Brontës (29 page)

Reads tolerably – Writes pretty well – Ciphers a little – Works very badly – Knows a little of Grammar, very little of Geography & History. Has made some progress in reading French but knows nothing of the language grammatically

Elizabeth, aged nine, fared even worse: ‘Reads little – Writes pretty well – Ciphers none – Works very badly. Knows nothing of Grammar, Geography, History or Accomplishments'.
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The apparently damning reports, which are often cited as evidence of Patrick's failure to educate his daughters, are actually almost identical to every other entry in the register, regardless of age or background.
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There was obviously a motive to understate achievements on entry so that the school could take the credit for greater improvements. Many girls, even some of the oldest entrants who were in their late teens, did no better than the Brontës: Maria was exceptional in being able to read French at the age of ten, even if she could not parse it.

It is interesting to note that Patrick had a clear notion of his daughters' capabilities and future prospects. Maria, ‘a girl of fine imagination and extraordinary talents', as even the teacher who is supposed to have persecuted her readily admitted, was to be educated for a governess. She therefore received lessons in French and drawing, for which Patrick had to pay an extra three pounds a year. Elizabeth, who possessed ‘sound common sense' but was not as intellectual as her sisters, was clearly earmarked by Patrick to be the family housekeeper; she was the only one of his daughters not to be instructed in the ‘accomplishments'.
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Life at the school at this time was probably not unpleasant. Both Maria and Elizabeth were used to being away from home, having already experienced the rigours of boarding school at Crofton Hall. There were only sixteen other girls there to begin with and, of these, at least two were already acquaintances, if not actual friends. Margaret Plummer, who had been at the school since 21 February, was the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Reverend Thomas Plummer, headmaster of the Free Grammar School at Keighley, who sometimes officiated for Patrick. She must have become a friend, as Maria gave her a needlecase she had made herself, suitably inscribed. Ten-year-old Harriet Jenkins, who had been there since 4 March, was the daughter of the Reverend David Jenkins, Patrick's fellow curate at Dewsbury, who had undertaken duty for him so often at Hartshead.
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On 10 August, just under three weeks after their own arrival, Maria and Elizabeth had a welcome visit from their father when he brought Charlotte, who was now well enough to join her sisters at the school. Patrick again stayed the night and dined with his daughters. At the end of September there was another visitor, Elizabeth Firth, now Mrs James Clarke Franks, who was on her wedding tour; she gave each of the girls 2s. 6d. before leaving.
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For Charlotte, the change in her circumstances was traumatic. It was the first time she had ever been away from home and she had no prospect of returning there for nearly a year: the only holidays were the customary five weeks in the summer. She could not even keep in regular contact with her father and the younger members of the family because letter writing was confined to once a quarter.
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Even though her elder sisters were there it must have seemed like a perpetual banishment from the home and the family which meant so much to her. Her own entry in the school register noted that she had been vaccinated and that she had had whooping cough. Her acquirements on entering were listed as: ‘Reads tolerably –
Writes indifferently – Ciphers a little and works neatly. Knows nothing of Grammar, Geography, History or Accomplishments'. To this was added an unusual and perceptive note: ‘Altogether clever of her age but knows nothing systematically'. Like her eldest sister, she was entered for the higher level of education which would train her to be a governess.
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Despite her own later recollection of herself as having a very quiet career, being ‘plodding and industrious', and ‘very grave', the entrance register assessment is backed up by Miss Andrews, who described her as

a very bright, clever, and happy little girl, a general favorite; to the best of my recollection she was never under disgrace, however slight; punishment she certainly did
not
experience while she was at Cowan Bridge.
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While their older sisters were settling into their new environment and, according to Miss Andrews, doing well,
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the three younger Brontë children were still at home in the care of Aunt Branwell and Nancy and Sarah Garrs. Branwell was now seven, Emily just six and Anne four. They must have missed Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte taking the lead in their study and play, but this was not the first time they had had to manage without the two eldest girls. Their ordinary routine was enlivened by two exciting incidents.

On Tuesday, 31 August 1824, Haworth was honoured by a rare visit from Edward Harcourt, the Archbishop of York. The reason for his visit was somewhat grim: he had come to consecrate a new piece of ground which was to be added to the then overflowing churchyard. An immense concourse of people gathered to watch the ceremony and, despite the fact that Harcourt had backed the vicar of Bradford against the trustees over Patrick's and Samuel Redhead's appointment to Haworth, ‘the strictest order and decorum prevailed'. The three Brontë children must have had prime positions for viewing the ceremony and afterwards, to add to their excitement, the archbishop and some of his fellow clergy came back to the parsonage to ‘partake of good English fare' prepared by a no doubt flustered Nancy Garrs.
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To see in the flesh, in their own home, one of the two premier spiritual lords of the land, about whom they read constantly in the newspapers, must have been a great thrill for the impressionable children.

The second event was even more memorable and certainly more spectacular. Two days after the archbishop's visit, on Thursday, 2 September, at about six o'clock in the evening, the bog four miles up on the moor behind the parsonage at Crow Hill burst, causing a landslip and flooding. Patrick
described what happened in a sermon he preached ten days later in Haworth Church:

As the day was exceedingly fine, I had sent my little children, who were indisposed, accompanied by the servants, to take an airing on the common, and as they stayed rather longer than I expected, I went to an upper chamber to look out for their return. The heavens over the moors were blackening fast. I heard muttering of distant thunder, and saw the frequent flashing of the lightning. Though, ten minutes before, there was scarcely a breath of air stirring; the gale freshened rapidly, and carried along with it clouds of dust and stubble; and, by this time, some large drops of rain, clearly announced an approaching heavy shower. My little family had escaped to a place of shelter, but I did not know it. I consequently watched every movement of the coming tempest with a painful degree of interest. The house was perfectly still. Under these circumstances, I heard a deep, distant explosion, something resembling, yet something differing from thunder, and I perceived a gentle tremour in the chamber in which I was standing, and in the glass of the window just before me, which, at the time, made an extra-ordinary impression on my mind; and which, I have no manner of doubt now, was the effect of an Earthquake at the place of eruption.
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The picture of the anxious father looking out for his children because they were late and then fearing dreadfully for their safety as he watched the storm develop should forever dispel any suggestion that Patrick was a cold and uncaring parent. What he did not say, but was later reported by Sarah Garrs' family, was that when he realized that his children were in actual danger, he set out in search of them. They had been caught in the full horror of the storm, ‘and they were frightened, and hid themselves under Sarah's cloak, and Mr Brontë went in search of them and found them in a Porch … terrified, and so was he till he found them'.
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He then discovered just how close he had come to losing them. A seven-foot-high torrent of mud, peat and water had swept down the valley from Crow Hill towards Ponden. Fortunately, it was seen in time and someone gave the alarm, ‘and thereby saved the lives of some children, who would otherwise have been swept away'.
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Once he had his beloved children safely back at home, Patrick had time to think over his experience. As an Evangelical, he was certain that the world would one day end in the apocalyptic style of the Revelation of St John. There was a general belief at the time, particularly in Evangelical circles, that
the end of the world was imminent and Patrick's immediate response was probably that it was happening at that moment. When it became clear that it was not, he then realized that this was a solemn warning,

to turn sinners from the error of their ways, and as solemn forerunners of that last and greatest day, when the earth shall be burnt up – and the heavens shall pass away with a great noise – and the universal frame of nature shall tremble, and break, and dissolve.
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In his intense excitement, Patrick wrote to both the
Leeds Intelligencer
and the
Leeds Mercury
giving an account of the bog-burst, which he attributed to an earthquake, and ‘improving' the event by pointing out its moral.
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The day after the bog-burst, he had been up to Crow Hill to view the damage. One solid stone bridge had been swept away, two others had been breached, four or five mills had had their workings entirely clogged up, fields of corn, hedges and walls had been flattened in the deluge and some houses had been swamped. Two huge areas of moorland bog had sunk without trace, swept down along the valleys by the volume of water absorbed in the undrained peat in the heavy rainfall of the previous days. The effects were felt as far away as Leeds: 200 stone of perch and trout were taken out of the River Aire at Horsforth, poisoned, or rather suffocated, by the volume of peat, mud and detritus flowing from the bog-burst. Virtually the entire woollen industry in the area ground to a halt for several days as it was impossible to use the water because it was so filthy.
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Patrick's letters caused further consternation – not for the spiritual thoughts he had hoped to inspire, but for the more prosaic reason that, if an earthquake had caused an underground reservoir to open up, then the woollen trade might be permanently affected. A team of investigators from the
Leeds Mercury
joined the supposed 10,000 sightseers who came from all over Yorkshire to view the dramatic sight. They concluded that the bog-burst was the result of a water spout, not an earthquake.
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Patrick obstinately refused to change his opinion. The day the
Leeds Mercury
published its report, Patrick wrote another letter in great haste to the paper, defending his claim that it was an earthquake. The electrical discharge of the lightning, combined with the intense heat of the day, had caused the eruption, he believed.
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The next day he delivered a powerful sermon to his parishioners on an appropriate text from the ninety-seventh psalm: ‘His lightnings enlightened the world; the earth saw, and trembled.
The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.' He explained the physical causes of earthquakes and some of the reasons why God sent them. Finally, he declared:

We have just seen something of the mighty power of God: he has unsheathed his sword, and brandished it over our heads, but still the blow is suspended in mercy – it has not yet fallen upon us. As well might he have shaken and sunk all Haworth, as those parts of the uninhabited moors on which the bolts of his vengeance have fallen. Be thankful that you are spared. – Despise not this merciful, but monitory voice of Divine Wisdom.
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Patrick's warnings were not treated with uniform respect. A correspondent from Haworth, signing himself ‘JPJ', wrote to the newspapers:

That it may have alarmed our worthy minister, terrified the clerk, electrified our grave-digger, and have been a subject for all women in the parish both now, and probably as long as they live after, to talk about, are truths, according to hearsay, that I am not now about to dispute: but that any reasonable person should construe a simple thing like [this] into an earthquake, or an irruption, or what not, is really preposterous.
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This cynic had not dared to publish in a local newspaper, however, but in the
Liverpool Mercury
, reflecting the widespread interest and controversy that Patrick's letters had sparked off. This justified Patrick in having the sermon printed for wider circulation by Thomas Inkersley, the Bradford printer and publisher, who printed some of Patrick's earlier works.
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At the same time he rewrote the sermon in simpler terminology, added a verse description of the bog-burst, and published it as a reward book for the higher classes in Sunday schools. A major shift of emphasis, dictated by the fact that the poem was intended for children, was that the poem ended, not with the threat of the end of the world, but with the promise of the Second Coming.

But, O! what heavenly joy will then impart

Its strongest impulse to the pious heart,

When the great Judge will loud approving say –

‘Come with me, to the heaven of heavens, away!'

Whilst the seraphic choirs strike all their strings,

And sing
Hosannah
to the King of kings!

And the new earth and heavens wide echo round,

The sweet, triumphal, loud, immortal sound!
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If the bog-burst caused such excitement and trauma to Patrick, one wonders what effect it had on his children, particularly as the apocalyptic interpretations could not have been lost on them. None of their writings for this period are extant, however, and only one poem by Emily, written twelve years later, even approaches the experience,
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so we cannot tell what they felt about their own brush with death.