The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family

by Juliet Barker

These are the sentiments of a jilted woman and Mary’s bitterness, even at the distance of fifteen years, suggests that she considered herself to have been wrongfully repudiated.

We can only guess at what happened. Marriage was definitely in the air in the early summer of 1808, for Patrick at long last arranged for his name to be removed from the boards at Cambridge on 26 May.107 This meant that he had given up the possibility of being elected a college fellow, and the only reason for doing so, after two years, was that he intended to get married: only unmarried men could hold fellowships. Over the next few months he seems to have encountered opposition from the Burder family, which obliged him to give up his engagement because Mary was under the legal age to marry without consent. To ensure that there were no clandestine meetings, Mary was removed to Great Yeldham, perhaps under the impression that Patrick would wait for her until she was old enough to marry without her guardian’s permission. The lovers were allowed a last meeting at which to say their farewells and Mary seems to have promised that, if Patrick came to Wethersfield again, she would receive him as a friend.108 While Mary was kept away from her suitor and had to face the wrath and curiosity of her family and neighbours, Patrick’s position was equally difficult. His authority in Wethersfield had been considerably compromised by the affair, not least because the Burders refused to accept his assurance that he would not pursue Mary. There was nothing else for him to do but to look for another post.

His letter is important, as it holds the key to the mystery of why Patrick never married Mary Burder. Since I returned here, I have enjoyed more peace, & contentment than I expected I should have done. The Lady I mentioned, is always in exile; her Guardians can scarcely believe me, that I have given the affair entirely up forever.

For Mary, though not of course an ‘unbeliever’, was a Nonconformist, a worshipper at the Congregational chapel in Wethersfield, and not a member of the Church of England.111 As such, had Patrick married her, he would almost certainly have placed immense difficulties in his own path of future promotion; who would have appointed as their curate or minister a man who had a wife belonging to a completely different religious group? This would seem to be the explanation behind one of Mary’s most sarcastic and wounding comments: Happily for me I have not been the ascribed cause of hindering your promotion, of preventing any brilliant alliance, nor have those great and affluent friends that you used to write and speak of withheld their patronage on my account, young, inexperienced, unsuspecting, and ignorant as I then was of what I had a right to look forward to.112

It is a measure of his love for Mary Burder that he had allowed his heart to rule his head to the extent of asking for her hand in marriage. When her family opposed the match, Patrick saw this as the hand of God directing his affairs: however much he loved her, his service to God came first and he was prepared to suffer personally (and make Mary suffer) in the process.

He wrote to John Nunn too, pouring out his grief and anguish over the decision he had to make and describing the turmoil of his own spiritual state in terms so dark that Nunn felt obliged to destroy the letters.

Patrick may have made up his own mind as to where his duty lay by November 1808 but all the evidence suggests that Mary continued to believe he might marry her. Her references in 1823 to Patrick’s letters of 1809 and 1810 and her insistence that it was the events of ‘the last eleven or twelve years’, rather than the last fifteen, which had placed an ‘insuperable bar’ to any revival of their friendship, point to the fact that it was not until some time after Patrick’s departure from Wethersfield that she realized there was no hope. We know that Patrick had continued to write to her, either personally or through Miss Davy, after he had left Wethersfield. This, and the fact that, when they parted, Patrick assured her that he would return ‘if my circumstances changed for the better’,116 seem to have led Mary to think that their engagement might be renewed, though it does not account for the complete absence of her replies. Perhaps Mary had even expected Patrick to return to claim her as his bride when he had settled in a living and she had reached her majority. It is significant, therefore, that Mary was twenty-one in 1811 or 1812, exactly the period when the breach really occurred. Coincidentally – or perhaps not – this was also the period of Patrick’s wooing of Maria Branwell, so it could be that Mary believed Patrick had actually jilted her to marry someone else. In his own defence, Patrick claimed that he had written twice to Miss Davy from Dewsbury in 1810 and received no...

All Saints’ Church, like Wellington itself, was totally different from anything Patrick had known before. A modern building, less than twenty years old, it looked externally more like assembly rooms or a chapel than a Church of England church.

Through his contacts here, if not from John Crosse himself, Patrick learnt that Bradford was one of the fastest growing parishes in terms of population and one of the least well served in terms of clergymen in the country. He had always wanted to live and work in Yorkshire,143 which was regarded by the Evangelicals as a sort of ‘Promised Land’ of opportunity: the Bradford area now became an obvious and attractive choice.

The decision was not entirely simple, however, for Patrick was once more at a crossroads in his life and had to make a decision that would determine his future. Just before he accepted Dewsbury, he had a letter from James Wood, his old tutor at St John’s, offering him the post of chaplain to the governor of Martinique in the West Indies.145 The island, a French colony, had recently been captured by the British, placing virtually all the West Indies under British rule. The appointment of a governor (and his chaplain) was therefore a new one, resulting from military success in the war against Napoleon. The position would offer prestige, excitement (as Martinique was still in the war zone) and an opportunity to be ‘useful’ converting the Negroes and attempting to work towards the abolition of slavery, a cause dear to Evangelical hearts. It is not clear whether Patrick had solicited Wood’s aid in trying to find another post, or whether Wood, remembering his former pupil’s Evangelical commitment, simply thought he would be a suitable man for the job. The letter took some three weeks to find him, which suggests that the latter explanation was the more likely. When Patrick eventually replied at the end of November 1809, it was with two questions: was the post likely to be permanent and would he receive any salary in advance that would enable him to pay for the expense of his voyage? The questions were extremely pertinent and Wood’s answers, which are not known, may have been the ...

Though little remained of the original medieval buildings except a delightful stone and half-timbered gatehouse and an enormous tithe barn, the place was renowned as the site of Robin Hood’s grave. Legend had it that while recovering from wounds at the gatehouse, Robin was treacherously bled to death by the prioress and buried 660 yards away, where the arrow he shot from his deathbed had landed.

For a less committed man this might have been an opportunity for taking things more easily, but Patrick seems to have devoted his leisure hours to assisting his hard-pressed colleagues in Dewsbury.

Within the area he soon acquired a number of friends, many of whom were to prove important in later life.

Even if most of their poorer parishioners were illiterate, hymns and simple verses, designed to be sung or read aloud, in Sunday school or in informal ‘kitchen meetings’, were an ideal way of communicating the faith.

chiefly designed for the lower classes of society … For the convenience of the unlearned and poor, the Author has not written much, and has endeavoured not to burthen his subjects with matter, and as much as he well could, has aimed at simplicity, plainness, and perspicuity, both in manner and style.49

The Advertisement, which Patrick prefixed to the text, is a neat summary of the message of the poems. The Bible is the ‘Book of Books … in which the wisest may learn that they know nothing, and fools be made wise’; all those who wish to be truly happy must first be truly religious; the simple and natural manners of the poor, when refined by religion, ‘shine, with a peculiar degree of gospel simplicity … wonderfully calculated to disarm prejudice, and to silence, and put infidelity to the blush’. There is also a rather touching confession of the almost guilty pleasure Patrick took in the composition of his verses:

Included in the collection was an adaptation of Winter Evening Thoughts, retitled ‘Winter-night Meditations’, and five poems extolling the virtues of a poor and simple life when coloured by religion. The highly sanitized descriptions of cottage life with its cheerful but welcoming cottagers who, though poor, are contented with their lot because they look to a better future in heaven, obviously bore little relation to the misery, poverty and disease of the labouring poor in Patrick’s parish which was about to explode in the violence of the Luddite riots. Patrick’s aim was not to paint a portrait from life, however, but to point out that faith alone offered salvation and the prospect of happiness.

Cottage Poems bears all the hallmarks of having been written, as Patrick himself described, under pressure of time and with a specific, didactic purpose in mind. It has little literary merit,

Given the fact that there was a strong feeling in favour of the Luddites in his parish, Patrick may have feared reprisals. It seems likely that it was in this period that he acquired his lifelong habit of keeping a loaded pistol in the house overnight. The discharging of the bullet out of the window each morning would become a ritual which aroused much future comment.62

for the Luddite cause. Though the excitements and turmoil of the uprisings must have given Patrick worry and work, by the middle of the year he had something else to occupy his mind. He was now thirty-five years old, ‘a man of very retired habits, but attentive to his clerical duties’.67 He had a wide acquaintance among the clergymen of the district

But now that he had his own parish and a post as perpetual curate from which he could not be evicted, short of some major catastrophe, Patrick could afford to consider marriage. No doubt Mary Burder sprang instantly to mind, but her faith and the fact that his letters to Wethersfield remained unanswered effectively ruled her out. It was no easy task to find an eligible bride who was capable of inspiring at least affection, if not love, in him. Fortunately, Patrick was to find a woman who possessed all the qualities he held most dear.

While he was there, Patrick was introduced to Maria Branwell,

Maria was twenty-nine years old, petite and elegant though not pretty; pious and something of a blue-stocking but also of a bright, cheerful and witty disposition. She was the daughter of a successful, property-owning grocer and tea merchant of Penzance, Thomas Branwell, who had died in 1808; her mother, Anne Carne, the daughter of a silversmith in the town, had died a year after her husband. Maria had grown up in a totally different world from Patrick. The eighth of eleven children, at least three of whom had not survived infancy, Maria had enjoyed all the benefits of belonging to a prosperous family in a small town.72

Penzance in Maria’s day was therefore a thriving market town of some three to four thousand inhabitants and, because of its trade, with a far wider outlook than its isolated and provincial position would otherwise have merited.

banks like that of the Bolitho family being founded and funded out of the profits of the local tin smelting industry.

There was also plenty of intellectual and artistic activity. The town had had its own Ladies’ Book Club,

Agricultural, Provident, Humane, Scientific and Literary Societies and a Penzance Institute since before Maria was born. There were concert rooms behind the Old Turk’s Head Inn and Assembly Rooms, funded by public subscription and built in 1791 by Maria’s uncle, Richard Branwell, where balls were held throughout the winter months.77

Visiting Penzance today it is not difficult to see why the place had such a hold on the affections of Maria and Elizabeth. The oldest part of the town is Chapel Street, where the Branwell home lay within a few hundred yards of the sea to front and rear. The street is built along the ridge of a rocky promontory protruding into the vast sweep of Mount’s Bay. Then, as now, the eye was immediately drawn to the spectacular outline of the island castle of St Michael’s Mount a couple of miles away. The long sandy beaches and fertile agricultural land around the bay remain unchanged,

The old heart of Penzance, centred around Chapel Street and Market Jew Street, is also relatively unchanged though engulfed by the larger modern town. Chapel Street itself is like something out of a picture book, steep, narrow and cobbled, winding up from the quay to the Market Place and lined with higgledy-piggledy eighteenth-century cottages. Most are built of granite though some, like number 25 where the Branwells lived, are faced with brick. Apart from this pretension to gentility, the house is simple and of a kind with its neighbours, having five rooms on each floor, two attic rooms and a south-facing walled garden to the rear. At the front, like its neighbours, it is straight on to the street. Originally, the house backed on to the graveyard of the ancient Chapel of St Mary but now it is dwarfed by the new parish church built on the chapel site in 1835.81 Above it, Chapel Street climbs past the picturesque smugglers’ inn, the Admiral Benbow, and the faded grandeur of the Union Hotel before opening out into the commercial bustle of Market Jew Street. With all that the town had to offer and a climate so famously mild that camellias bloom in February, Penzance must have been a very pleasant home for the Branwell family. The impression one gets of life there when Maria and her sisters were young is of a whirl of social entertainment and visiting of the sort so vividly described by Jane Austen. Maria, too, with her ready wit, charming manners and simple piety could have b...

From the softness of the Cornish climate and the comfortable, close-knit social world of Penzance, Maria travelled over 400 miles to the comparative austerity and friendlessness of a boys’ boarding school in the heart of a depressed and restless industrial West Riding. Though she soon became close friends with her cousin, Jane Branwell Fennell, who was eight years her junior, she must have felt the change in her circumstances and the loss of her family life. No doubt, therefore, she was more disposed to be receptive towards the courtship of the young minister of Hartshead than she might otherwise have been. The fact that Patrick enjoyed the confidence and esteem of her aunt and uncle, too, allowed him to be admitted into an intimate friendship with a speed which would otherwise have flouted social convention. Another important factor in Patrick’s favour was that he was also the best friend of William Morgan, who was now actively courting her cousin Jane. It was natural for the two clergymen to visit the two cousins and the inevitable pairing off led to an engagement within only a few months. Patrick lovingly preserved the series of letters written to him by Maria at this period; his side of the correspondence is unfortunately lost, but hers provides a unique and touching insight into the growing intimacy and affection between them. It is worth quoting extensively from them for this reason alone, but there is an added poignancy in that these letters, written during her enga...

Like Emma Woodhouse, she had been accustomed to independence and reliance on her own judgement. 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 in every case of importance, and scarcely ever doubted the propriety of my opinions and actions.93 Unlike Jane Austen’s heroine, however, Maria had no confidence in her own judgement: she had deeply felt the want of a guide and instructor. At such times I have seen and felt the necessity of supernatural aid, and by fervent applications to a throne of grace I have experienced that my heavenly Father is able and willing to supply the place of every earthly friend. I shall now no longer feel this want, this sense of helpless weakness, for I believe a kind Providence has intended that I shall find in you every earthly friend united; nor do I fear to trust myself under your protection, or shrink from your control. It is pleasant to be subject to those we love, especially when they never exert their authority but for the good of the subject.94

For this was to be no ordinary wedding, but a double one, shared with Jane Fennell and William Morgan, for which a special licence had to be procured: John Fennell would give away his daughter and his niece, the two clergymen would act alternately as bridegroom and officiating minister and the two cousins would be both bridesmaid and bride.

With the wedding imminent, Maria gave way to a classic state of premarital nerves. ‘So you thought that perhaps I might expect to hear from you’, she lashed her fiancé with unexpected ferocity. As the case was so doubtful, and you were in such great haste, you might as well have deferred writing a few days longer, for you seem to suppose it is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether I hear from you or not. I believe I once requested you to judge of my feelings by your own – am I to think that you are thus indifferent? Perceiving that she had over-reacted, she was immediately contrite. ‘I am too serious on the subject’, she confessed; I only meant to rally you a little on the beginning of your last, and to tell you that I fancied there was a coolness in it which none of your former letters had contained. If this fancy was groundless, forgive me for having indulged it, and let it serve to convince you of the sincerity and warmth of my affection. Real love is ever apt to suspect that it meets not with an equal return; you must not wonder then that my fears are sometimes excited. My pride cannot bear the idea of a diminution of your attachment, or to think that it is stronger on my side than yours … I am certain no one ever loved you with an affection more pure, constant, tender, and ardent than that which I feel. Surely this is not saying too much; it is the truth, and I trust you are worthy to know it. I long to improve in every religious and moral quality, that I may...

It cannot have simply been a coincidence in such a closely knit family that on exactly the same day there was another Branwell marriage. Far away in Penzance, Charlotte and Joseph Branwell were married at Madron Church, on the hill overlooking the bay.

They were not as comfortably off as perhaps they could have wished: Patrick’s living was worth only sixty-five pounds a year110 but Maria had her annuity of fifty pounds, enough to make them modestly respectable.

At some stage, either on their marriage or possibly before the birth of their first child, they moved from Lousy Thorn to a home of their own. Clough House was at Hightown, nearly a mile away from Hartshead Church; built of stone, with a central door and two windows on each of its three storeys, the house was a small but comfortable gentleman’s residence.

it was in the village of Hightown so Maria was not isolated and would have the opportunity of easily visiting her neighbours and the parish sick.111

Patrick’s personal happiness during his courtship and the first months of his marriage was reflected in his next literary venture, The Rural Minstrel: A Miscellany of Descriptive Poems, which was printed and published for the author in September 1813 by P. K. Holden of Halifax.

The little book contained eleven poems of a much higher standard than those in Cottage Poems. This was partly because they had been written over a two-year period, whenever inspiration had struck, rather than specifically for the publication. The poems are again didactic homilies but the moral is not thrust down the reader’s throat, as in his former work, but more attractively clad in descriptive verse which sugars the pill without detracting from its purpose. Even the message itself is more subtly expressed.

The whole tone is much more sympathetic and sensitive to the plight of the poor; it seems that the terrible winters of 1811 and 1812 had left their mark on Patrick and influenced his poetry as well as his heart.

The beauties of the natural world were, to Patrick, the manifestation of God; it was a belief that he was to pass on to his children, who would all share the passion for nature which he first expressed in these verses. Interestingly, too, the influence of the poems in The Rural Minstrel can be traced through to their work, particularly the poetry of Branwell and Emily.118

The Brontës’ happiness at Hartshead was crowned with the arrival of their first child, a daughter, the exact date of whose birth is not known.

For this reason, when he was approached by the Reverend Thomas Atkinson, perpetual curate of Thornton, with the proposition that they should exchange livings, Patrick was not displeased.

Thornton offered him the prospect of deeper involvement in a much larger parish and a considerably increased income as the living was worth £140 a year.126

This was now more important to him because on 8 February 1815 Maria had given birth to a second daughter, who was named after Maria’s elder sister, Elizabeth.127

peace in Europe – the first peace in Patrick’s adult life.2

By the time the Brontës

On one side of the garden ran the Allée défendue’, a narrow walk overlooked by the windows of the Athenée Royal, the neighbouring boys’ school. For that reason it was out of bounds to the pupils of the Pensionnat Heger, though the boys would have had to have extremely sharp eyes to pierce the thick, tangled foliage of the trees and shrubs which grew over the alleyway. Hardly the pleasantest spot in the garden because of its dense shade, it acquired an air of mystery because it was forbidden – an air that Charlotte was to exploit to the full in both her novels set in Brussels.

Madame Claire Zoe Heger, who was thirty-eight years old, was the directrice of the school. Her husband, Constantin Georges Romain Heger, was five years younger and, at thirty-three, had already an eminent reputation as a teacher at the Athenée Royal; he also gave literature lessons to his wife’s pupils.113

the total cost of six months’ schooling for Charlotte and Emily would have come to around 1055 francs or forty-two pounds each.114 This came within the budget set by Aunt Branwell, but left little room for manoeuvre or for unexpected crises. Charlotte had therefore written anxiously beforehand to enquire about the exact cost of all the ‘extras’. The Hegers were struck by the simple, earnest tone of her letter, and agreed between themselves that These are the daughters of an English pastor, of moderate means, anxious to learn with an ulterior view of instructing others, and to whom the risk of additional expense is of great consequence. Let us name a specific sum, within which all expenses shall be included.115 The Hegers’ kindness towards their English pupils further extended to permitting them to be absent from the daily mass and even to providing them with a curtained-off recess at the end of the school dormitory, so that they could enjoy at least a measure of privacy.