlson, Woodhouse Grove School, 1812–1962, 23–5.

  45. ‘A.H.’, Littell’s Living Age, 15 Sept 1855 [BST:16:83:210].

  46. Slugg, 160. This was still better than the Bowes school where the boys had meat 3times a week, with cakes made of water, meal and potatoes the other days; for tea on Sundays they got ‘the skimming of the pot’ which was usually full of maggots: LI, 6Nov 1823 p.3.

  47. Sarah Bicker died at school on 29 September 1826: CDSAR no.3. Her 11 contemporaries who left in ill-health, 6to die shortly afterwards, were (with date of departure and any marginal comment): no.2Hannah Bicker, 24 June 1827 (died 1828 ‘of a consumption’); no.8 Mary Chester, 18 Feb 1825 (left in ill-health, died 26 Apr 1825); no.17 Maria Bronté, 14 Feb 1825 (left in ill-health, died 8May 1825 ‘Decline’); no.18 Elizabeth Bronté, 31 May 1825 (left in ill-health, died 15 June 1825 ‘in decline’); no.19 Elizabeth Robinson, 1Mar 1825 (left in ill-health, died 29 Apr 1825 ‘in a decline’); no.22 Isabella Whaley, 2Apr 1825 (left ‘in good health’, died 23 Apr 1825 ‘Typhus Fever’); no.32 Jane Lowry, 3Sept 1825 (left in ill-health); no.39 Ann Dockeray, 8June 1825 (left ‘with bad legs’); no.45 Mary Eleanor Lowther, 27 Jan 1825 (left in ill-health ‘which incapacitated her for study’); no.50 Charlotte Banks, 19 May 1825 (left ‘in a spinal case’); no.53 Jane Allanson, 30 May 1825 (‘went home ill’). The 20 who left Jan–Sept 1825 were, in order of their departure: no.45 Mary Lowther, 27 Jan (ill-health); no.17 Maria Bronté, 14 Feb (ill-health; died 8May); no.8Mary Chester, 18 Feb (ill-health; died 26 Apr); no.19 Elizabeth Robinson, 1Mar (ill-health; died 29 Apr); no. 21 Ann Whaley, 2Apr; no.22 Isabella Whaley, 2Apr (died of typhus 23 Apr); [no.23 Phebe Whaley, [2Apr]: see below]; no.50 Charlotte Banks, 19 May (ill-health); no.46 Clara Parker, 30 May; no.53 Jane Allanson, 30 May (ill-health); no.18 Elizabeth Bronté, 31 May (ill-health; died 15 June); no.30 Charlotte Bronté, 1June; no.44 Emily Bronté, 1June; no.24 Jane Abbot, 8June; no.39 Ann Dockeray, 8June (ill-health); no.34 Eliza Grover, 13 June; no.35 Harriet Grover, 13 June; no.31 Eliza Goodacre, 14 June; no.32 Jane Lowry, 3Sept (ill-health); no.33 Mary Lowry, 3Sept. The Whaley sisters appar-ently left school on 2April, though in both Ann and Isabella’s cases this has been crudely altered from 22 April, the confusion arising perhaps from the fact that Isabella died on 23 April. Though no date at all is given for Phebe’s removal I have assumed she left on the same day as her sisters.

  48. According to the register, 2girls died at the school: CDSAR no.79 Mary Tate, 14 Aug 1829 (‘Died of the Typhus Fever’) and no.177 Emma Tinsley, 6June 1831 (‘in a sure and certain hope of a better resu
rrection complaint consumption’). Another girl, no.83 Mary Anna Clarke, died of ‘a consumption’ on 11 June 1829 and as there is no note of her being sent home, she may also have died at school. Her sister, no.84 Anne, was sent home the day before Mary died. The names of the 15 others who left in ill-health are: no.94 Frances Iron, 15 Nov 1826; no.92 Anne King, 27 Dec 1826; no.103 Harriet Iron, 1827; no.114 Martha Meadowcroft, 18 June 1828; no.131 Mary Allen, 17 Jan 1829; no.130 Maria Forshaw, 26 Sept 1829 (died 10 Oct); no.110 Thomasin Adin, 5 June 1830 (died 24 June ‘consumption’); no.135 Mary Anne Hannaford, 8 June 1830 (died 26 June); [no.121 Rebecca Kenney, 22 June 1830 (‘Home since dead’)]; [no.124 Mary Anne Kenney, 22 June 1830 (‘Home since dead’)]; no.238 Maria Overend, July 1830 (died 27 July); no.134 Jane Mason, 16 Oct 1830; no.146 Harriet Williams, 10 May 1831; no.176 Margaret Jones, 10 May 1831 (‘Went home very ill and died’); no.99 Mary Hitch, 19 Nov 1831 (died in Dec ‘consumption’). The two Kenney sisters are not noted as having been sent home in ill-health so their subsequent deaths may have been unrelated to the school, particularly as no date of death is recorded. Incidentally, the register’s evidence suggests that W.W.C. Wilson was casuistical, at the very least, in his claim that ‘For the whole 35 years the school has been in existence there have been but two attacks of fever, which carried off but six pupils’: W.W.C. Wilson, HG, 18 July 1857 p.3.

  49. Pritchard, The Story of Woodhouse Grove School, 118, 123; Geoffrey Sale, The History of Casterton School (Kirkby Lonsdale, 1983), 18, 30.

  50. ECG, Life, 147–8says that the Brontës were later grateful to Aunt Branwell for enforcing habits of order, method and neatness upon them in childhood which eventually became second nature: ‘with their impulsive natures it was positive repose to have learnt implicit obedience to external laws.’

  51. CDSAR nos. 17 and 18; ‘A.H.’, Littell’s Living Age, 15 Sept 1855 [BST:16:83:209]. Andrews said that they had both recently recovered from whooping cough and measles but CDSAR only noted that they had both had whooping cough and scarlet fever. All the children had scarlet fever when their mother was dying: see above, p.119.