Brontës (179 page)

26.
Revd John Wade ended the ‘intolerable nuisance' in the autumn of 1866 when he purchased and demolished the buildings; the church gates were reset in the space created. The whole transaction cost him £330: MS Notes in the front of Burials, iii, Haworth.

27.
Scruton, 113–15 quoting Abraham Holroyd; Emily Dowson, ‘A Visit to Haworth in 1866',
BST
:15:78:256. Some of the pewdoors and pew-receipts were preserved: HAOBP:C16, 17, 19, 27 and 28; MSS BS x, H, BPM.

28.
[Charles Hale], ‘An American Visitor at Haworth, 1861',
BST
:15:77:134. The sounding board was a canopy over the pulpit which projected the parson's voice forward towards his congregation. ‘To me, to live is Christ, to die is gain' was Grimshaw's favourite text and appears in the Wesleyan Methodist chapel he built in Haworth. A teapot bearing the text and his name is said to have belonged to Aunt Branwell, in the mistaken belief that she was a hard-line Methodist (see below, pp.327–8), but there is no evidence that it was ever owned by any of the Brontë family: HAOBP: H55, BPM [JB
ST
no. 5].

29.
EN, Reminiscences: MS pp.63–4, KSC [
LCB
, i, 600].

30.
Ibid., 64; PB,
The Maid of Killarney
, 131 [
Brontëana
, 185]. Abraham Holroyd, describing a visit to Haworth in the summer of 1853 says ‘he delivered an extempore sermon, devoid of all oratorical display, and remarkable for studied simplicity': Scruton, 113–5.

31.
The plaque over the door of the school reads: ‘This National Church Sunday School is under the management of trustees of whom the Incumbent for the time being is one. It was erected AD 1832 by Voluntary Subscription and by a grant from the National Society in London. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Prov. xxii.6.' The barn is marked on the Babbage map and appears in old photographs.

32.
For the closure of the churchyard see below, p.1132 n.56; a new adjoining area was licensed for use in 1856 but burials continued to take place in family graves and vaults in the older sections of the churchyard. For the planting of trees in November 1864 see MS Notes in the front of Burials, iii, Haworth.

33.
ECG to [John Forster], [Sept 1853] [C&P, 243].

34.
Plan of Proposed Extension to Haworth Parsonage, 1872–8: MS BS ix, H, BPM. The extension demolished Patrick's back kitchen, turned the kitchen itself into a lobby for a new dining room in the new wing and caused the realignment of the old garden wall, pushing it further out into Church Lane: the path between the house and wall (see plate 6) was lost. Upstairs, the larger back bedroom lost its mullioned window facing out over the moors and another overlooking the lane, as these walls now became internal, with a door knocked through to give access to the bedrooms and bathroom created in the new wing. The Revd John Wade, who carried out these alterations, had a private income additional to his salary. I have assumed that the parsonage had the same external arrangements as the two almost identical houses in Haworth, Bridge House, at the foot of
Bridgehouse Lane, and the Manor House, at the top of Lord Lane. The existence of narrow mullions at the back of the house is confirmed by the remnants of a window found in the small back bedroom, identified in ECG to [John Forster], [Sept 1853]: [C&P, 243] as the servants' room. It is possible that there was a room over the back kitchen built on by the Brontës where the servants may have slept when there were more people living in the house: see below, n.35.

35.
The back kitchen is marked in outline on the Babbage map: it appears to be two storeys high and its tall narrow chimney is clearly visible in many early photographs (see plate 6). The two-seater privy is remembered by older inhabitants of Haworth: the well was cleaned out in September 1847 when 8 decomposing tin cans which had turned the water yellow were removed: PB, Account Book, [
c
.1845–61]: MS BS 173 p.8, BPM. The small extension marked on the Babbage map, whose shape is outlined by ivy on old photographs, was probably a single storey, lean-to peat-store in the back yard. The bizarre tradition that the peat-store was the room inside the house which became Nicholls' study is unsupported by evidence or commonsense.

36.
See plate 6. Brontë legend has it that there was a ‘gate of the dead' at the foot of the garden through which the Brontë coffins were carried for burial in the vault under the church. Despite the plaque now marking the supposed spot this seems very unlikely. The wall itself has been rebuilt many times so the outlines visible there are not genuine. It only appears clearly in the frontispiece to ECG,
Life
. Gaskell's notoriously inaccurate drawing was probably based on a photograph taken from the hill-top beyond the churchyard and she may have mistaken a tall gravestone close to the wall for a gate. It does not appear in any other contemporary photographs (though the angles from which they are taken would not make it immediately obvious) nor in the Babbage map. The latter marks both the semi-circular garden path and the paths through the churchyard but none on either side of the wall leading to a gateway. The most obvious difficulty about accessing the churchyard through this supposed ‘gate of the dead' is that it would have meant walking over several graves even in the Brontës' own day.

37.
ECG,
Life
, 11–12; Dowson, ‘A Visit to Haworth in 1866', 255; CB to EN, 25 Mar 1844: MS BS 50.8 p.1, BPM [
LCB
, i, 344]. There is a memo in Patrick's notebook, ‘I will never flag the garden walks – since, Ch[arlott]e, & M[arth]a, [cum?] dixerunt, ut, it would cost £5 – look worse, be more slippery, in frost – require washing, & produce weeds, between the joinings – B. 1851': PB, Account Book, [
c
.1845–61]: MS BS 173 p.12, BPM.

38.
ECG,
Life
, 12.

39.
EN, Reminiscences, MS 59, KSC [
LCB
, i, 599]. Ellen characteristically implies that she was responsible, during one of her visits some time after 1849, for the innovation of curtains: ‘it did not please her father but it was not forbidden'. Patrick's concern to avoid anything flammable in a house where there were children (later to be short-sighted adults), open fires and candles, arose from the high number of fatalities in Haworth caused by burning in domestic accidents. He wrote to the newspapers to alert others to this danger: PB in
LM
, 16 Mar 1844 p.6[
LRPB
, 169–70]. ‘Damask and Muslin Window Hangings' are mentioned in Mr Cragg, Advertisement for the Sale by Auction of the Contents of Haworth Parsonage, 1 Oct 1861: MS BS x, H, BPM.

40.
EN, Reminiscences, MS 59–60, KSC [
LCB
, i, 599].

41.
ECG,
Life
, 41; ECG to [John Forster], [Sept 1853] [C&P, 243]. Gaskell describes the dining room as being larger than the study but this was only effected in 1850 when substantial alterations were made to the house and the dining room was expanded at the expense of the hall. The two rooms had originally been the same size as the position of the arch in the hall makes clear. See also Babbage map.

42.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 244 [
LRPB
, 43].

43.
Burials, Baptisms, and Marriages, Haworth. For example in 1820–3 alone Patrick baptized 24 children on 24 July, 19 on 16 Oct and 17 on 25 Dec 1820; 19 on 24 Apr, 20 on 15 Oct and 20 on 16 Oct 1821; 16 on 9 Apr 1822; 30 on 31 Mar, 21 on 22 July and 17 on 14 Oct 1823. Three children in each of the Hodgson, Ogden and Sugden familes were baptized on 15 Oct 1821 and 15 Sept 1822. Unmarried mothers seem to appear on virtually every page of the register in certain years.

44.
Burials and Marriages, Haworth.

45.
James Parker, Petition to the Committee of the Charity at Harrogate for the Purpose of Enabling the Afflicted and Distressed
Poor to Receive the Benefit of the Waters at that Place, 6 June 1820: MS 94D85/10/1/3, WYAS, Bradford.

46.
Firth, 6–7 and 21 June, 8 and 11–12 Sept, 4–6Nov 1820;
LM
, 10 June 1820 p.3. Firth says Patrick was going to the visitation at Leeds but this must be a mistake as Archdeacon Markham held it in Bradford Parish Church.

47.
Firth, 13, 21, 22, 27 Dec 1820.

48.
Ibid., 2, 4 Jan 1821. Patrick stayed a few days to comfort the bereaved widow and daughter.

49.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 245 [
LRPB
, 43]; ECG,
Life
, 43. Having given birth to 6children in as many years at a comparatively late age, Maria was probably susceptible to uterine cancer: her sister, Aunt Branwell, probably died of bowel cancer: see below, p.474.

50.
PB, note in Thomas John Graham,
Modern Domestic Medicine
(London, 1826): HAOBP:bb210 pp.221, 220, BPM. After discussion with William Wilson, the sur-geon who removed his cataracts in 1826, Patrick altered his first note to read: ‘As Mr Wilson, surgeon, said, & I have read, and seen frequently but not always – when cancer, is radically cut out in one part, it breaks out in another – B.': ibid., 220.

51.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 245 [
LRPB
, 43]; ECG,
Life
, 43. The nurse is identified as a Haworth woman, Martha Wright née Heaton (1792–1883) in Ann Dinsdale, ‘Mrs Brontë's Nurse',
BST
:30:3:258–9. See below, pp. 122–4, 920, 1009 n.78.

52.
Burials, Baptisms, and Marriages, Haworth.

53.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 245 [
LRPB
, 43]; ECG,
Life
, 43. ‘A stranger in a strange land' is a quote from Exodus: ch.2 v.22; ch.18 v.3.

54.
Firth, 9, 21 Feb, 17 Apr, 26 May & 22 June 1821. Though not mentioned in her diary, her cash accounts at the end of the book show 3s. 4d. ‘expenses to Haworth' in March and 10s. for the hire of a post chaise to collect Maria and Elizabeth in May.

55.
Fennell travelled to London to visit his son-in-law when Morgan fell ill of a bilious fever there so it is inconceivable that he would not have visited his mortally ill niece only 12 miles away: Elizabeth Wadsworth, ‘Diary',
THAS
(1943), 130.

56.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 246 [
LRPB
, 44].

57.
ECG,
Life
, 472; Sarah Fermi, ‘A “Religious” Family Disgraced',
BST
: 20:5:289–95 identifies the family as the Greenwoods of Bridge House, Haworth.

58.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 245–6[
LRPB
, 43].

59.
Ibid.

60.
LM
, 18 Aug 1821 pp.2, 3; Venn, vi, 189.

61.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 245–6[
LRPB
, 43–4].

62.
ECG to Catherine Winkworth, [25 Aug 1850] [C&P, 124]. The nurse's evidence is extremely unreliable (see below, pp.122–4, 920, 1009 n.78) but Maria's distress at the sight of her children during her final illness is borne out by Nancy Garrs: ‘Mrs Brontë was to the very last interested in her children, though she could only see them at intervals, and one at a time, as it upset her': Chadwick, 63.

63.
L.A. Herbert, ‘Charlotte Brontë: Pleasant Interview with the Old French Governess of this Famous Author', Special Correspondence of ‘The Post', no. 7: typescript of original cutting from scrap-book of Mary Stull, a descendant of Sarah Garrs. BPM.

64.
There is no evidence at all to support L&D, 230, which claims only Maria and Elizabeth attended the funeral with their father and aunt: it was then customary for even very young children to be present at both deathbed and burial.

65.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 246 [
LRPB
, 44].

66.
Patrick started to officiate again on 29 September, taking 2baptisms and 2burials: Baptisms, and Burials, Haworth. For his financial problems see PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 244 [
LRPB
, 44]. For the annuity see Holgate, ‘The Branwells at Penzance', 430. An annuity, by its very nature, ceased on the death of the recipient.

67.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 246 [
LRPB
, 44]. Elizabeth Firth recorded in her cash account for 1821 at the back of her diary for that year that she had given 2guineas to the ‘Subscription for Mr Bronte'. Though it is likely that Mrs Firth, Dr and Miss Outhwaite and Mrs Atkinson (the former Frances Walker) all contributed they cannot have been the sole donors of such an enormous sum as L&D, 233 suggest. Patrick had plenty of other wealthy friends including the Rands, Lamberts, Tetleys and, of course, his clerical acquaintances.

68.
PB to John Buckworth, 27 Nov 1821:
The Cottage Magazine
(1822), 246–7 [
LRPB
, 44]. For Miss Currer's philanthropy see below, pp.138, 1079 n.5.

69.
Patrick noted ‘I paid Wm Tetley Esqre no – 46 – Westcat, Bradford, Yorkshire, the £50:0:0, which I owed him, in 1821, in the presence of Mrs Tetly, & his son, and burnt the note'. As he then goes on to say ‘Mr Tetley made me a present of half a dozen of port, in Augt 1830=', it seems likely that this was when the debt was repaid: PB, note inside front cover of Account Book, [
c
.1845–61]: MS BS 173, BPM [L&D, 233].

70.
Firth, 8–10 Dec 1821. There is no direct evidence that Patrick proposed to Elizabeth Firth, though it was a family tradition, noted by her grandson, that he had done so: Moore Smith, ‘The Brontës at Thornton', 18. The sequence of events in her diary – the unusual noting of the receipt of a letter from Patrick, her writing ‘a last letter' to him 2 days later and the 2–year breach that followed – suggests that he did propose: Firth, 12, 14 Dec 1821, 4 Oct 1823.