Month: June 2025

The notices column in local newspapers was often referred to as ‘hatches, matches and dispatches’ as it contained announcements of births, marriages and deaths. In today’s new Brontë blog post we will look at two landmark life events which occurred for Charlotte Brontë on the same day – 38 years apart.

It was on this day in 1838 that Charlotte Brontë was baptised, and it was on this day in 1854 that Charlotte Brontë married. Her baptism was undertaken at St. James’s church, Thornton near Bradford, that is the old Bell Chapel whole ruins can be found across the road from the current church.

On 29th June 1816 Charlotte was baptised by her father Patrick’s best friend Reverend William Morgan, the man who had been married, to Jane Fennel, alongside Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell in a dual wedding ceremony three and a half years earlier. The font in which William baptised Charlotte, and which also served Elizabeth, Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë, can be found in the modern St. James’s church.

Charlotte Brontë’s godparents were, rather fittingly, Reverend Thomas Atkinson and his fiance Frances Walker. I say fittingly, for it was thanks to these two that the Brontës came to be at Thornton. Atkinson was Patrick’s predecessor as Thornton’s vicar, but he loved Frances Walker who lived near to Patrick’s Hartshead parish. Atkinson arranged with Patrick for the two Anglican priests to swap parishes, to the benefit of all concerned, and the rest is history.

Fast forward thirty eight years from that day in Thornton, and move a handful of miles across the moors to Haworth, and we see Charlotte Brontë entering church for rather a different reason. It was on 29th June 1854 that Charlotte Brontë married her father’s assistant curate Arthur Bell Nicholls. It had been a complicated route to the altar, as Charlotte at first rejected Arthur’s proposal leading him to seek employment as a missionary in Australia. Nevertheless he persisted, and at 8am on a Thursday morning Charlotte became Mrs. Charlotte Brontë Nicholls as she subsequently styled herself. Eight was, and is, the earliest time a marriage is allowed to take place in the Church of England and her father was not in attendance. It is said that the now elderly clergyman was too ill to make the short walk to the church from his parsonage.

The wedding was a very quiet, and very remarkable, affair, and we have an eyewitness account from one of the few people to attend it. This account was given to a local newspaper in 1913 by a John Robinson. At that time he was an old man living in retirement in Wombwell near Barnsley, but on that June day in 1854 he was an apprentice in Haworth about to be called upon to fulfil a surprise task. Here is his account:

“They were married during my apprenticeship. It was not known in the neighbourhood that the marriage was coming off, and to my surprise, when going past the end of ‘Church Fields’ to my lessons one morning, old John Brown, the sexton, was waiting for me, and said: ‘We want tha to go to t’top of t’ ‘ill to watch for three parsons coming from t’other hill, coming from Oxenhope. Charlotte and Mr. Nicholls are going to be married, and when tha sees Mr. Nicholls, Mr. Grant, and Mr. Sowden coming at t’ far hill, tha must get back to t’ Parsonage, so’s Charlotte and Ellen Nussey can get their things on to go down to t’ church.’

I returned with the message, and then was told to get the parish clerk. I found him just beginning to light his kitchen fire, and I had to rush him off, as I knew they would be at the church doors by the time we should get there. He seemed hard of belief. I said, ‘Come on, there’s no time to waste.’

On the way he said, ‘I must stop to lace my boots.’ He did so, and just as the clock was going to strike eight, the three clergymen walked into what they called the front door of the old church and Miss Brontë and Miss Nussey walked together in at the back door.

As far as I remember, the only persons present at the ceremony were those I have named [there was also Margaret Wooler of course]. Directly the ceremony was over, and the interested parties had gone to the parsonage, a carriage and pair drove up from Keighley. There was no station at Haworth then. I remember there was a bay horse and a grey one, and in a few moments Miss Brontë and Mr. Nicholls, now married, were away on their honeymoon. A message came to me to go to the parsonage for breakfast, and I went.”

Robinson at the time was serving a teaching apprenticeship under the tutelage of Arthur Bell Nicholls. He gave a glowing tribute to Charlotte’s husband, saying in 1913: ‘I never saw a man feel more than he did’, and ‘no kinder-hearted man or one more anxious to see others improve their position in life, ever lived, and I myself – I might say scores besides – have him to thank for putting us in the way to make a way in life instead of remaining where we had been born.’

For once I can end this blog post on a happy note in the Brontë story, so let us leave the happy couple there. I hope you can join me next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.

If you live in England you can’t fail to have noticed the unseasonably hot weather. The mercury is rising, and temperatures along with them, as June climate records fall like so many drips from the edges of ice cream cones. Thankfully a cooler snap is now starting, but in today’s post we’re going to look at two sublime ‘cold’ poems from the Brontë sisters.

Before we look at these poems, let’s ponder what life must have been like for the Brontës during a Haworth heatwave. There were no inflatable pools to jump into, nor even the opportunity to wear less clothing or to switch on an electric fan or two. One tool the Brontës did use was a parasol, and doubtless they would have used them to shelter themselves from the sun as they walked out on the moors or around Haworth on their everyday business. A number of their parasols have survived, so take a look at this beautiful collection on display in the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Two of the finest poems by Emily and Anne Brontë, surely the finest Brontë poets, start with a cold reference. Emily’s poem ‘Remembrance’ was given especially high praise by F. R. Leavis, one of the most celebrated literary critics of the first half of the  twentieth century. Referring to its first line rather than its title, Professor Leavis said: “Emily Brontë has hardly yet had her full justice as a poet… her Cold In The Earth is the finest poem in the 19th century part of The Oxford Book Of English Verse.”

Here is Emily’s coldly beautiful poem of loss and the endless cycle of nature, ‘Remembrance’:

“Cold in the earth – and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover,
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover,
Thy noble heart forever, ever more?
Cold in the earth – and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers,
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.
But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.
Then did I check the tears of useless passion –
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten,
Down to that tomb already more than mine.
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?”

Anne Brontë took a similar route in her cold poem ‘Night’. It is one of her briefest, one of her most personal and one of her most powerful poems, for surely the darling of her heart who is now cold in the grave referred to in the poem was her late, lamented love William Weightman, who had died three years before Anne’s composition of this poem:

“I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes!
And then a voice may meet my ear
That death has silenced long ago;
And hope and rapture may appear
Instead of solitude and woe.
Cold in the grave for years has lain
The form it was my bliss to see,
And only dreams can bring again
The darling of my heart to me.”

Whether you’re a sun worshipper or a cool cucumber, I hope you have a happy week ahead of you, and I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

As followers of this blog will know, I recently launched a new venture – the House Of Brontë channel on YouTube. Just like this blog it’s always free, and it exists so that I can share my love of the Brontës with the world and hopefully reach out to even more people who want to know more about this amazing family and their works of genius.

I’m lucky enough to be from Yorkshire, so it’s always been relatively easy for me to travel to centres of Brontë pilgrimage such as Haworth and Thornton. I hear from Brontë fans across the globe, however, and know that a visit to Haworth can be a once-in-a-lifetime bucketlist opportunity. That’s why my latest video goes inside Haworth Parsonage itself and examines one of its most important rooms – the dining room:

I hope you enjoyed the video, if you did please consider liking it, subscribing to the YouTube channel or sharing it with others. I’ll be making a House Of Brontë video where we follow the Brontë footsteps through Brussels soon, so do look out for that one. I hope you can join me here, as usual, on Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.

This is a happy day of celebration for many in the United Kingdom, for it is Father’s Day. In the ever recurring Brontë calendar, however, today marks one of the saddest anniversaries. In today’s new Brontë blog post we remember Elizabeth Brontë who died aged just ten years old on this day in 1825, exactly two hundred years ago today.

When we look for tangible evidence of Elizabeth Brontë now all we have is this beautiful sampler made by Elizabeth when she was seven years old. She would have been expected to produce further samplers in her youth to showcase her prowess as a seamstress, at the time an essential skill for a governess or housekeeper. Alas, fate put paid to those plans for a future career for Elizabeth as she died from tuberculosis contracted at Cowan Bridge School – the school searingly recreated as Lowood in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Elizabeth was born in a time of hope for the Brontë family. The second child to Patrick and Maria she would form a close bond with sister Maria, the eldest Brontë sibling, and be sent to Cowan Bridge school alongside her. We know the two sisters had different characters and different academic abilities, Elizabeth was more practical whereas Maria was a prodigious talent, but hopefully they could provide some solace and comfort to each other during those terrible months which saw both Maria and Elizabeth die in the first half of 1825.

It is to Cowan Bridge that we turn now for a telling recollection of Elizabeth. A Miss Evans was the Supervisor at the school, and she later stated: “The second, Elizabeth, is the only one of the [Brontë] family of whom I have a vivid recollection, from her meeting with a rather alarming accident, in consequence of which I had her for some days and nights in my bed-room, not only for the sake of her greater quiet, but that I might watch over her myself. Her head was severely cut, but she bore all the consequent suffering with exemplary patience, and by it won much upon my esteem.”

Elizabeth, like Maria and later all of her siblings but for Anne Brontë, was buried beneath the stone floor of Haworth church. Her name appeared on the memorial inside the church, but it has been all too easy to forget this young child who was such an integral part of the close-knit group of Brontë siblings.

Today, however, there is great interest in Elizabeth Brontë. My earliest post on Elizabeth, which I wrote in 2016, is still year after year the most visited of the many hundreds of posts on my blog. My video looking at the life of Elizabeth Brontë for my House Of Brontë YouTube channel is the most viewed video I’ve made.

It is clear that a growing number of people do remember Elizabeth Brontë, and they hold her in high esteem. Her loss was a great tragedy in the Brontë story, so let us remember her today and every day.

To all the fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers and pet fathers out there I hope you have had a happy and love filled day. I hope you all can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

This weekend we mark an anniversary that brought to an end the Brontë line, an end to the house of Brontë lineage. Patrick Brontë died on June 7th 1861 in Haworth, where he had served as Church of England curate for over 40 years. It was in some ways his great tragedy that he lived so long, as he had outlived his wife and all six of his children. When he died, his son-in-law Arthur Bell Nicholls was by Patrick’s side, the widower of his third daughter Charlotte Brontë.

It marked a time of great mourning in Haworth, and on the day of Patrick’s funeral the shops closed early and flags flew at half mast. Arthur, ever a man to wear his emotions on his sleeve, was led away after the funeral in tears. There can be little doubt that Patrick had a huge and positive influence on his daughters, and yet even today there are some who seek to denigrate his character. In today’s post we’ll look at how Patrick Brontë faced up to bullies, and of how his action came to be reproduced in one of his daughter Charlotte’s great novels.

We’ll begin with a dramatic scene from Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, a book I particularly love as many of its characters and places were drawn, thinly veiled, from real life. In this scene Reverend Helstone is leading a Whitsun march which encounters trouble when it runs into, quite literally, a similar march from a dissenting church:

“He pointed with his staff to the end of the lane before them. Lo and behold! another, an opposition, procession was there entering, headed also by men in black, and followed also, as they could now hear, by music.

“Is it our double?” asked Shirley, “our manifold wraith? Here is a card turned up.”

“If you wanted a battle, you are likely to get one—at least of looks,” whispered Caroline, laughing.

“They shall not pass us!” cried the curates unanimously; “we’ll not give way!”

“Give way!” retorted Helstone sternly, turning round; “who talks of giving way? You, boys, mind what you are about. The ladies, I know, will be firm. I can trust them. There is not a churchwoman here but will stand her ground against these folks, for the honour of the Establishment.—What does Miss Keeldar say?”

“She asks what is it.”

“The Dissenting and Methodist schools, the Baptists, Independents, and Wesleyans, joined in unholy alliance, and turning purposely into this lane with the intention of obstructing our march and driving us back.”

“Bad manners!” said Shirley, “and I hate bad manners. Of course, they must have a lesson.”

“A lesson in politeness,” suggested Mr. Hall, who was ever for peace; “not an example of rudeness.”

Old Helstone moved on. Quickening his step, he marched some yards in advance of his company. He had nearly reached the other sable leaders, when he who appeared to act as the hostile commander-in-chief—a large, greasy man, with black hair combed flat on his forehead—called a halt. The procession paused. He drew forth a hymn book, gave out a verse, set a tune, and they all struck up the most dolorous of canticles.

Helstone signed to his bands. They clashed out with all the power of brass. He desired them to play “Rule, Britannia!” and ordered the children to join in vocally, which they did with enthusiastic spirit. The enemy was sung and stormed down, his psalm quelled. As far as noise went, he was conquered.

“Now, follow me!” exclaimed Helstone; “not at a run, but at a firm, smart pace. Be steady, every child and woman of you. Keep together. Hold on by each other’s skirts, if necessary.”

And he strode on with such a determined and deliberate gait, and was, besides, so well seconded by his scholars and teachers, who did exactly as he told them, neither running nor faltering, but marching with cool, solid impetus—the curates, too, being compelled to do the same, as they were between two fires, Helstone and Miss Keeldar, both of whom watched any deviation with lynx-eyed vigilance, and were ready, the one with his cane, the other with her parasol, to rebuke the slightest breach of orders, the least independent or irregular demonstration—that the body of Dissenters were first amazed, then alarmed, then borne down and pressed back, and at last forced to turn tail and leave the outlet from Royd Lane free. Boultby suffered in the onslaught, but Helstone and Malone, between them, held him up, and brought him through the business, whole in limb, though sorely tried in wind.

The fat Dissenter who had given out the hymn was left sitting in the ditch. He was a spirit merchant by trade, a leader of the Nonconformists, and, it was said, drank more water in that one afternoon than he had swallowed for a twelvemonth before.”

 

In the 1890s a man named W .W. Yates set about writing a biography of Patrick Brontë, during the course of which he interviewed many people who had known Patrick. One such person was a Mr Senior, now an old man but once a youngster in a Dewsbury Sunday School run by Reverend Brontë in the days before he married and had a family. It was Mr Senior who gave this account, one which was also corroborated by a James Newsome who had also been on the march:

Senior also gave more information on the bully, saying he was: “belonged to Gawthorpe, a hamlet in the township of Ossett, and was a notorious cockfighter and boxer, and much addicted to drinking. Some of the men he was with on the memorable day were persons of like character.”

Senior commented too on the character of Patrick Brontë: “He was resolute about being obeyed, but was very kind, and we always liked him.”

A simple but important tribute to Patrick Brontë from one who had known him, and the outpouring of affection in Haworth after his death showed the depth of gratitude the villagers, not always the easiest to please at that time, held for him. Without Patrick, without his support for his daughters’ learning, there would be no Brontë story as we know it today. I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

The Brontë story is like no other, where else would we find three creative geniuses in one sibling group? In other ways it is a story familiar to us all, a stage we all must tread with its entrances and exits. This last week we remembered the passing of the great Anne Brontë on 28th May 1849, but it also saw the anniversary of another person connected with Anne and with the wider Brontë story: Edmund Robinson.

Edmund Robinson was born in 1800 into a wealthy family of landowners in the York region, and he died on 26th May 1846. His life impacted not just on his family but on the Brontë family too, for it was he who employed both Anne and Branwell Brontë to work at his family home of Thorp Green Hall. It would change both lives forever, and Branwell especially would never be the same again.

Anne Brontë was initially employed by the Robinsons as governess in 1840 and she remained in the position, highly valued, for over five years. It was due in part to her excellent work that they decided to employ her brother when they needed a tutor for their son Edmund junior, and Branwell followed Anne to Thorp Green in 1843. The story is well known of how Branwell fell in love with the mistress of Thorp Green Hall Lydia, the wife of Edmund senior. It may be that they had an affair, certainly Branwell claimed that they did, and in 1845 he was dismissed in disgrace and soon entered upon a dangerous downhill spiral fuelled by drink and drugs.

That much is known, but what do we know of the man who ruled Thorp Green Hall, Edmund Robinson. The information we have is scant but fascinating, and we are left with more questions than answers. The Robinsons had a long connection with the area and had long been landowners and masters of Thorp Green Hall. His father, another Edmund Robinson, Esquire, had died in 1800 just weeks after his son’s birth, aged just 33.

Another family connection to our Edmund Robinson was Frederick John Robinson, later Viscount Goderich and the first Earl of Ripon. Robinson, by that time Goderich, served as Prime Minister from 1827 to 1828. It is said that when he offered up his resignation to King George IV, Goderich wept so much that the King offered him his own handkerchief.

We do not have any such records of Edmund Robinson weeping. He is said to have been a choleric man with a hot temper, one who enjoyed nothing as much as hunting in his own extensive grounds. It was a little surprising, therefore, when he took holy orders, became Reverend Robinson, and became vicar of his own church, Holy Trinity, at Little Ouseburn on his Thorp Green estate (that’s it at the top of this post, and below, photograph copyright of Mark Davis).

After becoming vicar Robinson showed no inclination at all to do the job. A succession of assistant curates carried out the week to week duties of the church and Reverend Robinson carried out no services at all, other than baptising his own family members. Or, should I say, almost none at all – for Robinson carried out one other baptism of a local girl. Why would he do this? Was she related to him, was she perhaps an illegitimate daughter of Reverend Robinson? We shall never know.

People with the status of Edmund Robinson were expected to marry well, and he did in 1824 when he married Lydia Gisborne. Her father Thomas was also a squire and clergyman, but he became a senior figure at Durham Cathedral and was one of the founders of Durham University alongside Archdeacon Charles Thorp, a cousin once removed of Edmund Robinson. There were tensions in the marriage, and Branwell wrote of how Robinson mistreated his wife Lydia.

Branwell Brontë hoped that the death of Reverend Edmund Robinson on this week in 1846 would allow him to marry the widow Lydia Robinson; he could not understand that class distinctions of the time made that impossible. In fact, Lydia married the Baronet Sir Edward Dolman Scott in November 1848, just three months after the death of his first wife. In the process Lydia Robinson elevated herself to become Lady Scott.

Many of the wonderful pictures in today’s blog were taken by the brilliant Brontë country photographer Mark Davis, and are being used with his permission. Mark is one of the co-authors, along with Steven Stanworth, of a forthcoming book about the Brontës in Thornton and beyond called Birthplace Of Dreams from Amberley Publishing. Mark and Steven were at the very heart of the campaign to save the Brontë birthplace in Thornton for the public, and it wouldn’t have succeeded without them. I’m very proud, therefore, to have written the foreword for the book – more news on that as the publication date draws near.

I hope the sun realises that we have now entered meteorological summer, and I hope that you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.