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The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 1

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell · English · Gutenberg #1827 · 558,628 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 1

Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell


        
Release date: July 1, 1999 [eBook #1827]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1827

Credits: Transcribed from the 1906 Smith, Elder, and Co. edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË — VOLUME 1 ***





Transcribed from the 1906 Smith, Elder, and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE--VOLUME 1


CHAPTER I


The Leeds and Skipton railway runs along a deep valley of the Aire; a
slow and sluggish stream, compared to the neighbouring river of Wharfe.
Keighley station is on this line of railway, about a quarter of a mile
from the town of the same name.  The number of inhabitants and the
importance of Keighley have been very greatly increased during the last
twenty years, owing to the rapidly extended market for worsted
manufactures, a branch of industry that mainly employs the factory
population of this part of Yorkshire, which has Bradford for its centre
and metropolis.

Keighley is in process of transformation from a populous, old-fashioned
village, into a still more populous and flourishing town.  It is evident
to the stranger, that as the gable-ended houses, which obtrude themselves
corner-wise on the widening street, fall vacant, they are pulled down to
allow of greater space for traffic, and a more modern style of
architecture.  The quaint and narrow shop-windows of fifty years ago, are
giving way to large panes and plate-glass.  Nearly every dwelling seems
devoted to some branch of commerce.  In passing hastily through the town,
one hardly perceives where the necessary lawyer and doctor can live, so
little appearance is there of any dwellings of the professional middle-
class, such as abound in our old cathedral towns.  In fact, nothing can
be more opposed than the state of society, the modes of thinking, the
standards of reference on all points of morality, manners, and even
politics and religion, in such a new manufacturing place as Keighley in
the north, and any stately, sleepy, picturesque cathedral town in the
south.  Yet the aspect of Keighley promises well for future stateliness,
if not picturesqueness.  Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built
of it have a kind of solid grandeur connected with their uniform and
enduring lines.  The frame-work of the doors, and the lintels of the
windows, even in the smallest dwellings, are made of blocks of stone.
There is no painted wood to require continual beautifying, or else
present a shabby aspect; and the stone is kept scrupulously clean by the
notable Yorkshire housewives.  Such glimpses into the interior as a
passer-by obtains, reveal a rough abundance of the means of living, and
diligent and active habits in the women.  But the voices of the people
are hard, and their tones discordant, promising little of the musical
taste that distinguishes the district, and which has already furnished a
Carrodus to the musical world.  The names over the shops (of which the
one just given is a sample) seem strange even to an inhabitant of the
neighbouring county, and have a peculiar smack and flavour of the place.

The town of Keighley never quite melts into country on the road to
Haworth, although the houses become more sparse as the traveller journeys
upwards to the grey round hills that seem to bound his journey in a
westerly direction.  First come some villas; just sufficiently retired
from the road to show that they can scarcely belong to any one liable to
be summoned in a hurry, at the call of suffering or danger, from his
comfortable fireside; the lawyer, the doctor, and the clergyman, live at
hand, and hardly in the suburbs, with a screen of shrubs for concealment.

In a town one does not look for vivid colouring; what there may be of
this is furnished by the wares in the shops, not by foliage or
atmospheric effects; but in the country some brilliancy and vividness
seems to be instinctively expected, and there is consequently a slight
feeling of disappointment at the grey neutral tint of every object, near
or far off, on the way from Keighley to Haworth.  The distance is about
four miles; and, as I have said, what with villas, great worsted
factories, rows of workmen's houses, with here and there an old-fashioned
farmhouse and out-buildings, it can hardly be called "country" any part
of the way.  For two miles the road passes over tolerably level ground,
distant hills on the left, a "beck" flowing through meadows on the right,
and furnishing water power, at certain points, to the factories built on
its banks.  The air is dim and lightless with the smoke from all these
habitations and places of business.  The soil in the valley (or "bottom,"
to use the local term) is rich; but, as the road begins to ascend, the
vegetation becomes poorer; it does not flourish, it merely exists; and,
instead of trees, there are only bushes and shrubs about the dwellings.
Stone dykes are everywhere used in place of hedges; and what crops there
are, on the patches of arable land, consist of pale, hungry-looking, grey
green oats.  Right before the traveller on this road rises Haworth
village; he can see it for two miles before he arrives, for it is
situated on the side of a pretty steep hill, with a back-ground of dun
and purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church,
which is built at the very summit of the long narrow street.  All round
the horizon there is this same line of sinuous wave-like hills; the
scoops into which they fall only revealing other hills beyond, of similar
colour and shape, crowned with wild, bleak moors--grand, from the ideas
of solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from the
feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monotonous and
illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind in which the spectator
may be.

For a short distance the road appears to turn away from Haworth, as it
winds round the base of the shoulder of a hill; but then it crosses a
bridge over the "beck," and the ascent through the village begins.  The
flag-stones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, in order to give
a better hold to the horses' feet; and, even with this help, they seem to
be in constant danger of slipping backwards.  The old stone houses are
high compared to the width of the street, which makes an abrupt turn
before reaching the more level ground at the head of the village, so that
the steep aspect of the place, in one part, is almost like that of a
wall.  But this surmounted, the church lies a little off the main road on
the left; a hundred yards, or so, and the driver relaxes his care, and
the horse breathes more easily, as they pass into the quite little by-
street that leads to Haworth Parsonage.  The churchyard is on one side of
this lane, the school-house and the sexton's dwelling (where the curates
formerly lodged) on the other.

The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the
church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfried school-house,
form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to
the fields and moors that lie beyond.  The area of this oblong is filled
up by a crowded churchyard, and a small garden or court in front of the
clergyman's house.  As the entrance to this from the road is at the side,
the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground.  Underneath
the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore,
although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there.  Within
the stone wall, which keeps out the surrounding churchyard, are bushes of
elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass-
plot and a gravel walk.  The house is of grey stone, two stories high,
heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip
off a lighter covering.  It appears to have been built about a hundred
years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two windows on
the right (as the visitor stands with his back to the church, ready to
enter in at the front door) belonging to Mr. Bronte's study, the two on
the left to the family sitting-room.  Everything about the place tells of
the most dainty order, the most exquisite cleanliness.  The door-steps
are spotless; the small old-fashioned window-panes glitter like looking-
glass.  Inside and outside of that house cleanliness goes up into its
essence, purity.

The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the
village; and the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full
of upright tombstones.  The chapel or church claims greater antiquity
than any other in that part of the kingdom; but there is no appearance of
this in the external aspect of the present edifice, unless it be in the
two eastern windows, which remain unmodernized, and in the lower part of
the steeple.  Inside, the character of the pillars shows that they were
constructed before the reign of Henry VII.  It is probable that there
existed on this ground, a "field-kirk," or oratory, in the earliest
times; and, from the Archbishop's registry at York, it is ascertained
that there was a chapel at Haworth in 1317.  The inhabitants refer
inquirers concerning the date to the following inscription on a stone in
the church tower:--

   "Hic fecit Caenobium Monachorum Auteste fundator.  A. D.
   sexcentissimo."

That is to say, before the preaching of Christianity in Northumbria.
Whitaker says that this mistake originated in the illiterate copying out,
by some modern stone-cutter, of an inscription in the character of Henry
the Eighth's time on an adjoining stone:--

   "Orate pro bono statu Eutest Tod."

   "Now every antiquary knows that the formula of prayer 'bono statu'
   always refers to the living.  I suspect this singular Christian name
   has been mistaken by the stone-cutter for Austet, a contraction of
   Eustatius, but the word Tod, which has been mis-read for the Arabic
   figures 600, is perfectly fair and legible.  On the presumption of
   this foolish claim to antiquity, the people would needs set up for
   independence, and contest the right of the Vicar of Bradford to
   nominate a curate at Haworth."

I have given this extract, in order to explain the imaginary groundwork
of a commotion which took place in Haworth about five and thirty years
ago, to which I shall have occasion to allude again more particularly.

The interior of the church is commonplace; it is neither old enough nor
modern enough to compel notice.  The pews are of black oak, with high
divisions; and the names of those to whom they belong are painted in
white letters on the doors.  There are neither brasses, nor altar-tombs,
nor monuments, but there is a mural tablet on the right-hand side of the
communion-table, bearing the following inscription:--

   HERE
   LIE THE REMAINS OF
   MARIA BRONTE, WIFE
   OF THE
   REV. P. BRONTE, A.B., MINISTER OF HAWORTH.
   HER SOUL
   DEPARTED TO THE SAVIOUR, SEPT. 15TH, 1821,
   IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HER AGE.

   "Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man
   cometh."  MATTHEW xxiv. 44.

   ALSO HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF
   MARIA BRONTE, DAUGHTER OF THE AFORESAID;
   SHE DIED ON THE
   6TH OF MAY, 1825, IN THE 12TH YEAR OF HER AGE;
   AND OF
   ELIZABETH BRONTE, HER SISTER,
   WHO DIED JUNE 15TH, 1825, IN THE 11TH YEAR OF HER AGE.

   "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little
   children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."--MATTHEW
   xviii. 3.

   HERE ALSO LIE THE REMAINS OF
   PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTE,
   WHO DIED SEPT. 24TH, 1848, AGED 30 YEARS;
   AND OF
   EMILY JANE BRONTE,
   WHO DIED DEC. 19TH, 1848, AGED 29 YEARS,
   SON AND DAUGHTER OF THE
   REV. P. BRONTE, INCUMBENT.

   THIS STONE IS ALSO DEDICATED TO THE
   MEMORY OF ANNE BRONTE, {1}
   YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTE, A.B.
   SHE DIED, AGED 27 YEARS, MAY 28TH, 1849,
   AND WAS BURIED AT THE OLD CHURCH, SCARBORO.'

At the upper part of this tablet ample space is allowed between the lines
of the inscription; when the first memorials were written down, the
survivors, in their fond affection, thought little of the margin and
verge they were leaving for those who were still living.  But as one dead
member of the household follows another fast to the grave, the lines are
pressed together, and the letters become small and cramped.  After the
record of Anne's death, there is room for no other.

But one more of that generation--the last of that nursery of six little
motherless children--was yet to follow, before the survivor, the
childless and widowed father, found his rest.  On another tablet, below
the first, the following record has been added to that mournful list:--

   ADJOINING LIE THE REMAINS OF
   CHARLOTTE, WIFE
   OF THE
   REV. ARTHUR BELL NICHOLLS, A.B.,
   AND DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P.  BRONTE, A.B., INCUMBENT
   SHE DIED MARCH 31ST, 1855, IN THE 39TH
   YEAR OF HER AGE. {2}

This tablet, which corrects the error in the former tablet as to the age
of Anne Bronte, bears the following inscription in Roman letters; the
initials, however, being in old English.




CHAPTER II


For a right understanding of the life of my dear friend, Charlotte
Bronte, it appears to me more necessary in her case than in most others,
that the reader should be made acquainted with the peculiar forms of
population and society amidst which her earliest years were passed, and
from which both her own and her sisters' first impressions of human life
must have been received.  I shall endeavour, therefore, before proceeding
further with my work, to present some idea of the character of the people
of Haworth, and the surrounding districts.

Even an inhabitant of the neighbouring county of Lancaster is struck by
the peculiar force of character which the Yorkshiremen display.  This
makes them interesting as a race; while, at the same time, as
individuals, the remarkable degree of self-sufficiency they possess gives
them an air of independence rather apt to repel a stranger.  I use this
expression "self-sufficiency" in the largest sense.  Conscious of the
strong sagacity and the dogged power of will which seem almost the
birthright of the natives of the West Riding, each man relies upon
himself, and seeks no help at the hands of his neighbour.  From rarely
requiring the assistance of others, he comes to doubt the power of
bestowing it: from the general success of his efforts, he grows to depend
upon them, and to over-esteem his own energy and power.  He belongs to
that keen, yet short-sighted class, who consider suspicion of all whose
honesty is not proved as a sign of wisdom.  The practical qualities of a
man are held in great respect; but the want of faith in strangers and
untried modes of action, extends itself even to the manner in which the
virtues are regarded; and if they produce no immediate and tangible
result, they are rather put aside as unfit for this busy, striving world;
especially if they are more of a passive than an active character.  The
affections are strong and their foundations lie deep: but they are
not--such affections seldom are--wide-spreading; nor do they show
themselves on the surface.  Indeed, there is little display of any of the
amenities of life among this wild, rough population.  Their accost is
curt; their accent and tone of speech blunt and harsh.  Something of this
may, probably, be attributed to the freedom of mountain air and of
isolated hill-side life; something be derived from their rough Norse
ancestry.  They have a quick perception of character, and a keen sense of
humour; the dwellers among them must be prepared for certain
uncomplimentary, though most likely true, observations, pithily
expressed.  Their feelings are not easily roused, but their duration is
lasting.  Hence there is much close friendship and faithful service; and
for a correct exemplification of the form in which the latter frequently
appears, I need only refer the reader of "Wuthering Heights" to the
character of "Joseph."

From the same cause come also enduring grudges, in some cases amounting
to hatred, which occasionally has been bequeathed from generation to
generation.  I remember Miss Bronte once telling me that it was a saying
round about Haworth, "Keep a stone in thy pocket seven year; turn it, and
keep it seven year longer, that it may be ever ready to thine hand when
thine enemy draws near."

The West Riding men are sleuth-hounds in pursuit of money.  Miss Bronte
related to my husband a curious instance illustrative of this eager
desire for riches.  A man that she knew, who was a small manufacturer,
had engaged in many local speculations which had always turned out well,
and thereby rendered him a person of some wealth.  He was rather past
middle age, when he bethought him of insuring his life; and he had only
just taken out his policy, when he fell ill of an acute disease which was
certain to end fatally in a very few days.  The doctor,
half-hesitatingly, revealed to him his hopeless state.  "By jingo!" cried
he, rousing up at once into the old energy, "I shall _do_ the insurance
company!  I always was a lucky fellow!"

These men are keen and shrewd; faithful and persevering in following out
a good purpose, fell in tracking an evil one.  They are not emotional;
they are not easily made into either friends or enemies; but once lovers
or haters, it is difficult to change their feeling.  They are a powerful
race both in mind and body, both for good and for evil.

The woollen manufacture was introduced into this district in the days of
Edward III.  It is traditionally said that a colony of Flemings came over
and settled in the West Riding to teach the inhabitants what to do with
their wool.  The mixture of agricultural with manufacturing labour that
ensued and prevailed in the West Riding up to a very recent period,
sounds pleasant enough at this distance of time, when the classical
impression is left, and the details forgotten, or only brought to light
by those who explore the few remote parts of England where the custom
still lingers.  The idea of the mistress and her maidens spinning at the
great wheels while the master was abroad ploughing his fields, or seeing
after his flocks on the purple moors, is very poetical to look back upon;
but when such life actually touches on our own days, and we can hear
particulars from the lips of those now living, there come out details of
coarseness--of the uncouthness of the rustic mingled with the sharpness
of the tradesman--of irregularity and fierce lawlessness--that rather mar
the vision of pastoral innocence and simplicity.  Still, as it is the
exceptional and exaggerated characteristics of any period that leave the
most vivid memory behind them, it would be wrong, and in my opinion
faithless, to conclude that such and such forms of society and modes of
living were not best for the period when they prevailed, although the
abuses they may have led into, and the gradual progress of the world,
have made it well that such ways and manners should pass away for ever,
and as preposterous to attempt to return to them, as it would be for a
man to return to the clothes of his childhood.

The patent granted to Alderman Cockayne, and the further restrictions
imposed by James I. on the export of undyed woollen cloths (met by a
prohibition on the part of the States of Holland of the import of English-
dyed cloths), injured the trade of the West Riding manufacturers
considerably.  Their independence of character, their dislike of
authority, and their strong powers of thought, predisposed them to
rebellion against the religious dictation of such men as Laud, and the
arbitrary rule of the Stuarts; and the injury done by James and Charles
to the trade by which they gained their bread, made the great majority of
them Commonwealth men.  I shall have occasion afterwards to give one or
two instances of the warm feelings and extensive knowledge on subjects of
both home and foreign politics existing at the present day in the
villages lying west and east of the mountainous ridge that separates
Yorkshire and Lancashire; the inhabitants of which are of the same race
and possess the same quality of character.

The descendants of many who served under Cromwell at Dunbar, live on the
same lands as their ancestors occupied then; and perhaps there is no part
of England where the traditional and fond recollections of the
Commonwealth have lingered so long as in that inhabited by the woollen
manufacturing population of the West Riding, who had the restrictions
taken off their trade by the Protector's admirable commercial policy.  I
have it on good authority that, not thirty years ago, the phrase, "in
Oliver's days," was in common use to denote a time of unusual prosperity.
The class of Christian names prevalent in a district is one indication of
the direction in which its tide of hero-worship sets.  Grave enthusiasts
in politics or religion perceive not the ludicrous side of those which
they give to their children; and some are to be found, still in their
infancy, not a dozen miles from Haworth, that will have to go through
life as Lamartine, Kossuth, and Dembinsky.  And so there is a testimony
to what I have said, of the traditional feeling of the district, in the
fact that the Old Testament names in general use among the Puritans are
yet the prevalent appellations in most Yorkshire families of middle or
humble rank, whatever their religious persuasion may be.  There are
numerous records, too, that show the kindly way in which the ejected
ministers were received by the gentry, as well as by the poorer part of
the inhabitants, during the persecuting days of Charles II.  These little
facts all testify to the old hereditary spirit of independence, ready
ever to resist authority which was conceived to be unjustly exercised,
that distinguishes the people of the West Riding to the present day.

The parish of Halifax touches that of Bradford, in which the chapelry of
Haworth is included; and the nature of the ground in the two parishes is
much the of the same wild and hilly description.  The abundance of coal,
and the number of mountain streams in the district, make it highly
favourable to manufactures; and accordingly, as I stated, the inhabitants
have for centuries been engaged in making cloth, as well as in
agricultural pursuits.  But the intercourse of trade failed, for a long
time, to bring amenity and civilization into these outlying hamlets, or
widely scattered dwellings.  Mr. Hunter, in his "Life of Oliver Heywood,"
quotes a sentence out of a memorial of one James Rither, living in the
reign of Elizabeth, which is partially true to this day:--

"They have no superior to court, no civilities to practise: a sour and
sturdy humour is the consequence, so that a stranger is shocked by a tone
of defiance in every voice, and an air of fierceness in every
countenance."

Even now, a stranger can hardly ask a question without receiving some
crusty reply, if, indeed, he receive any at all.  Sometimes the sour
rudeness amounts to positive insult.  Yet, if the "foreigner" takes all
this churlishness good-humouredly, or as a matter of course, and makes
good any claim upon their latent kindliness and hospitality, they are
faithful and generous, and thoroughly to be relied upon.  As a slight
illustration of the roughness that pervades all classes in these out-of-
the-way villages, I may relate a little adventure which happened to my
husband and myself, three years ago, at Addingham--

   From Penigent to Pendle Hill,
   From Linton to Long-_Addingham_
   And all that Craven coasts did tell, &c.--

one of the places that sent forth its fighting men to the famous old
battle of Flodden Field, and a village not many miles from Haworth.

We were driving along the street, when one of those ne'er-do-weel lads
who seem to have a kind of magnetic power for misfortunes, having jumped
into the stream that runs through the place, just where all the broken
glass and bottles are thrown, staggered naked and nearly covered with
blood into a cottage before us.  Besides receiving another bad cut in the
arm, he had completely laid open the artery, and was in a fair way of
bleeding to death--which, one of his relations comforted him by saying,
would be likely to "save a deal o' trouble."

When my husband had checked the effusion of blood with a strap that one
of the bystanders unbuckled from his leg, he asked if a surgeon had been
sent for.

"Yoi," was the answer; "but we dunna think he'll come."

"Why not?"

"He's owd, yo seen, and asthmatic, and it's up-hill."

My husband taking a boy for his guide, drove as fast as he could to the
surgeon's house, which was about three-quarters of a mile off, and met
the aunt of the wounded lad leaving it.

"Is he coming?" inquired my husband.

"Well, he didna' say he wouldna' come."

"But, tell him the lad may bleed to death."

"I did."

"And what did he say?"

"Why, only, 'D-n him; what do I care?'"

It ended, however, in his sending one of his sons, who, though not
brought up to "the surgering trade," was able to do what was necessary in
the way of bandages and plasters.  The excuse made for the surgeon was,
that "he was near eighty, and getting a bit doited, and had had a matter
o' twenty childer."

Among the most unmoved of the lookers-on was the brother of the boy so
badly hurt; and while he was lying in a pool of blood on the flag floor,
and crying out how much his arm was "warching," his stoical relation
stood coolly smoking his bit of black pipe, and uttered not a single word
of either sympathy or sorrow.

Forest customs, existing in the fringes of dark wood, which clothed the
declivity of the hills on either side, tended to brutalize the population
until the middle of the seventeenth century.  Execution by beheading was
performed in a summary way upon either men or women who were guilty of
but very slight crimes; and a dogged, yet in some cases fine,
indifference to human life was thus generated.  The roads were so
notoriously bad, even up to the last thirty years, that there was little
communication between one village and another; if the produce of industry
could be conveyed at stated times to the cloth market of the district, it
was all that could be done; and, in lonely houses on the distant hill-
side, or by the small magnates of secluded hamlets, crimes might be
committed almost unknown, certainly without any great uprising of popular
indignation calculated to bring down the strong arm of the law.  It must
be remembered that in those days there was no rural constabulary; and the
few magistrates left to themselves, and generally related to one another,
were most of them inclined to tolerate eccentricity, and to wink at
faults too much like their own.

Men hardly past middle life talk of the days of their youth, spent in
this part of the country, when, during the winter months, they rode up to
the saddle-girths in mud; when absolute business was the only reason for
stirring beyond the precincts of home, and when that business was
conducted under a pressure of difficulties which they themselves, borne
along to Bradford market in a swift first-class carriage, can hardly
believe to have been possible.  For instance, one woollen manufacturer
says that, not five and twenty years ago, he had to rise betimes to set
off on a winter's-morning in order to be at Bradford with the great
waggon-load of goods manufactured by his father; this load was packed
over-night, but in the morning there was a great gathering around it, and
flashing of lanterns, and examination of horses' feet, before the
ponderous waggon got under way; and then some one had to go groping here
and there, on hands and knees, and always sounding with a staff down the
long, steep, slippery brow, to find where the horses might tread safely,
until they reached the comparative easy-going of the deep-rutted main
road.  People went on horseback over the upland moors, following the
tracks of the pack-horses that carried the parcels, baggage, or goods
from one town to another, between which there did not happen to be a
highway.

But in winter, all such communication was impossible, by reason of the
snow which lay long and late on the bleak high ground.  I have known
people who, travelling by the mail-coach over Blackstone Edge, had been
snowed up for a week or ten days at the little inn near the summit, and
obliged to spend both Christmas and New Year's Day there, till the store
of provisions laid in for the use of the landlord and his family falling
short before the inroads of the unexpected visitors, they had recourse to
the turkeys, geese, and Yorkshire pies with which the coach was laden;
and even these were beginning to fail, when a fortunate thaw released
them from their prison.

Isolated as the hill villages may be, they are in the world, compared
with the loneliness of the grey ancestral houses to be seen here and
there in the dense hollows of the moors.  These dwellings are not large,
yet they are solid and roomy enough for the accommodation of those who
live in them, and to whom the surrounding estates belong.  The land has
often been held by one family since the days of the Tudors; the owners
are, in fact, the remains of the old yeomanry--small squires--who are
rapidly becoming extinct as a class, from one of two causes.  Either the
possessor falls into idle, drinking habits, and so is obliged eventually
to sell his property: or he finds, if more shrewd and adventurous, that
the "beck" running down the mountain-side, or the minerals beneath his
feet, can be turned into a new source of wealth; and leaving the old
plodding life of a landowner with small capital, he turns manufacturer,
or digs for coal, or quarries for stone.

Still there are those remaining of this class--dwellers in the lonely
houses far away in the upland districts--even at the present day, who
sufficiently indicate what strange eccentricity--what wild strength of
will--nay, even what unnatural power of crime was fostered by a mode of
living in which a man seldom met his fellows, and where public opinion
was only a distant and inarticulate echo of some clearer voice sounding
behind the sweeping horizon.

A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become manias.  And the
powerful Yorkshire character, which was scarcely tamed into subjection by
all the contact it met with in "busy town or crowded mart," has before
now broken out into strange wilfulness in the remoter districts.  A
singular account was recently given me of a landowner (living, it is
true, on the Lancashire side of the hills, but of the same blood and
nature as the dwellers on the other,) who was supposed to be in the
receipt of seven or eight hundred a year, and whose house bore marks of
handsome antiquity, as if his forefathers had been for a long time people
of consideration.  My informant was struck with the appearance of the
place, and proposed to the countryman who was accompanying him, to go up
to it and take a nearer inspection.  The reply was, "Yo'd better not;
he'd threap yo' down th' loan.  He's let fly at some folk's legs, and let
shot lodge in 'em afore now, for going too near to his house."  And
finding, on closer inquiry, that such was really the inhospitable custom
of this moorland squire, the gentleman gave up his purpose.  I believe
that the savage yeoman is still living.

Another squire, of more distinguished family and larger property--one is
thence led to imagine of better education, but that does not always
follow--died at his house, not many miles from Haworth, only a few years
ago.  His great amusement and occupation had been cock-fighting.  When he
was confined to his chamber with what he knew would be his last illness,
he had his cocks brought up there, and watched the bloody battle from his
bed.  As his mortal disease increased, and it became impossible for him
to turn so as to follow the combat, he had looking-glasses arranged in
such a manner, around and above him, as he lay, that he could still see
the cocks fighting.  And in this manner he died.

These are merely instances of eccentricity compared to the tales of
positive violence and crime that have occurred in these isolated
dwellings, which still linger in the memories of the old people of the
district, and some of which were doubtless familiar to the authors of
"Wuthering Heights" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."

The amusements of the lower classes could hardly be expected to be more
humane than those of the wealthy and better educated.  The gentleman, who
has kindly furnished me with some of the particulars I have given,
remembers the bull-baitings at Rochdale, not thirty years ago.  The bull
was fastened by a chain or rope to a post in the river.  To increase the
amount of water, as well as to give their workpeople the opportunity of
savage delight, the masters were accustomed to stop their mills on the
day when the sport took place.  The bull would sometimes wheel suddenly
round, so that the rope by which he was fastened swept those who had been
careless enough to come within its range down into the water, and the
good people of Rochdale had the excitement of seeing one or two of their
neighbours drowned, as well as of witnessing the bull baited, and the
dogs torn and tossed.

The people of Haworth were not less strong and full of character than
their neighbours on either side of the hills.  The village lies embedded
in the moors, between the two counties, on the old road between Keighley
and Colne.  About the middle of the last century, it became famous in the
religious world as the scene of the ministrations of the Rev. William
Grimshaw, curate of Haworth for twenty years.  Before this time, it is
probable that the curates were of the same order as one Mr. Nicholls, a
Yorkshire clergyman, in the days immediately succeeding the Reformation,
who was "much addicted to drinking and company-keeping," and used to say
to his companions, "You must not heed me but when I am got three feet
above the earth," that was, into the pulpit.

Mr. Grimshaw's life was written by Newton, Cowper's friend; and from it
may be gathered some curious particulars of the manner in which a rough
population were swayed and governed by a man of deep convictions, and
strong earnestness of purpose.  It seems that he had not been in any way
remarkable for religious zeal, though he had led a moral life, and been
conscientious in fulfilling his parochial duties, until a certain Sunday
in September, 1744, when the servant, rising at five, found her master
already engaged in prayer; she stated that, after remaining in his
chamber for some time, he went to engage in religious exercises in the
house of a parishioner, then home again to pray; thence, still fasting,
to the church, where, as he was reading the second lesson, he fell down,
and, on his partial recovery, had to be led from the church.  As he went
out, he spoke to the congregation, and told them not to disperse, as he
had something to say to them, and would return presently.  He was taken
to the clerk's house, and again became insensible.  His servant rubbed
him, to restore the circulation; and when he was brought to himself "he
seemed in a great rapture," and the first words he uttered were, "I have
had a glorious vision from the third heaven."  He did not say what he had
seen, but returned into the church, and began the service again, at two
in the afternoon, and went on until seven.

From this time he devoted himself, with the fervour of a Wesley, and
something of the fanaticism of a Whitfield, to calling out a religious
life among his parishioners.  They had been in the habit of playing at
foot-ball on Sunday, using stones for this purpose; and giving and
receiving challenges from other parishes.  There were horse-races held on
the moors just above the village, which were periodical sources of
drunkenness and profligacy.  Scarcely a wedding took place without the
rough amusement of foot-races, where the half-naked runners were a
scandal to all decent strangers.  The old custom of "arvills," or funeral
feasts, led to frequent pitched battles between the drunken mourners.
Such customs were the outward signs of the kind of people with whom Mr.
Grimshaw had to deal.  But, by various means, some of the most practical
kind, he wrought a great change in his parish.  In his preaching he was
occasionally assisted by Wesley and Whitfield, and at such times the
little church proved much too small to hold the throng that poured in
from distant villages, or lonely moorland hamlets; and frequently they
were obliged to meet in the open air; indeed, there was not room enough
in the church even for the communicants.  Mr. Whitfield was once
preaching in Haworth, and made use of some such expression, as that he
hoped there was no need to say much to this congregation, as they had sat
under so pious and godly a minister for so many years; "whereupon Mr.
Grimshaw stood up in his place, and said with a loud voice, 'Oh, sir! for
God's sake do not speak so.  I pray you do not flatter them.  I fear the
greater part of them are going to hell with their eyes open.'"  But if
they were so bound, it was not for want of exertion on Mr. Grimshaw's
part to prevent them.  He used to preach twenty or thirty times a week in
private houses.  If he perceived any one inattentive to his prayers, he
would stop and rebuke the offender, and not go on till he saw every one
on their knees.  He was very earnest in enforcing the strict observance
of Sunday; and would not even allow his parishioners to walk in the
fields between services.  He sometimes gave out a very long Psalm
(tradition says the 119th), and while it was being sung, he left the
reading-desk, and taking a horsewhip went into the public-houses, and
flogged the loiterers into church.  They were swift who could escape the
lash of the parson by sneaking out the back way.  He had strong health
and an active body, and rode far and wide over the hills, "awakening"
those who had previously had no sense of religion.  To save time, and be
no charge to the families at whose houses he held his prayer-meetings, he
carried his provisions with him; all the food he took in the day on such
occasions consisting simply of a piece of bread and butter, or dry bread
and a raw onion.

The horse-races were justly objectionable to Mr. Grimshaw; they attracted
numbers of profligate people to Haworth, and brought a match to the
combustible materials of the place, only too ready to blaze out into
wickedness.  The story is, that he tried all means of persuasion, and
even intimidation, to have the races discontinued, but in vain.  At
length, in despair, he prayed with such fervour of earnestness that the
rain came down in torrents, and deluged the ground, so that there was no
footing for man or beast, even if the multitude had been willing to stand
such a flood let down from above.  And so Haworth races were stopped, and
have never been resumed to this day.  Even now the memory of this good
man is held in reverence, and his faithful ministrations and real virtues
are one of the boasts of the parish.

But after his time, I fear there was a falling back into the wild rough
heathen ways, from which he had pulled them up, as it were, by the
passionate force of his individual character.  He had built a chapel for
the Wesleyan Methodists, and not very long after the Baptists established
themselves in a place of worship.  Indeed, as Dr. Whitaker says, the
people of this district are "strong religionists;" only, fifty years ago,
their religion did not work down into their lives.  Half that length of
time back, the code of morals seemed to be formed upon that of their
Norse ancestors.  Revenge was handed down from father to son as an
hereditary duty; and a great capability for drinking without the head
being affected was considered as one of the manly virtues.  The games of
foot-ball on Sundays, with the challenges to the neighbouring parishes,
were resumed, bringing in an influx of riotous strangers to fill the
public-houses, and make the more sober-minded inhabitants long for good
Mr. Grimshaw's stout arm, and ready horsewhip.  The old custom of
"arvills" was as prevalent as ever.  The sexton, standing at the foot of
the open grave, announced that the "arvill" would be held at the Black
Bull, or whatever public-house might be fixed upon by the friends of the
dead; and thither the mourners and their acquaintances repaired.  The
origin of the custom had been the necessity of furnishing some
refreshment for those who came from a distance, to pay the last mark of
respect to a friend.  In the life of Oliver Heywood there are two
quotations, which show what sort of food was provided for "arvills" in
quiet Nonconformist connections in the seventeenth century; the first
(from Thoresby) tells of "cold possets, stewed prunes, cake, and cheese,"
as being the arvill after Oliver Heywood's funeral.  The second gives, as
rather shabby, according to the notion of the times (1673), "nothing but
a bit of cake, draught of wine, piece of rosemary, and pair of gloves."

But the arvills at Haworth were often far more jovial doings.  Among the
poor, the mourners were only expected to provide a kind of spiced roll
for each person; and the expense of the liquors--rum, or ale, or a
mixture of both called "dog's nose"--was generally defrayed by each guest
placing some money on a plate, set in the middle of the table.  Richer
people would order a dinner for their friends.  At the funeral of Mr.
Charnock (the next successor but one to Mr. Grimshaw in the incumbency),
above eighty people were bid to the arvill, and the price of the feast
was 4s. 6d. per head, all of which was defrayed by the friends of the
deceased.  As few "shirked their liquor," there were very frequently "up-
and-down fights" before the close of the day; sometimes with the horrid
additions of "pawsing" and "gouging," and biting.

Although I have dwelt on the exceptional traits in the characteristics of
these stalwart West-Ridingers, such as they were in the first quarter of
this century, if not a few years later, I have little doubt that in the
everyday life of the people so independent, wilful, and full of grim
humour, there would be much found even at present that would shock those
accustomed only to the local manners of the south; and, in return, I
suspect the shrewd, sagacious, energetic Yorkshireman would hold such
"foreigners" in no small contempt.

I have said, it is most probable that where Haworth Church now stands,
there was once an ancient "field-kirk," or oratory.  It occupied the
third or lowest class of ecclesiastical structures, according to the
Saxon law, and had no right of sepulture, or administration of
sacraments.  It was so called because it was built without enclosure, and
open to the adjoining fields or moors.  The founder, according to the
laws of Edgar, was bound, without subtracting from his tithes, to
maintain the ministering priest out of the remaining nine parts of his
income.  After the Reformation, the right of choosing their clergyman, at
any of those chapels of ease which had formerly been field-kirks, was
vested in the freeholders and trustees, subject to the approval of the
vicar of the parish.  But owing to some negligence, this right has been
lost to the freeholders and trustees at Haworth, ever since the days of
Archbishop Sharp; and the power of choosing a minister has lapsed into
the hands of the Vicar of Bradford.  So runs the account, according to
one authority.

Mr. Bronte says,--"This living has for its patrons the Vicar of Bradford
and certain trustees.  My predecessor took the living with the consent of
the Vicar of Bradford, but in opposition to the trustees; in consequence
of which he was so opposed that, after only three weeks' possession, he
was compelled to resign."  A Yorkshire gentleman, who has kindly sent me
some additional information on this subject since the second edition of
my work was published, write, thus:--

   "The sole right of presentation to the incumbency of Haworth is vested
   in the Vicar of Bradford.  He only can present.  The funds, however,
   from which the clergyman's stipend mainly proceeds, are vested in the
   hands of trustees, who have the power to withhold them, if a nominee
   is sent of whom they disapprove.  On the decease of Mr. Charnock, the
   Vicar first tendered the preferment to Mr. Bronte, and he went over to
   his expected cure.  He was told that towards himself they had no
   personal objection; but as a nominee of the Vicar he would not be
   received.  He therefore retired, with the declaration that if he could
   not come with the approval of the parish, his ministry could not be
   useful.  Upon this the attempt was made to introduce Mr. Redhead.

   "When Mr. Redhead was repelled, a fresh difficulty arose.  Some one
   must first move towards a settlement, but a spirit being evoked which
   could not be allayed, action became perplexing.  The matter had to be
   referred to some independent arbitrator, and my father was the
   gentleman to whom each party turned its eye.  A meeting was convened,
   and the business settled by the Vicar's conceding the choice to the
   trustees, and the acceptance of the Vicar's presentation.  That choice
   forthwith fell on Mr. Bronte, whose promptness and prudence had won
   their hearts."

In conversing on the character of the inhabitants of the West Riding with
Dr. Scoresby, who had been for some time Vicar of Bradford, he alluded to
certain riotous transactions which had taken place at Haworth on the
presentation of the living to Mr. Redhead, and said that there had been
so much in the particulars indicative of the character of the people,
that he advised me to inquire into them.  I have accordingly done so,
and, from the lips of some of the survivors among the actors and
spectators, I have learnt the means taken to eject the nominee of the
Vicar.

The previous incumbent had been the Mr. Charnock whom I have mentioned as
next but one in succession to Mr. Grimshaw.  He had a long illness which
rendered him unable to discharge his duties without assistance, and Mr.
Redhead gave him occasional help, to the great satisfaction of the
parishioners, and was highly respected by them during Mr. Charnock's
lifetime.  But the case was entirely altered when, at Mr. Charnock's
death in 1819, they conceived that the trustees had been unjustly
deprived of their rights by the Vicar of Bradford, who appointed Mr.
Redhead as perpetual curate.

The first Sunday he officiated, Haworth Church was filled even to the
aisles; most of the people wearing the wooden clogs of the district.  But
while Mr. Redhead was reading the second lesson, the whole congregation,
as by one impulse, began to leave the church, making all the noise they
could with clattering and clumping of clogs, till, at length, Mr. Redhead
and the clerk were the only two left to continue the service.  This was
bad enough, but the next Sunday the proceedings were far worse.  Then, as
before, the church was well filled, but the aisles were left clear; not a
creature, not an obstacle was in the way.  The reason for this was made
evident about the same time in the reading of the service as the
disturbances had begun the previous week.  A man rode into the church
upon an ass, with his face turned towards the tail, and as many old hats
piled on his head as he could possibly carry.  He began urging his beast
round the aisles, and the screams, and cries, and laughter of the
congregation entirely drowned all sound of Mr. Redhead's voice, and, I
believe, he was obliged to desist.

Hitherto they had not proceeded to anything like personal violence; but
on the third Sunday they must have been greatly irritated at seeing Mr.
Redhead, determined to brave their will, ride up the village street,
accompanied by several gentlemen from Bradford.  They put up their horses
at the Black Bull--the little inn close upon the churchyard, for the
convenience of arvills as well as for other purposes--and went into
church.  On this the people followed, with a chimney-sweeper, whom they
had employed to clean the chimneys of some out-buildings belonging to the
church that very morning, and afterward plied with drink till he was in a
state of solemn intoxication.  They placed him right before the reading-
desk, where his blackened face nodded a drunken, stupid assent to all
that Mr. Redhead said.  At last, either prompted by some mischief-maker,
or from some tipsy impulse, he clambered up the pulpit stairs, and
attempted to embrace Mr. Redhead.  Then the profane fun grew fast and
furious.  Some of the more riotous, pushed the soot-covered
chimney-sweeper against Mr. Redhead, as he tried to escape.  They threw
both him and his tormentor down on the ground in the churchyard where the
soot-bag had been emptied, and, though, at last, Mr. Redhead escaped into
the Black Bull, the doors of which were immediately barred, the people
raged without, threatening to stone him and his friends.  One of my
informants is an old man, who was the landlord of the inn at the time,
and he stands to it that such was the temper of the irritated mob, that
Mr. Redhead was in real danger of his life.  This man, however, planned
an escape for his unpopular inmates.  The Black Bull is near the top of
the long, steep Haworth street, and at the bottom, close by the bridge,
on the road to Keighley, is a turnpike.  Giving directions to his hunted
guests to steal out at the back door (through which, probably, many a
ne'er-do-weel has escaped from good Mr. Grimshaw's horsewhip), the
landlord and some of the stable-boys rode the horses belonging to the
party from Bradford backwards and forwards before his front door, among
the fiercely-expectant crowd.  Through some opening between the houses,
those on the horses saw Mr. Redhead and his friends creeping along behind
the street; and then, striking spurs, they dashed quickly down to the
turnpike; the obnoxious clergyman and his friends mounted in haste, and
had sped some distance before the people found out that their prey had
escaped, and came running to the closed turnpike gate.

This was Mr. Redhead's last appearance at Haworth for many years.  Long
afterwards, he came to preach, and in his sermon to a large and attentive
congregation he good-humouredly reminded them of the circumstances which
I have described.  They gave him a hearty welcome, for they owed him no
grudge; although before they had been ready enough to stone him, in order
to maintain what they considered to be their rights.

The foregoing account, which I heard from two of the survivors, in the
presence of a friend who can vouch for the accuracy of my repetition, has
to a certain degree been confirmed by a letter from the Yorkshire
gentleman, whose words I have already quoted.

"I am not surprised at your difficulty in authenticating matter-of-fact.
I find this in recalling what I have heard, and the authority on which I
have heard anything.  As to the donkey tale, I believe you are right.  Mr.
Redhead and Dr. Ramsbotham, his son-in-law, are no strangers to me.  Each
of them has a niche in my affections.

"I have asked, this day, two persons who lived in Haworth at the time to
which you allude, the son and daughter of an acting trustee, and each of
them between sixty and seventy years of age, and they assure me that the
donkey was introduced.  One of them says it was mounted by a half-witted
man, seated with his face towards the tail of the beast, and having
several hats piled on his head.  Neither of my informants was, however,
present at these edifying services.  I believe that no movement was made
in the church on either Sunday, until the whole of the authorised reading-
service was gone through, and I am sure that nothing was more remote from
the more respectable party than any personal antagonism toward Mr.
Redhead.  He was one of the most amiable and worthy of men, a man to
myself endeared by many ties and obligations.  I never heard before your
book that the sweep ascended the pulpit steps.  He was present, however,
in the clerical habiliments of his order . . . I may also add that among
the many who were present at those sad Sunday orgies the majority were
non-residents, and came from those moorland fastnesses on the outskirts
of the parish locally designated as 'ovver th' steyres,' one stage more
remote than Haworth from modern civilization.

"To an instance or two more of the rusticity of the inhabitants of the
chapelry of Haworth, I may introduce you.

"A Haworth carrier called at the office of a friend of mine to deliver a
parcel on a cold winter's day, and stood with the door open.  'Robin!
shut the door!' said the recipient.  'Have you no doors in your country?'
'Yoi,' responded Robin, 'we hev, but we nivver steik 'em.'  I have
frequently remarked the number of doors open even in winter.

"When well directed, the indomitable and independent energies of the
natives of this part of the country are invaluable; dangerous when
perverted.  I shall never forget the fierce actions and utterances of one
suffering from delirium tremens.  Whether in its wrath, disdain, or its
dismay, the countenance was infernal.  I called once upon a time on a
most respectable yeoman, and I was, in language earnest and homely,
pressed to accept the hospitality of the house.  I consented.  The word
to me was, 'Nah, Maister, yah mun stop an hev sum te-ah, yah mun, eah,
yah mun.'  A bountiful table was soon spread; at all events, time soon
went while I scaled the hills to see 't' maire at wor thretty year owd,
an't' feil at wor fewer.'  On sitting down to the table, a venerable
woman officiated, and after filling the cups, she thus addressed me:
'Nah, Maister, yah mun loawze th'taible' (loose the table).  The master
said, 'Shah meeans yah mun sey t' greyce.'  I took the hint, and uttered
the blessing.

"I spoke with an aged and tried woman at one time, who, after recording
her mercies, stated, among others, her powers of speech, by asserting
'Thank the Lord, ah nivver wor a meilly-meouthed wumman.'  I feel
particularly at fault in attempting the orthography of the dialect, but
must excuse myself by telling you that I once saw a letter in which the
word I have just now used (excuse) was written 'ecksqueaize!'

"There are some things, however, which rather tend to soften the idea of
the rudeness of Haworth.  No rural district has been more markedly the
abode of musical taste and acquirement, and this at a period when it was
difficult to find them to the same extent apart from towns in advance of
their times.  I have gone to Haworth and found an orchestra to meet me,
filled with local performers, vocal and instrumental, to whom the best
works of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Marcello, &c. &c., were familiar as
household words.  By knowledge, taste, and voice, they were markedly
separate from ordinary village choirs, and have been put in extensive
requisition for the solo and chorus of many an imposing festival.  One
man still survives, who, for fifty years, has had one of the finest tenor
voices I ever heard, and with it a refined and cultivated taste.  To him
and to others many inducements have been offered to migrate; but the
loom, the association, the mountain air have had charms enow to secure
their continuance at home.  I love the recollection of their performance;
that recollection extends over more than sixty years.  The attachments,
the antipathies and the hospitalities of the district are ardent, hearty,
and homely.  Cordiality in each is the prominent characteristic.  As a
people, these mountaineers have ever been accessible to gentleness and
truth, so far as I have known them; but excite suspicion or resentment,
and they give emphatic and not impotent resistance.  Compulsion they
defy.

"I accompanied Mr. Heap on his first visit to Haworth after his accession
to the vicarage of Bradford.  It was on Easter day, either 1816 or 1817.
His predecessor, the venerable John Crosse, known as the 'blind vicar,'
had been inattentive to the vicarial claims.  A searching investigation
had to be made and enforced, and as it proceeded stout and sturdy
utterances were not lacking on the part of the parishioners.  To a
spectator, though rude, they were amusing, and significant, foretelling
what might be expected, and what was afterwards realised, on the advent
of a new incumbent, if they deemed him an intruder.

"From their peculiar parochial position and circumstances, the
inhabitants of the chapelry have been prompt, earnest, and persevering in
their opposition to church-rates.  Although ten miles from the mother-
church, they were called upon to defray a large proportion of this
obnoxious tax,--I believe one fifth.

"Besides this, they had to maintain their own edifice, &c., &c.  They
resisted, therefore, with energy, that which they deemed to be oppression
and injustice.  By scores would they wend their way from the hills to
attend a vestry meeting at Bradford, and in such service failed not to
show less of the _suaviter in modo_ than the _fortiter in re_.  Happily
such occasion for their action has not occurred for many years.

"The use of patronymics has been common in this locality.  Inquire for a
man by his Christian name and surname, and you may have some difficulty
in finding him: ask, however, for 'George o' Ned's,' or 'Dick o' Bob's,'
or 'Tom o' Jack's,' as the case may be, and your difficulty is at an end.
In many instances the person is designated by his residence.  In my early
years I had occasion to inquire for Jonathan Whitaker, who owned a
considerable farm in the township.  I was sent hither and thither, until
it occurred to me to ask for 'Jonathan o' th' Gate.'  My difficulties
were then at an end.  Such circumstances arise out of the settled
character and isolation of the natives.

"Those who have witnessed a Haworth wedding when the parties were above
the rank of labourers, will not easily forget the scene.  A levy was made
on the horses of the neighbourhood, and a merry cavalcade of mounted men
and women, single or double, traversed the way to Bradford church.  The
inn and church appeared to be in natural connection, and as the labours
of the Temperance Society had then to begin, the interests of sobriety
were not always consulted.  On remounting their steeds they commenced
with a race, and not unfrequently an inebriate or unskilful horseman or
woman was put _hors de combat_.  A race also was frequent at the end. of
these wedding expeditions, from the bridge to the toll-bar at Haworth.
The race-course you will know to be anything but level."

Into the midst of this lawless, yet not unkindly population, Mr. Bronte
brought his wife and six little children, in February, 1820.  There are
those yet alive who remember seven heavily-laden carts lumbering slowly
up the long stone street, bearing the "new parson's" household goods to
his future abode.

One wonders how the bleak aspect of her new home--the low, oblong, stone
parsonage, high up, yet with a still higher back-ground of sweeping
moors--struck on the gentle, delicate wife, whose health even then was
failing.




CHAPTER III


The Rev. Patrick Bronte is a native of the County Down in Ireland.  His
father Hugh Bronte, was left an orphan at an early age.  He came from the
south to the north of the island, and settled in the parish of Ahaderg,
near Loughbrickland.  There was some family tradition that, humble as
Hugh Bronte's circumstances were, he was the descendant of an ancient
family.  But about this neither he nor his descendants have cared to
inquire.  He made an early marriage, and reared and educated ten children
on the proceeds of the few acres of land which he farmed.  This large
family were remarkable for great physical strength, and much personal
beauty.  Even in his old age, Mr. Bronte is a striking-looking man, above
the common height, with a nobly-shaped head, and erect carriage.  In his
youth he must have been unusually handsome.

He was born on Patrickmas day (March 17), 1777, and early gave tokens of
extraordinary quickness and intelligence.  He had also his full share of
ambition; and of his strong sense and forethought there is a proof in the
fact, that, knowing that his father could afford him no pecuniary aid,
and that he must depend upon his own exertions, he opened a public school
at the early age of sixteen; and this mode of living he continued to
follow for five or six years.  He then became a tutor in the family of
the Rev. Mr. Tighe, rector of Drumgooland parish.  Thence he proceeded to
St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was entered in July, 1802, being
at the time five-and-twenty years of age.  After nearly four years'
residence, he obtained his B.A. degree, and was ordained to a curacy in
Essex, whence he removed into Yorkshire.  The course of life of which
this is the outline, shows a powerful and remarkable character,
originating and pursuing a purpose in a resolute and independent manner.
Here is a youth--a boy of sixteen--separating himself from his family,
and determining to maintain himself; and that, not in the hereditary
manner by agricultural pursuits, but by the labour of his brain.

I suppose, from what I have heard, that Mr. Tighe became strongly
interested in his children's tutor, and may have aided him, not only in
the direction of his studies, but in the suggestion of an English
university education, and in advice as to the mode in which he should
obtain entrance there.  Mr. Bronte has now no trace of his Irish origin
remaining in his speech; he never could have shown his Celtic descent in
the straight Greek lines and long oval of his face; but at
five-and-twenty, fresh from the only life he had ever known, to present
himself at the gates of St. John's proved no little determination of
will, and scorn of ridicule.

While at Cambridge, he became one of a corps of volunteers, who were then
being called out all over the country to resist the apprehended invasion
by the French.  I have heard him allude, in late years, to Lord
Palmerston as one who had often been associated with him then in the
mimic military duties which they had to perform.

We take him up now settled as a curate at Hartshead, in Yorkshire--far
removed from his birth-place and all his Irish connections; with whom,
indeed, he cared little to keep up any intercourse, and whom he never, I
believe, revisited after becoming a student at Cambridge.

Hartshead is a very small village, lying to the east of Huddersfield and
Halifax; and, from its high situation--on a mound, as it were, surrounded
by a circular basin--commanding a magnificent view.  Mr. Bronte resided
here for five years; and, while the incumbent of Hartshead, he wooed and
married Maria Branwell.

She was the third daughter of Mr. Thomas Branwell, merchant, of Penzance.
Her mother's maiden name was Carne: and, both on father's and mother's
side, the Branwell family were sufficiently well descended to enable them
to mix in the best society that Penzance then afforded.  Mr. and Mrs.
Branwell would be living--their family of four daughters and one son,
still children--during the existence of that primitive state of society
which is well described by Dr. Davy in the life of his brother.

"In the same town, when the population was about 2,000 persons, there was
only one carpet, the floors of rooms were sprinkled with sea-sand, and
there was not a single silver fork.

"At that time, when our colonial possessions were very limited, our army
and navy on a small scale, and there was comparatively little demand for
intellect, the younger sons of gentlemen were often of necessity brought
up to some trade or mechanical art, to which no discredit, or loss of
caste, as it were, was attached.  The eldest son, if not allowed to
remain an idle country squire, was sent to Oxford or Cambridge,
preparatory to his engaging in one of the three liberal professions of
divinity, law, or physic; the second son was perhaps apprenticed to a
surgeon or apothecary, or a solicitor; the third to a pewterer or
watchmaker; the fourth to a packer or mercer, and so on, were there more
to be provided for.

"After their apprenticeships were finished, the young men almost
invariably went to London to perfect themselves in their respective trade
or art: and on their return into the country, when settled in business,
they were not excluded from what would now be considered genteel society.
Visiting then was conducted differently from what it is at present.
Dinner-parties were almost unknown, excepting at the annual feast-time.
Christmas, too, was then a season of peculiar indulgence and
conviviality, and a round of entertainments was given, consisting of tea
and supper.  Excepting at these two periods, visiting was almost entirely
confined to tea-parties, which assembled at three o'clock, broke up at
nine, and the amusement of the evening was commonly some round game at
cards, as Pope Joan, or Commerce.  The lower class was then extremely
ignorant, and all classes were very superstitious; even the belief in
witches maintained its ground, and there was an almost unbounded
credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous.  There was scarcely
a parish in the Mount's Bay that was without a haunted house, or a spot
to which some story of supernatural horror was not attached.  Even when I
was a boy, I remember a house in the best street of Penzance which was
uninhabited because it was believed to be haunted, and which young people
walked by at night at a quickened pace, and with a beating heart.  Amongst
the middle and higher classes there was little taste for literature, and
still less for science, and their pursuits were rarely of a dignified or
intellectual kind.  Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cock-fighting,
generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in.
Smuggling was carried on to a great extent; and drunkenness, and a low
state of morals, were naturally associated with it.  Whilst smuggling was
the means of acquiring wealth to bold and reckless adventurers,
drunkenness and dissipation occasioned the ruin of many respectable
families."

I have given this extract because I conceive it bears some reference to
the life of Miss Bronte, whose strong mind and vivid imagination must
have received their first impressions either from the servants (in that
simple household, almost friendly companions during the greater part of
the day,) retailing the traditions or the news of Haworth village; or
from Mr. Bronte, whose intercourse with his children appears to have been
considerably restrained, and whose life, both in Ireland and at
Cambridge, had been spent under peculiar circumstances; or from her aunt,
Miss Branwell, who came to the parsonage, when Charlotte was only six or
seven years old, to take charge of her dead sister's family.  This aunt
was older than Mrs. Bronte, and had lived longer among the Penzance
society, which Dr. Davy describes.  But in the Branwell family itself,
the violence and irregularity of nature did not exist.  They were
Methodists, and, as far as I can gather, a gentle and sincere piety gave
refinement and purity of character.  Mr. Branwell, the father, according
to his descendants' account, was a man of musical talent.  He and his
wife lived to see all their children grown up, and died within a year of
each other--he in 1808, she in 1809, when their daughter Maria was twenty-
five or twenty-six years of age.  I have been permitted to look over a
series of nine letters, which were addressed by her to Mr. Bronte, during
the brief term of their engagement in 1812.  They are full of tender
grace of expression and feminine modesty; pervaded by the deep piety to
which I have alluded as a family characteristic.  I shall make one or two
extracts from them, to show what sort of a person was the mother of
Charlotte Bronte: but first, I must state the circumstances under which
this Cornish lady met the scholar from Ahaderg, near Loughbrickland.  In
the early summer of 1812, when she would be twenty-nine, she came to
visit her uncle, the Reverend John Fennel, who was at that time a
clergyman of the Church of England, living near Leeds, but who had
previously been a Methodist minister.  Mr. Bronte was the incumbent of
Hartshead; and had the reputation in the neighbourhood of being a very
handsome fellow, full of Irish enthusiasm, and with something of an
Irishman's capability of falling easily in love.  Miss Branwell was
extremely small in person; not pretty, but very elegant, and always
dressed with a quiet simplicity of taste, which accorded well with her
general character, and of which some of the details call to mind the
style of dress preferred by her daughter for her favourite heroines.  Mr.
Bronte was soon captivated by the little, gentle creature, and this time
declared that it was for life.  In her first letter to him, dated August
26th, she seems almost surprised to find herself engaged, and alludes to
the short time which she has known him.  In the rest there are touches
reminding one of Juliet's--

   "But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true,
   Than those that have more cunning to be strange."

There are plans for happy pic-nic parties to Kirkstall Abbey, in the
glowing September days, when "Uncle, Aunt, and Cousin Jane,"--the last
engaged to a Mr. Morgan, another clergyman--were of the party; all since
dead, except Mr. Bronte.  There was no opposition on the part of any of
her friends to her engagement.  Mr. and Mrs. Fennel sanctioned it, and
her brother and sisters in far-away Penzance appear fully to have
approved of it.  In a letter dated September 18th, she says:--

"For some years I have been perfectly my own mistress, subject to no
control whatever; so far from it, that my sisters, who are many years
older than myself, and even my dear mother, used to consult me on every
occasion of importance, and scarcely ever doubted the propriety of my
opinions and actions: perhaps you will be ready to accuse me of vanity in
mentioning this, but you must consider that I do not boast of it.  I have
many times felt it a disadvantage, and although, I thank God, it has
never led me into error, yet, in circumstances of uncertainty and doubt,
I have deeply felt the want of a guide and instructor."  In the same
letter she tells Mr. Bronte, that she has informed her sisters of her
engagement, and that she should not see them again so soon as she had
intended.  Mr. Fennel, her uncle, also writes to them by the same post in
praise of Mr. Bronte.

The journey from Penzance to Leeds in those days was both very long and
very expensive; the lovers had not much money to spend in unnecessary
travelling, and, as Miss Branwell had neither father nor mother living,
it appeared both a discreet and seemly arrangement that the marriage
should take place from her uncle's house.  There was no reason either why
the engagement should be prolonged.  They were past their first youth;
they had means sufficient for their unambitious wants; the living of
Hartshead is rated in the Clergy List at 202_l_. per annum, and she was
in the receipt of a small annuity (50_l_. I have been told) by the will
of her father.  So, at the end of September, the lovers began to talk
about taking a house, for I suppose that Mr. Bronte up to that time had
been in lodgings; and all went smoothly and successfully with a view to
their marriage in the ensuing winter, until November, when a misfortune
happened, which she thus patiently and prettily describes:--

"I suppose you never expected to be much the richer for me, but I am
sorry to inform you that I am still poorer than I thought myself.  I
mentioned having sent for my books, clothes, &c.  On Saturday evening,
about the time when you were writing the description of your imaginary
shipwreck, I was reading and feeling the effects of a real one, having
then received a letter from my sister giving me an account of the vessel
in which she had sent my box being stranded on the coast of Devonshire,
in consequence of which the box was dashed to pieces with the violence of
the sea, and all my little property, with the exception of a very few
articles, being swallowed up in the mighty deep.  If this should not
prove the prelude to something worse I shall think little of it, as it is
the first disastrous circumstance which has occurred since I left my
home."

The last of these letters is dated December the 5th.  Miss Branwell and
her cousin intended to set about making the wedding-cake in the following
week, so the marriage could not be far off.  She had been learning by
heart a "pretty little hymn" of Mr. Bronte's composing; and reading Lord
Lyttelton's "Advice to a Lady," on which she makes some pertinent and
just remarks, showing that she thought as well as read.  And so Maria
Branwell fades out of sight; we have no more direct intercourse with her;
we hear of her as Mrs. Bronte, but it is as an invalid, not far from
death; still patient, cheerful, and pious.  The writing of these letters
is elegant and neat; while there are allusions to household
occupations--such as making the wedding-cake; there are also allusions to
the books she has read, or is reading, showing a well-cultivated mind.
Without having anything of her daughter's rare talents, Mrs. Bronte must
have been, I imagine, that unusual character, a well-balanced and
consistent woman.  The style of the letters is easy and good; as is also
that of a paper from the same hand, entitled "The Advantages of Poverty
in Religious Concerns," which was written rather later, with a view to
publication in some periodical.

She was married from her uncle's house in Yorkshire, on the 29th of
December, 1812; the same day was also the wedding-day of her younger
sister, Charlotte Branwell, in distant Penzance.  I do not think that
Mrs. Bronte ever revisited Cornwall, but she has left a very pleasant
impression on the minds of those relations who yet survive; they speak of
her as "their favourite aunt, and one to whom they, as well as all the
family, looked up, as a person of talent and great amiability of
disposition;" and, again, as "meek and retiring, while possessing more
than ordinary talents, which she inherited from her father, and her piety
was genuine and unobtrusive."

Mr. Bronte remained for five years at Hartshead, in the parish of
Dewsbury.  There he was married, and his two children, Maria and
Elizabeth, were born.  At the expiration of that period, he had the
living of Thornton, in Bradford Parish.  Some of those great West Riding
parishes are almost like bishoprics for their amount of population and
number of churches.  Thornton church is a little episcopal chapel of
ease, rich in Nonconformist monuments, as of Accepted Lister and his
friend Dr. Hall.  The neighbourhood is desolate and wild; great tracts of
bleak land, enclosed by stone dykes, sweeping up Clayton heights.  The
church itself looks ancient and solitary, and as if left behind by the
great stone mills of a flourishing Independent firm, and the solid square
chapel built by the members of that denomination.  Altogether not so
pleasant a place as Hartshead, with its ample outlook over
cloud-shadowed, sun-flecked plain, and hill rising beyond hill to form
the distant horizon.

Here, at Thornton, Charlotte Bronte was born, on the 21st of April, 1816.
Fast on her heels followed Patrick Branwell, Emily Jane, and Anne.  After
the birth of this last daughter, Mrs. Bronte's health began to decline.
It is hard work to provide for the little tender wants of many young
children where the means are but limited.  The necessaries of food and
clothing are much more easily supplied than the almost equal necessaries
of attendance, care, soothing, amusement, and sympathy.  Maria Bronte,
the eldest of six, could only have been a few months more than six years
old, when Mr. Bronte removed to Haworth, on February the 25th, 1820.
Those who knew her then, describe her as grave, thoughtful, and quiet, to
a degree far beyond her years.  Her childhood was no childhood; the cases
are rare in which the possessors of great gifts have known the blessings
of that careless happy time; _their_ unusual powers stir within them,
and, instead of the natural life of perception--the objective, as the
Germans call it--they begin the deeper life of reflection--the
subjective.

Little Maria Bronte was delicate and small in appearance, which seemed to
give greater effect to her wonderful precocity of intellect.  She must
have been her mother's companion and helpmate in many a household and
nursery experience, for Mr. Bronte was, of course, much engaged in his
study; and besides, he was not naturally fond of children, and felt their
frequent appearance on the scene as a drag both on his wife's strength,
and as an interruption to the comfort of the household.

Haworth Parsonage is--as I mentioned in the first chapter--an oblong
stone house, facing down the hill on which the village stands, and with
the front door right opposite to the western door of the church, distant
about a hundred yards.  Of this space twenty yards or so in depth are
occupied by the grassy garden, which is scarcely wider than the house.
The graveyard lies on two sides of the house and garden.  The house
consists of four rooms on each floor, and is two stories high.  When the
Brontes took possession, they made the larger parlour, to the left of the
entrance, the family sitting-room, while that on the right was
appropriated to Mr. Bronte as a study.  Behind this was the kitchen;
behind the former, a sort of flagged store-room.  Upstairs were four bed-
chambers of similar size, with the addition of a small apartment over the
passage, or "lobby" as we call it in the north.  This was to the front,
the staircase going up right opposite to the entrance.  There is the
pleasant old fashion of window seats all through the house; and one can
see that the parsonage was built in the days when wood was plentiful, as
the massive stair-banisters, and the wainscots, and the heavy
window-frames testify.

This little extra upstairs room was appropriated to the children.  Small
as it was, it was not called a nursery; indeed, it had not the comfort of
a fire-place in it; the servants--two affectionate, warm-hearted sisters,
who cannot now speak of the family without tears--called the room the
"children's study."  The age of the eldest student was perhaps by this
time seven.

The people in Haworth were none of them very poor.  Many of them were
employed in the neighbouring worsted mills; a few were mill-owners and
manufacturers in a small way; there were also some shopkeepers for the
humbler and everyday wants; but for medical advice, for stationery,
books, law, dress, or dainties, the inhabitants had to go to Keighley.
There were several Sunday-schools; the Baptists had taken the lead in
instituting them, the Wesleyans had followed, the Church of England had
brought up the rear.  Good Mr. Grimshaw, Wesley's friend, had built a
humble Methodist chapel, but it stood close to the road leading on to the
moor; the Baptists then raised a place of worship, with the distinction
of being a few yards back from the highway; and the Methodists have since
thought it well to erect another and a larger chapel, still more retired
from the road.  Mr. Bronte was ever on kind and friendly terms with each
denomination as a body; but from individuals in the village the family
stood aloof, unless some direct service was required, from the first.
"They kept themselves very close," is the account given by those who
remember Mr. and Mrs. Bronte's coming amongst them.  I believe many of
the Yorkshiremen would object to the system of parochial visiting; their
surly independence would revolt from the idea of any one having a right,
from his office, to inquire into their condition, to counsel, or to
admonish them.  The old hill-spirit lingers in them, which coined the
rhyme, inscribed on the under part of one of the seats in the Sedilia of
Whalley Abbey, not many miles from Haworth,

   "Who mells wi' what another does
   Had best go home and shoe his goose."

I asked an inhabitant of a district close to Haworth what sort of a
clergyman they had at the church which he attended.

"A rare good one," said he: "he minds his own business, and ne'er
troubles himself with ours."

Mr. Bronte was faithful in visiting the sick and all those who sent for
him, and diligent in attendance at the schools; and so was his daughter
Charlotte too; but, cherishing and valuing privacy themselves, they were
perhaps over-delicate in not intruding upon the privacy of others.

From their first going to Haworth, their walks were directed rather out
towards the heathery moors, sloping upwards behind the parsonage, than
towards the long descending village street.  A good old woman, who came
to nurse Mrs. Bronte in the illness--an internal cancer--which grew and
gathered upon her, not many months after her arrival at Haworth, tells me
that at that time the six little creatures used to walk out, hand in
hand, towards the glorious wild moors, which in after days they loved so
passionately; the elder ones taking thoughtful care for the toddling wee
things.

They were grave and silent beyond their years; subdued, probably, by the
presence of serious illness in the house; for, at the time which my
informant speaks of, Mrs. Bronte was confined to the bedroom from which
she never came forth alive.  "You would not have known there was a child
in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures.
Maria would shut herself up" (Maria, but seven!) "in the children's study
with a newspaper, and be able to tell one everything when she came out;
debates in Parliament, and I don't know what all.  She was as good as a
mother to her sisters and brother.  But there never were such good
children.  I used to think them spiritless, they were so different to any
children I had ever seen.  They were good little creatures.  Emily was
the prettiest."

Mrs. Bronte was the same patient, cheerful person as we have seen her
formerly; very ill, suffering great pain, but seldom if ever complaining;
at her better times begging her nurse to raise her in bed to let her see
her clean the grate, "because she did it as it was done in Cornwall;"
devotedly fond of her husband, who warmly repaid her affection, and
suffered no one else to take the night-nursing; but, according to my
informant, the mother was not very anxious to see much of her children,
probably because the sight of them, knowing how soon they were to be left
motherless, would have agitated her too much.  So the little things clung
quietly together, for their father was busy in his study and in his
parish, or with their mother, and they took their meals alone; sat
reading, or whispering low, in the "children's study," or wandered out on
the hill-side, hand in hand.

The ideas of Rousseau and Mr. Day on education had filtered down through
many classes, and spread themselves widely out.  I imagine, Mr. Bronte
must have formed some of his opinions on the management of children from
these two theorists.  His practice was not half so wild or extraordinary
as that to which an aunt of mine was subjected by a disciple of Mr.
Day's.  She had been taken by this gentleman and his wife, to live with
them as their adopted child, perhaps about five-and-twenty years before
the time of which I am writing.  They were wealthy people and kind
hearted, but her food and clothing were of the very simplest and rudest
description, on Spartan principles.  A healthy, merry child, she did not
much care for dress or eating; but the treatment which she felt as a real
cruelty was this.  They had a carriage, in which she and the favourite
dog were taken an airing on alternate days; the creature whose turn it
was to be left at home being tossed in a blanket--an operation which my
aunt especially dreaded.  Her affright at the tossing was probably the
reason why it was persevered in.  Dressed-up ghosts had become common,
and she did not care for them, so the blanket exercise was to be the next
mode of hardening her nerves.  It is well known that Mr. Day broke off
his intention of marrying Sabrina, the girl whom he had educated for this
purpose, because, within a few weeks of the time fixed for the wedding,
she was guilty of the frivolity, while on a visit from home, of wearing
thin sleeves.  Yet Mr. Day and my aunt's relations were benevolent
people, only strongly imbued with the crotchet that by a system of
training might be educed the hardihood and simplicity of the ideal
savage, forgetting the terrible isolation of feelings and habits which
their pupils would experience in the future life which they must pass
among the corruptions and refinements of civilization.

Mr. Bronte wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the
pleasures of eating and dress.  In the latter he succeeded, as far as
regarded his daughters.

His strong, passionate, Irish nature was, in general, compressed down
with resolute stoicism; but it was there notwithstanding all his
philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour; though he did not speak when
he was annoyed or displeased.  Mrs. Bronte, whose sweet nature thought
invariably of the bright side, would say, "Ought I not to be thankful
that he never gave me an angry word?"

Mr. Bronte was an active walker, stretching away over the moors for many
miles, noting in his mind all natural signs of wind and weather, and
keenly observing all the wild creatures that came and went in the
loneliest sweeps of the hills.  He has seen eagles stooping low in search
of food for their young; no eagle is ever seen on those mountain slopes
now.

He fearlessly took whatever side in local or national politics appeared
to him right.  In the days of the Luddites, he had been for the
peremptory interference of the law, at a time when no magistrate could be
found to act, and all the property of the West Riding was in terrible
danger.  He became unpopular then among the millworkers, and he esteemed
his life unsafe if he took his long and lonely walks unarmed; so he began
the habit, which has continued to this day, of invariably carrying a
loaded pistol about with him.  It lay on his dressing-table with his
watch; with his watch it was put on in the morning; with his watch it was
taken off at night.

Many years later, during his residence at Haworth, there was a strike;
the hands in the neighbourhood felt themselves aggrieved by the masters,
and refused to work: Mr. Bronte thought that they had been unjustly and
unfairly treated, and he assisted them by all the means in his power to
"keep the wolf from their doors," and avoid the incubus of debt.  Several
of the more influential inhabitants of Haworth and the neighbourhood were
mill-owners; they remonstrated pretty sharply with him, but he believed
that his conduct was right and persevered in it.

His opinions might be often both wild and erroneous, his principles of
action eccentric and strange, his views of life partial, and almost
misanthropical; but not one opinion that he held could be stirred or
modified by any worldly motive: he acted up to his principles of action;
and, if any touch of misanthropy mingled with his view of mankind in
general, his conduct to the individuals who came in personal contact with
him did not agree with such view.  It is true that he had strong and
vehement prejudices, and was obstinate in maintaining them, and that he
was not dramatic enough in his perceptions to see how miserable others
might be in a life that to him was all-sufficient.  But I do not pretend
to be able to harmonize points of character, and account for them, and
bring them all into one consistent and intelligible whole.  The family
with whom I have now to do shot their roots down deeper than I can
penetrate.  I cannot measure them, much less is it for me to judge them.
I have named these instances of eccentricity in the father because I hold
the knowledge of them to be necessary for a right understanding of the
life of his daughter.

Mrs. Bronte died in September, 1821, and the lives of those quiet
children must have become quieter and lonelier still.  Charlotte tried
hard, in after years, to recall the remembrance of her mother, and could
bring back two or three pictures of her.  One was when, sometime in the
evening light, she had been playing with her little boy, Patrick
Branwell, in the parlour of Haworth Parsonage.  But the recollections of
four or five years old are of a very fragmentary character.

Owing to some illness of the digestive organs, Mr. Bronte was obliged to
be very careful about his diet; and, in order to avoid temptation, and
possibly to have the quiet necessary for digestion, he had begun, before
his wife's death, to take his dinner alone--a habit which he always
retained.  He did not require companionship, therefore he did not seek
it, either in his walks, or in his daily life.  The quiet regularity of
his domestic hours was only broken in upon by church-wardens, and
visitors on parochial business; and sometimes by a neighbouring
clergyman, who came down the hills, across the moors, to mount up again
to Haworth Parsonage, and spend an evening there.  But, owing to Mrs.
Bronte's death so soon after her husband had removed into the district,
and also to the distances, and the bleak country to be traversed, the
wives of these clerical friends did not accompany their husbands; and the
daughters grew up out of childhood into girlhood bereft, in a singular
manner, of all such society as would have been natural to their age, sex,
and station.

But the children did not want society.  To small infantine gaieties they
were unaccustomed.  They were all in all to each other.  I do not suppose
that there ever was a family more tenderly bound to each other.  Maria
read the newspapers, and reported intelligence to her younger sisters
which it is wonderful they could take an interest in.  But I suspect that
they had no "children's books," and that their eager minds "browzed
undisturbed among the wholesome pasturage of English literature," as
Charles Lamb expresses it.  The servants of the household appear to have
been much impressed with the little Brontes' extraordinary cleverness.  In
a letter which I had from him on this subject, their father writes:--"The
servants often said that they had never seen such a clever little child"
(as Charlotte), "and that they were obliged to be on their guard as to
what they said and did before her.  Yet she and the servants always lived
on good terms with each other."

These servants are yet alive; elderly women residing in Bradford.  They
retain a faithful and fond recollection of Charlotte, and speak of her
unvarying kindness from the "time when she was ever such a little child!"
when she would not rest till she had got the old disused cradle sent from
the parsonage to the house where the parents of one of them lived, to
serve for a little infant sister.  They tell of one long series of kind
and thoughtful actions from this early period to the last weeks of
Charlotte Bronte's life; and, though she had left her place many years
ago, one of these former servants went over from Bradford to Haworth on
purpose to see Mr. Bronte, and offer him her true sympathy, when his last
child died.  I may add a little anecdote as a testimony to the admirable
character of the likeness of Miss Bronte prefixed to this volume.  A
gentleman who had kindly interested himself in the preparation of this
memoir took the first volume, shortly after the publication, to the house
of this old servant, in order to show her the portrait.  The moment she
caught a glimpse of the frontispiece, "There she is," in a minute she
exclaimed.  "Come, John, look!" (to her husband); and her daughter was
equally struck by the resemblance.  There might not be many to regard the
Brontes with affection, but those who once loved them, loved them long
and well.

I return to the father's letter.  He says:--

"When mere children, as soon as they could read and write, Charlotte and
her brothers and sisters used to invent and act little plays of their
own, in which the Duke of Wellington, my daughter Charlotte's hero, was
sure to come off conqueror; when a dispute would not unfrequently arise
amongst them regarding the comparative merits of him, Buonaparte,
Hannibal, and Caesar.  When the argument got warm, and rose to its
height, as their mother was then dead, I had sometimes to come in as
arbitrator, and settle the dispute according to the best of my judgment.
Generally, in the management of these concerns, I frequently thought that
I discovered signs of rising talent, which I had seldom or never before
seen in any of their age . . . A circumstance now occurs to my mind which
I may as well mention.  When my children were very young, when, as far as
I can remember, the oldest was about ten years of age, and the youngest
about four, thinking that they knew more than I had yet discovered, in
order to make them speak with less timidity, I deemed that if they were
put under a sort of cover I might gain my end; and happening to have a
mask in the house, I told them all to stand and speak boldly from under
cover of the mask.

"I began with the youngest (Anne, afterwards Acton Bell), and asked what
a child like her most wanted; she answered, 'Age and experience.'  I
asked the next (Emily, afterwards Ellis Bell), what I had best do with
her brother Branwell, who was sometimes a naughty boy; she answered,
'Reason with him, and when he won't listen to reason, whip him.'  I asked
Branwell what was the best way of knowing the difference between the
intellects of man and woman; he answered, 'By considering the difference
between them as to their bodies.'  I then asked Charlotte what was the
best book in the world; she answered, 'The Bible.'  And what was the next
best; she answered, 'The Book of Nature.'  I then asked the next what was
the best mode of education for a woman; she answered, 'That which would
make her rule her house well.'  Lastly, I asked the oldest what was the
best mode of spending time; she answered, 'By laying it out in
preparation for a happy eternity.'  I may not have given precisely their
words, but I have nearly done so, as they made a deep and lasting
impression on my memory.  The substance, however, was exactly what I have
stated."

The strange and quaint simplicity of the mode taken by the father to
ascertain the hidden characters of his children, and the tone and
character of these questions and answers, show the curious education
which was made by the circumstances surrounding the Brontes.  They knew
no other children.  They knew no other modes of thought than what were
suggested to them by the fragments of clerical conversation which they
overheard in the parlour, or the subjects of village and local interest
which they heard discussed in the kitchen.  Each had their own strong
characteristic flavour.

They took a vivid interest in the public characters, and the local and
the foreign as well as home politics discussed in the newspapers.  Long
before Maria Bronte died, at the age of eleven, her father used to say he
could converse with her on any of the leading topics of the day with as
much freedom and pleasure as with any grown-up person.




CHAPTER IV


About a year after Mrs. Bronte's death, an elder sister, as I have before
mentioned, came from Penzance to superintend her brother-in-law's
household, and look after his children.  Miss Branwell was, I believe, a
kindly and conscientious woman, with a good deal of character, but with
the somewhat narrow ideas natural to one who had spent nearly all her
life in the same place.  She had strong prejudices, and soon took a
distaste to Yorkshire.  From Penzance, where plants which we in the north
call greenhouse flowers grow in great profusion, and without any shelter
even in the winter, and where the soft warm climate allows the
inhabitants, if so disposed, to live pretty constantly in the open air,
it was a great change for a lady considerably past forty to come and take
up her abode in a place where neither flowers nor vegetables would
flourish, and where a tree of even moderate dimensions might be hunted
for far and wide; where the snow lay long and late on the moors,
stretching bleakly and barely far up from the dwelling which was
henceforward to be her home; and where often, on autumnal or winter
nights, the four winds of heaven seemed to meet and rage together,
tearing round the house as if they were wild beasts striving to find an
entrance.  She missed the small round of cheerful, social visiting
perpetually going on in a country town; she missed the friends she had
known from her childhood, some of whom had been her parents' friends
before they were hers; she disliked many of the customs of the place, and
particularly dreaded the cold damp arising from the flag floors in the
passages and parlours of Haworth Parsonage.  The stairs, too, I believe,
are made of stone; and no wonder, when stone quarries are near, and trees
are far to seek.  I have heard that Miss Branwell always went about the
house in pattens, clicking up and down the stairs, from her dread of
catching cold.  For the same reason, in the latter years of her life, she
passed nearly all her time, and took most of her meals, in her bedroom.
The children respected her, and had that sort of affection for her which
is generated by esteem; but I do not think they ever freely loved her.  It
was a severe trial for any one at her time of life to change
neighbourhood and habitation so entirely as she did; and the greater her
merit.

I do not know whether Miss Branwell taught her nieces anything besides
sewing, and the household arts in which Charlotte afterwards was such an
adept.  Their regular lessons were said to their father; and they were
always in the habit of picking up an immense amount of miscellaneous
information for themselves.  But a year or so before this time, a school
had been begun in the North of England for the daughters of clergymen.
The place was Cowan Bridge, a small hamlet on the coach-road between
Leeds and Kendal, and thus easy of access from Haworth, as the coach ran
daily, and one of its stages was at Keighley.  The yearly expense for
each pupil (according to the entrance-rules given in the Report for 1842,
and I believe they had not been increased since the establishment of the
schools in 1823) was as follows:

"Rule 11.  The terms for clothing, lodging, boarding, and educating, are
14_l_. a year; half to be paid in advance, when the pupils are sent; and
also 1_l_. entrance-money, for the use of books, &c.  The system of
education comprehends history, geography, the use of the globes, grammar,
writing and arithmetic, all kinds of needlework, and the nicer kinds of
household work--such as getting up fine linen, ironing, &c.  If
accomplishments are required, an additional charge of 3_l_. a year is
made for music or drawing, each."

Rule 3rd requests that the friends will state the line of education
desired in the case of every pupil, having a regard to her future
prospects.

Rule 4th states the clothing and toilette articles which a girl is
expected to bring with her; and thus concludes: "The pupils all appear in
the same dress.  They wear plain straw cottage bonnets; in summer white
frocks on Sundays, and nankeen on other days; in winter, purple stuff
frocks, and purple cloth cloaks.  For the sake of uniformity, therefore,
they are required to bring 3_l_. in lieu of frocks, pelisse, bonnet,
tippet, and frills; making the whole sum which each pupil brings with her
to the school--

   7_l_. half-year in advance.
   1_l_. entrance for books.
   1_l_. entrance for clothes.

The 8th rule is,--"All letters and parcels are inspected by the
superintendent;" but this is a very prevalent regulation in all young
ladies' schools, where I think it is generally understood that the
schoolmistress may exercise this privilege, although it is certainly
unwise in her to insist too frequently upon it.

There is nothing at all remarkable in any of the other regulations, a
copy of which was doubtless in Mr. Bronte's hands when he formed the
determination to send his daughters to Cowan Bridge School; and he
accordingly took Maria and Elizabeth thither in July, 1824.

I now come to a part of my subject which I find great difficulty in
treating, because the evidence relating to it on each side is so
conflicting that it seems almost impossible to arrive at the truth.  Miss
Bronte more than once said to me, that she should not have written what
she did of Lowood in "Jane Eyre," if she had thought the place would have
been so immediately identified with Cowan Bridge, although there was not
a word in her account of the institution but what was true at the time
when she knew it; she also said that she had not considered it necessary,
in a work of fiction, to state every particular with the impartiality
that might be required in a court of justice, nor to seek out motives,
and make allowances for human failings, as she might have done, if
dispassionately analysing the conduct of those who had the
superintendence of the institution.  I believe she herself would have
been glad of an opportunity to correct the over-strong impression which
was made upon the public mind by her vivid picture, though even she,
suffering her whole life long, both in heart and body, from the
consequences of what happened there, might have been apt, to the last, to
take her deep belief in facts for the facts themselves--her conception of
truth for the absolute truth.

In some of the notices of the previous editions of this work, it is
assumed that I derived the greater part of my information with regard to
her sojourn at Cowan Bridge from Charlotte Bronte herself.  I never heard
her speak of the place but once, and that was on the second day of my
acquaintance with her.  A little child on that occasion expressed some
reluctance to finish eating his piece of bread at dinner; and she,
stooping down, and addressing him in a low voice, told him how thankful
she should have been at his age for a piece of bread; and when we--though
I am not sure if I myself spoke--asked her some question as to the
occasion she alluded to, she replied with reserve and hesitation,
evidently shying away from what she imagined might lead to too much
conversation on one of her books.  She spoke of the oat-cake at Cowan
Bridge (the clap-bread of Westmorland) as being different to the leaven-
raised oat-cake of Yorkshire, and of her childish distaste for it.  Some
one present made an allusion to a similar childish dislike in the true
tale of "The terrible knitters o' Dent" given in Southey's "Common-place
Book:" and she smiled faintly, but said that the mere difference in food
was not all: that the food itself was spoilt by the dirty carelessness of
the cook, so that she and her sisters disliked their meals exceedingly;
and she named her relief and gladness when the doctor condemned the meat,
and spoke of having seen him spit it out.  These are all the details I
ever heard from her.  She so avoided particularizing, that I think Mr.
Carus Wilson's name never passed between us.

I do not doubt the general accuracy of my informants,--of those who have
given, and solemnly repeated, the details that follow,--but it is only
just to Miss Bronte to say that I have stated above pretty nearly all
that I ever heard on the subject from her.

A clergyman, living near Kirby Lonsdale, the Reverend William Carus
Wilson, was the prime mover in the establishment of this school.  He was
an energetic man, sparing no labour for the accomplishment of his ends.
He saw that it was an extremely difficult task for clergymen with limited
incomes to provide for the education of their children; and he devised a
scheme, by which a certain sum was raised annually by subscription, to
complete the amount required to furnish a solid and sufficient English
education, for which the parent's payment of 14_l_. a year would not have
been sufficient.  Indeed, that made by the parents was considered to be
exclusively appropriated to the expenses of lodging and boarding, and the
education provided for by the subscriptions.  Twelve trustees were
appointed; Mr. Wilson being not only a trustee, but the treasurer and
secretary; in fact, taking most of the business arrangements upon
himself; a responsibility which appropriately fell to him, as he lived
nearer the school than any one else who was interested in it.  So his
character for prudence and judgment was to a certain degree implicated in
the success or failure of Cowan Bridge School; and the working of it was
for many years the great object and interest of his life.  But he was
apparently unacquainted with the prime element in good
administration--seeking out thoroughly competent persons to fill each
department, and then making them responsible for, and judging them by,
the result, without perpetual interference with the details.

So great was the amount of good which Mr. Wilson did, by his constant,
unwearied superintendence, that I cannot help feeling sorry that, in his
old age and declining health, the errors which he was believed to have
committed, should have been brought up against him in a form which
received such wonderful force from the touch of Miss Bronte's great
genius.  No doubt whatever can be entertained of the deep interest which
he felt in the success of the school.  As I write, I have before me his
last words on giving up the secretaryship in 1850: he speaks of the
"withdrawal, from declining health, of an eye, which, at all events, has
loved to watch over the schools with an honest and anxious interest;"--and
again he adds, "that he resigns, therefore, with a desire to be thankful
for all that God has been pleased to accomplish through his
instrumentality (the infirmities and unworthinesses of which he deeply
feels and deplores)."

Cowan Bridge is a cluster of some six or seven cottages, gathered
together at both ends of a bridge, over which the high road from Leeds to
Kendal crosses a little stream, called the Leck.  This high road is
nearly disused now; but formerly, when the buyers from the West Riding
manufacturing districts had frequent occasion to go up into the North to
purchase the wool of the Westmorland and Cumberland farmers, it was
doubtless much travelled; and perhaps the hamlet of Cowan Bridge had a
more prosperous look than it bears at present.  It is prettily situated;
just where the Leck-fells swoop into the plain; and by the course of the
beck alder-trees and willows and hazel bushes grow.  The current of the
stream is interrupted by broken pieces of grey rock; and the waters flow
over a bed of large round white pebbles, which a flood heaves up and
moves on either side out of its impetuous way till in some parts they
almost form a wall.  By the side of the little, shallow, sparkling,
vigorous Leck, run long pasture fields, of the fine short grass common in
high land; for though Cowan Bridge is situated on a plain, it is a plain
from which there is many a fall and long descent before you and the Leck
reach the valley of the Lune.  I can hardly understand how the school
there came to be so unhealthy, the air all round about was so sweet and
thyme-scented, when I visited it last summer.  But at this day, every one
knows that the site of a building intended for numbers should be chosen
with far greater care than that of a private dwelling, from the tendency
to illness, both infectious and otherwise, produced by the congregation
of people in close proximity.

The house is still remaining that formed part of that occupied by the
school.  It is a long, bow-windowed cottage, now divided into two
dwellings.  It stands facing the Leck, between which and it intervenes a
space, about seventy yards deep, that was once the school garden.  This
original house was an old dwelling of the Picard family, which they had
inhabited for two generations.  They sold it for school purposes, and an
additional building was erected, running at right angles from the older
part.  This new part was devoted expressly to schoolrooms, dormitories,
&c.; and after the school was removed to Casterton, it was used for a
bobbin-mill connected with the stream, where wooden reels were made out
of the alders, which grow profusely in such ground as that surrounding
Cowan Bridge.  This mill is now destroyed.  The present cottage was, at
the time of which I write, occupied by the teachers' rooms, the dinner-
room and kitchens, and some smaller bedrooms.  On going into this
building, I found one part, that nearest to the high road, converted into
a poor kind of public-house, then to let, and having all the squalid
appearance of a deserted place, which rendered it difficult to judge what
it would look like when neatly kept up, the broken panes replaced in the
windows, and the rough-cast (now cracked and discoloured) made white and
whole.  The other end forms a cottage, with the low ceilings and stone
floors of a hundred years ago; the windows do not open freely and widely;
and the passage upstairs, leading to the bedrooms, is narrow and
tortuous: altogether, smells would linger about the house, and damp cling
to it.  But sanitary matters were little understood thirty years ago; and
it was a great thing to get a roomy building close to the high road, and
not too far from the habitation of Mr. Wilson, the originator of the
educational scheme.  There was much need of such an institution; numbers
of ill-paid clergymen hailed the prospect with joy, and eagerly put down
the names of their children as pupils when the establishment should be
ready to receive them.  Mr. Wilson was, no doubt, pleased by the
impatience with which the realisation of his idea was anticipated, and
opened the school with less than a hundred pounds in hand, and with
pupils, the number of whom varies according to different accounts; Mr. W.
W. Carus Wilson, the son of the founder, giving it as seventy; while Mr.
Shepheard, the son-in-law, states it to have been only sixteen.

Mr. Wilson felt, most probably, that the responsibility of the whole plan
rested upon him.  The payment made by the parents was barely enough for
food and lodging; the subscriptions did not flow very freely into an
untried scheme; and great economy was necessary in all the domestic
arrangements.  He determined to enforce this by frequent personal
inspection; carried perhaps to an unnecessary extent, and leading
occasionally to a meddling with little matters, which had sometimes the
effect of producing irritation of feeling.  Yet, although there was
economy in providing for the household, there does not appear to have
been any parsimony.  The meat, flour, milk, &c., were contracted for, but
were of very fair quality; and the dietary, which has been shown to me in
manuscript, was neither bad nor unwholesome; nor, on the whole, was it
wanting in variety.  Oatmeal porridge for breakfast; a piece of oat-cake
for those who required luncheon; baked and boiled beef, and mutton,
potato-pie, and plain homely puddings of different kinds for dinner.  At
five o'clock, bread and milk for the younger ones; and one piece of bread
(this was the only time at which the food was limited) for the elder
pupils, who sat up till a later meal of the same description.

Mr. Wilson himself ordered in the food, and was anxious that it should be
of good quality.  But the cook, who had much of his confidence, and
against whom for a long time no one durst utter a complaint, was
careless, dirty, and wasteful.  To some children oatmeal porridge is
distasteful, and consequently unwholesome, even when properly made; at
Cowan Bridge School it was too often sent up, not merely burnt, but with
offensive fragments of other substances discoverable in it.  The beef,
that should have been carefully salted before it was dressed, had often
become tainted from neglect; and girls, who were school-fellows with the
Brontes, during the reign of the cook of whom I am speaking, tell me that
the house seemed to be pervaded, morning, noon, and night, by the odour
of rancid fat that steamed out of the oven in which much of their food
was prepared.  There was the same carelessness in making the puddings;
one of those ordered was rice boiled in water, and eaten with a sauce of
treacle and sugar; but it was often uneatable, because the water had been
taken out of the rain tub, and was strongly impregnated with the dust
lodging on the roof, whence it had trickled down into the old wooden
cask, which also added its own flavour to that of the original rain
water.  The milk, too, was often "bingy," to use a country expression for
a kind of taint that is far worse than sourness, and suggests the idea
that it is caused by want of cleanliness about the milk pans, rather than
by the heat of the weather.  On Saturdays, a kind of pie, or mixture of
potatoes and meat, was served up, which was made of all the fragments
accumulated during the week.  Scraps of meat from a dirty and disorderly
larder, could never be very appetizing; and, I believe, that this dinner
was more loathed than any in the early days of Cowan Bridge School.  One
may fancy how repulsive such fare would be to children whose appetites
were small, and who had been accustomed to food, far simpler perhaps, but
prepared with a delicate cleanliness that made it both tempting and
wholesome.  At many a meal the little Brontes went without food, although
craving with hunger.  They were not strong when they came, having only
just recovered from a complication of measles and hooping-cough: indeed,
I suspect they had scarcely recovered; for there was some consultation on
the part of the school authorities whether Maria and Elizabeth should be
received or not, in July 1824.  Mr. Bronte came again, in the September
of that year, bringing with him Charlotte and Emily to be admitted as
pupils.

It appears strange that Mr. Wilson should not have been informed by the
teachers of the way in which the food was served up; but we must remember
that the cook had been known for some time to the Wilson family, while
the teachers were brought together for an entirely different work--that
of education.  They were expressly given to understand that such was
their department; the buying in and management of the provisions rested
with Mr. Wilson and the cook.  The teachers would, of course, be
unwilling to lay any complaints on the subject before him.

There was another trial of health common to all the girls.  The path from
Cowan Bridge to Tunstall Church, where Mr. Wilson preached, and where
they all attended on the Sunday, is more than two miles in length, and
goes sweeping along the rise and fall of the unsheltered country, in a
way to make it a fresh and exhilarating walk in summer, but a bitter cold
one in winter, especially to children like the delicate little Brontes,
whose thin blood flowed languidly in consequence of their feeble
appetites rejecting the food prepared for them, and thus inducing a half-
starved condition.  The church was not warmed, there being no means for
this purpose.  It stands in the midst of fields, and the damp mist must
have gathered round the walls, and crept in at the windows.  The girls
took their cold dinner with them, and ate it between the services, in a
chamber over the entrance, opening out of the former galleries.  The
arrangements for this day were peculiarly trying to delicate children,
particularly to those who were spiritless and longing for home, as poor
Maria Bronte must have been; for her ill health was increasing, and the
old cough, the remains of the hooping-cough, lingered about her.

She was far superior in mind to any of her play-fellows and companions,
and was lonely amongst them from that very cause; and yet she had faults
so annoying that she was in constant disgrace with her teachers, and an
object of merciless dislike to one of them, who is depicted as "Miss
Scatcherd" in "Jane Eyre," and whose real name I will be merciful enough
not to disclose.  I need hardly say, that Helen Burns is as exact a
transcript of Maria Bronte as Charlotte's wonderful power of reproducing
character could give.  Her heart, to the latest day on which we met,
still beat with unavailing indignation at the worrying and the cruelty to
which her gentle, patient, dying sister had been subjected by this woman.
Not a word of that part of "Jane Eyre" but is a literal repetition of
scenes between the pupil and the teacher.  Those who had been pupils at
the same time knew who must have written the book from the force with
which Helen Burns' sufferings are described.  They had, before that,
recognised the description of the sweet dignity and benevolence of Miss
Temple as only a just tribute to the merits of one whom all that knew her
appear to hold in honour; but when Miss Scatcherd was held up to
opprobrium they also recognised in the writer of "Jane Eyre" an
unconsciously avenging sister of the sufferer.

One of their fellow-pupils, among other statements even worse, gives me
the following:--The dormitory in which Maria slept was a long room,
holding a row of narrow little beds on each side, occupied by the pupils;
and at the end of this dormitory there was a small bed-chamber opening
out of it, appropriated to the use of Miss Scatcherd.  Maria's bed stood
nearest to the door of this room.  One morning, after she had become so
seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to her side (the sore
from which was not perfectly healed), when the getting-up bell was heard,
poor Maria moaned out that she was so ill, so very ill, she wished she
might stop in bed; and some of the girls urged her to do so, and said
they would explain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent.  But Miss
Scatcherd was close at hand, and her anger would have to be faced before
Miss Temple's kind thoughtfulness could interfere; so the sick child
began to dress, shivering with cold, as, without leaving her bed, she
slowly put on her black worsted stockings over her thin white legs (my
informant spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flushed out
undying indignation).  Just then Miss Scatcherd issued from her room,
and, without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and
frightened girl, she took her by the arm, on the side to which the
blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement whirled her out
into the middle of the floor, abusing her all the time for dirty and
untidy habits.  There she left her.  My informant says, Maria hardly
spoke, except to beg some of the more indignant girls to be calm; but, in
slow, trembling movements, with many a pause, she went down-stairs at
last,--and was punished for being late.

Any one may fancy how such an event as this would rankle in Charlotte's
mind.  I only wonder that she did not remonstrate against her father's
decision to send her and Emily back to Cowan Bridge, after Maria's and
Elizabeth's deaths.  But frequently children are unconscious of the
effect which some of their simple revelations would have in altering the
opinions entertained by their friends of the persons placed around them.
Besides, Charlotte's earnest vigorous mind saw, at an unusually early
age, the immense importance of education, as furnishing her with tools
which she had the strength and the will to wield, and she would be aware
that the Cowan Bridge education was, in many points, the best that her
father could provide for her.

Before Maria Bronte's death, that low fever broke out, in the spring of
1825, which is spoken of in "Jane Eyre."  Mr. Wilson was extremely
alarmed at the first symptoms of this.  He went to a kind motherly woman,
who had had some connection with the school--as laundress, I believe--and
asked her to come and tell him what was the matter with them.  She made
herself ready, and drove with him in his gig.  When she entered the
schoolroom, she saw from twelve to fifteen girls lying about; some
resting their aching heads on the table, others on the ground; all heavy-
eyed, flushed, indifferent, and weary, with pains in every limb.  Some
peculiar odour, she says, made her recognise that they were sickening for
"the fever;" and she told Mr. Wilson so, and that she could not stay
there for fear of conveying the infection to her own children; but he
half commanded, and half entreated her to remain and nurse them; and
finally mounted his gig and drove away, while she was still urging that
she must return to her own house, and to her domestic duties, for which
she had provided no substitute.  However, when she was left in this
unceremonious manner, she determined to make the best of it; and a most
efficient nurse she proved: although, as she says, it was a dreary time.

Mr. Wilson supplied everything ordered by the doctors, of the best
quality and in the most liberal manner; the invalids were attended by Dr.
Batty, a very clever surgeon in Kirby, who had had the medical
superintendence of the establishment from the beginning, and who
afterwards became Mr. Wilson's brother-in-law.  I have heard from two
witnesses besides Charlotte Bronte, that Dr. Batty condemned the
preparation of the food by the expressive action of spitting out a
portion of it.  He himself, it is but fair to say, does not remember this
circumstance, nor does he speak of the fever itself as either alarming or
dangerous.  About forty of the girls suffered from this, but none of them
died at Cowan Bridge; though one died at her own home, sinking under the
state of health which followed it.  None of the Brontes had the fever.
But the same causes, which affected the health of the other pupils
through typhus, told more slowly, but not less surely, upon their
constitutions.  The principal of these causes was the food.

The bad management of the cook was chiefly to be blamed for this; she was
dismissed, and the woman who had been forced against her will to serve as
head nurse, took the place of housekeeper; and henceforward the food was
so well prepared that no one could ever reasonably complain of it.  Of
course it cannot be expected that a new institution, comprising domestic
and educational arrangements for nearly a hundred persons, should work
quite smoothly at the beginning.

All this occurred during the first two years of the establishment, and in
estimating its effect upon the character of Charlotte Bronte, we must
remember that she was a sensitive thoughtful child, capable of reflecting
deeply, if not of analyzing truly; and peculiarly susceptible, as are all
delicate and sickly children, to painful impressions.  What the healthy
suffer from but momentarily and then forget, those who are ailing brood
over involuntarily and remember long,--perhaps with no resentment, but
simply as a piece of suffering that has been stamped into their very
life.  The pictures, ideas, and conceptions of character received into
the mind of the child of eight years old, were destined to be reproduced
in fiery words a quarter of a century afterwards.  She saw but one side
of Mr. Wilson's character; and many of those who knew him at that time
assure me of the fidelity with which this is represented, while at the
same time they regret that the delineation should have obliterated, as it
were, nearly all that was noble or conscientious.  And that there were
grand and fine qualities in Mr. Wilson, I have received abundant
evidence.  Indeed for several weeks past I have received letters almost
daily, bearing on the subject of this chapter; some vague, some definite;
many full of love and admiration for Mr. Wilson, some as full of dislike
and indignation; few containing positive facts.  After giving careful
consideration to this mass of conflicting evidence, I have made such
alterations and omissions in this chapter as seem to me to be required.
It is but just to state that the major part of the testimony with which I
have been favoured from old pupils is in high praise of Mr. Wilson.  Among
the letters that I have read, there is one whose evidence ought to be
highly respected.  It is from the husband of "Miss Temple."  She died in
1856, but he, a clergyman, thus wrote in reply to a letter addressed to
him on the subject by one of Mr. Wilson's friends:--"Often have I heard
my late dear wife speak of her sojourn at Cowan Bridge; always in terms
of admiration of Mr. Carus Wilson, his parental love to his pupils, and
their love for him; of the food and general treatment, in terms of
approval.  I have heard her allude to an unfortunate cook, who used at
times to spoil the porridge, but who, she said, was soon dismissed."

The recollections left of the four Bronte sisters at this period of their
lives, on the minds of those who associated with them, are not very
distinct.  Wild, strong hearts, and powerful minds, were hidden under an
enforced propriety and regularity of demeanour and expression, just as
their faces had been concealed by their father, under his stiff,
unchanging mask.  Maria was delicate, unusually clever and thoughtful for
her age, gentle, and untidy.  Of her frequent disgrace from this last
fault--of her sufferings, so patiently borne--I have already spoken.  The
only glimpse we get of Elizabeth, through the few years of her short
life, is contained in a letter which I have received from "Miss Temple."
"The second, Elizabeth, is the only one of the family of whom I have a
vivid recollection, from her meeting with a somewhat alarming accident,
in consequence of which I had her for some days and nights in my bedroom,
not only for the sake of greater quiet, but that I might watch over her
myself.  Her head was severely cut, but she bore all the consequent
suffering with exemplary patience, and by it won much upon my esteem.  Of
the two younger ones (if two there were) I have very slight
recollections, save that one, a darling child, under five years of age,
was quite the pet nursling of the school."  This last would be Emily.
Charlotte was considered the most talkative of the sisters--a "bright,
clever, little child."  Her great friend was a certain "Mellany Hane" (so
Mr. Bronte spells the name), whose brother paid for her schooling, and
who had no remarkable talent except for music, which her brother's
circumstances forbade her to cultivate.  She was "a hungry, good-natured,
ordinary girl;" older than Charlotte, and ever ready to protect her from
any petty tyranny or encroachments on the part of the elder girls.
Charlotte always remembered her with affection and gratitude.

I have quoted the word "bright" in the account of Charlotte.  I suspect
that this year of 1825 was the last time it could ever be applied to her.
In the spring of it, Maria became so rapidly worse that Mr. Bronte was
sent for.  He had not previously been aware of her illness, and the
condition in which he found her was a terrible shock to him.  He took her
home by the Leeds coach, the girls crowding out into the road to follow
her with their eyes over the bridge, past the cottages, and then out of
sight for ever.  She died a very few days after her arrival at home.
Perhaps the news of her death falling suddenly into the life of which her
patient existence had formed a part, only a little week or so before,
made those who remained at Cowan Bridge look with more anxiety on
Elizabeth's symptoms, which also turned out to be consumptive.  She was
sent home in charge of a confidential servant of the establishment; and
she, too, died in the early summer of that year.  Charlotte was thus
suddenly called into the responsibilities of eldest sister in a
motherless family.  She remembered how anxiously her dear sister Maria
had striven, in her grave earnest way, to be a tender helper and a
counsellor to them all; and the duties that now fell upon her seemed
almost like a legacy from the gentle little sufferer so lately dead.

Both Charlotte and Emily returned to school after the Midsummer holidays
in this fatal year.  But before the next winter it was thought desirable
to advise their removal, as it was evident that the damp situation of the
house at Cowan Bridge did not suit their health. {3}




CHAPTER V


For the reason just stated, the little girls were sent home in the autumn
of 1825, when Charlotte was little more than nine years old.

About this time, an elderly woman of the village came to live as servant
at the parsonage.  She remained there, as a member of the household, for
thirty years; and from the length of her faithful service, and the
attachment and respect which she inspired, is deserving of mention.  Tabby
was a thorough specimen of a Yorkshire woman of her class, in dialect, in
appearance, and in character.  She abounded in strong practical sense and
shrewdness.  Her words were far from flattery; but she would spare no
deeds in the cause of those whom she kindly regarded.  She ruled the
children pretty sharply; and yet never grudged a little extra trouble to
provide them with such small treats as came within her power.  In return,
she claimed to be looked upon as a humble friend; and, many years later,
Miss Bronte told me that she found it somewhat difficult to manage, as
Tabby expected to be informed of all the family concerns, and yet had
grown so deaf that what was repeated to her became known to whoever might
be in or about the house.  To obviate this publication of what it might
be desirable to keep secret, Miss Bronte used to take her out for a walk
on the solitary moors; where, when both were seated on a tuft of heather,
in some high lonely place, she could acquaint the old woman, at leisure,
with all that she wanted to hear.

Tabby had lived in Haworth in the days when the pack-horses went through
once a week, with their tinkling bells and gay worsted adornment,
carrying the produce of the country from Keighley over the hills to Colne
and Burnley.  What is more, she had known the "bottom," or valley, in
those primitive days when the fairies frequented the margin of the "beck"
on moonlight nights, and had known folk who had seen them.  But that was
when there were no mills in the valleys; and when all the wool-spinning
was done by hand in the farm-houses round.  "It wur the factories as had
driven 'em away," she said.  No doubt she had many a tale to tell of by-
gone days of the country-side; old ways of living, former inhabitants,
decayed gentry, who had melted away, and whose places knew them no more;
family tragedies, and dark superstitious dooms; and in telling these
things, without the least consciousness that there might ever be anything
requiring to be softened down, would give at full length the bare and
simple details.

Miss Branwell instructed the children at regular hours in all she could
teach, making her bed-chamber into their schoolroom.  Their father was in
the habit of relating to them any public news in which he felt an
interest; and from the opinions of his strong and independent mind they
would gather much food for thought; but I do not know whether he gave
them any direct instruction.  Charlotte's deep thoughtful spirit appears
to have felt almost painfully the tender responsibility which rested upon
her with reference to her remaining sisters.  She was only eighteen
months older than Emily; but Emily and Anne were simply companions and
playmates, while Charlotte was motherly friend and guardian to both; and
this loving assumption of duties beyond her years, made her feel
considerably older than she really was.

Patrick Branwell, their only brother, was a boy of remarkable promise,
and, in some ways, of extraordinary precocity of talent.  Mr. Bronte's
friends advised him to send his son to school; but, remembering both the
strength of will of his own youth and his mode of employing it, he
believed that Patrick was better at home, and that he himself could teach
him well, as he had taught others before.  So Patrick, or as his family
called him--Branwell, remained at Haworth, working hard for some hours a
day with his father; but, when the time of the latter was taken up with
his parochial duties, the boy was thrown into chance companionship with
the lads of the village--for youth will to youth, and boys will to boys.

Still, he was associated in many of his sisters' plays and amusements.
These were mostly of a sedentary and intellectual nature.  I have had a
curious packet confided to me, containing an immense amount of
manuscript, in an inconceivably small space; tales, dramas, poems,
romances, written principally by Charlotte, in a hand which it is almost
impossible to decipher without the aid of a magnifying glass.  No
description will give so good an idea of the extreme minuteness of the
writing as the annexed facsimile of a page.

Among these papers there is a list of her works, which I copy, as a
curious proof how early the rage for literary composition had seized upon
her:--

   CATALOGUE OF MY BOOKS, WITH THE PERIOD OF THEIR COMPLETION, UP TO
   AUGUST 3RD, 1830.

   Two romantic tales in one volume; viz., The Twelve Adventurers and the
   Adventures in Ireland, April 2nd, 1829.

   The Search after Happiness, a Tale, Aug. 1st, 1829.

   Leisure Hours, a Tale, and two Fragments, July 6th 1829.

   The Adventures of Edward de Crack, a Tale, Feb. 2nd, 1830.

   The Adventures of Ernest Alembert, a Tale, May 26th, 1830.

   An interesting Incident in the Lives of some of the most eminent
   Persons of the Age, a Tale, June 10th, 1830.

   Tales of the Islanders, in four volumes.  Contents of the 1st Vol.:--l.
   An Account of their Origin; 2.  A Description of Vision Island; 3.
   Ratten's Attempt; 4.  Lord Charles Wellesley and the Marquis of
   Douro's Adventure; completed June 31st, 1829.  2nd Vol.:--1.  The
   School-rebellion; 2.  The strange Incident in the Duke of Wellington's
   Life; 3.  Tale to his Sons; 4.  The Marquis of Douro and Lord Charles
   Wellesley's Tale to his little King and Queen; completed Dec. 2nd,
   1829.  3rd Vol.:--1.  The Duke of Wellington's Adventure in the
   Cavern; 2.  The Duke of Wellington and the little King's and Queen's
   visit to the Horse-Guards; completed May 8th, 1830.  4th Vol.:--1.  The
   three old Washer-women of Strathfieldsaye; 2.  Lord C. Wellesley's
   Tale to his Brother; completed July 30th, 1830.

   Characters of Great Men of the Present Age, Dec. 17th 1829.

   The Young Men's Magazines, in Six Numbers, from August to December,
   the latter months double number, completed December the 12th, 1829.
   General index to their contents:--1.  A True Story; 2.  Causes of the
   War; 3.  A Song; 4.  Conversations; 5.  A True Story continued; 6.  The
   Spirit of Cawdor; 7.  Interior of a Pothouse, a Poem; 8.  The Glass
   Town, a Song; 9.  The Silver Cup, a Tale; 10.  The Table and Vase in
   the Desert, a Song; 11.  Conversations; 12.  Scene on the Great
   Bridge; 13.  Song of the Ancient Britons; 14.  Scene in my Tun, a
   Tale; 15.  An American Tale; 16.  Lines written on seeing the Garden
   of a Genius; 17.  The Lay of the Glass Town; 18.  The Swiss Artist, a
   Tale; 19.  Lines on the Transfer of this Magazine; 20.  On the Same,
   by a different hand; 21.  Chief Genii in Council; 22.  Harvest in
   Spain; 23.  The Swiss Artists continued; 24.  Conversations.

   The Poetaster, a Drama, in 2 volumes, July 12th, 1830.

   A Book of Rhymes, finished December 17th, 1829.  Contents:--1.  The
   Beauty of Nature; 2.  A Short Poem; 3.  Meditations while Journeying
   in a Canadian Forest; 4.  Song of an Exile; 5.  On Seeing the Ruins of
   the Tower of Babel; 6.  _A Thing of_ 14 _lines_;  7.  Lines written on
   the Bank of a River one fine Summer Evening; 8.  Spring, a Song; 9.
   Autumn, a Song.

   Miscellaneous Poems, finished May 30th, 1830.  Contents:--1.  The
   Churchyard; 2.  Description of the Duke of Wellington's Palace on the
   Pleasant Banks of the Lusiva; this article is a small prose tale or
   incident; 3.  Pleasure;  4.  Lines written on the Summit of a high
   Mountain of the North of England; 5.  Winter; 6.  Two Fragments,
   namely, 1st, The Vision; 2nd, A Short untitled Poem; the Evening Walk,
   a Poem, June 23rd, 1830.

   Making in the whole twenty-two volumes.

   C. BRONTE, _August_ 3, 1830

As each volume contains from sixty to a hundred pages, and the size of
the page lithographed is rather less than the average, the amount of the
whole seems very great, if we remember that it was all written in about
fifteen months.  So much for the quantity; the quality strikes me as of
singular merit for a girl of thirteen or fourteen.  Both as a specimen of
her prose style at this time, and also as revealing something of the
quiet domestic life led by these children, I take an extract from the
introduction to "Tales of the Islanders," the title of one of their
"Little Magazines:"--

   "June the 31st, 1829.

   "The play of the 'Islanders' was formed in December, 1827, in the
   following manner.  One night, about the time when the cold sleet and
   stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snow-storms, and high
   piercing night winds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting round
   the warm blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel with
   Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she
   came off victorious, no candle having been produced.  A long pause
   succeeded, which was at last broken by Branwell saying, in a lazy
   manner, 'I don't know what to do.'  This was echoed by Emily and Anne.

   "_Tabby_.  'Wha ya may go t' bed.'

   "_Branwell_.  'I'd rather do anything than that.'

   "_Charlotte_.  'Why are you so glum to-night, Tabby?  Oh! suppose we
   had each an island of our own.'

   "_Branwell_.  'If we had I would choose the Island of Man.'

   "_Charlotte_.  'And I would choose the Isle of Wight.'

   "_Emily_.  'The Isle of Arran for me.'

   "_Anne_.  'And mine shall be Guernsey.'

   "We then chose who should be chief men in our islands.  Branwell chose
   John Bull, Astley Cooper, and Leigh Hunt; Emily, Walter Scott, Mr.
   Lockhart, Johnny Lockhart; Anne, Michael Sadler, Lord Bentinck, Sir
   Henry Halford.  I chose the Duke of Wellington and two sons,
   Christopher North and Co., and Mr. Abernethy.  Here our conversation
   was interrupted by the, to us, dismal sound of the clock striking
   seven, and we were summoned off to bed.  The next day we added many
   others to our list of men, till we got almost all the chief men of the
   kingdom.  After this, for a long time, nothing worth noticing
   occurred.  In June, 1828, we erected a school on a fictitious island,
   which was to contain 1,000 children.  The manner of the building was
   as follows.  The Island was fifty miles in circumference, and
   certainly appeared more like the work of enchantment than anything
   real," &c.

Two or three things strike me much in this fragment; one is the graphic
vividness with which the time of the year, the hour of the evening, the
feeling of cold and darkness outside, the sound of the night-winds
sweeping over the desolate snow-covered moors, coming nearer and nearer,
and at last shaking the very door of the room where they were sitting--for
it opened out directly on that bleak, wide expanse--is contrasted with
the glow, and busy brightness of the cheerful kitchen where these
remarkable children are grouped.  Tabby moves about in her quaint country-
dress, frugal, peremptory, prone to find fault pretty sharply, yet
allowing no one else to blame her children, we may feel sure.  Another
noticeable fact is the intelligent partisanship with which they choose
their great men, who are almost all stanch Tories of the time.  Moreover,
they do not confine themselves to local heroes; their range of choice has
been widened by hearing much of what is not usually considered to
interest children.  Little Anne, aged scarcely eight, picks out the
politicians of the day for her chief men.

There is another scrap of paper, in this all but illegible handwriting,
written about this time, and which gives some idea of the sources of
their opinions.



THE HISTORY OF THE YEAR 1829.


"Once Papa lent my sister Maria a book.  It was an old geography-book;
she wrote on its blank leaf, 'Papa lent me this book.'  This book is a
hundred and twenty years old; it is at this moment lying before me.  While
I write this I am in the kitchen of the Parsonage, Haworth; Tabby, the
servant, is washing up the breakfast-things, and Anne, my youngest sister
(Maria was my eldest), is kneeling on a chair, looking at some cakes
which Tabby has been baking for us.  Emily is in the parlour, brushing
the carpet.  Papa and Branwell are gone to Keighley.  Aunt is upstairs in
her room, and I am sitting by the table writing this in the kitchen.
Keighley is a small town four miles from here.  Papa and Branwell are
gone for the newspaper, the 'Leeds Intelligencer,' a most excellent Tory
newspaper, edited by Mr. Wood, and the proprietor, Mr. Henneman.  We take
two and see three newspapers a week.  We take the 'Leeds Intelligencer,'
Tory, and the 'Leeds Mercury,' Whig, edited by Mr. Baines, and his
brother, son-in-law, and his two sons, Edward and Talbot.  We see the
'John Bull;' it is a high Tory, very violent.  Mr. Driver lends us it, as
likewise 'Blackwood's Magazine,' the most able periodical there is.  The
Editor is Mr. Christopher North, an old man seventy-four years of age;
the 1st of April is his birth-day; his company are Timothy Tickler,
Morgan O'Doherty, Macrabin Mordecai, Mullion, Warnell, and James Hogg, a
man of most extraordinary genius, a Scottish shepherd.  Our plays were
established; 'Young Men,' June, 1826; 'Our Fellows,' July, 1827;
'Islanders,' December, 1827.  These are our three great plays, that are
not kept secret.  Emily's and my best plays were established the 1st of
December, 1827; the others March, 1828.  Best plays mean secret plays;
they are very nice ones.  All our plays are very strange ones.  Their
nature I need not write on paper, for I think I shall always remember
them.  The 'Young Men's' play took its rise from some wooden soldiers
Branwell had: 'Our Fellows' from 'AEsop's Fables;' and the 'Islanders'
from several events which happened.  I will sketch out the origin of our
plays more explicitly if I can.  First, 'Young Men.'  Papa bought
Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds; when Papa came home it was night,
and we were in bed, so next morning Branwell came to our door with a box
of soldiers.  Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched up one and
exclaimed, 'This is the Duke of Wellington!  This shall be the Duke!'
When I had said this, Emily likewise took up one and said it should be
hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers.  Mine was the
prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every
part.  Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him 'Gravey.'
Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him
'Waiting-Boy.'  Branwell chose his, and called him 'Buonaparte.'"

The foregoing extract shows something of the kind of reading in which the
little Brontes were interested; but their desire for knowledge must have
been excited in many directions, for I find a "list of painters whose
works I wish to see," drawn up by Charlotte when she was scarcely
thirteen:--

"Guido Reni, Julio Romano, Titian, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio,
Annibal Caracci, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, Carlo Cignani,
Vandyke, Rubens, Bartolomeo Ramerghi."

Here is this little girl, in a remote Yorkshire parsonage, who has
probably never seen anything worthy the name of a painting in her life,
studying the names and characteristics of the great old Italian and
Flemish masters, whose works she longs to see some time, in the dim
future that lies before her!  There is a paper remaining which contains
minute studies of, and criticisms upon, the engravings in "Friendship's
Offering for 1829;" showing how she had early formed those habits of
close observation, and patient analysis of cause and effect, which served
so well in after-life as handmaids to her genius.

The way in which Mr. Bronte made his children sympathise with him in his
great interest in politics, must have done much to lift them above the
chances of their minds being limited or tainted by petty local gossip.  I
take the only other remaining personal fragment out of "Tales of the
Islanders;" it is a sort of apology, contained in the introduction to the
second volume, for their not having been continued before; the writers
had been for a long time too busy, and latterly too much absorbed in
politics.

"Parliament was opened, and the great Catholic question was brought
forward, and the Duke's measures were disclosed, and all was slander,
violence, party-spirit, and confusion.  Oh, those six months, from the
time of the King's speech to the end!  Nobody could write, think, or
speak on any subject but the Catholic question, and the Duke of
Wellington, and Mr. Peel.  I remember the day when the Intelligence
Extraordinary came with Mr. Peel's speech in it, containing the terms on
which the Catholics were to be let in!  With what eagerness Papa tore off
the cover, and how we all gathered round him, and with what breathless
anxiety we listened, as one by one they were disclosed, and explained,
and argued upon so ably, and so well! and then when it was all out, how
aunt said that she thought it was excellent, and that the Catholics could
do no harm with such good security!  I remember also the doubts as to
whether it would pass the House of Lords, and the prophecies that it
would not; and when the paper came which was to decide the question, the
anxiety was almost dreadful with which we listened to the whole affair:
the opening of the doors; the hush; the royal dukes in their robes, and
the great duke in green sash and waistcoat; the rising of all the
peeresses when he rose; the reading of his speech--Papa saying that his
words were like precious gold; and lastly, the majority of one to four
(sic) in favour of the Bill.  But this is a digression," &c., &c.

This must have been written when she was between thirteen and fourteen.

It will be interesting to some of my readers to know what was the
character of her purely imaginative writing at this period.  While her
description of any real occurrence is, as we have seen, homely, graphic,
and forcible, when she gives way to her powers of creation, her fancy and
her language alike run riot, sometimes to the very borders of apparent
delirium.  Of this wild weird writing, a single example will suffice.  It
is a letter to the editor of one of the "Little Magazines."

   "Sir,--It is well known that the Genii have declared that unless they
   perform certain arduous duties every year, of a mysterious nature, all
   the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up, and gathered together in
   one mighty globe, which will roll in solitary grandeur through the
   vast wilderness of space, inhabited only by the four high princes of
   the Genii, till time shall be succeeded by Eternity; and the impudence
   of this is only to be paralleled by another of their assertions,
   namely, that by their magic might they can reduce the world to a
   desert, the purest waters to streams of livid poison, and the clearest
   lakes to stagnant waters, the pestilential vapours of which shall slay
   all living creatures, except the blood-thirsty beast of the forest,
   and the ravenous bird of the rock.  But that in the midst of this
   desolation the palace of the Chief Genii shall rise sparkling in the
   wilderness, and the horrible howl of their war-cry shall spread over
   the land at morning, at noontide and night; but that they shall have
   their annual feast over the bones of the dead, and shall yearly
   rejoice with the joy of victors.  I think, sir, that the horrible
   wickedness of this needs no remark, and therefore I haste to subscribe
   myself, &c.

   "July 14, 1829."

It is not unlikely that the foregoing letter may have had some
allegorical or political reference, invisible to our eyes, but very clear
to the bright little minds for whom it was intended.  Politics were
evidently their grand interest; the Duke of Wellington their demi-god.
All that related to him belonged to the heroic age.  Did Charlotte want a
knight-errant, or a devoted lover, the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles
Wellesley, came ready to her hand.  There is hardly one of her
prose-writings at this time in which they are not the principal
personages, and in which their "august father" does not appear as a sort
of Jupiter Tonans, or Deus ex Machina.

As one evidence how Wellesley haunted her imagination, I copy out a few
of the titles to her papers in the various magazines.

"Liffey Castle," a Tale by Lord C. Wellesley.

"Lines to the River Aragua," by the Marquis of Douro.

"An Extraordinary Dream," by Lord C. Wellesley.

"The Green Dwarf, a Tale of the Perfect Tense," by the Lord Charles
Albert Florian Wellesley.

"Strange Events," by Lord C. A. F. Wellesley.

Life in an isolated village, or a lonely country-house, presents many
little occurrences which sink into the mind of childhood, there to be
brooded over.  No other event may have happened, or be likely to happen,
for days, to push one of these aside, before it has assumed a vague and
mysterious importance.  Thus, children leading a secluded life are often
thoughtful and dreamy: the impressions made upon them by the world
without--the unusual sights of earth and sky--the accidental meetings
with strange faces and figures (rare occurrences in those out-of-the-way
places)--are sometimes magnified by them into things so deeply
significant as to be almost supernatural.  This peculiarity I perceive
very strongly in Charlotte's writings at this time.  Indeed, under the
circumstances, it is no peculiarity.  It has been common to all, from the
Chaldean shepherds--"the lonely herdsman stretched on the soft grass
through half a summer's day"--the solitary monk--to all whose impressions
from without have had time to grow and vivify in the imagination, till
they have been received as actual personifications, or supernatural
visions, to doubt which would be blasphemy.

To counterbalance this tendency in Charlotte, was the strong common sense
natural to her, and daily called into exercise by the requirements of her
practical life.  Her duties were not merely to learn her lessons, to read
a certain quantity, to gain certain ideas; she had, besides, to brush
rooms, to run errands up and down stairs, to help in the simpler forms of
cooking, to be by turns play-fellow and monitress to her younger sisters
and brother, to make and to mend, and to study economy under her careful
aunt.  Thus we see that, while her imagination received vivid
impressions, her excellent understanding had full power to rectify them
before her fancies became realities.  On a scrap of paper, she has
written down the following relation:--

   "June 22, 1830, 6 o'clock p.m.
   "Haworth, near Bradford.

   "The following strange occurrence happened on the 22nd of June,
   1830:--At the time Papa was very ill, confined to his bed, and so weak
   that he could not rise without assistance.  Tabby and I were alone in
   the kitchen, about half-past nine ante-meridian.  Suddenly we heard a
   knock at the door; Tabby rose and opened it.  An old man appeared,
   standing without, who accosted her thus:--

   "_Old Man_.--'Does the parson live here?'

   "_Tabby_.--'Yes.'

   "_Old Man_.--'I wish to see him.'

   "_Tabby_.--'He is poorly in bed.'

   "_Old Man_.--'I have a message for him.'

   "_Tabby_.--'Who from?'

   "_Old Man_.--'From the Lord.'

   "_Tabby_.--'Who?'

   "_Old Man_.--'The Lord.  He desires me to say that the Bridegroom is
   coming, and that we must prepare to meet him; that the cords are about
   to be loosed, and the golden bowl broken; the pitcher broken at the
   fountain.'

   "Here he concluded his discourse, and abruptly went his way.  As Tabby
   closed the door, I asked her if she knew him.  Her reply was, that she
   had never seen him before, nor any one like him.  Though I am fully
   persuaded that he was some fanatical enthusiast, well meaning perhaps,
   but utterly ignorant of true piety; yet I could not forbear weeping at
   his words, spoken so unexpectedly at that particular period."

Though the date of the following poem is a little uncertain, it may be
most convenient to introduce it here.  It must have been written before
1833, but how much earlier there are no means of determining.  I give it
as a specimen of the remarkable poetical talent shown in the various
diminutive writings of this time; at least, in all of them which I have
been able to read.



THE WOUNDED STAG.


Passing amid the deepest shade
   Of the wood's sombre heart,
Last night I saw a wounded deer
   Laid lonely and apart.

Such light as pierced the crowded boughs
   (Light scattered, scant and dim,)
Passed through the fern that formed his couch
   And centred full on him.

Pain trembled in his weary limbs,
   Pain filled his patient eye,
Pain-crushed amid the shadowy fern
   His branchy crown did lie.

Where were his comrades? where his mate?
   All from his death-bed gone!
And he, thus struck and desolate,
   Suffered and bled alone.

Did he feel what a man might feel,
   Friend-left, and sore distrest?
Did Pain's keen dart, and Grief's sharp sting
   Strive in his mangled breast?

Did longing for affection lost
   Barb every deadly dart;
Love unrepaid, and Faith betrayed,
   Did these torment his heart?

No! leave to man his proper doom!
   These are the pangs that rise
Around the bed of state and gloom,
   Where Adam's offspring dies!




CHAPTER VI


This is perhaps a fitting time to give some personal description of Miss
Bronte.  In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen
years of age, very small in figure--"stunted" was the word she applied to
herself,--but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the
slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of
deformity could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick, brown hair,
and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description, as
they appeared to me in her later life.  They were large and well shaped;
their colour a reddish brown; but if the iris was closely examined, it
appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints.  The usual
expression was of quiet, listening intelligence; but now and then, on
some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light
would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled, which glowed
behind those expressive orbs.  I never saw the like in any other human
creature.  As for the rest of her features, they were plain, large, and
ill set; but, unless you began to catalogue them, you were hardly aware
of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance over-balanced
every physical defect; the crooked mouth and the large nose were
forgotten, and the whole face arrested the attention, and presently
attracted all those whom she herself would have cared to attract.  Her
hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw; when one of the former was
placed in mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my
palm.  The delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of sensation,
which was one reason why all her handiwork, of whatever kind--writing,
sewing, knitting--was so clear in its minuteness.  She was remarkably
neat in her whole personal attire; but she was dainty as to the fit of
her shoes and gloves.

I can well imagine that the grave serious composure, which, when I knew
her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no
acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found
herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children.  But
in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be
called (to use a country phrase) "old-fashioned;" and in 1831, the period
of which I now write, we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated
girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for besides the
influence exerted by her father's ideas concerning the simplicity of
attire befitting the wife and daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt,
on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never
been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and
the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart.

In January, 1831, Charlotte was sent to school again.  This time she went
as a pupil to Miss W---, who lived at Roe Head, a cheerful roomy country
house, standing a little apart in a field, on the right of the road from
Leeds to Huddersfield.  Three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow
windows run from basement to roof; and look down upon a long green slope
of pasture-land, ending in the pleasant woods of Kirklees, Sir George
Armitage's park.  Although Roe Head and Haworth are not twenty miles
apart, the aspect of the country is as totally dissimilar as if they
enjoyed a different climate.  The soft curving and heaving landscape
round the former gives a stranger the idea of cheerful airiness on the
heights, and of sunny warmth in the broad green valleys below.  It is
just such a neighbourhood as the monks loved, and traces of the old
Plantagenet times are to be met with everywhere, side by side with the
manufacturing interests of the West Riding of to-day.  There is the park
of Kirklees, full of sunny glades, speckled with black shadows of
immemorial yew-trees; the grey pile of building, formerly a "House of
professed Ladies;" the mouldering stone in the depth of the wood, under
which Robin Hood is said to lie; close outside the park, an old stone-
gabled house, now a roadside inn, but which bears the name of the "Three
Nuns," and has a pictured sign to correspond.  And this quaint old inn is
frequented by fustian-dressed mill-hands from the neighbouring worsted
factories, which strew the high road from Leeds to Huddersfield, and form
the centres round which future villages gather.  Such are the contrasts
of modes of living, and of times and seasons, brought before the
traveller on the great roads that traverse the West Riding.  In no other
part of England, I fancy, are the centuries brought into such close,
strange contact as in the district in which Roe Head is situated.  Within
six miles of Miss W---'s house--on the left of the road, coming from
Leeds--lie the remains of Howley Hall, now the property of Lord Cardigan,
but formerly belonging to a branch of the Saviles.  Near to it is Lady
Anne's well; "Lady Anne," according to tradition, having been worried and
eaten by wolves as she sat at the well, to which the indigo-dyed factory
people from Birstall and Batley woollen mills would formerly repair on
Palm Sunday, when the waters possess remarkable medicinal efficacy; and
it is still believed by some that they assume a strange variety of
colours at six o'clock on the morning of that day.

All round the lands held by the farmer who lives in the remains of Howley
Hall are stone houses of to-day, occupied by the people who are making
their living and their fortunes by the woollen mills that encroach upon
and shoulder out the proprietors of the ancient halls.  These are to be
seen in every direction, picturesque, many-gabled, with heavy stone
carvings of coats of arms for heraldic ornament; belonging to decayed
families, from whose ancestral lands field after field has been shorn
away, by the urgency of rich manufacturers pressing hard upon necessity.

A smoky atmosphere surrounds these old dwellings of former Yorkshire
squires, and blights and blackens the ancient trees that overshadow them;
cinder-paths lead up to them; the ground round about is sold for building
upon; but still the neighbours, though they subsist by a different state
of things, remember that their forefathers lived in agricultural
dependence upon the owners of these halls; and treasure up the traditions
connected with the stately households that existed centuries ago.  Take
Oakwell Hall, for instance.  It stands in a pasture-field, about a
quarter of a mile from the high road.  It is but that distance from the
busy whirr of the steam-engines employed in the woollen mills at
Birstall; and if you walk to it from Birstall Station about meal-time,
you encounter strings of mill-hands, blue with woollen dye, and cranching
in hungry haste over the cinder-paths bordering the high road.  Turning
off from this to the right, you ascend through an old pasture-field, and
enter a short by-road, called the "Bloody Lane"--a walk haunted by the
ghost of a certain Captain Batt, the reprobate proprietor of an old hall
close by, in the days of the Stuarts.  From the "Bloody Lane,"
overshadowed by trees, you come into the field in which Oakwell Hall is
situated.  It is known in the neighbourhood to be the place described as
"Field Head," Shirley's residence.  The enclosure in front, half court,
half garden; the panelled hall, with the gallery opening into the bed-
chambers running round; the barbarous peach-coloured drawing-room; the
bright look-out through the garden-door upon the grassy lawns and
terraces behind, where the soft-hued pigeons still love to coo and strut
in the sun,--are described in "Shirley."  The scenery of that fiction
lies close around; the real events which suggested it took place in the
immediate neighbourhood.

They show a bloody footprint in a bed-chamber of Oakwell Hall, and tell a
story connected with it, and with the lane by which the house is
approached.  Captain Batt was believed to be far away; his family was at
Oakwell; when in the dusk, one winter evening, he came stalking along the
lane, and through the hall, and up the stairs, into his own room, where
he vanished.  He had been killed in a duel in London that very same
afternoon of December 9th, 1684.

The stones of the Hall formed part of the more ancient vicarage, which an
ancestor of Captain Batt's had seized in the troublous times for property
which succeeded the Reformation.  This Henry Batt possessed himself of
houses and money without scruple; and, at last, stole the great bell of
Birstall Church, for which sacrilegious theft a fine was imposed on the
land, and has to be paid by the owner of the Hall to this day.

But the Oakwell property passed out of the hands of the Batts at the
beginning of the last century; collateral descendants succeeded, and left
this picturesque trace of their having been.  In the great hall hangs a
mighty pair of stag's horns, and dependent from them a printed card,
recording the fact that, on the 1st of September, 1763, there was a great
hunting-match, when this stag was slain; and that fourteen gentlemen
shared in the chase, and dined on the spoil in that hall, along with
Fairfax Fearneley, Esq., the owner.  The fourteen names are given,
doubtless "mighty men of yore;" but, among them all, Sir Fletcher Norton,
Attorney-General, and Major-General Birch were the only ones with which I
had any association in 1855.  Passing on from Oakwell there lie houses
right and left, which were well known to Miss Bronte when she lived at
Roe Head, as the hospitable homes of some of her school-fellows.  Lanes
branch off for three or four miles to heaths and commons on the higher
ground, which formed pleasant walks on holidays, and then comes the white
gate into the field-path leading to Roe Head itself.

One of the bow-windowed rooms on the ground floor with the pleasant look-
out I have described was the drawing-room; the other was the schoolroom.
The dining-room was on one side of the door, and faced the road.

The number of pupils, during the year and a half Miss Bronte was there,
ranged from seven to ten; and as they did not require the whole of the
house for their accommodation, the third story was unoccupied, except by
the ghostly idea of a lady, whose rustling silk gown was sometimes heard
by the listeners at the foot of the second flight of stairs.

The kind motherly nature of Miss W---, and the small number of the girls,
made the establishment more like a private family than a school.
Moreover, she was a native of the district immediately surrounding Roe
Head, as were the majority of her pupils.  Most likely Charlotte Bronte,
in coming from Haworth, came the greatest distance of all.  "E.'s" home
was five miles away; two other dear friends (the Rose and Jessie Yorke of
"Shirley") lived still nearer; two or three came from Huddersfield; one
or two from Leeds.

I shall now quote from a valuable letter which I have received from
"Mary," one of these early friends; distinct and graphic in expression,
as becomes a cherished associate of Charlotte Bronte's.  The time
referred to is her first appearance at Roe Head, on January 19th, 1831.

"I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned
clothes, and looking very cold and miserable.  She was coming to school
at Miss W---'s.  When she appeared in the schoolroom, her dress was
changed, but just as old.  She looked a little old woman, so
short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and
moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it.  She was very
shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent.  When a book was
given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched it,
and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it,
still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing."

This was the first impression she made upon one of those whose dear and
valued friend she was to become in after-life.  Another of the girls
recalls her first sight of Charlotte, on the day she came, standing by
the schoolroom window, looking out on the snowy landscape, and crying,
while all the rest were at play.  "E." was younger than she, and her
tender heart was touched by the apparently desolate condition in which
she found the oddly-dressed, odd-looking little girl that winter morning,
as "sick for home she stood in tears," in a new strange place, among new
strange people.  Any over-demonstrative kindness would have scared the
wild little maiden from Haworth; but "E." (who is shadowed forth in the
Caroline Helstone of "Shirley") managed to win confidence, and was
allowed to give sympathy.

To quote again from "Mary's" letter:--

"We thought her very ignorant, for she had never learnt grammar at all,
and very little geography."

This account of her partial ignorance is confirmed by her other school-
fellows.  But Miss W--- was a lady of remarkable intelligence and of
delicate tender sympathy.  She gave a proof of this in her first
treatment of Charlotte.  The little girl was well-read, but not
well-grounded.  Miss W--- took her aside and told her she was afraid that
she must place her in the second class for some time till she could
overtake the girls of her own age in the knowledge of grammar, &c.; but
poor Charlotte received this announcement with so sad a fit of crying,
that Miss W---'s kind heart was softened, and she wisely perceived that,
with such a girl, it would be better to place her in the first class, and
allow her to make up by private study in those branches where she was
deficient.

"She would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range
altogether.  She was acquainted with most of the short pieces of poetry
that we had to learn by heart; would tell us the authors, the poems they
were taken from, and sometimes repeat a page or two, and tell us the
plot.  She had a habit of writing in italics (printing characters), and
said she had learnt it by writing in their magazine.  They brought out a
'magazine' once a month, and wished it to look as like print as possible.
She told us a tale out of it.  No one wrote in it, and no one read it,
but herself, her brother, and two sisters.  She promised to show me some
of these magazines, but retracted it afterwards, and would never be
persuaded to do so.  In our play hours she sate, or stood still, with a
book, if possible.  Some of us once urged her to be on our side in a game
at ball.  She said she had never played, and could not play.  We made her
try, but soon found that she could not see the ball, so we put her out.
She took all our proceedings with pliable indifference, and always seemed
to need a previous resolution to say 'No' to anything.  She used to go
and stand under the trees in the play-ground, and say it was pleasanter.
She endeavoured to explain this, pointing out the shadows, the peeps of
sky, &c.  We understood but little of it.  She said that at Cowan Bridge
she used to stand in the burn, on a stone, to watch the water flow by.  I
told her she should have gone fishing; she said she never wanted.  She
always showed physical feebleness in everything.  She ate no animal food
at school.  It was about this time I told her she was very ugly.  Some
years afterwards, I told her I thought I had been very impertinent.  She
replied, 'You did me a great deal of good, Polly, so don't repent of it.'
She used to draw much better, and more quickly, than anything we had seen
before, and knew much about celebrated pictures and painters.  Whenever
an opportunity offered of examining a picture or cut of any kind, she
went over it piecemeal, with her eyes close to the paper, looking so long
that we used to ask her 'what she saw in it.'  She could always see
plenty, and explained it very well.  She made poetry and drawing at least
exceedingly interesting to me; and then I got the habit, which I have
yet, of referring mentally to her opinion on all matters of that kind,
along with many more, resolving to describe such and such things to her,
until I start at the recollection that I never shall."

To feel the full force of this last sentence--to show how steady and
vivid was the impression which Miss Bronte made on those fitted to
appreciate her--I must mention that the writer of this letter, dated
January 18th, 1856, in which she thus speaks of constantly referring to
Charlotte's opinion has never seen her for eleven years, nearly all of
which have been passed among strange scenes, in a new continent, at the
antipodes.

"We used to be furious politicians, as one could hardly help being in
1832.  She knew the names of the two ministries; the one that resigned,
and the one that succeeded and passed the Reform Bill.  She worshipped
the Duke of Wellington, but said that Sir Robert Peel was not to be
trusted; he did not act from principle like the rest, but from
expediency.  I, being of the furious radical party, told her 'how could
any of them trust one another; they were all of them rascals!'  Then she
would launch out into praises of the Duke of Wellington, referring to his
actions; which I could not contradict, as I knew nothing about him.  She
said she had taken interest in politics ever since she was five years
old.  She did not get her opinions from her father--that is, not
directly--but from the papers, &c., he preferred."

In illustration of the truth of this, I may give an extract from a letter
to her brother, written from Roe Head, May 17th, 1832:--"Lately I had
begun to think that I had lost all the interest which I used formerly to
take in politics; but the extreme pleasure I felt at the news of the
Reform Bill's being thrown out by the House of Lords, and of the
expulsion, or resignation of Earl Grey, &c., convinced me that I have not
as yet lost all my penchant for politics.  I am extremely glad that aunt
has consented to take in 'Fraser's Magazine;' for, though I know from
your description of its general contents it will be rather uninteresting
when compared with 'Blackwood,' still it will be better than remaining
the whole year without being able to obtain a sight of any periodical
whatever; and such would assuredly be our case, as, in the little wild
moorland village where we reside, there would be no possibility of
borrowing a work of that description from a circulating library.  I hope
with you that the present delightful weather may contribute to the
perfect restoration of our dear papa's health; and that it may give aunt
pleasant reminiscences of the salubrious climate of her native place,"
&c.

To return to "Mary's" letter.

"She used to speak of her two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who
died at Cowan Bridge.  I used to believe them to have been wonders of
talent and kindness.  She told me, early one morning, that she had just
been dreaming; she had been told that she was wanted in the drawing-room,
and it was Maria and Elizabeth.  I was eager for her to go on, and when
she said there was no more, I said, 'but go on!  _Make it out_!  I know
you can.'  She said she would not; she wished she had not dreamed, for it
did not go on nicely, they were changed; they had forgotten what they
used to care for.  They were very fashionably dressed, and began
criticising the room, &c.

"This habit of 'making out' interests for themselves that most children
get who have none in actual life, was very strong in her.  The whole
family used to 'make out' histories, and invent characters and events.  I
told her sometimes they were like growing potatoes in a cellar.  She
said, sadly, 'Yes!  I know we are!'

"Some one at school said she 'was always talking about clever people;
Johnson, Sheridan, &c.'  She said, 'Now you don't know the meaning of
_clever_, Sheridan might be clever; yes, Sheridan was clever,--scamps
often are; but Johnson hadn't a spark of cleverality in him.'  No one
appreciated the opinion; they made some trivial remark about
'_cleverality_,' and she said no more.

"This is the epitome of her life.  At our house she had just as little
chance of a patient hearing, for though not school-girlish, we were more
intolerant.  We had a rage for practicality, and laughed all poetry to
scorn.  Neither she nor we had any idea but that our opinions were the
opinions of all the _sensible_ people in the world, and we used to
astonish each other at every sentence . . . Charlotte, at school, had no
plan of life beyond what circumstances made for her.  She knew that she
must provide for herself, and chose her trade; at least chose to begin it
once.  Her idea of self-improvement ruled her even at school.  It was to
cultivate her tastes.  She always said there was enough of hard
practicality and _useful_ knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that
the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds.  She picked up
every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture, poetry, music,
&c., as if it were gold."

What I have heard of her school days from other sources, confirms the
accuracy of the details in this remarkable letter.  She was an
indefatigable student: constantly reading and learning; with a strong
conviction of the necessity and value of education, very unusual in a
girl of fifteen.  She never lost a moment of time, and seemed almost to
grudge the necessary leisure for relaxation and play-hours, which might
be partly accounted for by the awkwardness in all games occasioned by her
shortness of sight.  Yet, in spite of these unsociable habits, she was a
great favourite with her school-fellows.  She was always ready to try and
do what they wished, though not sorry when they called her awkward, and
left her out of their sports.  Then, at night, she was an invaluable
story-teller, frightening them almost out of their wits as they lay in
bed.  On one occasion the effect was such that she was led to scream out
aloud, and Miss W---, coming up stairs, found that one of the listeners
had been seized with violent palpitations, in consequence of the
excitement produced by Charlotte's story.

Her indefatigable craving for knowledge tempted Miss W--- on into setting
her longer and longer tasks of reading for examination; and towards the
end of the year and a half that she remained as a pupil at Roe Head, she
received her first bad mark for an imperfect lesson.  She had had a great
quantity of Blair's "Lectures on Belles Lettres" to read; and she could
not answer some of the questions upon it; Charlotte Bronte had a bad
mark.  Miss W--- was sorry, and regretted that she had set Charlotte so
long a task.  Charlotte cried bitterly.  But her school-fellows were more
than sorry--they were indignant.  They declared that the infliction of
ever so slight a punishment on Charlotte Bronte was unjust--for who had
tried to do her duty like her?--and testified their feeling in a variety
of ways, until Miss W---, who was in reality only too willing to pass
over her good pupil's first fault, withdrew the bad mark; and the girls
all returned to their allegiance except "Mary," who took her own way
during the week or two that remained of the half-year, choosing to
consider that Miss W---, in giving Charlotte Bronte so long a task, had
forfeited her claim to obedience of the school regulations.

The number of pupils was so small that the attendance to certain subjects
at particular hours, common in larger schools, was not rigidly enforced.
When the girls were ready with their lessons, they came to Miss W--- to
say them.  She had a remarkable knack of making them feel interested in
whatever they had to learn.  They set to their studies, not as to tasks
or duties to be got through, but with a healthy desire and thirst for
knowledge, of which she had managed to make them perceive the relishing
savour.  They did not leave off reading and learning as soon as the
compulsory pressure of school was taken away.  They had been taught to
think, to analyse, to reject, to appreciate.  Charlotte Bronte was happy
in the choice made for her of the second school to which she was sent.
There was a robust freedom in the out-of-doors life of her companions.
They played at merry games in the fields round the house: on Saturday
half-holidays they went long scrambling walks down mysterious shady
lanes, then climbing the uplands, and thus gaining extensive views over
the country, about which so much had to be told, both of its past and
present history.

Miss W--- must have had in great perfection the French art, "conter," to
judge from her pupil's recollections of the tales she related during
these long walks, of this old house, or that new mill, and of the states
of society consequent on the changes involved by the suggestive dates of
either building.  She remembered the times when watchers or wakeners in
the night heard the distant word of command, and the measured tramp of
thousands of sad desperate men receiving a surreptitious military
training, in preparation for some great day which they saw in their
visions, when right should struggle with might and come off victorious:
when the people of England, represented by the workers of Yorkshire,
Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire, should make their voice heard in a
terrible slogan, since their true and pitiful complaints could find no
hearing in parliament.  We forget, now-a-days, so rapid have been the
changes for the better, how cruel was the condition of numbers of
labourers at the close of the great Peninsular war.  The half-ludicrous
nature of some of their grievances has lingered on in tradition; the real
intensity of their sufferings has become forgotten.  They were maddened
and desperate; and the country, in the opinion of many, seemed to be on
the verge of a precipice, from which it was only saved by the prompt and
resolute decision of a few in authority.  Miss W--- spoke of those times;
of the mysterious nightly drillings; of thousands on lonely moors; of the
muttered threats of individuals too closely pressed upon by necessity to
be prudent; of the overt acts, in which the burning of Cartwright's mill
took a prominent place; and these things sank deep into the mind of one,
at least, among her hearers.

Mr. Cartwright was the owner of a factory called Rawfolds, in Liversedge,
not beyond the distance of a walk from Roe Head.  He had dared to employ
machinery for the dressing of woollen cloth, which was an unpopular
measure in 1812, when many other circumstances conspired to make the
condition of the mill-hands unbearable from the pressure of starvation
and misery.  Mr. Cartwright was a very remarkable man, having, as I have
been told, some foreign blood in him, the traces of which were very
apparent in his tall figure, dark eyes and complexion, and singular,
though gentlemanly bearing.  At any rate he had been much abroad, and
spoke French well, of itself a suspicious circumstance to the bigoted
nationality of those days.  Altogether he was an unpopular man, even
before he took the last step of employing shears, instead of hands, to
dress his wool.  He was quite aware of his unpopularity, and of the
probable consequences.  He had his mill prepared for an assault.  He took
up his lodgings in it; and the doors were strongly barricaded at night.
On every step of the stairs there was placed a roller, spiked with barbed
points all round, so as to impede the ascent of the rioters, if they
succeeded in forcing the doors.

On the night of Saturday the 11th of April, 1812, the assault was made.
Some hundreds of starving cloth-dressers assembled in the very field near
Kirklees that sloped down from the house which Miss W--- afterwards
inhabited, and were armed by their leaders with pistols, hatchets, and
bludgeons, many of which had been extorted by the nightly bands that
prowled about the country, from such inhabitants of lonely houses as had
provided themselves with these means of self-defence.  The silent sullen
multitude marched in the dead of that spring-night to Rawfolds, and
giving tongue with a great shout, roused Mr. Cartwright up to the
knowledge that the long-expected attack was come.  He was within walls,
it is true; but against the fury of hundreds he had only four of his own
workmen and five soldiers to assist him.  These ten men, however, managed
to keep up such a vigorous and well-directed fire of musketry that they
defeated all the desperate attempts of the multitude outside to break
down the doors, and force a way into the mill; and, after a conflict of
twenty minutes, during which two of the assailants were killed and
several wounded, they withdrew in confusion, leaving Mr. Cartwright
master of the field, but so dizzy and exhausted, now the peril was past,
that he forgot the nature of his defences, and injured his leg rather
seriously by one of the spiked rollers, in attempting to go up his own
staircase.  His dwelling was near the factory.  Some of the rioters vowed
that, if he did not give in, they would leave this, and go to his house,
and murder his wife and children.  This was a terrible threat, for he had
been obliged to leave his family with only one or two soldiers to defend
them.  Mrs. Cartwright knew what they had threatened; and on that
dreadful night, hearing, as she thought, steps approaching, she snatched
up her two infant children, and put them in a basket up the great
chimney, common in old-fashioned Yorkshire houses.  One of the two
children who had been thus stowed away used to point out with pride,
after she had grown up to woman's estate, the marks of musket shot, and
the traces of gunpowder on the walls of her father's mill.  He was the
first that had offered any resistance to the progress of the "Luddites,"
who had become by this time so numerous as almost to assume the character
of an insurrectionary army.  Mr. Cartwright's conduct was so much admired
by the neighbouring mill-owners that they entered into a subscription for
his benefit which amounted in the end to 3,000_l_.

Not much more than a fortnight after this attack on Rawfolds, another
manufacturer who employed the obnoxious machinery was shot down in broad
daylight, as he was passing over Crossland Moor, which was skirted by a
small plantation in which the murderers lay hidden.  The readers of
"Shirley" will recognise these circumstances, which were related to Miss
Bronte years after they occurred, but on the very spots where they took
place, and by persons who remembered full well those terrible times of
insecurity to life and property on the one hand, and of bitter starvation
and blind ignorant despair on the other.

Mr. Bronte himself had been living amongst these very people in 1812, as
he was then clergyman at Hartshead, not three miles from Rawfolds; and,
as I have mentioned, it was in these perilous times that he began his
custom of carrying a loaded pistol continually about with him.  For not
only his Tory politics, but his love and regard for the authority of the
law, made him despise the cowardice of the surrounding magistrates, who,
in their dread of the Luddites, refused to interfere so as to prevent the
destruction of property.  The clergy of the district were the bravest men
by far.

There was a Mr. Roberson of Heald's Hall, a friend of Mr. Bronte's who
has left a deep impression of himself on the public mind.  He lived near
Heckmondwike, a large, straggling, dirty village, not two miles from Roe
Head.  It was principally inhabited by blanket weavers, who worked in
their own cottages; and Heald's Hall is the largest house in the village,
of which Mr. Roberson was the vicar.  At his own cost, he built a
handsome church at Liversedge, on a hill opposite the one on which his
house stood, which was the first attempt in the West Riding to meet the
wants of the overgrown population, and made many personal sacrifices for
his opinions, both religious and political, which were of the true old-
fashioned Tory stamp.  He hated everything which he fancied had a
tendency towards anarchy.  He was loyal in every fibre to Church and
King; and would have proudly laid down his life, any day, for what he
believed to be right and true.  But he was a man of an imperial will, and
by it he bore down opposition, till tradition represents him as having
something grimly demoniac about him.  He was intimate with Cartwright,
and aware of the attack likely to be made on his mill; accordingly, it is
said, he armed himself and his household, and was prepared to come to the
rescue, in the event of a signal being given that aid was needed.  Thus
far is likely enough.  Mr. Roberson had plenty of warlike spirit in him,
man of peace though he was.

But, in consequence of his having taken the unpopular side, exaggerations
of his character linger as truth in the minds of the people; and a
fabulous story is told of his forbidding any one to give water to the
wounded Luddites, left in the mill-yard, when he rode in the next morning
to congratulate his friend Cartwright on his successful defence.
Moreover, this stern, fearless clergyman had the soldiers that were sent
to defend the neighbourhood billeted at his house; and this deeply
displeased the workpeople, who were to be intimidated by the red-coats.
Although not a magistrate, he spared no pains to track out the Luddites
concerned in the assassination I have mentioned; and was so successful in
his acute unflinching energy, that it was believed he had been
supernaturally aided; and the country people, stealing into the fields
surrounding Heald's Hall on dusky winter evenings, years after this time,
declared that through the windows they saw Parson Roberson dancing, in a
strange red light, with black demons all whirling and eddying round him.
He kept a large boys' school; and made himself both respected and dreaded
by his pupils.  He added a grim kind of humour to his strength of will;
and the former quality suggested to his fancy strange out-of-the-way
kinds of punishment for any refractory pupils: for instance, he made them
stand on one leg in a corner of the schoolroom, holding a heavy book in
each hand; and once, when a boy had run away home, he followed him on
horseback, reclaimed him from his parents, and, tying him by a rope to
the stirrup of his saddle, made him run alongside of his horse for the
many miles they had to traverse before reaching Heald's Hall.

One other illustration of his character may be given.  He discovered that
his servant Betty had "a follower;" and, watching his time till Richard
was found in the kitchen, he ordered him into the dining-room, where the
pupils were all assembled.  He then questioned Richard whether he had
come after Betty; and on his confessing the truth, Mr. Roberson gave the
word, "Off with him, lads, to the pump!"  The poor lover was dragged to
the court-yard, and the pump set to play upon him; and, between every
drenching, the question was put to him, "Will you promise not to come
after Betty again?"  For a long time Richard bravely refused to give in;
when "Pump again, lads!" was the order.  But, at last, the poor soaked
"follower" was forced to yield, and renounce his Betty.

The Yorkshire character of Mr. Roberson would be incomplete if I did not
mention his fondness for horses.  He lived to be a very old man, dying
some time nearer to 1840 than 1830; and even after he was eighty years of
age, he took great delight in breaking refractory steeds; if necessary,
he would sit motionless on their backs for half-an-hour or more to bring
them to.  There is a story current that once, in a passion, he shot his
wife's favourite horse, and buried it near a quarry, where the ground,
some years after, miraculously opened and displayed the skeleton; but the
real fact is, that it was an act of humanity to put a poor old horse out
of misery; and that, to spare it pain, he shot it with his own hands, and
buried it where, the ground sinking afterwards by the working of a coal-
pit, the bones came to light.  The traditional colouring shows the animus
with which his memory is regarded by one set of people.  By another, the
neighbouring clergy, who remember him riding, in his old age, down the
hill on which his house stood, upon his strong white horse--his bearing
proud and dignified, his shovel hat bent over and shadowing his keen
eagle eyes--going to his Sunday duty like a faithful soldier that dies in
harness--who can appreciate his loyalty to conscience, his sacrifices to
duty, and his stand by his religion--his memory is venerated.  In his
extreme old age, a rubric meeting was held, at which his clerical
brethren gladly subscribed to present him with a testimonial of their
deep respect and regard.

This is a specimen of the strong character not seldom manifested by the
Yorkshire clergy of the Established Church.  Mr. Roberson was a friend of
Charlotte Bronte's father; lived within a couple of miles of Roe Head
while she was at school there; and was deeply engaged in transactions,
the memory of which was yet recent when she heard of them, and of the
part which he had had in them.

I may now say a little on the character of the Dissenting population
immediately surrounding Roe Head; for the "Tory and clergyman's
daughter," "taking interest in politics ever since she was five years
old," and holding frequent discussions with such of the girls as were
Dissenters and Radicals, was sure to have made herself as much acquainted
as she could with the condition of those to whom she was opposed in
opinion.

The bulk of the population were Dissenters, principally Independents.  In
the village of Heckmondwike, at one end of which Roe Head is situated,
there were two large chapels belonging to that denomination, and one to
the Methodists, all of which were well filled two or three times on a
Sunday, besides having various prayer-meetings, fully attended, on week-
days.  The inhabitants were a chapel-going people, very critical about
the doctrine of their sermons, tyrannical to their ministers, and violent
Radicals in politics.  A friend, well acquainted with the place when
Charlotte Bronte was at school, has described some events which occurred
then among them:--

"A scene, which took place at the Lower Chapel at Heckmondwike, will give
you some idea of the people at that time.  When a newly-married couple
made their appearance at chapel, it was the custom to sing the Wedding
Anthem, just after the last prayer, and as the congregation was quitting
the chapel.  The band of singers who performed this ceremony expected to
have money given them, and often passed the following night in drinking;
at least, so said the minister of the place; and he determined to put an
end to this custom.  In this he was supported by many members of the
chapel and congregation; but so strong was the democratic element, that
he met with the most violent opposition, and was often insulted when he
went into the street.  A bride was expected to make her first appearance,
and the minister told the singers not to perform the anthem.  On their
declaring they would, he had the large pew which they usually occupied
locked; they broke it open: from the pulpit he told the congregation
that, instead of their singing a hymn, he would read a chapter; hardly
had he uttered the first word, before up rose the singers, headed by a
tall, fierce-looking weaver, who gave out a hymn, and all sang it at the
very top of their voices, aided by those of their friends who were in the
chapel.  Those who disapproved of the conduct of the singers, and sided
with the minister, remained seated till the hymn was finished.  Then he
gave out the chapter again, read it, and preached.  He was just about to
conclude with prayer, when up started the singers and screamed forth
another hymn.  These disgraceful scenes were continued for many weeks,
and so violent was the feeling, that the different parties could hardly
keep from blows as they came through the chapel-yard.  The minister, at
last, left the place, and along with him went many of the most temperate
and respectable part of the congregation, and the singers remained
triumphant.

"I believe that there was such a violent contest respecting the choice of
a pastor, about this time, in the Upper Chapel at Heckmondwike, that the
Riot Act had to be read at a church-meeting."

Certainly, the _soi-disant_ Christians who forcibly ejected Mr. Redhead
at Haworth, ten or twelve years before, held a very heathen brotherhood
with the _soi-disant_ Christians of Heckmondwike; though the one set
might be called members of the Church of England and the other
Dissenters.

The letter from which I have taken the above extract relates throughout
to the immediate neighbourhood of the place where Charlotte Bronte spent
her school-days, and describes things as they existed at that very time.
The writer says,--"Having been accustomed to the respectful manners of
the lower orders in the agricultural districts, I was at first, much
disgusted and somewhat alarmed at the great freedom displayed by the
working classes of Heckmondwike and Gomersall to those in a station above
them.  The term 'lass,' was as freely applied to any young lady, as the
word 'wench' is in Lancashire.  The extremely untidy appearance of the
villagers shocked me not a little, though I must do the housewives the
justice to say that the cottages themselves were not dirty, and had an
air of rough plenty about them (except when trade was bad), that I had
not been accustomed to see in the farming districts.  The heap of coals
on one side of the house-door, and the brewing tubs on the other, and the
frequent perfume of malt and hops as you walked along, proved that fire
and 'home-brewed' were to be found at almost every man's hearth.  Nor was
hospitality, one of the main virtues of Yorkshire, wanting.  Oat-cake,
cheese, and beer were freely pressed upon the visitor.

"There used to be a yearly festival, half-religious, half social, held at
Heckmondwike, called 'The Lecture.'  I fancy it had come down from the
times of the Nonconformists.  A sermon was preached by some stranger at
the Lower Chapel, on a week-day evening, and the next day, two sermons in
succession were delivered at the Upper Chapel.  Of course, the service
was a very long one, and as the time was June, and the weather often hot,
it used to be regarded by myself and my companions as no pleasurable way
of passing the morning.  The rest of the day was spent in social
enjoyment; great numbers of strangers flocked to the place; booths were
erected for the sale of toys and gingerbread (a sort of 'Holy Fair'); and
the cottages, having had a little extra paint and white-washing, assumed
quite a holiday look.

"The village of Gomersall" (where Charlotte Bronte's friend "Mary" lived
with her family), "which was a much prettier place than Heckmondwike,
contained a strange-looking cottage, built of rough unhewn stones, many
of them projecting considerably, with uncouth heads and grinning faces
carved upon them; and upon a stone above the door was cut, in large
letters, 'SPITE HALL.'  It was erected by a man in the village, opposite
to the house of his enemy, who had just finished for himself a good
house, commanding a beautiful view down the valley, which this hideous
building quite shut out."

Fearless--because this people were quite familiar to all of them--amidst
such a population, lived and walked the gentle Miss W---'s eight or nine
pupils.  She herself was born and bred among this rough, strong, fierce
set, and knew the depth of goodness and loyalty that lay beneath their
wild manners and insubordinate ways.  And the girls talked of the little
world around them, as if it were the only world that was; and had their
opinions and their parties, and their fierce discussions like their
elders--possibly, their betters.  And among them, beloved and respected
by all, laughed at occasionally by a few, but always to her face--lived,
for a year and a half, the plain, short-sighted, oddly-dressed, studious
little girl they called Charlotte Bronte.




CHAPTER VII


Miss Bronte left Roe Head in 1832, having won the affectionate regard
both of her teacher and her school-fellows, and having formed there the
two fast friendships which lasted her whole life long; the one with
"Mary," who has not kept her letters; the other with "E.," who has kindly
entrusted me with a large portion of Miss Bronte's correspondence with
her.  This she has been induced to do by her knowledge of the urgent
desire on the part of Mr. Bronte that the life of his daughter should be
written, and in compliance with a request from her husband that I should
be permitted to have the use of these letters, without which such a task
could be but very imperfectly executed.  In order to shield this friend,
however, from any blame or misconstruction, it is only right to state
that, before granting me this privilege, she throughout most carefully
and completely effaced the names of the persons and places which occurred
in them; and also that such information as I have obtained from her bears
reference solely to Miss Bronte and her sisters, and not to any other
individuals whom I may find it necessary to allude to in connection with
them.

In looking over the earlier portion of this correspondence, I am struck
afresh by the absence of hope, which formed such

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