Brontës (47 page)

If 1833 and 1834 were busy years for the arts in Haworth, culminating in
Branwell's pupillage to William Robinson, they were also increasingly fraught on the political front. The Church of England was no longer the indissoluble and monopolist partner of the state: the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and the emancipation of Roman Catholics in 1829 had admitted Dissenters and, to a lesser degree, Catholics, to civil liberty and public office. Over the next decade, however, the cry would increasingly be for more rights and more equal status, particularly for Dissenters, who had the backing of the powerful and wealthy mercantile classes. Behind these demands and the outcry over the compulsory payment of church rates by all sects loomed the ultimate horror of the spectre of the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. The relations between the Established Church and Dissenters, which Patrick had always striven to keep open and mutually beneficial, gradually deteriorated over the decade in Haworth as elsewhere.

A symptom of this was the declining fortunes of Patrick's beloved Haworth Auxiliary of the Bible Society, which had relied heavily on the support and co-operation of the different sects in the township. On 3 September 1833 Patrick had to write to the society in London cancelling the visit of one of their speakers because he was unable to rouse sufficient interest for a meeting. This, he explained somewhat incoherently, was ‘owing to changes effected by death – in some cases, and by political, and Trades Unions, in others'.
⁵⁰
Patrick's own health, as he explained, was still poor and he was not yet equal to the struggle of persuading his fellow ministers to put aside their differences and promote the interests of the society.

Ill health, which had dogged Patrick since his dramatic collapse three years before, was also doubtless the reason why in July 1833 he tried to obtain his first curate for the parish. He prepared, but never completed, the nomination papers for a young man, James Bardsley, who had not yet been fully admitted to holy orders. The day before his ordination, the Archbishop of York, ‘for some private reason of his own', refused to sanction the arrangement and assigned Bardsley instead to the curacy of Keighley. Nevertheless, Bardsley remained on friendly terms with the Brontës and frequently took his young wife to the parsonage on Saturday afternoons to drink tea.
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Thwarted in his plans to obtain more permanent help in the chapelry, Patrick must have been doubly grateful to visiting clergymen friends, such as Thomas Crowther and William Morgan, who preached the annual Sunday school sermons on his behalf.
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At the beginning of 1834, Patrick landed himself in the middle of a furious and bitter row, which became increasingly characterized by personal
invective. Towards the end of December 1833 there had been a number of meetings in Bradford of Dissenters from the independent and Baptist denominations, who were fiercely arguing for the removal of their grievances.
⁵³
In response to these meetings, which were reported in detail in the local press, Patrick wrote a series of three letters to the
Leeds Intelligencer
defending the Anglican Church establishment and attacking Dissenters' proposals to remove the bishops from the House of Lords, abolish tithes and other Church dues and open the universities to non-Anglicans. The letters were written anonymously, perhaps in a fruitless attempt to avoid offending the strong dissenting element in Haworth, but signed with his initials.
⁵⁴
His authorship was soon discovered and brought to the attention of the Reverend John Winterbotham, minister of the Baptist chapel in West Lane at Haworth, who responded:

I knew that very many people, both men and women, were seen to flock to the head inn, in this village, to hear, whilst some one read aloud, the wonderful discoveries which a learned gentleman had made concerning Dissenters, and that his College store of learned lore had found out that they were hypocrites, selfish persons, and, moreover, traitors to the King.
⁵⁵

The correspondence, most of which was unfortunately published in the columns of the local newspapers, soon descended from the wider issues which had prompted it to local and personal accusation. Patrick poured scorn on the presumption of his uneducated colleague's attempt to instruct Parliament and the clergy. If Winterbotham wanted the universities opening,

I would seriously ask him, what good this opening would do to him? He seems not to be aware that, however the universities might be opened, it would be requisite, that before any one entered them, he should have at least a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin. When he went therefore to procure admission, the inexorable examiner would put Homer and Horace into his hands, and just then and there, alas! would for ever terminate the university peregrination of the Rev. John Winterbotham.
⁵⁶

His opponent was not slow to respond, accusing him of ‘storms and rages' which ‘in my estimation, resemble more the vapourings of an empty mind, than the sober language of a man of letters'. He pointed out that Patrick had
obtained his present position and salary through ‘the kind influence of Dissenters' and that his recent repairs to the church, which included a new roof, a new and ornamented under-drawing and complete painting and redecoration, had been paid for out of church rates imposed on Dissenters and Anglicans alike.
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Though the newspaper correspondence ended when Patrick, wisely, refused to be provoked into further replies, the matter did not stop there. Winterbotham was to be a vociferous opponent of church rates for many years to come and Patrick himself would return to the fray the following year in his pamphlet
The Signs of the Times
.
⁵⁸

Patrick's attack on the Dissenters does not seem to have soured his relations with the Church trustees, many of whom, by a curious irony, were non-Anglicans. Both clergyman and trustees seem to have been working to put things on a more formal and efficient footing. On 1 February 1834, they all signed a document agreeing to the appointment of four out of the twelve to be acting trustees in rotation, with Joseph Greenwood of Springhead, their chairman, present at all meetings to sign any necessary documents. In addition to creating a more manageable-sized committee, Patrick also initiated a reform in the payment of his salary: ten pounds a year was, in future, to be deducted before it was paid to him. This was to be used for the repair and upkeep of buildings on the Church lands, for which he was responsible. The fixed sum, and its prior deduction, would avoid arguments about the excessive amounts sometimes charged to him in the past and about reclaiming sums which had already been handed over.
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Patrick's good relations, with Joseph Greenwood of Springhead extended beyond Church affairs. On 11 August 1834, he wrote to the Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding, the Earl of Harewood, requesting him, as a matter of urgency, to appoint a magistrate for the Haworth district because ‘Our neighbourhood, is populous, and in some parts, has been – and soon may be again, somewhat turbulent.'
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The suggestion was rejected as two new magistrates had recently been appointed for Keighley, but Patrick tried again in November after the dismissal of Lord Melbourne's Whig ministry had put the Tory party back in office. Joseph Greenwood, being a major landowner, ‘warmly attached to the best Institutions of our Country, … of sound principles – and a regular Churchman', was the obvious candidate for the magistracy, as Patrick pointed out in a letter soliciting his support, to Henry Heap, the vicar of Bradford. The application was again refused, though Greenwood was eventually appointed a magistrate for the area in 1836.
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One of the reasons Patrick cited for needing a magistrate in Haworth itself was to enforce the new factory regulations of 1833 which restricted the hours children under eleven could work in the mills to a maximum of forty-eight, those under eighteen to a maximum of sixty-nine and insisted on a minimum of two hours' schooling per day.
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Patrick is likely to have been a supporter not only of the Factory Act of 1833 but also of the Ten Hours lobby, which wanted further restrictions to be imposed. On 11 September 1834 he entertained the Reverend George Bull at the parsonage and, at very short notice, gave him a platform in the schoolroom to defend himself against accusations of being a ‘Tory Demagogue, under the MASK of pleading for the poor factory children'. Bull's accuser was the splenetic Baptist minister, John Winterbotham, which may have increased Patrick's sympathy for his clerical colleague, but the two men were already friends and Patrick greatly admired George Bull's commitment to the cause of the Ten Hours bill.
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Patrick's last major campaign of the year 1834 was for a Temperance Society in Haworth. An inaugural meeting on 17 November, held in the National School-Room, was so well attended that it had to move to the larger premises of the Methodist chapel on West Lane. Reviving the spirit of co-operation with other sects which had existed before he had incurred Winterbotham's wrath, Patrick called on the support of the other ministers in Haworth, inviting them, Theodore Dury and James Bardsley from Keighley, and a number of other ministers from the district, to address the meeting. Patrick was appointed President of the Society and given three secretaries, the two Baptist ministers, Moses Saunders and John Winterbotham, and his own son, Branwell. At the close of the meeting ‘a considerable number' of people came forward to sign the temperance pledge. Their membership cards declared, ‘We agree to abstain from Distilled Spirits, except for Medicinal Purposes, and to discountenance the Causes and Practice of Intemperance.' Perhaps it was the good effect of the Temperance Society, but when Babbage came to Haworth to investigate the sanitary conditions in 1850 he noted that the total consumption of beer and spirits was considerably below the average of other places.
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This certainly belies the drunken image given the town by Mrs Gaskell.

Ellen Nussey had returned from London in the summer and, to Charlotte's evident surprise, not only remained unchanged by the experience of living in the metropolis but also as firmly attached to her old friend as ever. Mrs Gaskell was struck by Charlotte's lack of optimism in later life,
but this was evidently a characteristic she had developed by the age of eighteen.

I am slow
very
slow to believe the protestations of another … I have long seen ‘friend' in your mind, in your words in your actions, but
now
distinctly visible, and clearly written in characters that
cannot
be distrusted, I discern
true
friend! I am truly grateful for your mindfulness of so obscure a person as myself …
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Ellen tried to fall back into the old ways of gaining Charlotte's attention in their correspondence, seeking her opinion on various subjects. Would Charlotte give her a list of her faults so that she could seek to improve herself? – she would not, ‘Why child – I've neither time nor inclination to reflect on
your
faults when you are so far from me, and when besides kind letters and presents and so forth are continually bringing forward your goodness in the most prominent light.' Did Charlotte think dancing between young men and women an objectionable amusement? – she did not, unless it encouraged frivolity and wasted time.
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Would Charlotte recommend some books for her to read? – she would, ‘in as few words as I can'. The list she gave Ellen is unexceptionable and is simply a summary of the standard works of the day, reflecting not Charlotte's own, more adventurous reading but what she thought would suit her conventional friend.

If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will though I don't admire him) Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great Men and their works are like themselves, You will know how to chuse the good and avoid the evil, the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice, Omit the Comedies of Shakspeare and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain of Byron though the latter is a magnificent Poem and read the rest fearlessly.
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As Shakespeare had been one of Miss Wooler's favourite authors, there was little chance of shocking Ellen there. Byron, more feared for his moral reputation than for his often execrable verse, was the only unusual inclusion and, as Charlotte pointed out, poems like his ‘Hebrew Melodies' were free from any taint of moral perversion. What she did not tell Ellen was that she
had not only read both
Don Juan
and
Cain
herself, but had lingered over the more salacious passages.
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For History read Hume, Rollin, and the Universal History if you can – I never did. For Fiction – read Scott alone all novels after his are worthless. For Biography, read Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Boswell's life of Johnson, Southey's life of Nelson, Lockhart's life of Burns, Moore's life of Sheridan, Moore's life of Byron, Wolfe's remains. For Natural History, read Bewick, and Audubon, and Goldsmith and White of Selborne. For Divinity, but your brother Henry will advise you there.

The whole tenor of the list was summed up in Charlotte's final comment: ‘I only say adhere to standard authors and don't run after novelty.'
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One wonders, by contrast, what she might have suggested Mary Taylor should read.

On 24 November 1834, Emily and Anne together drew up a diary paper which gives a brief but eloquent vignette of life at Haworth Parsonage. It is signed by them both but written by Emily, on a scrap of paper less than 10cm by 6cm, in a mixture of her ordinary hand and the same tiny script as Charlotte and Branwell used in their miniature books.