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.
Excellent piece of work, I bet it was a lovely wedding she was a nice person as were all the girls in the Bronte family