The church of St Michael and All Angels sits at the top of the cobble-stoned main street of Haworth, a small village in the Yorkshire Pennines. Patrick Brontë became curate of the church in February, 1820, and moved into the adjacent parsonage on the edge of the moors.
This was home to his wife Maria, his daughters Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and his troubled son, Branwell Brontë. The people of Haworth are proud of their literary heritage, yet signage for the parsonage is modest and understated.
A ‘reimagining’ of Branwell Brontë’s famous painting before he painted himself out, created for the 2016 BBC TV drama ‘To Walk Invisible’.
There is a sense of unreality as you enter the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The first room we entered was the dining room, overseen by the familiar portrait of Charlotte. For those, like me, who grew up reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, it’s easy to imagine the ghosts of the sisters, who walked around the table reading their work aloud to each other.
The museum curators have brought together an intriguing mix of actual items and examples of the period to create an impression of the house as it might have been when the Brontë sisters lived there.
Across the narrow hallway is Patrick Brontë’s study, with the original piano played by the whole family, and now restored to a playable condition. One of the many things I learned during this visit was that he was originally called ‘Patrick Brunty’, an old Irish name, and assumed the more distinguished sounding name Brontë at Cambridge university.
A small kitchen leads off next, where the girls would gather for the warmth of the range on cold winter evenings. It seems their few servants became close companions, and very much part of the conversations – and the girls did their share of domestic work.
Up the stairs is Charlotte’s bedroom, with one of her dresses on display, as well as personal items, such as her paint box, preserved as she last left it.
Charlotte’s paint box, preserved as she left it
Maria Brontë died of suspected cancer in 1821, and was followed by her two eldest daughters, Maria and Elizabeth in 1825 who died due to poor living conditions at school. Patrick never remarried, and did his best to educate his daughters in preparation for becoming governesses. He made sure they all had lessons in drawing and music, and encouraged their interest in literature, including poetry by Wordsworth, and the novels of Walter Scott, which were studied by the sisters and important to the development of their writing.
Another of the things I learned on my visit was that Patrick Brontë was also an important literary influence on the sisters. His first book of verse, published in 1811, and in 1813 was followed by his second collection entitled ‘The Rural Minstrel’. a novel. In 1818, the year Emily was born, Patrick saw his first novel published: ‘The Maid Of Killarney; or Flora and Albion; A Modern Tale.’
The religious allegories in their father’s works must have inspired the love of poetry and writing for Anne, Emily and Charlotte, even after the failure of their first publication, ‘Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell’. In the dark days when they failed to find a publisher, it is likely they thought ‘our father did it, and so can we.’
Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë wrote some of the most important novels in the history of English literature - including 'Jane Eyre', 'Wuthering Heights' and 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall', but only Charlotte saw commercial success in her lifetime – and suffered the loss of Emily and Branwell in 1848 and Anne in 1849.
In 1854, Charlotte, by then a famous novelist, married her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, but died the following year, possibly from pregnancy complications. Her spirit lives on through her books, and there is a real sense of her presence at the parsonage, a recommended visit for anyone with an interest in lives of the Brontës.
Tony Riches
