The Brontës II

As you may have guessed, I'm not in reading mode and am moving through this book at a snail's pace. Actually, I don't want to rush through it, because it is not only interesting to me but also of extremely high quality. There is too much information in the book to provide a detailed summary, but I will make an effort to extract some of what I think are the important facts. The writing isn't entirely in exact chronological order but is still easy to follow.

The chronology skips ahead to the time of Charlotte's death in 1855. Her siblings had already died. Charlotte had published four novels, Emily one and Anne two. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had all been popular, but they were often considered "coarse" and were criticized accordingly. Charlotte admired reviews written by G.H. Lewes, probably because he was straightforward and unpretentious. She was relieved that his review of Jane Eyre was generally positive. They corresponded and eventually met, but had a falling out when he wrote a negative review of Shirley. Following Charlotte's death, Patrick asked Mrs. Gaskell, the novelist, to write a biography of her. She had been acquainted with Charlotte and had previously visited Haworth. That biography shaped public opinion of the Brontës for many years, and Barker goes to great lengths in this book to correct the errors promulgated by Gaskell. As a novelist, Gaskell was probably not the right person for a biography, and she apparently made several inaccurate descriptions. The one of most concern to Barker is her characterization of Patrick as stern, remote and volatile. To some extent, Barker's book is a corrective, indicating that Patrick was close to his children and sensitive to their needs. 

Haworth in 1820 had problems similar to those in other rural towns at the time, i.e., families were enormous, and people died young from tuberculosis or scarlet fever. In Haworth, the local sanitation was also poor, with untreated sewage accumulating in a ditch by the road. The Brontës apparently had a working privy. In those days, the population of Haworth was growing, but the people were poor. This all added up to a very high death rate. I am often amazed to read descriptions of the daily lives of people hundreds of years ago, and enjoyed the description of a church service in 1833 written by a friend of Charlotte:

The people assembled, but it was apparently to listen, any part beyond that was quite out of their reckoning. All through the Prayers a stolid look of apathy was fixed in the generality of their faces, then they sat or leaned in their pews; (some few perhaps were resting after a long walk over the moors). The children from the school pattered in after service had commenced, and pattered out again before the sermon. <began> The sexton with a long staff continually walked round in the aisles 'knobbing' sleepers when he dare, shaking his head at and threatening unruly children, but when the sermon began there was a change, attitudes took the listening form, eyes were turned on the speaker. It was curious now to note <to note> the expression, a rustic untaught intelligence gleamed in their faces, in some a daring doubting questioning look as if the lips would like to say something defiant.

Patrick had a fairly heavy workload, with baptisms, burials and marriages. In 1821, Maria became ill, and her health gradually declined. Elizabeth Firth, a friend from Thornton, came to help. Later, Maria's sister, Elizabeth Branwell, came from Penzance to help. Maria died on September 15, 1821; the cause was thought at the time to be uterine cancer. Maria's death meant that her inheritance from her parents, which was paid as an annuity, would cease. This put an immediate financial pressure on Patrick, and his subsequent behavior seems to indicate that he was in a panic. In December, Patrick proposed to Elizabeth Firth; she was deeply offended and temporarily broke off contact with the Brontës. Elizabeth Branwell did stay and help for a long period, but in those days it was illegal for a sister of a deceased woman to marry her husband. Barker speculates that Patrick also considered proposing to Isabella Drury, another wealthy local woman, but apparently he didn't. Just to show how desperate Patrick was, he also contacted Mary Burder, his former fiancée from Wethersfield, whom he hadn't seen in nearly fifteen years. She was still unmarried, but his overtures went nowhere.

Barker continues with Brontë family life in Haworth. The Brontë children were quite creative by any standard. Branwell went by his middle name and dropped "Patrick." Apparently he came up with various fictional ideas, and Charlotte, Emily and Anne followed suit. They wrote stories and made tiny books in which the print resembled that of a real book. Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte attended the Cowan Bridge School, which was fictionalized by Charlotte in Jane Eyre as Lowood School. The conditions were rather bleak there, and both Maria and Elizabeth died from the tuberculosis that they contracted. However, in Barker's account, the school was not particularly substandard for the time. There do seem to be special linguistic and storytelling abilities in the family.