Brontës (13 page)

Equally important in the life of the town was the Wesleyan Methodist community, of which the Branwells and the Carnes were prominent members. The ubiquitous John Wesley himself had preached regularly in Penzance, including on at least three occasions in the 1780s when, as small children, Maria and her elder sister, Elizabeth, might have joined the crowds to hear him.
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In 1790 Maria's aunt, Jane Branwell, had married John Fennell, then the headmaster and class leader of the Wesleyan Methodist school in Penzance. Ten years later, Maria's eldest sister, Jane, had married the Wesleyan minister, John Kingston, and emigrated with him to America. This marriage was not a happy one and, in a bold move extremely rare in those days, Jane left her husband and four older children in 1809 and returned, with only her baby, to Penzance. When the Wesleyan Conference split away from the Church of England in 1812, the Branwells preferred to join the Wesleyans and were largely instrumental in the construction, in 1814, of Penzance's first purpose-built chapel, only a few yards up the street from Maria's old home.
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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, but virtually all traces of the tin industry have disappeared. In Maria's day Penzance was surrounded by smelting works and mines, the most renowned of which was the Wherry Mine, whose main shaft lay thirty fathoms under the sea and half a mile out from the shore. At high tide all that was visible from the shore was the steam engine's chimney, rising twelve feet above the waves, and the miners had to walk across the sea along a plank bridge to reach the entrance.
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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.
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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 been an Austen heroine, living a comfortably middle-class life in a provincial town. All this was to end, however, when a series of misfortunes struck. After the death of her father in 1808, the ownership of 25 Chapel Street passed to his brother, Richard, the tenant of the Golden Lion Inn. He allowed his brother's family to continue living in the house, even after the death of his
sister-in-law the following year meant that it was only occupied by his three unmarried nieces, Elizabeth, now aged thirty-three, Maria, aged twenty-six, and Charlotte, aged eighteen. They were quite comfortably situated as they each had a life annuity of fifty pounds, secured against the property in their father's will.
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Then, on Christmas Eve 1811, Richard's son, Thomas, a thirty-three-year-old lieutenant in the navy, was drowned in the wreck of the
St George
off the coast of Denmark.
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Within a few months Richard himself was dead and this seems to have precipitated the break-up of the family. Maria's youngest sister, Charlotte, accepted an offer of marriage from her cousin, Richard's son, Joseph,
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and Maria herself decided to leave Penzance and travel to Yorkshire to live with her aunt and uncle. John Fennell, like Patrick before him, had been promoted from his schoolmastership in Wellington, Shropshire, to be head of the newly opened boarding school for Methodist ministers' sons at Woodhouse Grove. The school had expanded so rapidly that Mrs Fennell was unable to manage the domestic arrangements with only her daughter's assistance. Maria therefore had the opportunity of earning her keep in a genteel manner while still remaining within her own family.

Elizabeth's fate is unknown: her annuity was not sufficient to enable her to remain in the family home alone and it seems likely that she moved in with her married sister.
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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 engagement, contain virtually all we know about the mother of the Brontës.

On 26 August 1812, Maria wrote her first letter to Patrick, having agreed, at their last meeting, to become his wife.

My dear Friend,

This address is sufficient to convince you that I not only permit, but approve of yours to me – I do indeed consider you as my friend; yet, when I consider how short a time I have had the pleasure of knowing you, I start at my own rashness, my heart fails, and did I not think that you would be disappointed and grieved at it, I believe I should be ready to spare myself the task of writing. Do not think that I am so wavering as to repent of what I have already said. No, believe me, this will never be the case, unless you give me cause for it. You need not fear that you have been mistaken in my character. If I know anything of myself, I am incapable of making an ungenerous return to the smallest degree of kindness, much less to you whose attentions and conduct have been so particularly obliging. I will frankly confess that your behaviour and what I have seen and heard of your character has excited my warmest esteem and regard, and be assured that you shall never have cause to repent of any confidence you may think proper to place in me, and that it will always be my endeavour to deserve the good opinion which you have formed, although human weakness may in some instances cause me to fall short. In giving you these assurances I do not depend upon my own strength, but I look to Him who has been my unerring guide through life, and in whose continued protection and assistance I confidently trust.
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The receipt of a letter from Patrick had caused her some embarrassment as the Fennells had teased her about its contents though they did not, as yet, know of her engagement. Maria felt herself in some difficulty as to the etiquette of her own letter: she wanted to speak her heart but was afraid of appearing too forward:

If you knew what were my feelings whilst writing this you would pity me. I wish to write the truth and give you satisfaction, yet fear to go too far, and exceed the
bounds of propriety. But whatever I may say or write I will
never
deceive
you, or
exceed
the
truth
.
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By 5 September she felt emboldened enough to tease Patrick a little: ‘I do, indeed,
sometimes
think of you, but I will not say how often, lest I raise your vanity.' She was worried by Patrick's haste in announcing his engagement to his friends, particularly as she had not yet told the Fennells:

But I think there is no need, as by some means or other they seem to have a pretty correct notion how matters stand betwixt us; and as their hints, etc., meet with no contradiction from me, my silence passes for confirmation. Mr Fennell has not neglected to give me some serious and encouraging advice, and my aunt takes frequent opportunities of dropping little sentences which I may turn to some advantage. I have long had reason to know that the present state of things would give pleasure to all parties.
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Toiling up the hill from Woodhouse Grove to take tea at Mr Tatham's she thought about

the evening when I first took the same walk with you, and on the change which had taken place in my circumstances and views since then – not wholly without a wish that I had your arm to assist me, and your conversation to shorten the walk.
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Six days later, she gave him a half-jocular berating for forgetting to pass on a note from Jane to William Morgan.
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Patrick was apparently visiting fairly regularly at this time, walking the dozen or so miles in each direction in the day. The journey was not without hazard, as there were still ominous rumblings from the Luddites. John Abbott, who lived at Woodhouse Grove at this time and was, as he said, intimately acquainted with both Patrick and Maria, recalled the scares and alarms of those days:

I well remember how frightened she was when one night on my return from Leeds on foot – a walk of eleven miles I told her and her cousin Jane Fennel, afterwards Mrs Morgan, how that I had been met on my way and stopped by a regularly organised body of men (Luddites) marching along with military precision. As I approached it, a man in command gave the word ‘halt' when the the [sic] moving body, it was too dark to distinguish individuals, became stationary
and the man stepped out from it to confront me asking, in a harsh rough voice, as he did so, ‘who goes there?'

‘A friend', was the ready, and, under the circumstances of the case, the most prudent answer to the challenge

‘Pass friend', was the instant rejoinder, followed without even so much as a ‘comma's' pause, with the word of command, ‘quick march'! and the black mass of men with still blacker hearts moved on
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Sometimes Patrick would stay overnight or longer, as, for instance, in September, so that he could join the party in a walk along the banks of the River Aire to Kirkstall Abbey on the 16th.
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Two days afterwards, Maria wrote again, feeling the need to explain her position to him. 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.
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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.
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For the second time, Patrick was taken to task for failing to deliver a message, this time to the Fennells. In an attempt to get work for his parish and to help his friends, he had acted as an intermediary to place an order for blankets for the school. The Bedfords, with whom he still lodged, had been over to Woodhouse Grove to discuss the order and, because Patrick had
forgotten to forewarn the Fennells, had found no one there. The Fennells, with affectionate indulgence, accused Patrick of being ‘mazed' with love and talked of sending him to York Lunatic Asylum.
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Maria at last plucked up the courage to tell her sisters of her engagement:

Mr Fennell has crossed my letter to my sisters. With his usual goodness he has supplied my
deficiencies
, and spoken of me in terms of commendation of which I wish I were more worthy. Your character he has likewise displayed in the most favourable light; and I am sure they will not fail to love and esteem you though unknown.
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