In Search of Anne Brontë
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many people and organisations without whom this work would not have been possible, so alongside the support of family and friends I must give special thanks to the following people: Sophie Bradshaw, a pleasure to work with, and the team at The History Press; Julie Shaw and all at the Hollybank Trust (formerly Roe Head School), a wonderful charity that can be supported via www.hollybanktrust.com; Sylvie Lain and Arthur Sansam; Dave Zdanowicz, for his stunning photography; Amanda White, whose love for the Brontës and other writers is reflected in her art; Mark de Luca, proprietor of ‘Emily’s by De Luca’ on the site of the Brontë birthplace; Diana Chaccour, National Portrait Gallery; Sylvia Thomas, President of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society; Charles Chambers, the Vina Cooke Museum; and Kit Shorten, expert on the Moravian church in Yorkshire.
Many thanks also to the British Library, Leeds City Library, Leeds University Library, Bradford City Library, Royal & Pavilion Museums, Durham University, and Julie and Steve at Ponden Hall. Special thanks must go to the Brontë Society, and especially Ann Dinsdale for her help and support. Final thanks, and without whom this labour of love really would not have been possible, to Anne Brontë herself, the courageous woman whose work continues to bring joy to me and many others.
CONTENTS
TITLE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PROLOGUE
1 IN THE BEGINNING
2 EARLY LOSS
3 THE BRONTË TWINS
4 YOUTHFUL EXPLORATIONS
5 THE HAWORTH THAT ANNE KNEW
6 A PURIFICATION OF FIRE
7 GOING OUT INTO THE WORLD
8 EXILED AND HARASSED
9 THE BELOVED AND LAMENTED MR WEIGHTMAN
10 SEPARATIONS AND RETURNS
11 THE BIRTH OF ACTON BELL
12 THE TRUE HISTORY OF AGNES GREY
13 LIGHT FROM DARKNESS
14 THE SCANDALOUS TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL
15 THE BRONTË SISTERS MAKE THEIR ENTRANCE
16 THE END OF THE UNHAPPY SCAPEGRACE
17 THE UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT
18 THE GLORIOUS SUNSET
19 THE LEGACY LIVES ON
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
PLATES
COPYRIGHT
PROLOGUE
Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.
Agnes Grey
It is 28 May 1849 in a room in Wood’s Lodgings, a guest house in the northern resort of Scarborough. A thin, pale-faced woman gazes out at the sea far below. Beads of sweat shine on her forehead as she tries to draw in one more painful breath. Watching on despairingly are her sister Charlotte and her friend Ellen. They are in tears, but the young woman smiles as best she can. After a lifetime of regrets and fears, punctuated by brief, golden moments of love and triumph, she is completely at peace. These are the last moments of Anne Brontë. She is 29 years old.
A month earlier Anne had written to Ellen Nussey, stating that she wasn’t afraid to die, but she regretted that she could not live longer, as she longed to do something good and worthwhile in life, even if little. Anne was dying, as she had lived, in total obscurity. Nobody who saw her could have guessed that she was the much talked about Acton Bell, whose novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had become such a cause célèbre. Nor could they have guessed that the woman alongside her was the famed Currer Bell.
In her last days, Anne was confident that the literary success that she and her elder sisters, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, had found in the last two years would be fleeting. The names of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell would soon be forgotten, like marks in the sand that are washed away by an incoming tide. It did not trouble her: she was, after all, a woman who scorned fame and the trappings of success. Little did she know that over a century and a half later, she and her sisters would be loved and lauded across the world.
Anne, the youngest of the Brontë sisters, was in many ways the most enigmatic. Quiet and thoughtful in real life, she could seem mysterious even to those closest to her. In a letter to W.S. Williams, one of her publishers, on 31 July 1848, Charlotte wrote of Anne, ‘She does not say much for she is of a still, thoughtful nature, reserved even with her nearest of kin.’1
Nevertheless, Anne hid deep and powerful feelings within her and had led a life that was full of joys and sorrows, even though short of days. She was a woman who was always committed to the truth, however painful it could be to others.
Anne Brontë has for too long been the ‘forgotten Brontë’, an epithet that is unbecoming of her great talents as a poet and novelist. She deserves to be sought out by new readers and revisited by those who are already familiar with her work.
When we go in search of Anne Brontë we inevitably meet with difficulties. All of her youthful prose writing, in itself a prodigious output, has been lost. Only five letters by Anne are currently known to exist, although she was a keen letter writer. Nevertheless we still have more than enough source material to construct a meaningful and accurate life.
Piecing together a biography of Anne Brontë is in some ways like being a lawyer working on a case before the courts. There are lots of clues, if we choose to see them, and from these clues we can piece together a fuller picture of the truth itself. This may in some cases have to lead to supposition as to what Anne would have said, done or felt, but by examining the clues of her life we can do so with some degree of confidence, even certainty.
To a large extent we are reliant upon the testimony of others, most notably Charlotte Brontë and Ellen Nussey, but this can be very revealing, particularly when we know how to read many of Charlotte’s opinions and pronouncements. The greatest evidence of all, however, is contained within Anne’s writing itself. Yes, these are works of fiction, but as every fiction writer knows, there will always be elements of truth contained within them. Whether an author is a first-rate writer like Anne or a tenth-rate scribbler, every book will contain pieces of the person who created it. To discard this is to wilfully misunderstand the art of creating prose and poetry. Anne particularly used her novels to unburden the feelings that she was normally so careful to hide. In Agnes Grey alone, in itself quite a slender novel, we find sixty instances that are drawn directly from her actual life. To examine Anne’s writing, then, is not only rewarding, it is fruitful too, although of course we must be careful to extract the facts from the fiction.
We can now embark upon a remarkable life story. To seek out the real Anne Brontë, we must go back to the very beginning. Back twenty-nine years and four months before the scene that is playing out in Scarborough, to the village of Thornton, near Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Note
1. Smith, Margaret (Ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 2, p.94
1
IN THE BEGINNING
My father was a clergyman of the north of England; deservedly respected by all who knew him.
Agnes Grey
The month of January 1820 was an exceptionally cold one in the north of England, and conditions were very hard for the workers of Yorkshire’s West Riding. Crops of wheat and corn had failed, peat farmers were left with nothing, and the moors and fields lay covered by a thick blanket of snow. Rivers and canals were frozen, and supplies of food and fuel were brought to a standstill.
The harvest of 1819 had been the poorest in memory, and the harsh January weather promised little respite in the year to come. People with little means and little hope were starving and freezing to death. Bodies were found in the streets, with nobody to mourn them. Families were left without breadwinners or broken up as men left the country
side and headed into the burgeoning new urban centres that offered jobs and at least a little hope for the future.
England was entering an age of increased automation, the Industrial Revolution was reaching its height and machines made by one were doing the work of many. It was a period of civil unrest, and discord hung in the air. Groups of people gathered together and plotted acts against the machines and the mill owners who used them. These men became known as Luddites, and the West Riding was a hotbed for them. They would break into factories at night, smashing machines before vanishing into the darkness, or they would intimidate mill owners and workers with threats that were sometimes bloodily carried out.
Others were taking an interest in the political sphere and agitated for suffrage for men of all social classes. Just five months previously, 80,000 people had gathered in St Peter’s Field, across the Pennines in Manchester. They had come to see Henry Hunt, a famous orator who was calling for political and social reform. Unrest grew in the crowd as the day progressed, and soon the local militia were called. These militia, not caring who was in the way, drew sabres and charged into the crowd, cutting down men, women and children. In an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place four years before, this infamous event became known as the Peterloo Massacre; it is in this world of change and unrest that Anne Brontë’s story begins.
Her father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, was a priest in the Church of England. He had been born into very inauspicious circumstances in Emdale, near the village of Drumballyroney, in County Down, Ireland. Despite spending the majority of his life in England, his Irish accent remained undimmed. Due to their very particular circumstances, most of Anne’s formative days were spent in his company, so it is little surprise that contemporary accounts state that both she and her sisters spoke with an Irish accent,1 although Charlotte was the only one who would ever see the country of her forebears.2
Through determination and the kindness of benefactors such as local landowner Reverend Thomas Tighe, Patrick secured an education at Cambridge University and was then ordained into the Anglican priesthood. Patrick saw entering Cambridge as the start of a new life, and a new life required a new name. In Ireland, his family was known by the name Brunty, but from the time of his arrival in England, he called himself Brontë. A Latin scholar, he knew that Brontë translates as thunder, and he was also aware of the castle that Lord Nelson, a hero of his,3 had near the town of Brontë in the foothills of Sicily. These factors influenced his adoption of the name that was to become so famous. It is worth noting that neither he nor his children used the familiar diaeresis, the two dots above the letter ‘e’, from the beginning.4 Patrick often used a plain ‘e’, and in their early years the sisters frequently used the French accented ‘é’ in their surname. Only later in their lives was the ‘Brontë’ we know today uniformly adopted.
After positions as an assistant curate in the south of England, Patrick was offered the role of chaplain to the Governor of Martinique. He was a very inquisitive man, whose mind thrilled at the thought of new ideas and new places. A situation in the West Indies must have seemed highly appealing to him, but it was then that fate took a hand.
The vicar of Dewsbury, John Buckworth, was looking for an enthusiastic and evangelical cleric to help him in his parish. Dewsbury, like many parishes across the West Riding of Yorkshire, was growing rapidly, and priests were in short supply. Patrick recognised this calling, and in December 1809 he headed north to a new life.
By 1810 Patrick was curate at a village parish called Hartshead, near Dewsbury. On the moor near Hartshead is a marker point known as the Dumb Steeple. It was here, on 11 April 1812, that a bloody and terrible event had its beginning. A large crowd of Luddites from the region gathered at the steeple. Their target was to be Rawfolds Mill in nearby Cleckheaton.
The mill owner was a Mr William Cartwright, a man who saw progress only in terms of the revenue that entered his coffers, and who had replaced many of his men with cropping machines that worked tirelessly day and night. Cartwright had been targeted before, and as a consequence of this he slept in his mill along with five soldiers and four armed guards.
On this particular night a crowd of over 200 Luddites headed across the moor towards the mill. Patrick watched them march past his rented home at Lousy Thorn Farm, and, guessing their intentions, made his way to Hartshead church to pray for their souls. When the men reached Cartwright’s mill they tried to gain access but were met by a hail of rifle fire from within. A group of Luddites approaching from Leeds turned and fled at this sound, and soon the fields around Rawsfold turned red with blood and were scattered with the bodies of groaning men. Two were left dead and seventeen more were later executed after the York assizes.
That same night, Patrick heard a scraping and shovelling noise. Looking out of the church window, he saw by moonlight men digging at the earth. Having heard the shots carrying across the night-time stillness, Patrick realised that they were burying others who’d been injured at the mill and had succumbed to their injuries. He left them in peace to bury the dead, and later said a prayer over the unmarked graves.5 Patrick Brontë knew what it was like to struggle with poverty.
Later that year another event took place, and it was to have the most direct impact upon Anne’s story. One of Patrick’s earliest curacies had been at Wellington in Shropshire. It was there that he made friends with a schoolmaster called John Fennell. By 1812, Mr Fennell was also in Yorkshire, and he was running a boys’ school in Rawdon, near the growing city of Leeds. Knowing his friend’s skill at Greek and Latin, John asked if he would inspect the boys in the classics. Patrick had always taken a special interest in education – he had already served as a teacher while a teenage boy in County Down – so he readily agreed to his friend’s request, and in July he commenced his role.
Patrick spent a lot of time at Woodhouse School, but the pupils weren’t his only interest. It was there that he met, and fell quickly in love with, a woman, then 29 years old, by the name of Maria Branwell. Maria was the niece of John Fennell and had come to the school from Penzance, leaving behind her sisters Elizabeth and Charlotte, to assist her cousin Jane with the domestic duties of the establishment.
Eros cast his spell upon them both. It was a whirlwind romance, such as that which can rapidly consume two lonely souls a long way from home and family. They sent each other frank and loving letters, in which Maria playfully referred to Mr Brontë as her ‘saucy Pat’. On 29 December of that year they were married in the parish church of Guiseley. On the same day, and at the same ceremony, Maria’s cousin Jane Fennell married William Morgan, a curate who was an established friend of Patrick Brontë. The two friends performed the ceremonies for each other, sealing bonds that would last a lifetime.
Anne would later lament that she was unable to remember anything of her mother, but she was left in no doubt that she had been a very pious and intelligent woman, and indeed she had written an essay entitled ‘The Advantages of Poverty, in Religious Concerns’.6
The Branwells were a well-established family in Cornwall society and were staunch supporters of the Methodist cause, which was at the time having a revolutionary impact on the Church of England, from which it hadn’t as yet split. Her father, Thomas, was a wealthy merchant with a keen love of music, but both he and his wife, Anne, had died before Maria came to Yorkshire. As the title of Maria’s essay shows, she was predisposed to love a poor clergyman like Patrick Brontë, despite her own more exalted background.
It may seem strange that her wealthy relatives did nothing to help her transition into married life, but it is likely that they disapproved of the match and so cut her out of any inheritance or financial help that she could otherwise have expected. Years later Anne Brontë was to hint at this on the very first page of her novel Agnes Grey, where Agnes reveals a family background very much like that of the author. After revealing that her father was a northern clergyman, she continues:
My mother, who married him against th
e wishes of her friends, was a squire’s daughter, and a woman of spirit. In vain it was represented to her, that if she became the poor parson’s wife, she must relinquish her carriage and her lady’s-maid, and all the luxuries and elegance of affluence … but she would rather live in a cottage with Richard Grey than in a palace with any other man in the world.7
Whilst Anne exaggerated the wealth and position of the Branwell family here, there is more than an element of truth to this portrait.
From a surviving portrait we can see that Maria Brontë, née Branwell, had long, curly hair, like Anne, and striking eyes, like Charlotte, above a long aquiline nose. Despite their lack of monetary resources, and a life very different to the one left behind in Cornwall, she and Patrick were very much in love. It was during this first year of their marriage that Patrick wrote and published his first volume of poems, The Rural Minstrel, setting down his belief in a loving God and the importance of a life without sin.
At the beginning of 1814 their first child, Maria, was born, and from her earliest days she seemed to be an exceptional child. A year later, a sister, Elizabeth, arrived. They were now a happy band of four, but it was a struggle for Patrick to meet the needs of his growing family, especially as his incumbency at Hartshead included no parsonage, leaving him to pay the rent for his little cottage at Lousy Thorn Farm out of his small annual stipend.
Providence was to shine upon them, however. Shortly after Elizabeth’s birth, Patrick received a very timely and most interesting proposal from Reverend Thomas Atkinson, the curate of Thornton. Reverend Atkinson was a man of independent means, not reliant on the larger income that Thornton offered, but he had his eyes on a very different prize. He was in love with Frances Walker of Lascelles Hall near Huddersfield. He’d met Frances on many occasions at Kipping House in Thornton, home of the Firth family who were related to the Walkers. Thomas believed that by moving closer to Lascelles Hall, he could form stronger ties with her. In this he was not wrong, as they would later be married.