Today marks yet another sad anniversary in the Brontë story, for on this day 1861 the Brontë line came to an end. Patrick Brontë, the man who had first taken the name after changing it from Prunty, died aged 84, having outlived his wife and all six of his children.
We have a lot to be thankful for – he certainly wasn’t the average nineteenth century curate, although he was Haworth’s parish priest for over 40 years. Many of the clergy at that time came from wealthy and privileged backgrounds, but Patrick was from a poor farming family in Northern Ireland – his talent and intelligence was spotted in his youth, allowing him to be sponsored to attend Cambridge University and then onto a career in the Anglican church.
Patrick never forgot the transformative power of education, and he built Sunday schools in his parishes, allowing children from working class backgrounds to get a rudimentary education when they weren’t working in mills and factories. Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne all taught at his Haworth school in the shadow of their parsonage home. Many years later Tabitha Ratcliffe remembered those lessons:
‘I used to think Miss Anne looked the nicest and most serious like; she used to teach at Sunday school. I’ve been taught by her and by Charlotte and all.’
Patrick also had a major impact as a young curate in Dewsbury, his first position in Yorkshire. During his ministry there he saved a boy from drowning, and threw a drunken bully over a hedge during a church parade – an incident which later found its way into his daughter Charlotte’s novel Shirley.
In Haworth, it was repeated letters and pressure from Patrick Brontë that finally led to a government health inspector, Benjamin Babbage, arriving in Haworth and making recommendations to improve sanitation in the village, which was at the time one of the unhealthiest places in England. It was Patrick who then put further pressure on the government to enact the recommendations in Babbage’s report. The changes which happened thanks to Patrick saved thousands of lives in the years and decades that followed.
Despite his long service, Patrick could be a very shy man, like his daughters, and throughout his life he preferred to dine alone. He was a man ahead of his time in many ways, allowing his daughters to read books by the likes of Byron and Shelley that were thought scandalous at the time: it’s thanks to this enlightened attitude to reading and education for girls that the Brontës had such a broad understanding of literature and the world, despite little formal education. As Patrick himself said in his old age:
‘I do not deny that I am somewhat eccentric. If I had been numbered among the calm, sedate, concentric men of the world I should not have been as I now am. And I should in all probability never have had such children as mine have been.’
Parish returns show that the majority of villagers in Haworth were not Church of England, and attendances at Baptist and Methodist churches outstripped those at Patrick’s St. Michael and All Angels’ church. Despite this, Patrick Brontë was very popular in Haworth, and on the day of his funeral all the shops in the village closed in respect.
The Bradford Observer of 13th June 1861 gave this obituary:
‘The last link connecting the Brontë family with the living has snapt asunder. The father of Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell died at the Parsonage of Haworth, on Friday last, at the age of 83. He went down to the grave in the ripeness of years, and as the last of his race, his gifted children having all died before their father. Mrs. Gaskell, in her Life of Charlotte Brontë has given a sketch of the life of Mr. Brontë, from which, and other sources, we give a few particulars, reserving for another opportunity some interesting particulars respecting the Brontë family, kindly to be supplied by an intimate friend of the deceased. The Rev. Patrick Brontë was born in the parish of Ahellerergh, County Down, Ireland, on the 17th March, 1777. His father was a farmer, and had a large family, remarkable for physical strength and personal beauty. Patrick Brontë gave early 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; from Essex he removed about the beginning of this century to Hartshead cum Clifton, near Cleckheaton. Whilst incumbent of this place he married Miss Maria Branwell, a native of Penzance, who was reputed a woman of an excellent disposition and cultivated mind. At Hartshead two of his children, Maria and Elizabeth were born, after which Mr. Brontë removed to Thornton, near Bradford, where Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, Emily June, and Anne were born. On the 29th February, 1820, he removed to Haworth, where he remained until his death. He was ever on kind and friendly terms with each denominational body; but from individuals in the village the family stood aloof, unless some direct service was required from the first. He was, however, faithful in visiting the sick, and all who sent for him, and diligent in attendance at the schools. He was of a strong passionate nature, which, however, he compressed down with resolute stoicism. He was universally esteemed by the people among whom he lived, and his demise is deeply lamented. The Rev. Mr. Nicholls, the husband of the late Charlotte Brontë, better known as Currer Bell, was with the deceased in his last hours. He did not speak after six o’clock on Friday morning, and died between two and three o’clock that afternoon.’
Let us raise a glass of our favourite beverage and say ‘thank you, Patrick Brontë.’ I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.