Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle. Clement King Shorter

churchyard. The Rev. Dr. Burnet, Vicar of Bradford, read the funeral service, and led the way into the church, and the following clergymen were the bearers of the coffin: The Rev. Dr. Cartman of Skipton; Rev. Mr. Sowden of Hebden Bridge; the Incumbents of Cullingworth, Oakworth, Morton, Oxenhope, and St. John’s Ingrow. The chief mourners were the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, son-in-law of the deceased; Martha Brown, the housekeeper; and her sister; Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Wainwright. There were several gentlemen followed the corpse whom we did not know. All the shops in Haworth were closed, and the people filled every pew, and the aisles in the church, and many shed tears during the impressive reading of the service for the burial of the dead, by the vicar. The body of Mr. Brontë was laid within the altar rails, by the side of his daughter Charlotte. He is the last that can be interred inside of Haworth Church. On the coffin was this inscription: “Patrick Brontë, died June 7th, 1861, aged 84 years.” ’

      His will, which was proved at Wakefield, left the bulk of his property, as was natural, to the son-in-law who had faithfully served and tended him for the six years which succeeded Charlotte Brontë’s death.

      Extracted from the Principal Registry of the Probate Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice.

      Being of sound mind and judgment, in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Patrick Brontë, B.A., Incumbent of Haworth, in the Parish of Bradford and county of York, make this my last Will and Testament: I leave forty pounds to be equally divided amongst all my brothers and sisters to whom I gave considerable sums in times past; And I direct the same sum of forty pounds to be sent for distribution to Mr. Hugh Brontë, Ballinasceaugh, near Loughbrickland, Ireland; I leave thirty pounds to my servant, Martha Brown, as a token of regard for long and faithful services to me and my children; To my beloved and esteemed son-in-law, the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, B.A., I leave and bequeath the residue of my personal estate of every description which I shall be possessed of at my death for his own absolute benefit; And I make him my sole executor; And I revoke all former and other Wills, in witness whereof I, the said Patrick Brontë, have to this my last Will, contained in this sheet of paper, set my hand this twentieth day of June, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five.

      Patrick Brontë.—Signed and acknowledged by the said Patrick Brontë as his Will in the presence of us present at the same time, and who in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses: Joseph Redman, Eliza Brown.

      The Irish relatives are not forgotten, and indeed this will gives the most direct evidence of the fact that for the sixty years that he had been absent from his native land he had always kept his own country, or at least his relatives in County Down, sufficiently in mind.

CHAPTER II: CHILDHOOD

       Table of Contents

      Eighty years have passed over Thornton since that village had the honour of becoming the birthplace of Charlotte Brontë. The visitor of to-day will find the Bell Chapel, in which Mr. Brontë officiated, a mere ruin, and the font in which his children were baptized ruthlessly exposed to the winds of heaven. [56a] The house in which Patrick Brontë resided is now a butcher’s shop, and indeed little, one imagines, remains the same. But within the new church one may still overhaul the registers, and find, with but little trouble, a record of the baptism of the Brontë children. There, amid the names of the rough and rude peasantry of the neighbourhood, we find the accompanying entries, [56b] differing from their neighbours only by the fact that Mr. Morgan or Mr. Fennell came to the help of their relatives and officiated in place of Mr. Brontë. Mr. Brontë, it will be observed, had already received his appointment to Haworth when Anne was baptized.

      There were, it is well known, two elder children, Maria and Elizabeth, born at Hartshead, and doomed to die speedily at Haworth. A vague memory of Maria lives in the Helen Burns of Jane Eyre, but the only tangible records of the pair, as far as I am able to ascertain, are a couple of samplers, of the kind which Mrs. Brontë and her sisters had worked at Penzance a generation earlier.

       Maria Brontë finished this Sampler on the 16th of May at the age of eight years

      one of them tells us, and the other:

      Elizabeth Brontë finished this Sampler the 27th of July at the age of seven years.

      Maria died at the age of twelve in May 1825, and Elizabeth in June of the same year, at the age of eleven. It is, however, with their three sisters that we have most concern, although all the six children accompanied their parents to Haworth in 1820.

      Haworth, we are told, has been over-described; and yet it may not be amiss to discover from the easily available directories what manner of place it was during the Brontë residence there. Pigot’s Yorkshire Directory of 1828 gives the census during the first year of Mr. Brontë’s incumbency thus:—

      Haworth, a populous manufacturing village, in the honour of Pontefract, Morley wapentake, and in the parish of Bradford, is four miles south of Keighley, containing, by the census of 1821, 4668 inhabitants.

      Gentry and Clergy: Brontë, Rev. Patrick, Haworth; Heaton, Robert, gent., Ponden Hall; Miles, Rev. Oddy, Haworth; Saunders, Rev. Moses, Haworth.

      From the same source twenty years later we obtain more explicit detail, which is not without interest to-day.

      Haworth is a chapelry, comprising the hamlets of Haworth, Stanbury, and Near and Far Oxenhope, in the parish of Bradford, and wapentake of Morley, West Riding—Haworth being ten miles from Bradford, about the same distance from Halifax, Colne, and Skipton, three and a half miles S. from Keighley, and eight from Hebden Bridge, at which latter place is a station on the Leeds and Manchester railway. Haworth is situated on the side of a hill, and consists of one irregularly built street—the habitations in that part called Oxenhope being yet more scattered, and Stanbury still farther distant; the entire chapelry occupying a wide space. The spinning of worsted, and the manufacture of stuffs, are branches which here prevail extensively.

      The Church or rather chapel (subject to Bradford), dedicated to St. Michael, was rebuilt in 1757: the living is a perpetual curacy, in the presentation of the vicar of Bradford and certain trustees; the present curate is the Rev. Patrick Brontë. The other places of worship are two chapels for baptists, one each for primitive and Wesleyan methodists, and another at Oxenhope for the latter denomination. There are two excellent free schools—one at Stanbury, the other, called the Free Grammar School, near Oxenhope; besides which there are several neat edifices erected for Sunday teaching. There are three annual fairs: they are held on Easter-Monday, the second Monday after St. Peter’s day (old style), and the first Monday after Old Michaelmas day. The chapelry of Haworth, and its dependent hamlets, contained by the returns for 1831, 5835 inhabitants; and by the census taken in June, 1841, the population amounted to 6301.

      Haworth needs even to-day no further description, but the house in which Mr. Brontë resided, from 1820 till his death in 1861, has not been over-described, perhaps because Mr. Brontë’s successor has not been too well disposed to receive the casual visitor to Haworth under his roof.

      Many changes have been made since Mr. Brontë died, but the house still retains its essentially interesting features. In the time of the Brontës, it is true, the front outlook was as desolate as to-day it is attractive. Then there was a little piece of barren ground running down to the walls of the churchyard, with here and there a currant-bush as the sole adornment. Now we see an abundance of trees and a well-kept