the rev. patrick brontë is a native of the county down in ireland. his father hugh brontë, was left an orphan at an early age. he came from the south to the north of the island, and settled in the parish of ahaderg, near loughbrickland. there was some family tradition that, humble as hugh brontë’s circumstances were, he was the descendant of an ancient family. but about this neither he nor his descendants have cared to inquire. he made an early marriage, and reared and educated ten children on the proceeds of the few acres of land which he farmed. this large family were remarkable for great physical strength, and much personal beauty. even in his old age, mr. brontë is a striking-looking man, above the common height, with a nobly-shaped head, and erect carriage. in his youth he must have been unusually handsome.
he was born on patrickmas day (march 17), 1777, and early gave tokens of extraordinary quickness and intelligence. he had also his full share of ambition; and of his strong sense and forethought there is a proof in the fact, that, knowing that his father could afford him no pecuniary aid, and that he must depend upon his own exertions, he opened a public school at the early age of sixteen; and this mode of living he continued to follow for five or six years. he then became a tutor in the family of the rev. mr. tighe, rector of drumgooland parish. thence he proceeded to st. john’s college, cambridge, where he was entered in july, 1802, being at the time five-and-twenty years of age. after nearly four years’ residence, he obtained his b.a. degree, and was ordained to a curacy in essex, whence he removed into yorkshire. the course of life of which this is the outline, shows a powerful and remarkable character, originating and pursuing a purpose in a resolute and independent manner. here is a youth—a boy of sixteen—separating himself from his family, and determining to maintain himself; and that, not in the hereditary manner by agricultural pursuits, but by the labour of his brain.
i suppose, from what i have heard, that mr. tighe became strongly interested in his children’s tutor, and may have aided him, not only in the direction of his studies, but in the suggestion of an english university education, and in advice as to the mode in which he should obtain entrance there. mr. brontë has now no trace of his irish origin remaining in his speech; he never could have shown his celtic descent in the straight greek lines and long oval of his face; but at five-and-twenty, fresh from the only life he had ever known, to present himself at the gates of st. john’s proved no little determination of will, and scorn of ridicule.
while at cambridge, he became one of a corps of volunteers, who were then being called out all over the country to resist the apprehended invasion by the french. i have heard him allude, in late years, to lord palmerston as one who had often been associated with him then in the mimic military duties which they had to perform.
we take him up now settled as a curate at hartshead, in yorkshire—far removed from his birth-place and all his irish connections; with whom, indeed, he cared little to keep up any intercourse, and whom he never, i believe, revisited after becoming a student at cambridge.
hartshead is a very small village, lying to the east of huddersfield and halifax; and, from its high situation—on a mound, as it were, surrounded by a circular basin—commanding a magnificent view. mr. brontë resided here for five years; and, while the incumbent of hartshead, he wooed and married maria branwell.
she was the third daughter of mr. thomas branwell, merchant, of penzance. her mother’s maiden name was carne: and, both on father’s and mother’s side, the branwell family were sufficiently well descended to enable them to mix in the best society that penzance then afforded. mr. and mrs. branwell would be living—their family of four daughters and one son, still children—during the existence of that primitive state of society which is well described by dr. davy in the life of his brother.
“in the same town, when the population was about 2,000 persons, there was only one carpet, the floors of rooms were sprinkled with sea-sand, and there was not a single silver fork.
“at that time, when our colonial possessions were very limited, our army and navy on a small scale, and there was comparatively little demand for intellect, the younger sons of gentlemen were often of necessity brought up to some trade or mechanical art, to which no discredit, or loss of caste, as it were, was attached. the eldest son, if not allowed to remain an idle country squire, was sent to oxford or cambridge, preparatory to his engaging in one of the three liberal professions of divinity, law, or physic; the second son was perhaps apprenticed to a surgeon or apothecary, or a solicitor; the third to a pewterer or watchmaker; the fourth to a packer or mercer, and so on, were there more to be provided for.
“after their apprenticeships were finished, the young men almost invariably went to london to perfect themselves in their respective trade or art: and on their return into the country, when settled in business, they were not excluded from what would now be considered genteel society. visiting then was conducted differently from what it is at present. dinner-parties were almost unknown, excepting at the annual feast-time. christmas, too, was then a season of peculiar indulgence and conviviality, and a round of entertainments was given, consisting of tea and supper. excepting at these two periods, visiting was almost entirely confined to tea-parties, which assembled at three o’clock, broke up at nine, and the amusement of the evening was commonly some round game at cards, as pope joan, or commerce. the lower class was then extremely ignorant, and all classes were very superstitious; even the belief in witches maintained its ground, and there was an almost unbounded credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous. there was scarcely a parish in the mount’s bay that was without a haunted house, or a spot to which some story of supernatural horror was not attached. even when i was a boy, i remember a house in the best street of penzance which was uninhabited because it was believed to be haunted, and which young people walked by at night at a quickened pace, and with a beating heart. amongst the middle and higher classes there was little taste for literature, and still less for science, and their pursuits were rarely of a dignified or intellectual kind. hunting, shooting, wrestling, cock-fighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in. smuggling was carried on to a great extent; and drunkenness, and a low state of morals, were naturally associated with it. whilst smuggling was the means of acquiring wealth to bold and reckless adventurers, drunkenness and dissipation occasioned the ruin of many respectable families.”
i have given this extract because i conceive it bears some reference to the life of miss brontë, whose strong mind and vivid imagination must have received their first impressions either from the servants (in that simple household, almost friendly companions during the greater part of the day,) retailing the traditions or the news of haworth village; or from mr. brontë, whose intercourse with his children appears to have been considerably restrained, and whose life, both in ireland and at cambridge, had been spent under peculiar circumstances; or from her aunt, miss branwell, who came to the parsonage, when charlotte was only six or seven years old, to take charge of her dead sister’s family. this aunt was older than mrs. brontë, and had lived longer among the penzance society, which dr. davy describes. but in the branwell family itself, the violence and irregularity of nature did not exist. they were methodists, and, as far as i can gather, a gentle and sincere piety gave refinement and purity of character. mr. branwell, the father, according to his descendants’ account, was a man of musical talent. he and his wife lived to see all their children grown up, and died within a year of each other—he in 1808, she in 1809, when their daughter maria was twenty-five or twenty-six years of age. i have been permitted to look over a series of nine letters, which were addressed by her to mr. brontë, during the brief term of their engagement in 1812. they are full of tender grace of expression and feminine modesty; pervaded by the deep piety to which i have alluded as a family characteristic. i shall make one or two extracts from them, to show what sort of a person was the mother of charlotte brontë: but first, i must state the circumstances under which this cornish lady met the scholar from ahaderg, near loughbrickland. in the early summer of 1812, when she would be twenty-nine, she came to visit her uncle, the reverend john fennel, who was at that time a clergyman of the church of england, living near leeds, but who had previously been a methodist minister. mr. brontë was the incumbent of hartshead; and had the reputation in the neighbourhood of being a very handsome fellow, full of irish enthusiasm, and with something of an irishman’s capability of falling easily in love. miss branwell was extremely small in person; not pretty, but very elegant, and always dressed with a quiet simplicity of taste, which accorded well with her general character, and of which some of the details call to mind the style of dress preferred by her daughter for her favourite heroines. mr. brontë was soon captivated by the little, gentle creature, and this time declared that it was for life. in her first letter to him, dated august 26th, she seems almost surprised to find herself engaged, and alludes to the short time which she has known him. in the rest there are touches reminding one of juliet’s—
“but trust me, gentleman, i’ll prove more true,
than those that have more cunning to be strange.”
there are plans for happy pic-nic parties to kirkstall abbey, in the glowing september days, when “uncle, aunt, and cousin jane,”—the last engaged to a mr. morgan, another clergyman—were of the party; all since dead, except mr. brontë. there was no opposition on the part of any of her friends to her engagement. mr. and mrs. fennel sanctioned it, and her brother and sisters in far-away penzance appear fully to have approved of it. in a letter dated september 18th, she says:—
“for some years i have been perfectly my own mistress, subject to no control whatever; so far from it, that my sisters, who are many years older than myself, and even my dear mother, used to consult me on every occasion of importance, and scarcely ever doubted the propriety of my opinions and actions: perhaps you will be ready to accuse me of vanity in mentioning this, but you must consider that i do not boast of it. i have many times felt it a disadvantage, and although, i thank god, it has never led me into error, yet, in circumstances of uncertainty and doubt, i have deeply felt the want of a guide and instructor.” in the same letter she tells mr. brontë, that she has informed her sisters of her engagement, and that she should not see them again so soon as she had intended. mr. fennel, her uncle, also writes to them by the same post in praise of mr. brontë.
the journey from penzance to leeds in those days was both very long and very expensive; the lovers had not much money to spend in unnecessary travelling, and, as miss branwell had neither father nor mother living, it appeared both a discreet and seemly arrangement that the marriage should take place from her uncle’s house. there was no reason either why the engagement should be prolonged. they were past their first youth; they had means sufficient for their unambitious wants; the living of hartshead is rated in the clergy list at 202l. per annum, and she was in the receipt of a small annuity (50l. i have been told) by the will of her father. so, at the end of september, the lovers began to talk about taking a house, for i suppose that mr. brontë up to that time had been in lodgings; and all went smoothly and successfully with a view to their marriage in the ensuing winter, until november, when a misfortune happened, which she thus patiently and prettily describes:—
“i suppose you never expected to be much the richer for me, but i am sorry to inform you that i am still poorer than i thought myself. i mentioned having sent for my books, clothes, &c. on saturday evening, about the time when you were writing the description of your imaginary shipwreck, i was reading and feeling the effects of a real one, having then received a letter from my sister giving me an account of the vessel in which she had sent my box being stranded on the coast of devonshire, in consequence of which the box was dashed to pieces with the violence of the sea, and all my little property, with the exception of a very few articles, being swallowed up in the mighty deep. if this should not prove the prelude to something worse i shall think little of it, as it is the first disastrous circumstance which has occurred since i left my home.”
the last of these letters is dated december the 5th. miss branwell and her cousin intended to set about making the wedding-cake in the following week, so the marriage could not be far off. she had been learning by heart a “pretty little hymn” of mr. brontë’s composing; and reading lord lyttelton’s “advice to a lady,” on which she makes some pertinent and just remarks, showing that she thought as well as read. and so maria branwell fades out of sight; we have no more direct intercourse with her; we hear of her as mrs. brontë, but it is as an invalid, not far from death; still patient, cheerful, and pious. the writing of these letters is elegant and neat; while there are allusions to household occupations—such as making the wedding-cake; there are also allusions to the books she has read, or is reading, showing a well-cultivated mind. without having anything of her daughter’s rare talents, mrs. brontë must have been, i imagine, that unusual character, a well-balanced and consistent woman. the style of the letters is easy and good; as is also that of a paper from the same hand, entitled “the advantages of poverty in religious concerns,” which was written rather later, with a view to publication in some periodical.
she was married from her uncle’s house in yorkshire, on the 29th of december, 1812; the same day was also the wedding-day of her younger sister, charlotte branwell, in distant penzance. i do not think that mrs. brontë ever revisited cornwall, but she has left a very pleasant impression on the minds of those relations who yet survive; they speak of her as “their favourite aunt, and one to whom they, as well as all the family, looked up, as a person of talent and great amiability of disposition;” and, again, as “meek and retiring, while possessing more than ordinary talents, which she inherited from her father, and her piety was genuine and unobtrusive.”
mr. brontë remained for five years at hartshead, in the parish of dewsbury. there he was married, and his two children, maria and elizabeth, were born. at the expiration of that period, he had the living of thornton, in bradford parish. some of those great west riding parishes are almost like bishoprics for their amount of population and number of churches. thornton church is a little episcopal chapel of ease, rich in nonconformist monuments, as of accepted lister and his friend dr. hall. the neighbourhood is desolate and wild; great tracts of bleak land, enclosed by stone dykes, sweeping up clayton heights. the church itself looks ancient and solitary, and as if left behind by the great stone mills of a flourishing independent firm, and the solid square chapel built by the members of that denomination. altogether not so pleasant a place as hartshead, with its ample outlook over cloud-shadowed, sun-flecked plain, and hill rising beyond hill to form the distant horizon.
here, at thornton, charlotte brontë was born, on the 21st of april, 1816. fast on her heels followed patrick branwell, emily jane, and anne. after the birth of this last daughter, mrs. brontë’s health began to decline. it is hard work to provide for the little tender wants of many young children where the means are but limited. the necessaries of food and clothing are much more easily supplied than the almost equal necessaries of attendance, care, soothing, amusement, and sympathy. maria brontë, the eldest of six, could only have been a few months more than six years old, when mr. brontë removed to haworth, on february the 25th, 1820. those who knew her then, describe her as grave, thoughtful, and quiet, to a degree far beyond her years. her childhood was no childhood; the cases are rare in which the possessors of great gifts have known the blessings of that careless happy time; their unusual powers stir within them, and, instead of the natural life of perception—the objective, as the germans call it—they begin the deeper life of reflection—the subjective.
little maria brontë was delicate and small in appearance, which seemed to give greater effect to her wonderful precocity of intellect. she must have been her mother’s companion and helpmate in many a household and nursery experience, for mr. brontë was, of course, much engaged in his study; and besides, he was not naturally fond of children, and felt their frequent appearance on the scene as a drag both on his wife’s strength, and as an interruption to the comfort of the household.
haworth parsonage is—as i mentioned in the first chapter—an oblong stone house, facing down the hill on which the village stands, and with the front door right opposite to the western door of the church, distant about a hundred yards. of this space twenty yards or so in depth are occupied by the grassy garden, which is scarcely wider than the house. the graveyard lies on two sides of the house and garden. the house consists of four rooms on each floor, and is two stories high. when the brontës took possession, they made the larger parlour, to the left of the entrance, the family sitting-room, while that on the right was appropriated to mr. brontë as a study. behind this was the kitchen; behind the former, a sort of flagged store-room. upstairs were four bed-chambers of similar size, with the addition of a small apartment over the passage, or “lobby” as we call it in the north. this was to the front, the staircase going up right opposite to the entrance. there is the pleasant old fashion of window seats all through the house; and one can see that the parsonage was built in the days when wood was plentiful, as the massive stair-banisters, and the wainscots, and the heavy window-frames testify.
this little extra upstairs room was appropriated to the children. small as it was, it was not called a nursery; indeed, it had not the comfort of a fire-place in it; the servants—two affectionate, warm-hearted sisters, who cannot now speak of the family without tears—called the room the “children’s study.” the age of the eldest student was perhaps by this time seven.
the people in haworth were none of them very poor. many of them were employed in the neighbouring worsted mills; a few were mill-owners and manufacturers in a small way; there were also some shopkeepers for the humbler and everyday wants; but for medical advice, for stationery, books, law, dress, or dainties, the inhabitants had to go to keighley. there were several sunday-schools; the baptists had taken the lead in instituting them, the wesleyans had followed, the church of england had brought up the rear. good mr. grimshaw, wesley’s friend, had built a humble methodist chapel, but it stood close to the road leading on to the moor; the baptists then raised a place of worship, with the distinction of being a few yards back from the highway; and the methodists have since thought it well to erect another and a larger chapel, still more retired from the road. mr. brontë was ever on kind and friendly terms with each denomination as a body; but from individuals in the village the family stood aloof, unless some direct service was required, from the first. “they kept themselves very close,” is the account given by those who remember mr. and mrs. brontë’s coming amongst them. i believe many of the yorkshiremen would object to the system of parochial visiting; their surly independence would revolt from the idea of any one having a right, from his office, to inquire into their condition, to counsel, or to admonish them. the old hill-spirit lingers in them, which coined the rhyme, inscribed on the under part of one of the seats in the sedilia of whalley abbey, not many miles from haworth,
“who mells wi’ what another does
had best go home and shoe his goose.”
i asked an inhabitant of a district close to haworth what sort of a clergyman they had at the church which he attended.
“a rare good one,” said he: “he minds his own business, and ne’er troubles himself with ours.”
mr. brontë was faithful in visiting the sick and all those who sent for him, and diligent in attendance at the schools; and so was his daughter charlotte too; but, cherishing and valuing privacy themselves, they were perhaps over-delicate in not intruding upon the privacy of others.
from their first going to haworth, their walks were directed rather out towards the heathery moors, sloping upwards behind the parsonage, than towards the long descending village street. a good old woman, who came to nurse mrs. brontë in the illness—an internal cancer—which grew and gathered upon her, not many months after her arrival at haworth, tells me that at that time the six little creatures used to walk out, hand in hand, towards the glorious wild moors, which in after days they loved so passionately; the elder ones taking thoughtful care for the toddling wee things.
they were grave and silent beyond their years; subdued, probably, by the presence of serious illness in the house; for, at the time which my informant speaks of, mrs. brontë was confined to the bedroom from which she never came forth alive. “you would not have known there was a child in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures. maria would shut herself up” (maria, but seven!) “in the children’s study with a newspaper, and be able to tell one everything when she came out; debates in parliament, and i don’t know what all. she was as good as a mother to her sisters and brother. but there never were such good children. i used to think them spiritless, they were so different to any children i had ever seen. they were good little creatures. emily was the prettiest.”
mrs. brontë was the same patient, cheerful person as we have seen her formerly; very ill, suffering great pain, but seldom if ever complaining; at her better times begging her nurse to raise her in bed to let her see her clean the grate, “because she did it as it was done in cornwall;” devotedly fond of her husband, who warmly repaid her affection, and suffered no one else to take the night-nursing; but, according to my informant, the mother was not very anxious to see much of her children, probably because the sight of them, knowing how soon they were to be left motherless, would have agitated her too much. so the little things clung quietly together, for their father was busy in his study and in his parish, or with their mother, and they took their meals alone; sat reading, or whispering low, in the “children’s study,” or wandered out on the hill-side, hand in hand.
the ideas of rousseau and mr. day on education had filtered down through many classes, and spread themselves widely out. i imagine, mr. brontë must have formed some of his opinions on the management of children from these two theorists. his practice was not half so wild or extraordinary as that to which an aunt of mine was subjected by a disciple of mr. day’s. she had been taken by this gentleman and his wife, to live with them as their adopted child, perhaps about five-and-twenty years before the time of which i am writing. they were wealthy people and kind hearted, but her food and clothing were of the very simplest and rudest description, on spartan principles. a healthy, merry child, she did not much care for dress or eating; but the treatment which she felt as a real cruelty was this. they had a carriage, in which she and the favourite dog were taken an airing on alternate days; the creature whose turn it was to be left at home being tossed in a blanket—an operation which my aunt especially dreaded. her affright at the tossing was probably the reason why it was persevered in. dressed-up ghosts had become common, and she did not care for them, so the blanket exercise was to be the next mode of hardening her nerves. it is well known that mr. day broke off his intention of marrying sabrina, the girl whom he had educated for this purpose, because, within a few weeks of the time fixed for the wedding, she was guilty of the frivolity, while on a visit from home, of wearing thin sleeves. yet mr. day and my aunt’s relations were benevolent people, only strongly imbued with the crotchet that by a system of training might be educed the hardihood and simplicity of the ideal savage, forgetting the terrible isolation of feelings and habits which their pupils would experience in the future life which they must pass among the corruptions and refinements of civilization.
mr. brontë wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress. in the latter he succeeded, as far as regarded his daughters.
his strong, passionate, irish nature was, in general, compressed down with resolute stoicism; but it was there notwithstanding all his philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour; though he did not speak when he was annoyed or displeased. mrs. brontë, whose sweet nature thought invariably of the bright side, would say, “ought i not to be thankful that he never gave me an angry word?”
mr. brontë was an active walker, stretching away over the moors for many miles, noting in his mind all natural signs of wind and weather, and keenly observing all the wild creatures that came and went in the loneliest sweeps of the hills. he has seen eagles stooping low in search of food for their young; no eagle is ever seen on those mountain slopes now.
he fearlessly took whatever side in local or national politics appeared to him right. in the days of the luddites, he had been for the peremptory interference of the law, at a time when no magistrate could be found to act, and all the property of the west riding was in terrible danger. he became unpopular then among the millworkers, and he esteemed his life unsafe if he took his long and lonely walks unarmed; so he began the habit, which has continued to this day, of invariably carrying a loaded pistol about with him. it lay on his dressing-table with his watch; with his watch it was put on in the morning; with his watch it was taken off at night.
many years later, during his residence at haworth, there was a strike; the hands in the neighbourhood felt themselves aggrieved by the masters, and refused to work: mr. brontë thought that they had been unjustly and unfairly treated, and he assisted them by all the means in his power to “keep the wolf from their doors,” and avoid the incubus of debt. several of the more influential inhabitants of haworth and the neighbourhood were mill-owners; they remonstrated pretty sharply with him, but he believed that his conduct was right and persevered in it.
his opinions might be often both wild and erroneous, his principles of action eccentric and strange, his views of life partial, and almost misanthropical; but not one opinion that he held could be stirred or modified by any worldly motive: he acted up to his principles of action; and, if any touch of misanthropy mingled with his view of mankind in general, his conduct to the individuals who came in personal contact with him did not agree with such view. it is true that he had strong and vehement prejudices, and was obstinate in maintaining them, and that he was not dramatic enough in his perceptions to see how miserable others might be in a life that to him was all-sufficient. but i do not pretend to be able to harmonize points of character, and account for them, and bring them all into one consistent and intelligible whole. the family with whom i have now to do shot their roots down deeper than i can penetrate. i cannot measure them, much less is it for me to judge them. i have named these instances of eccentricity in the father because i hold the knowledge of them to be necessary for a right understanding of the life of his daughter.
mrs. brontë died in september, 1821, and the lives of those quiet children must have become quieter and lonelier still. charlotte tried hard, in after years, to recall the remembrance of her mother, and could bring back two or three pictures of her. one was when, sometime in the evening light, she had been playing with her little boy, patrick branwell, in the parlour of haworth parsonage. but the recollections of four or five years old are of a very fragmentary character.
owing to some illness of the digestive organs, mr. brontë was obliged to be very careful about his diet; and, in order to avoid temptation, and possibly to have the quiet necessary for digestion, he had begun, before his wife’s death, to take his dinner alone—a habit which he always retained. he did not require companionship, therefore he did not seek it, either in his walks, or in his daily life. the quiet regularity of his domestic hours was only broken in upon by church-wardens, and visitors on parochial business; and sometimes by a neighbouring clergyman, who came down the hills, across the moors, to mount up again to haworth parsonage, and spend an evening there. but, owing to mrs. brontë’s death so soon after her husband had removed into the district, and also to the distances, and the bleak country to be traversed, the wives of these clerical friends did not accompany their husbands; and the daughters grew up out of childhood into girlhood bereft, in a singular manner, of all such society as would have been natural to their age, sex, and station.
but the children did not want society. to small infantine gaieties they were unaccustomed. they were all in all to each other. i do not suppose that there ever was a family more tenderly bound to each other. maria read the newspapers, and reported intelligence to her younger sisters which it is wonderful they could take an interest in. but i suspect that they had no “children’s books,” and that their eager minds “browzed undisturbed among the wholesome pasturage of english literature,” as charles lamb expresses it. the servants of the household appear to have been much impressed with the little brontës’ extraordinary cleverness. in a letter which i had from him on this subject, their father writes:—“the servants often said that they had never seen such a clever little child” (as charlotte), “and that they were obliged to be on their guard as to what they said and did before her. yet she and the servants always lived on good terms with each other.”
these servants are yet alive; elderly women residing in bradford. they retain a faithful and fond recollection of charlotte, and speak of her unvarying kindness from the “time when she was ever such a little child!” when she would not rest till she had got the old disused cradle sent from the parsonage to the house where the parents of one of them lived, to serve for a little infant sister. they tell of one long series of kind and thoughtful actions from this early period to the last weeks of charlotte brontë’s life; and, though she had left her place many years ago, one of these former servants went over from bradford to haworth on purpose to see mr. brontë, and offer him her true sympathy, when his last child died. i may add a little anecdote as a testimony to the admirable character of the likeness of miss brontë prefixed to this volume. a gentleman who had kindly interested himself in the preparation of this memoir took the first volume, shortly after the publication, to the house of this old servant, in order to show her the portrait. the moment she caught a glimpse of the frontispiece, “there she is,” in a minute she exclaimed. “come, john, look!” (to her husband); and her daughter was equally struck by the resemblance. there might not be many to regard the brontës with affection, but those who once loved them, loved them long and well.
i return to the father’s letter. he says:—
“when mere children, as soon as they could read and write, charlotte and her brothers and sisters used to invent and act little plays of their own, in which the duke of wellington, my daughter charlotte’s hero, was sure to come off conqueror; when a dispute would not unfrequently arise amongst them regarding the comparative merits of him, buonaparte, hannibal, and cæsar. when the argument got warm, and rose to its height, as their mother was then dead, i had sometimes to come in as arbitrator, and settle the dispute according to the best of my judgment. generally, in the management of these concerns, i frequently thought that i discovered signs of rising talent, which i had seldom or never before seen in any of their age . . . a circumstance now occurs to my mind which i may as well mention. when my children were very young, when, as far as i can remember, the oldest was about ten years of age, and the youngest about four, thinking that they knew more than i had yet discovered, in order to make them speak with less timidity, i deemed that if they were put under a sort of cover i might gain my end; and happening to have a mask in the house, i told them all to stand and speak boldly from under cover of the mask.
“i began with the youngest (anne, afterwards acton bell), and asked what a child like her most wanted; she answered, ‘age and experience.’ i asked the next (emily, afterwards ellis bell), what i had best do with her brother branwell, who was sometimes a naughty boy; she answered, ‘reason with him, and when he won’t listen to reason, whip him.’ i asked branwell what was the best way of knowing the difference between the intellects of man and woman; he answered, ‘by considering the difference between them as to their bodies.’ i then asked charlotte what was the best book in the world; she answered, ‘the bible.’ and what was the next best; she answered, ‘the book of nature.’ i then asked the next what was the best mode of education for a woman; she answered, ‘that which would make her rule her house well.’ lastly, i asked the oldest what was the best mode of spending time; she answered, ‘by laying it out in preparation for a happy eternity.’ i may not have given precisely their words, but i have nearly done so, as they made a deep and lasting impression on my memory. the substance, however, was exactly what i have stated.”
the strange and quaint simplicity of the mode taken by the father to ascertain the hidden characters of his children, and the tone and character of these questions and answers, show the curious education which was made by the circumstances surrounding the brontës. they knew no other children. they knew no other modes of thought than what were suggested to them by the fragments of clerical conversation which they overheard in the parlour, or the subjects of village and local interest which they heard discussed in the kitchen. each had their own strong characteristic flavour.
they took a vivid interest in the public characters, and the local and the foreign as well as home politics discussed in the newspapers. long before maria brontë died, at the age of eleven, her father used to say he could converse with her on any of the leading topics of the day with as much freedom and pleasure as with any grown-up person.
