Brontës (169 page)

we were taken into his bedroom; where everything was delicately clean and white, and there he was sitting propped up in bed in a clean nightgown, with a clean towel laid just for his hands to play upon – looking Oh! very different from the stiff scarred face above the white walls of cravat in the photograph – he had a short soft white growth of beard on his chin; and such a gentle, quiet, sweet, half-pitiful expression on his mouth, a good deal of soft white hair, and spectacles on. He shook hands with us, and we sat down, and then said how glad he was to see Mama – and she said how she had hesitated about coming, – feeling as if he might now have unpleasant associations with her – which never seemed to have entered his head – then he asked her how, since he last saw her, she had passed through this weary and varied world – in a sort of half-grandiloquent style – and then interrupting himself he said ‘but first tell me how is that
young lady, whose friend went to the Massacres in India?' I thought he meant the Ewarts, or something, and was quite surprised (besides other things) when Mama pointed to me, and said I was here, and then he prosecuted his inquiries about the engagement, and its breaking off; and then turned round and told me that he hoped I would forget the past; and would hope – that we ought all to live on hope.—

Patrick told the Gaskells how he had had so many applications for Charlotte's handwriting that he was obliged to cut up her letters into strips of a line each and again averred that ‘the
Memoir \s
a book which will hand your name down to posterity'. Harking back, as he always did with visitors, to his own portrayal, he complained that the statement that he had not allowed his children to eat meat had given ammunition to the Wilson camp in their attempts to defend the Clergy Daughters' School. They discussed politics and Thackeray's notice in the
Cornhill
until Patrick dropped a strong hint that it would be desirable for them to leave in the next five minutes or so, which his guests understood to mean that Arthur was due home from school. Though Meta was evidently rather taken with Patrick, her mother was surprisingly unpleasant about him. ‘He is touchingly softened by illness;' she told Williams, ‘but still talks in his pompous way, and mingles moral remarks and somewhat stale sentiments with his conversation on other subjects.' Clearly she had already forgotten how surprised and pleased she had been by the way he had behaved ‘like a brick' when she was under pressure from all sides about the first edition of the biography.
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After they left the parsonage, the Gaskells went to pay a visit to John Greenwood, where they were informed, at passionate length, about Arthur's furious reaction to the baptism of young Brontë Greenwood. Mrs Gaskell had evidently still not learnt that John Greenwood was a partial and hostile observer, for she accepted his account without question because it confirmed her own prejudices. ‘Mr Nicholls seems to keep him [Patrick] rather
in terrorerri
, she announced, misinterpreting Patrick's natural anxiety that his son-in-law should not be upset by an unexpected confrontation with Charlotte's biographer for fear of Arthur's anger.
‘He is
more unpopular in the village than ever; and seems to have even a greater aversion than formerly to any strangers visiting his wife's grave; or, indeed, to any reverence paid to her memory, even by those who knew and loved her for her own sake.' Even Meta seems to have been infected by Greenwood's bile, commenting on the Brontë Greenwood story, ‘this is a specimen of Mr N's
sullen, obstinate rooted objection to any reverence being paid to Miss B. one might almost say at any rate to people caring to remember her as an authoress'.
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It was a pity the Gaskells could not have talked to some of the Americans who had been welcomed to the parsonage by Charlotte Brontës husband.

Though confined to bed, Patrick remained ‘on the whole pretty well' throughout the winter of i860, but as the new year turned he suffered a severe relapse. Though recovery was not expected, his astonishingly tough physique pulled him through yet again.
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His decline was now steady. So much of Martha's time was now taken up in looking after the invalid that her sister Eliza was hired again on 1 February to assist in running the house.
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The weather was extremely severe throughout the early months of 18 61, the roads between Skipton and Keighley becoming impassable as the snow drifted as high as the tops of the walls. Dr Cartman proved his friendship and showed considerable determination in getting through to Haworth for Patrick's eighty-fourth birthday on 17 March 1861: he also made himself useful by preaching two sermons in the church the same day.
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On 4 April, Arthur reported to George Smith that ‘Mr Brontë continues pretty well – He has been confined to bed for some months, and seems to lose strength very gradually; his mental faculties however remain quite unimpaired –'. About a fortnight later there came sad news from Suffolk: Patrick's old friend John Nunn had died on 16 April, at the age of seventy-nine.
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Patrick himself was soon to follow.

About six o'clock on the morning of 7 June 1861, Patrick was seized with convulsions: before Arthur could get to him he was unconscious. Even then, death would not come swiftly to take the last Brontë who, of all his family, was the one most glad to die. He lingered, in a state of unconsciousness, with Arthur and Martha in constant attendance, until between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, his spirit went rejoicing to meet its Maker.
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He had served his God and his church faithfully for fifty-five years, forty-one of them in Haworth. Many of the inhabitants of his far-flung chapelry had known no other incumbent and they came in their hundreds to pay their last respects. On 12 June 18 61, the day of the funeral, all the shops in Haworth voluntarily closed, the unaccustomed ‘silence and solemnity that reigned around' proving ‘the deep estimation in which the venerable incumbent was held'. In the church every pew and available space was taken and several hundred people were forced to remain outside in the churchyard.
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In accordance with Patrick's wishes, Arthur had arranged everything with
unostentatious simplicity. There was no passing bell and no psalms were sung. The coffin, preceded by Dr Burnett, vicar of Bradford, and William Cartman, who jointly conducted the burial service, was carried from the parsonage to the church and then to the family vault by six of Patrick's closest friends and neighbours, all clergymen: Joseph Grant from Oxenhope, J.H. Mitchell from Cullingworth, H. Taylor from Newsholme, William Fawcett from Morton, John Smith from Oakworth and John Mayne from Keighley. Arthur followed the coffin, accompanied by Martha and Eliza Brown, their mother and Nancy Garrs: Sutcliffe Sowden, too, was among the crowd of mourners. Anyone who might have doubted the personal affection which had arisen between Patrick and his son-in-law had only to observe Arthur's conduct: he was so ‘deeply affected' that he had to be physically supported by William Cartman.
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Patrick's body was placed in the family vault and the last name was then added to the memorial tablet in the church, above the inscription from I Corinthians, Chapter xv, verses 56–7: ‘The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.'
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For Arthur, however, the sting of death was to be terrible indeed. He was too prostrate with grief to note the fact that the church trustees had held a meeting on the day of Patrick's funeral to decide what course of action they should take over the appointment of a new incumbent. Patrick had outlived all the twelve trustees who had appointed him in 1820 and it was their descendants, at least two of whom were not even resident in the district, who had inherited the right to decide who should replace him. This first meeting was adjourned because it was deemed inappropriate to discuss the subject with the former incumbent not yet cold in his grave.
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The deferral several months forward of the next trustees' meeting seemed to confirm the general expectation that this was simply a formality and that Arthur would succeed his father-in-law. He had, after all, been incumbent of the parish in all but name for the previous six years, carrying out all the duties virtually singlehandedly. A few days after Patrick's funeral, Arthur resumed his pastoral role, teaching in the schools, performing the duties and preaching at the Sunday services. He also read the evening prayers ‘with great solemnity' on 23 June, when Dr Burnett returned to Haworth to preach Patrick's funeral sermon to a packed church.
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On 13 August he had to officiate on an even more traumatic occasion: the funeral of his closest friend, Sutcliffe Sowden. His death had been sudden and tragic: coming home from a parish visit at half past ten on the dark and stormy night of
8 August, he had had some sort of a fit, fallen into the canal at Hebden Bridge and drowned. ‘Of a quiet and somewhat retiring disposition', he had been universally liked and respected. Almost exactly two months to the day after Patrick's funeral there was a second impressive gathering for the burial of a beloved clergyman. The shops and mills in Hebden Bridge closed for the day, the crowds lined the streets to pay their last respects, the Sunday school teachers and children carried posies of flowers, which they scattered on the coffin in the open grave. Joseph Grant of Oxenhope and William Baldwin, the rector of Mytholmroyd, were among the mourners, but it fell to Arthur, ‘between whom and the deceased there had existed a brotherhood of 14 years standing', to read the burial service. Overcome with emotion at this second loss in such a short time, Arthur was ‘so deeply affected as to be often wholly inaudible'.
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He had lost not only a friend but also another precious link with his wife.

One crumb of comfort at this time was that Archdeacon Musgrave, in a gesture that was welcomed as a fitting tribute to Sutcliffe Sowden himself, appointed his younger brother, George, to the incumbency of Hebden Bridge.
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Such comfort was to be denied Arthur Nicholls at Haworth.

At a second meeting attended by ten of the twelve trustees, his name was put forward for the incumbency. Only four trustees, including the chairman, voted in his favour; five voted against him and one, the Dissenter, abstained. On this narrowest of margins, Arthur effectively lost the appointment. Consultations with Dr Burnett were evidently held for, at a third meeting, when all the trustees were present, his candidate, John Wade, won the vote by seven votes to Arthur's five.
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That the candidate of the vicar of Bradford should have been preferred before the man who had been curate of the parish for sixteen years requires some explanation. Two reasons are usually cited: that there was a general antipathy towards him in Haworth, caused by what Mrs Gaskell calls his ‘aversion' to having anyone pay reverence to his wife's memory, and that he had antagonized the church trustees by refusing to arrange for the late chairman, Michael Heaton, to be buried with his wife in a part of the churchyard that had been closed.
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Neither reason stands up to close scrutiny.

There are only three contemporary sources which mention Arthur's unpopularity in the township: Mrs Gaskell, her daughter Meta, and Charles Hale, an American who visited Haworth in November 1861.
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The Gaskells' source of information was John Greenwood, who seems to have been at loggerheads with Arthur since the latter discovered his unwarranted
interference and claims to friendship with Charlotte after her death; the baptizing of his child had simply been the latest in a series of incidents which had given Greenwood good reason to dislike the curate and to interpret his actions as hostility to his wife's literary reputation. The corroborative evidence from Charles Hale proves doubly fallacious. Not only was he a personal friend of Mrs Gaskell, who wrote his account of his visit from her home at Plymouth Grove, but he too quotes the Brontë Greenwood story as evidence, confusing the Greenwoods with the Browns in the process; more importantly, he himself states that he got the story not from the principals involved, but from Mrs Gaskell. ‘General aversion', therefore, becomes one parishioner with a grudge and literary contacts who perpetuated his claims.

The overwhelming evidence of all those who wrote accounts of meeting Arthur when they visited Haworth was entirely favourable: he impressed his wife's admirers as quiet, courteous and kind. More significantly, the reminiscences of those who had lived in the chapelry during his curacy, especially those who had been taught by him in the schools, give the impression of a man who was not merely respected but also well liked and whose departure was genuinely regretted.
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The story about Michael Heaton was equally bizarre. The fact that he was buried by Joseph Grant is of no significance, for Grant was sometimes called upon to officiate in Arthur's absence. Similarly, the fact that the faculty for his burial was obtained by the family rather than the minister is irrelevant: Arthur's own application on Patrick's behalf was made not in his public but his private capacity as the deceased's son-in-law. Moreover, the fact that the chairman of the trustees was one of those who voted for Arthur rather than John Wade
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suggests that if there was any truth in the incident at all, the matter had been forgiven and forgotten by those most concerned.

We are therefore left with the problem of finding an explanation for Arthur's rejection. That the margin was as narrow as one on the first occasion and two on the second is an indication that the issue was not clear cut, even in the trustees' minds.

One factor may have been a wish to end the Brontë associations with the church and appoint a minister who would not be a celebrity because of his personal connections. Another may have been the desire to avoid continuing the position in which the new incumbent, like Patrick, was totally dependent on his salary for his income, which meant pressure on the trustees to find funds for extraordinary expenses, such as repairs to the
church and parsonage. A more compelling reason may have been that, despite his personal qualities as a parish priest, Arthur's High Church Puseyite leanings were not in sympathy with an area which had a strong dissenting tradition and a church which had always favoured a more austere form of worship. The trustees may have feared that, without Patrick to overrule him, he would introduce Catholic rituals and vestments to church services, thus alienating his congregation. In all these areas, John Wade was a preferable candidate; he was unsympathetic, if not actually hostile, towards the Brontës and possessed of independent means, which enabled him to contribute towards the parish funds rather than be a drain on them. On the other hand he was tainted by being the vicar of Bradford's candidate and, more importantly, by his having been rejected by the Simeon trustees for the incumbency of Girlington only eighteen months before on unspecified grounds about which dark hints were thrown. Dr Burnett had pushed his candidacy for that post too and, when he was rejected, had felt obliged to defend his choice against the Simeon trustees' accusations and offer him a curacy at the parish church until a new vacancy turned up.
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He was therefore especially anxious to secure Wade a new post and may have suggested that his successful candidacy would ensure that the long-discussed creation of Haworth as an independent parish would meet a favourable reception. This is supposition, but the Orders in Council which eventually gave Haworth its independence from Bradford were finally signed on 30 August 1864, only three years after Wade's appointment.
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