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

by Juliet Barker

the fact that they were such an extraordinarily close family that is the key to their achievements.

Instead of being writers of ‘naughty books’, who revelled in vulgarity and brutality, the Brontës thus became graduates of the school of adversity, writing in all innocence about the barbarous society in which they lived because that was all they knew.

Patrick emerges as a tireless campaigner and reformer, a man of liberal beliefs rather than the rampant Tory he is so often labelled.

I was then a Tutor in a Gentleman’s Family – from which situation I removed to Cambridge, and enter’d St John’s College

For him, life effectively began only when he shook the dust of Ireland from his feet and was admitted to Cambridge.

Patrick was born on 17 March 1777,

Emdale,

Hugh Brontë may have been only a ‘poor farmer’ but he was not the impoverished peasant of Brontë legend.10

But this was 1798, one of the most momentous years in Irish history.

When the new lord lieutenant determined to crush the United Irishmen by disarming Ulster, he drove them into open revolt. County Down, where the Brontë family lived, was at the epicentre of the rebellion. At

Drumballyroney

Drumgooland.

Although Thomas Tighe was a member of the Church of Ireland, he belonged firmly within the Evangelical camp.

Because the Evangelicals placed great emphasis on the Bible, their ministers were particularly enthusiastic about the need for education and literacy among their congregations, promoting Sunday schools, holding ‘cottage meetings’ and producing simple, didactic pamphlets.

Though his ambition cannot be doubted, neither can his personal faith. His writings and his activities are eloquent testimony to the sincerity of his belief,

It was difficult to find bishops willing to ordain them or grant them livings, and even the most venerated of all Evangelical clergymen, Charles Simeon, was never anything more than a simple vicar.

he could not become a clergyman unless he graduated from one of the universities.

Ostensibly there were three choices open to him: Trinity College in Dublin, the natural choice for an Irishman, Oxford or Cambridge.

St John’s was renowned for its Evangelical connections and, perhaps most important of all as far as Patrick was concerned, it had the largest funds available of any college in any of the universities for assisting poor but able young men to get a university education.

Four long years after taking up the post as tutor to Thomas Tighe’s children, Patrick finally achieved his ambition. Leaving behind his family, his friends and his home, he embarked for England with his meagre savings in his pocket and, it would appear, with scarcely a backward glance.

From the moment that he arrived in Cambridge in July 180228 to the day he graduated in 1806, Patrick Brontë was a distinctive and somewhat eccentric figure.

For Patrick, it was the passport to a promising future and he had no intention of being distracted from his purpose. He was,

in every sense, an outsider and he had only to open his mouth to betray his origins.

within a couple of years he was already a legend at the college.

Patrick was fortunate in having three outstanding tutors at St John’s: James Wood, Joshua Smith and Thomas Catton. All three had held sizarships themselves, so they fully understood the difficulties of and actively encouraged the sizars in their care. James Wood, an Evangelical who later became Master of the college and a Vice-Chancellor of the university, was especially active on Patrick’s behalf.41 Under their guidance, Patrick’s academic career flourished.

To crown his college career, Patrick was one of only seven men to get into the first class and, even more impressively, one of only five who had managed to maintain an unbroken record of first-class successes.

Patrick’s pride was natural and justified. He had worked hard and the prize books were concrete evidence of his achievement.

The fact that Patrick was able to attract the attention of men of the calibre of Martyn, Thornton and Wilberforce is further proof of his commitment to his faith and his outstanding qualities.

Volunteers were called for and by December 1803, 463,000 men had enrolled in the local militia of the three kingdoms. Among them was Patrick Brontë, who had a

lifelong passion for all things military.

For the rest of his life Patrick was to be inordinately proud of the fact that he had drilled under Lord Palmerston, not least because by 1809, when he was still only a humble curate, Palmerston had been appointed Minister for War, and was already embarking on a long political career which was to make him an outstanding foreign secretary and prime minister.

By 28 June Patrick had a sworn document from Joseph Jowett, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, appointing him his curate in the parish of Wethersfield in Essex at a salary of £60 a year.

he emerged from Fulham chapel on 10 August 1806 a deacon in holy orders.72

His degree had made him a gentleman, his ordination would make him a clergyman; his future lay in his own hands, make of it what he would.

He never expressed any wish to return to Ireland and did not inspire any curiosity in his children to seek out their father’s relatives or his first home.

Patrick had plainly seen that his future lay in England and he was eager to take up his first curacy there.

Wethersfield

Finchingfield,

Patrick could hardly have chosen a more attractive place to launch his clerical career and yet, despite its seeming remoteness, the village was only seven miles from the bustling town of Braintree and about forty-five miles from the heart of London.

Wethersfield Manor, a huge eighteenth-century mansion, still stands in its own parkland on the approach from the Braintree road.

church of St Mary Magdalene.

John Cole, the minister appointed during the Commonwealth, had been expelled from the living because he refused to use the Book of Common Prayer for his services;

soon after his arrival, there was an outbreak of typhus fever, the perennial disease of the poor.

Colchester

Two considerations must have influenced him. The first was the possibility of visiting John Nunn, whose family home was in Colchester.90 The second, and more important, reason was that St Peter’s Church, the largest in the town, was an outstanding centre of Evangelicalism.

He was finally ordained as a priest on 21 December 1807

He had fallen in love with the young daughter of a local farmer and was intent on marrying her. Mary Mildred Davy Burder96

The marriage was forbidden and Mary was then swept off to her uncle’s house, where she was kept a virtual prisoner until Patrick had left Wethersfield. Patrick’s letters to her were intercepted and destroyed and her uncle made him return all her letters. When Mary opened the parcel containing her own letters she found in it a small card with Patrick’s likeness in profile on it and beneath it the words: ‘Mary, you have torn the heart; spare the face.’ Hearing no more from her lover, Mary eventually gave up all hope and resigned herself to the end of her engagement.100

The relative financial status of the pair was not an insuperable problem.

They evidently made Mary deeply bitter, which suggests that Patrick, rather than her family, had been the cause of the breach of the engagement.