Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (447 page)

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. Brontë 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. Brontë, 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. Brontë, 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.