 CHAPTER IV About a year after Mrs. Bronte's death, an elder sister, as I have before mentioned, came from Penzance to superintend her brother-in-law's household and look after his children. Miss Branwell was, I believe, a kindly and conscientious woman, with a good deal of character, but with the somewhat narrow ideas natural to one who has spent nearly all her life in the same place. She had strong prejudices, and soon took a distaste to Yorkshire. In Penzance, where plants which we in the north call greenhouse flowers grow in great profusion and without any shelter even in the winter, and where the soft warm climate allows the inhabitants, if so disposed, to live pretty constantly in the open air, it was a great change for a lady considerably past forty to come and take up her abode in a place where neither flowers nor vegetables would flourish, and where a tree of even moderate dimensions might be hunted for far and wide. Where the snow lay long and late on the moors, stretching bleakly and barely far up from the dwelling which was henceforward to be her home, and where often on a tumble or winter nights the four winds of heaven seemed to meet and rage together, tearing round the house as if they were wild beasts striving to find an entrance. She missed the small round of cheerful social visiting perpetually going on in a country town. She missed the friends she had known from her childhood, some of whom had been her parents' friends before they were hers. She disliked many of the customs of the place, and particularly dreaded the cold damp arising from the flag-floors in the passages and parlours of Hallworth Parsonage. The stairs, too, I believe, are made of stone, and no wonder when stone quarries are near and trees are far to seek. I have heard that Miss Branwell always went about the house in patents, clicking up and down the stairs, from her dread of catching cold. For the same reason, in the latter years of her life, she passed nearly all her time and took most of her meals in her bedroom. The children respected her, and had that sort of affection for her which is generated by esteem, but I do not think they ever freely loved her. It was a severe trial for anyone at her time of life to change neighbourhood and habitation so entirely as she did, and the greater her merit. I do not know whether Miss Branwell taught her nieces anything besides sewing and the household arts in which Charlotte afterwards was such an adept. Their regular lessons were said to their father, and they were always in a habit of picking up an immense amount of miscellaneous information for themselves. But a year or so before this time a school had been begun in the north of England for the daughters of clergymen. The place was Cowan Bridge, a small hamlet on the coach-road between Leeds and Kendall, and thus easy of access from Haworth, as the coach ran daily, and one of its stages was at Keithley. The yearly expense for each pupil, according to the entrance rules given in the report for 1842, and I believe they had not been increased since the establishment of the schools in 1823, was as follows. The terms for clothing, lodging, boarding, and educating are 14 pounds a year, have to be paid in advance when the pupils are sent, and also one pound entrance money for the use of books, etc. The system of education comprehends history, geography, the use of the globes, grammar, writing, and arithmetic, all kinds of needlework, and the nicer kinds of household work, such as getting up fine linen, ironing, etc. The accomplishments are required, and additional charge of three pounds a year is made for music or drawing each. Rule III requests that the friends will state the line of education desired in the case of every pupil, having a regard to her future prospects. Rule IV states the clothing and toilette articles which a girl is expected to bring with her, and thus concludes, the pupils all appear in the same dress. They wear plain straw cottage bonnets, in summer white frocks on Sundays, and nankine on other days, in winter purple stuffed frocks and purple cloth cloaks. For the sake of uniformity, therefore, they are required to bring three pounds in lieu of frocks, police, bonnet, tippet, and frills, making the whole sum which each pupil brings with her to the school, seven pounds half year in advance, one pound entrance for books, one pound entrance for clothes. The eighth rule is all letters and parcels are inspected by the superintendent. This is a very prevalent regulation in all young ladies' schools, where I think it is generally understood that the schoolmistress may exercise his privilege, although it is certainly unwise in her to insist too frequently upon it. There is nothing at all remarkable in any of the other regulations, a copy of which was doubtless in Mr. Bronte's hands, when he formed the determination to send his daughters to Cowan Bridge School, that he accordingly took Mariah and Elizabeth thither in July, 1824. I now come to a part of my subject which I find great difficulty in treating, because the evidence relating to it on each side is so conflicting that it seems almost impossible to arrive at the truth. Miss Bronte more than once said to me that she should not have written what she did of low wood in Jane Eyre, if she had thought the place would have been so immediately identified with Cowan Bridge. Although there was not a word in her account of the institution but what was true at the time when she knew it, she also said that she had not considered it necessary in a work of fiction to state every particular with the impartiality that might be required in the court of justice, nor to seek out motives and make allowances for human failings as she might have done if dispassionately analyzing the conduct of those who had the superintendence of the institution. I believe she herself would have been glad of an opportunity to correct the overstrong impression which was made upon the public mind by her vivid picture, though even she, suffering her whole life long both in heart and body from the consequences of what happened there, might have been apt to the last to take her deep belief in facts for the facts themselves, her conception of truth for the absolute truth. In some of the notices of the previous editions of this work, it is assumed that I derived the greater part of my information with regard to her sojourn at Cowan Bridge from Charlotte Bronte herself. I never heard her speak of the place but once, and that was on the second day of my acquaintance with her. A little child on that occasion expressed some reluctance to finish eating his piece of bread at dinner, and she, stooping down and addressing him in a low voice, told him how thankful she should have been at his age for a piece of bread. And when we, though I am not sure if I myself spoke, asked her some question as to the occasion she alluded to, she replied with reserve and hesitation, evidently shying away from what she imagined might lead to too much conversation on one of her books. She spoke of the oat-cake at Cowan Bridge, the clap-bread of Westmoreland, as being different to the leaven-raised oat-cake of Yorkshire, and of her childish distaste for it. Some one present made an allusion to a similar childish dislike in the true tale of The Terrible Knitter's Adent, given in Suthie's commonplace book, and she smiled faintly, but said that the mere difference in food was not all, that the food itself was spoiled by the dirty carelessness of the cook, so that she and her sisters disliked their meals exceedingly, and she named her relief and gladness when the doctor condemned the meat, and spoke of having seen him spit it out. These are all the details I ever heard from her. She so avoided particularising that I think Mr. Carras Wilson's name never passed between us. I do not doubt the general accuracy of my informants, of those who have given and solemnly repeated the details that follow. But it is only just to Miss Bronte to say that I have stated above pretty nearly all that I ever heard on the subject from her. A clergyman living near Kirkby Lonsdale, the reverend William Carras Wilson, was the prime mover in the establishment of this school. He was an energetic man, sparing no labour for the accomplishment of his ends. He saw that it was an extremely difficult task for clergymen with limited incomes to provide for the education of their children. And he devised a scheme by which a certain sum was raised annually by subscription to complete the amount required to furnish a solid and sufficient English education for which the parent's payment of fourteen pounds a year would not have been sufficient. Indeed, that made by the parents was considered to be exclusively appropriated to the expenses of lodging and boarding, and the education provided for by the subscriptions. Twelve trustees were appointed, Mr. Wilson being not only a trustee, but the treasurer and secretary, in fact taking most of the business arrangements upon himself, a responsibility which appropriately fell to him as he lived nearer the school than anyone else who was interested in it. So his character for prudence and judgment was to a certain degree implicated in the success or failure of Cowan Bridge School, and the working of it was for many years the great object and interest of his life. But he was apparently unacquainted with the prime element in good administration, seeking out thoroughly competent persons to still each department, and then making them responsible for and judging them by the result without perpetual interference with the details. Though great was the amount of good which Mr. Wilson did by his constant unwearyed superintendents, that I cannot help feeling sorry that in his old age in declining health the errors which he was believed to have committed should have been brought up against him in a form which received such wonderful force from the touch of Miss Bronte's great genius. No doubt whatever can be entertained of the deep interests which he felt in the success of the school. As I write I have before me his last words on giving up the secretarieship in 1850. He speaks of the withdrawal from declining health of an eye which at all events has loved to watch over the schools with an honest and anxious interest, and again he adds that he resigns therefore with the desire to be thankful for all that God has been pleased to accomplish through his instrumentality, the infirmities and unworthinesses of which he deeply feels and deplores. Cowan Bridge is a cluster of some six or seven cottages gathered together at both ends of a bridge over which the high road from Leeds to Kendall crosses a little stream called the Lek. This high road is nearly disused now, but formerly when the buyers from the West Riding Manufacturing Districts had frequent occasion to go up into the North to purchase the wool of the West Moreland and Cumberland Farmers, it was doubtless much traveled, and perhaps the hamlet of Cowan Bridge had a more prosperous look than it bears at present. It is prettily situated just where the Lekfels swoop into the plain, and by the course of the back alder trees and willows and hazel bushes grow. The current of the stream is interrupted by broken pieces of grey rock and the waters flow over a bed of large round white pebbles which a flood heaves up and moves on either side out of its impetuous way till in some parts they almost form a wall. By the side of the little shallow sparkling vigorous Lek run long pasture fields of the fine short grass common in Highland, for though Cowan Bridge is situated on a plain, it is a plain from which there is many a fall and long descent before you and the Lek reach the valley of the loon. I can hardly understand how the school there came to be so unhealthy. The air all round about was so sweet and time scented when I visited it last summer. But at this day everyone knows that the sight of the building intended for numbers should be chosen with far greater care than that of a private dwelling, from the tendency to illness both infectious and otherwise produced by the congregation of people in close proximity. The house is still remaining that formed part of that occupied by the school. It is a long bow-windowed cottage now divided into two dwellings. It stands facing the Lek between which and it intervenes a space about seventy yards deep that was once the school garden. This original house was an old dwelling of the Picard family, which they had inhabited for two generations. They sold it for school purposes and an additional building was erected running at right angles from the older part. This new part was devoted expressly to school rooms, dormitories, et cetera, and after the school was removed to Casterton it was used for a bobbin mill connected with the stream where wooden reels were made out of the alders which grow profusely in such ground as that surrounding Cowan Bridge. This mill is now destroyed. The present cottage was, at the time of which I write, occupied by the teacher's rooms, the dinner room and kitchens and some smaller bedrooms. When going into this building I found one part that nearest to the high-road converted into a poor kind of public house, then to let, and having all the squalid appearance of a deserted place which rendered it difficult to judge what it would look like when neatly kept up, the broken panes replaced in the windows, and the rough cast now cracked and discoloured made white and whole. The other end forms a cottage with the low ceilings and stone floors of a hundred years ago, the windows did not open freely and widely, and the passage upstairs leading to the bedrooms is narrow and tortuous, altogether smells would linger about the house and damp cling to it. But sanitary matters were little understood thirty years ago, and it was a great thing to get a roomy building close to the high-road and not too far from the habitation of Mr. Wilson, the originator of the educational scheme. There was much need of such an institution. Numbers of ill-paid clergymen hailed the prospect with joy, and eagerly put down the names of their children as pupils when the establishment should be ready to receive them. Mr. Wilson was no doubt pleased by the impatience with which the realization of his idea was anticipated, and opened to the school with less than a hundred pounds in hand, and with pupils, the number of whom varies according to different accounts. Mr. W. W. Karis Wilson, the son of the founder, giving it as seventy, while Mr. Shepherd, the son-in-law, states it to have been only sixteen. Mr. Wilson felt, most probably, that the responsibility of the whole plan rested upon him. The payment made by the parents was barely enough for food and lodging. The subscriptions did not flow very freely into an untried scheme, and great economy was necessary in all the domestic arrangements. He determined to enforce this by frequent personal inspection, carried perhaps to an unnecessary extent, and leading occasionally to a meddling with little matters which had sometimes the effect of producing irritation of feeling. Yet although there was economy in providing for the household, there does not appear to have been any parsimony. The meat, flour, milk, etc., were contracted for, but were a very fair quality, and the dietary which has been shown to me in manuscript was neither bad nor unwholesome, nor on the whole was it wanting in variety. Oatmeal porridge for breakfast, a piece of oat cake for those who required luncheon, baked and boiled beef and mutton, potato pie, and plain homely puddings of different kinds for dinner, at five o'clock bread and milk for the younger ones, and one piece of bread. This was the only time at which the food was limited, for the elder pupils who sat up till a later meal of the same description. Mr. Wilson himself ordered in the food and was anxious that it should be of good quality, but the cook, who had much of his confidence and against whom for a long time no one durst utter a complaint, was careless, dirty, and wasteful. To some children, oatmeal porridge is distasteful and consequently unwholesome even when properly made. At Cowanbridge School it was too often sent up not merely burnt, but with offensive fragments of other substances discoverable in it. The beef that should have been carefully salted before it was dressed had often become tainted from neglect, and girls who were school-fellows with the Brontes during the reign of the cook of whom I am speaking tell me that the house seemed to be pervaded morning, noon, and night by the odor of rancid fat that steamed out of the oven in which much of their food was prepared. There was the same carelessness in making the puddings. One of those ordered was rice boiled in water and eaten with a sauce of treacle and sugar. But it was often un-eatable, because the water had been taken out of the rain-tub and was strongly impregnated with the dust lodging on the roof whence it had trickled down into the old wooden cask which also added its own flavor to that of the original rain-water. The milk, too, was often bingey to use a country expression for a kind of taint that is far worse than sourness and suggests the idea that it is caused by want of cleanliness about the milk-pans rather than by the heat of the weather. On Saturdays a kind of pie or mixture of potatoes and meat was served up which was made of all the fragments accumulated during the week. Scraps of meat from a dirty and disorderly larder could never be very appetizing, and I believe that this dinner was more loathed than any in the early days of Cowenbridge School. One may fancy how repulsive such fare would be to children whose appetites were small and who had been accustomed to food far simpler perhaps but prepared with the delicate cleanliness that made it both tempting and wholesome. At many a meal the little Brontes went without food, although craving with hunger. They were not strong when they came, having only just recovered from a complication of measles and whooping cough. Indeed, I suspect they had scarcely recovered, for there was some consultation on the part of the school authorities whether Mariah and Elizabeth should be received or not in July 1824. Mr. Bronte came again in the September of that year, bringing with him Charlotte and Emily to be admitted as pupils. It appears strange that Mr. Wilson should not have been informed by the teachers of the way in which the food was served up, but we must remember that the cook had been known for some time to the Wilson family, while the teachers were brought together for an entirely different work that of education. They were expressly given to understand that such was their department. The buying in and management of the provisions rested with Mr. Wilson and the cook. The teachers would, of course, be unwilling to lay any complaints on the subject before him. There was another trial of health common to all the girls. The path from Cowan Bridge to Tunstall Church, where Mr. Wilson preached and where they all attended on the Sunday, is more than two miles in length, and goes sweeping along the rise and fall of the unsheltered country in a way to make it a fresh and exhilarating walk in summer but a bitter cold one in winter, especially to children like the delicate little Brontes, whose thin blood flowed languidly in consequence of their feeble appetites rejecting the food prepared for them, and thus inducing a half-starved condition. The church was not warmed, there being no means for this purpose. It stands in the midst of fields, and the damp mist must have gathered round the walls and crept in at the windows. The girls took their cold dinner with them and ate it between the services in a chamber over the entrance opening out of the former galleries. The arrangements for this day were peculiarly trying to delicate children, particularly to those who were spiritless and longing for home, as poor Mariah Bronte must have been, for her ill health was increasing, and the old cough, the remains of the hooping cough, lingered about her. She was far superior in mind to any of her play-fellows and companions, and was lonely amongst them from that very cause. And yet she had faults so annoying that she was in constant disgrace with her teachers and an object of merciless dislike to one of them, who is depicted as mis-scattered in Jane Eyre, and whose real name I will be merciful enough not to disclose. I need hardly say that Helen Burns is as exact a transcript of Mariah Bronte as Charlotte's wonderful power of reproducing character could give. Her heart, to the latest day on which we met, still beat with unavailing indignation at the worrying and the cruelty to which her gentle patient dying sister had been subjected by this woman. Not a word of that part of Jane Eyre but is a literal repetition of scenes between the pupil and the teacher. Those who had been pupils at the same time knew who must have written the book, from the force with which Helen Burns's sufferings are described. They had before that recognized the description of the sweet dignity and benevolence of Miss Temple as only a just tribute to the merits of one whom all that knew her appeared to hold in honour. But when mis-scattered was held up to a program they also recognized in the writer of Jane Eyre an unconsciously a venging sister of the sufferer. One of their fellow pupils, among other statements even worse, gives me the following. The dormitory in which Mariah slept was a long room, holding a row of narrow little beds on each side occupied by the pupils, and at the end of this dormitory there was a small bed chamber opening out of it appropriated to the use of mis-scattered. Mariah's bed stood nearest to the door of this room. One morning, after she had become so seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to her side, the sore from which was not perfectly healed, when the getting-up bell was heard poor Mariah moaned out that she was so ill, so very ill, she wished she might stop in bed, as some of the girls urged her to do so, and said they would explain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent. But mis-scattered was close at hand, and her anger would have to be faced before Miss Temple's kind thoughtfulness could intervene. So the sick child began to dress, shivering with cold as, without leaving her bed, she slowly put on her black worsted stockings over her thin white legs. My informant spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flushed out on dying indignation. Just then mis-scattered issued from her room, and, without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and frightened girl, she took her by the arm on the side of which the blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement whirled her out into the middle of the room, abusing her all the time for dirty and untidy habits. There she left her. My informant says Mariah hardly spoke, except to beg some of the more indignant girls to be calm. But in slow, trembling movements with many a pause she went downstairs at last, and was punished for being late. Anyone may fancy how such an event as this would rankle in Charlotte's mind. I only wonder that she did not remonstrate against her father's decision to send her and Emily back to Cowan Bridge after Mariah's and Elizabeth's deaths. But frequently children are unconscious of the effect which some of their simple revelations would have in altering the opinions entertained by their friends of the persons placed around them. Besides, Charlotte's earnest vigorous mind saw, at an unusually early age, the immense importance of education, as furnishing her with tools which she had the strength and the will to wield, and she would be aware that the Cowan Bridge education was in many points the best that her father could provide for her. Before Mariah brought his death, that low fever broke out in the spring of 1825, which is spoken of in Jane Eyre. Mr. Wilson was extremely alarmed at the first symptoms of this. He went to a kind motherly woman, who had had some connection with the school, as laundress, I believe, and asked her to come and tell him what was the matter with them. She made herself ready and drove with him in his gig. When she entered the school room she saw from twelve to fifteen girls lying about, some resting their aching heads on the table, others on the ground, all heavy-eyed, flushed, indifferent, and weary with pains in every limb. Some peculiar odor, she says, made her recognize that they were sickening for the fever, and she told Mr. Wilson so, and that she could not stay there for fear of conveying the infection to her own children. But he half commanded and half entreated her to remain and nurse them, and finally mounted his gig and drove away while she was still urging that she must return to her own house and to her domestic duties for which she had provided no substitute. However, when she was left in this unceremonious manner, she determined to make the best of it, and the most efficient nurse she proved, although, as she says, it was a dreary time. Mr. Wilson supplied everything ordered by the doctors of the best quality and in the most liberal manner. The invalids were attended by Dr. Batty, a very clever surgeon in Kirkby, who had had the medical superintendents of the establishment from the beginning, and who afterwards became Mr. Wilson's brother-in-law. I have heard from two witnesses besides Charlotte Bronte that Dr. Batty condemned the preparation of the food by the expressive action of spitting out a portion of it. He himself, it is but fair to say, does not remember this circumstance, nor does he speak of the fever itself as either alarming or dangerous. About forty of the girls suffered from this, but none of them died at Cowan Bridge, though one died at her own home, sinking under the state of health which followed it. None of the Bronte's had the fever. But the same causes which affected the health of the other pupils through typhus told more slowly but not less surely upon their constitutions. The principle of these causes was the food. The bad management of the cook was chiefly to be blamed for this. She was dismissed, and the woman who had been forced against her will to serve as head nurse took the place of housekeeper, and henceforward the food was so well prepared that no one could ever reasonably complain of it. Of course it cannot be expected that a new institution comprising domestic and educational arrangements for nearly a hundred persons should work quite smoothly at the beginning. All this occurred during the first two years of the establishment, and in estimating its effect upon the character of Charlotte Bronte, we must remember that she was a sensitive, thoughtful child, capable of reflecting deeply if not of analysing truly, and peculiarly susceptible as are all delicate and sickly children to painful impressions. What the healthy suffer from but momentarily and then forget, those who are ailing, brood over involuntarily and remember long, perhaps with no resentment but simply as a piece of suffering that has been stamped into their very life. The pictures, ideas, and conceptions of character received into the mind of the child of eight years old were destined to be reproduced in fiery words a quarter of a century afterwards. She saw but one side of Mr. Wilson's character, and many of those who knew him at that time assure me of the fidelity with which this is represented, while at the same time they regret that the delineation should have obliterated as it were, nearly all that was noble or conscientious, and that there were grand and fine qualities in Mr. Wilson I have received abundant evidence. Indeed, for several weeks past I have received letters almost daily bearing on the subject of this chapter, some vague, some definite, many full of love and admiration for Mr. Wilson, some as full of dislike and indignation, few containing positive facts. After giving careful consideration to this mass of conflicting evidence, I have made such alterations and omissions in this chapter as seemed to me to be required. It is but just to state that the major part of the testimony with which I have been favored from old pupils is in high praise of Mr. Wilson. Among the letters that I have read there is one whose evidence ought to be highly respected. It is from the husband of Miss Temple. She died in 1856, but he, a clergyman, thus wrote in reply to a letter addressed to him on the subject by one of Mr. Wilson's friends. Often I have heard my late dear wife speak of her sojourn at Cowan Bridge, always in terms of admiration of Mr. Karris Wilson, his parental love to his pupils and their love for him, of the food and general treatment in terms of approval. I have heard her allude to an unfortunate cook who used at times to spoil the porridge, but who, she said, was soon dismissed. The recollections left of the four Bronte sisters at this period of their lives on the minds of those who associated with them are not very distinct. Wild, strong hearts and powerful minds were hidden under an enforced propriety and regularity of demeanor and expression, just as their faces had been concealed by their father under his stiff, unchanging mask. Mariah was delicate, unusually clever and thoughtful for her age, gentle and untidy. Of her frequent disgrace from this last fault of her suffering so patiently borne I have already spoken. The only glimpse we get of Elizabeth, through the few years of her short life, is contained in a letter which I have received from Miss Temple. The second, Elizabeth, is the only one of the family of whom I have a vivid recollection from her meeting with a somewhat alarming accident in consequence of which I had her for some days and nights in my bedroom, not only for the sake of greater quiet but that I might watch over her myself. Her head was severely cut, but she bore all the consequence suffering with exemplary patience and by it one much upon my esteem. Of the two younger ones if two there were I have very slight recollections, save that one a darling child under five years of age was quite the pet-nursling of the school. This last would be Emily. Charlotte was considered the most talkative of the sisters, a bright, clever little child. Her great friend was a certain Melanie Haynes, so Mr. Bronte spells the name, whose brother paid for her schooling and who had no remarkable talent except for music, which her brother's circumstances forbade her to cultivate. She was a hungry, good-natured, ordinary girl older than Charlotte and ever ready to protect her from any petty tyranny or encroachments on the part of the elder girls. Charlotte always remembered her with affection and gratitude. I have quoted the word bright in the account of Charlotte. I suspect that this year of 1825 was the last time it could ever be applied to her. In the spring of it Mariah became so rapidly worse that Mr. Bronte was sent for. He had not previously been aware of her illness and the condition in which she found her was a terrible shock to him. He took her home by the leaves coach, the girls crowding out into the road to follow her with their eyes over the bridge, past the cottages, and then out of sight forever. She died a very few days after her arrival at home. Perhaps the news of her death falling suddenly into the life of which her patient existence had formed apart, only a little weaker so before, made those who remained at Cowan Bridge look with more anxiety on Elizabeth's symptoms, which also turned out to be consumptive. She was sent home in charge of a confidential servant of the establishment, and she too died in the early summer of that year. Charlotte was thus suddenly called into the responsibilities of eldest sister in a motherless family. She remembered how anxiously her dear sister Mariah had striven in her grave earnest way, to be a tender helper and a counsellor to them all, and the duties that now fell upon her seemed almost like a legacy from the gentle little sufferer so lately dead. Both Charlotte and Emily returned to school after the Midsummer holidays in this fatal year. But before the next winter it was thought desirable to advise their removal, as it was evident that the damp situation of the house at Cowan Bridge did not suit their health. Footnote. With regard to my own opinion of the present school, I can only give it as formed after what was merely a cursory and superficial inspection, as I do not believe that I was in the house above half an hour, but it was, and is, this. That the house at Casterton seemed thoroughly healthy and well kept, and is situated in a lovely spot, that the pupils looked bright, happy, and well, and that the Lady Superintendent was a most prepossessing-looking person, who, on my making some inquiry as to the accomplishments taught to the pupils, said that the scheme of education was materially changed since the school had been opened. I would have inserted this testimony in the first edition had I believed that any weight could be attached to an opinion formed on such slight and superficial grounds. End of Footnote. End of Section 5. Volume 1 Chapter 5 of the Life of Charlotte Bronte. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Hayden McHaleff. The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Clegg Horne Gaskell. Volume 1 Chapter 5. For the reason just stated, the little girls were sent home in the autumn of 1825, when Charlotte was little more than nine years old. About this time an elderly woman of the village came to live as a servant of the Parsonage. She remained there as a member of the household for 30 years and from the length of her faithful service and the attachment and respect which she inspired is deserving of mention. Tabby was a thorough specimen of a Yorkshire woman of her class in dialect, appearance and character. She abounded in strong practical sense and shrewdness. Her words were far from flattery but she would spare no deeds in the cause of those whom she kindly regarded. She ruled the children pretty sharply and yet never grudged a little extra trouble to provide them with such small treats as came with her power. In return she claimed to be looked upon as a humble friend and many years later Miss Bronte told me she found it somewhat difficult to manage as Tabby expected to be informed of all the family concerns and yet had grown so deaf that what was repeated to her became known to whoever might be in or about the house. To obviate this publication of what it might be desired to keep secret Miss Bronte used to take her out for a walk on the solitary moors where when both were seated on a tuft of heather in some high lonely place she could acquaint the old woman at ledger with all that she wanted to hear. Tabby had lived in Haworth in the days when the pack horses went through once a week with their tinkling bells and gay worsted adornment carrying the produce of the country from Keely over the hills to Colne and Burnley. What is more she had known the bottom or valley in those primitive days when the fairies frequented the margin of the beck on moonlit nights and had known folk who had seen them. But that was when there were no mills in the valleys and when all the wool spinning was done by hand in the farmhouses round. It were the factories as had driven them away she said. No doubt she had many a tale to tell of bygone days of the countryside. Old ways of living former inhabitants decayed gentry who had melted away and whose places knew them no more family tragedies and dark superstitious dunes and in telling these things without the least consciousness that there might ever be anything required to be softened down would give at full length the bare and simple details. Miss Branwell instructed the children at regular hours in all she could teach making her bedchamber into their school room. Their father was in the habit of relating to them any public news in which he felt an interest and from the opinions of his strong and independent mind they would gather much food for thought. But I do not know whether he gave them any direct instruction. Charlotte's deep thoughtful spirit seems to her felt almost painfully the tender responsibility which rested upon her with the reference to her remaining sisters. She was only 18 months older than Emily but Emily and Anne were simply companions and playmates while Charlotte was motherly friend and guardian to both and this loving assumption of duties beyond her years made her feel considerably older than she really was. Patrick Branwell their only brother was a boy of remarkable promise and in some ways of extraordinary precocity of talent. Mr Bronte's friends advised him to send his son to school but remembering both the strength of will of his own youth and his mode of employing it he believed that Patrick was better at home and that he could teach him well as he had taught others before. So Patrick or as his family called him Branwell remained at Haworth working hard for some hours a day with his father but when the time of the latter was taken up with his parochial duties the boy was thrown into chance companionship with the lads of the village for youth will to youth and boys will to boys. Still he was associated in many of his sister's plays and amusements. These were mostly of a sedentary and intellectual nature. I have had a curious packet confided to me containing an immense amount of manuscript in an inconceivably small space tales, dramas, poems, romances written principally by Charlotte in a hand which it is almost impossible to decipher without the aid of a magnifying glass. No description will give so good an idea of the extreme minuteness of the writing as the annexed facsimile of a page. Among these papers there is a list of her works which I copy as a curious proof how early the rage for literary composition had seized upon her. Catalog of my books with the period of their completion up to August 3rd 1830. Two romantic tales in one volume vis the twelve adventurers and the adventures in Ireland April 2nd 1829. The search after happiness a tale August 1st 1829. Leisure hours a tale and two fragments July 6th 1829. The adventures of Edward de Krak a tale February 2nd 1830. The adventures of Ernest Alenbert a tale May 26th 1830. An interesting incident in the lives of some of the most eminent persons of the age a tale. June 10th 1830. Tales of the Islanders in four volumes contents of the first volume one an account of their origin two a description of the vision island three Raton's attempt four Lord Charles Wellersley and the Marquis de Duro's adventure completed June 31st 1829. Second volume one the school rebellion two the strange incident in the Duke of Wellington's life three tale to his sons four the Marquis of Duro and Lord Charles Wellersley's tale to his little king and queen completed December 2nd 1829. Third volume one the Duke of Wellington's adventure in the cavern two the Duke of Wellington and the little kings and queens visit to the horse guards completed May 8th 1830. Volume four one the three old washer women of Strathfield say two Lord See Wellersley's tale to his brother completed July 30th 1830. Characters of great men of the present age December 17th 1829. The Young Men's magazine in six numbers from August to December the latter month's double number completed December the 12th 1829. General index to their contents one a true story two causes of the war three a song four conversations five a true story continued six the spirit of corridor seven interior of a pothouse a poem eight the glass town a song nine the silver cup a tale ten the table and bars in the desert a song eleven conversations twelve seen on the great bridge thirteen songs of the ancient Britons fourteen seen in my tongue a tale fifteen an American tale sixteen lines written on seeing the garden of a genius seventeen the lay of the glass town eighteen the Swiss artist a tale nineteen lines on the transfer of this magazine twenty on the same by a different hand twenty one chief genie in council twenty two harvest in Spain twenty three the Swiss artists continued twenty four conversations the poetaster a drama in two volumes July 12th 1830 a book of rhymes finished December 17th 1829 contents one the beauty of nature two a short poem three meditations while journeying in a Canadian forest four songs of an exile five on seeing the ruins of the tower of Babel six a thing of fourteen lines seven lines written on the bank of a river one fine summer evening eight spring a song nine autumn a song miscellaneous poems finished May 30th 1830 contents one the churchyard two description of the Duke of Wellington's palace on the pleasant banks of the Lusiva this article is a small prose tale or incident three pleasure four lines written on the summit of a high mountain of the north of England five winter six two fragments namely first the vision second a short untitled poem the evening walk a poem June 23rd 1830 making in the whole 22 volumes Charlotte Pronte August 3rd 1830 as each volume contains from 60 to 100 pages and the size of the page lithographed is rather less than the average the amount of the whole seems very great if we remember that it was all written in about 15 months so much for the quantity the quality strikes me as a singular merit for a girl of 13 or 14 both as a specimen of her prose style at this time and also as revealing something of the quiet domestic life led by these children I take an extract from the introduction to Tales of the Islanders the title of one of their little magazines June 31st 1829 the play of the Islanders was formed in December 1827 in the following manner one night about the time when the cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snow storms and high-peacing night winds of confirmed winter we were all sitting around the warm blazing kitchen fire having just concluded a quarrel with tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle from which she came off victorious no candle having been produced a long pause succeeded which was at last broken by brandwell saying in a lazy manner I don't know what to do this was echoed by emily and an tabby where you may go to bed brandwell I'd rather do anything than that Charlotte why are you so glum tonight tabby oh suppose we had each an island of our own brandwell if we had I would choose the island of man Charlotte and I would choose the Isle of White Emily the Isle of Iran for me Ann and mine shall be Guernsey we then chose who should be chief men in our islands brandwell chose John Bull Astley Cooper and Lee Hunt Emily Walter Scott Mr Lockhart Johnny Lockhart Ann Michael Sadler Lord Bentick Sir Henry Halford I chose the Duke of Wellington and two sons Christopher North and Co and Mr Abernethy here our conversation was interrupted by the to us dismal sound of the clock striking seven and we were summoned off to bed the next day we added many others to our list of men till we got almost all the chief men of the kingdom after this for a long time nothing worth noticed occurring in June 1828 we erected a school on a fictitious island which was to contain 1000 children the manner of the building was as follows the island was 50 miles in circumference and certainly appeared more like the work of enchantment than anything real etc two or three things strike me much in this fragment one is the graphic vividness with which the time of the year the hour of the evening the feeling of cold and darkness outside the sound of the night winds sweeping over the desolate snow-covered moors coming nearer and nearer and at last shaking the very door of the room where they sat sitting for it opened out directly on that bleak white expense it's contrasted with the glow and busy brightness of the cheerful kitchen where these remarkable children are grouped tabby moves about in her quaint country dress frugal, peremptory, prone to find fault pretty sharply yet allowing no one else to blame her children we may feel sure another noticeable fact is the intelligent partisanship with which they choose their great men whom are almost all stanched toys of time moreover they do not confine themselves to local heroes their range of choice has been widened by hearing much of what is not usually considered to interest children little Anne aged scarcely eight picks out the politicians of the day for her chief men there is another scrap of paper in this all but illegible handwriting written about this time and which gives some idea of the sources of their opinions the history of the year 1829 once papa lent my sister Maria a book it was an old geography book she wrote on its blank leaf papa lent me this book this book is 120 years old it is at this moment lying before me while i write this i'm in the kitchen of the parsonage Haworth tabby the 7th is washing up the breakfast things and Anne my younger sister Maria was my eldest is kneeling on a chair looking at some cakes which tabby has been baking for us emily is in the parlor brushing the carpet papa and brandwell are gone to keely aunt is upstairs in her room and i'm sitting by the table writing this in the kitchen keely is a small town four miles from here papa and brandwell are gone for the newspaper the leads intelligentsia a most excellent tory newspaper edited by mr wood and the proprietor mr henerman we take two and see three newspapers a week we take the leads intelligentsia tory and the leads mercury wig edited by mr barnes and his brother son-in-law and his two sons edward and talbot we see the john bull it is a high tory very violent mr driver lends us it as likewise blackwood's magazine the most able periodical there is the editor is mr christopher north an old man 74 years of age the first of april is his birthday his company are timothy tickler morgan odoity mcrabben mordecai mullion warnel and james hogg a man of most extraordinary genius a scottish shepherd our plays were established young men june 1826 our fellows july 1827 islanders december 1827 these are our three great plays that are not kept secret emily's and my best plays were established on the first of december 1827 the others march 1828 best plays mean secret plays they are very nice ones all our plays are very strange ones their nature i need not write on paper for i think i shall always remember them the young men's play took its rise from some wooden soldiers branwell had our fellows from esop's fables and the islanders from several events which happened i will sketch out the origin of our plays more explicitly if i can first young men papa brought branwell some wooden soldiers at leads when papa came home it was night and we were in bed so next morning branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers emily and i jumped out of bed and i snatched up one and exclaimed this is the juke of wellington this shall be the juke when i had said this emily likewise took up one and said it should be hers when an came down she said one should be hers mine was the prettiest of the whole and the tallest and the most perfect in every part emily's was a grave looking fellow and we called him gravy and was a queer little thing much like herself and we called him waiting boy branwell chose his and called him buonaparte the foregoing extract shows something of the kind of reading in which the brontes were interested but their desire for knowledge must have been excited in many directions for i find a list of painters whose works i wish to see drawn up by charlotte when she was scarcely 13 guido reny julio romano tijan rafael michael angelo coraggio anibal carachi leonardo da vinci fra bartholomew carlo signani van dyke ribbons bartholomew ramergy here is this little girl in a remote yorkshire parsonage who has probably never seen anything worthy the name of a painting in her life studying the names and characteristics of the great old italian and flemish masters whose works she longs to see sometime in the dim future that lies before her there is a paper remaining which contains minute studies of and criticisms upon the engravings in friendships offering for 1829 showing how she had early formed those habits of close observation and patient analysis of cause and effect which served her so well in later life as handmaids to her genius the way in which mr bronte made his children sympathize with him in his great interest in politics must have done much to lift them above the chances of their minds being limited or tainted by petty local gossip i take the only other remaining personal fragment out of tales of the islanders it is a sort of apology contained in the introduction to the second volume for they're not having been continued before the writers had been for a long time too busy and latterly too much absorbed in politics parliament was opened and the great catholic question was brought forward and the juke's measures were disclosed and all was slander violence party spirit and confusion oh those six months from the time of the king's speech to the end nobody could write think or speak on any subject but the catholic question and the duke of wellington and mr peal i remember the day when the intelligence extraordinary came with mr peal's speech in it containing the terms on which the catholics were to be let in with what eagerness papa tore off the cover and how we all gathered around him and with what breathless anxiety we listened as one by one they were disclosed and explained and argued upon so ably and so well and then when it was all out how aunt said she thought it was excellent and that the catholics could do no harm with such good security i remember also the doubts as to whether it would pass the house of lords and the prophecies that it would not and when the paper came which was to decide the question the anxiety was almost dreadful with which we listened to the whole affair the opening of the doors the hush the royal dukes in their robes and the great juke in green sash and waistcoat the rising of all the pierces when he rose the reading of his speech papa saying that his words were like precious gold and lastly the majority of one to four in favor of the bill but this is a digression etc etc this must have been written when she was between 13 and 14 it will be interesting to some of my readers to know what was the character of her purely imaginative writing at this period while her description of any real occurrence is as we have seen homely graphic and forcible when she gives away to her powers of creation her fancy and her language alike run right sometimes to the very borders of apparent delirium of this wild weird writing a single example will suffice it is a letter to the editor of one of the little magazines so it is well known that the genie have declared that unless they perform certain arduous duties every year of a mysterious nature all the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up and gathered together in one mighty globe which will roll in solitary grandeur through the vast wilderness of space inhabited only by the four high princes of the genie till time shall be succeeded by eternity and the impudence of this is only to be paralleled by another of their assertions namely that by their magic might they can reduce the world to a desert the purest waters to streams of livid poison and the clearest lakes to stagnant waters the pestilential vapours of which shall slay all living creatures except the bloodthirsty beast of the forest and the ravenous bird of the rock but that in the midst of this desolation the palace of the chief genie shall rise sparkling in the wilderness and the horrible howl of their war cry shall spread over the land at morning at noontide and at night but they shall have their annual feast over the bones of the dead and shall yearly rejoice with the joy of victors i think sir that the horrible wickedness of this needs no remark and therefore i haste to subscribe myself etc july 14th 1829 it is not unlikely that the foregoing letter may have been some allegorical or political reference invisible to our eyes but very clear to the bright little minds for whom it was intended politics were evidently their grand interest the duke of wellington their demigod all that related to him belonged to the heroic age did charlotte want a knight errant or a devoted lover the marquis of duro or lord charles wellersley came ready to her hand there is hardly one of her prose writings at this time in which they are not the principal personages and in which their august father does not appear as some sort of jupiter of tonans or deus ex machina as one evidence how wellersley haunted her imagination i copy out a few of the titles to her papers in the various magazines liffy castle a tale by lord c wellersley lines to the river aragua by the marquis of duro an extraordinary dream by lord c wellersley the green dwarf a tale of the perfect tense by the lord charles albert florian wellersley strange events by lord c af wellersley life in an isolated village or a lonely country house presents many little occurrences which sink into the mind of childhood there to be brooded over no other event may have happened or be likely to happen for days to push one of these aside therefore it has assumed a vague and mysterious importance thus children leading a secluded life are often thoughtful and dreamy the impressions made upon them by the world without the usual sights of the earth and sky the accidental meetings with strange faces and figures rare occurrences in those out of the way places are sometimes magnified by them into things so deeply significant as to be almost supernatural this peculiarity i perceive very strongly in charlotte's writing at this time indeed under the circumstances it is no peculiarity it has been common to all from the chaldean shepherds the lonely herdsmen stretched on the soft grass through half a summer's day the solitary monk to all whose impressions from without have had time to grow and vivify in the imagination till they have been received as actual personifications or supernatural visions to doubt which would be blasphemy to counterbalance this tendency in charlotte was the strong common sense natural to her and daily called into exercise by the requirements of her practical life her duties were not merely to learn her lessons to read a certain quantity to gain ideas she had besides to brush rooms to run errands up and down stairs to help in the simpler forms of cooking to be by turns playfellow and monitors to her younger sisters and brother to make and to mend and to study economy under her careful art thus we see that while her imagination received vivid impressions her excellent understanding had full power to rectify them before her fancies became realities on a scrap of paper she has written down the following relation June 22nd 1830 6 o'clock p.m. Haworth near Bradford the following strange occurrence happened on the 22nd of June 1830 at the time papa was very ill confined to his bed and so weak that he could not rise without assistance tabby and i were alone in the kitchen about half past nine anti-maridian suddenly we heard a knock at the door tabby rose and opened it an old man appeared standing without who accosted her thus old man does the person live here tabby yes old man i wish to see him tabby he is poorly in bed old man i have a message for him tabby who from old man from the lord tabby who old man the lord he desires me to say that the bridegroom is coming and that we must prepare to meet him that the cords are about to be loosed and the golden bowl broken the picture broken at the fountain here he concluded his discourse and abruptly went his way as tabby closed the door i asked her if she knew him her reply was that she had never seen him before nor anyone like him though i am fully persuaded that he was some fanatical enthusiast well meaning perhaps but utterly ignorant of true piety yet i could not forbear weeping at his words spoken so unexpectedly at that particular period though the date of the following poem is a little uncertain it may be most convenient to introduce it here it must have been written before 1833 but how much earlier there are no means of determining i give it as a specimen of the remarkable poetical talent shown in the various diminutive writings of this time at least in all of them which i have been able to read the wounded stag passing amid the deepest shade of the woods somber heart last night i saw a wounded deer laid lonely and apart such light as pierced the crowding bows light scattered scant and dim passed through the fern that formed his couch and scented full on him pain trembled in his weary limbs pain filled his patient eye pain crushed amid the shadowy fern his branchy crown did lie where were his comrades where his mate all from his deathbed gone and he thus struck and desolate suffered and bled alone did he feel what a man might feel friend left and saw distressed did pains keen dart and grief sharp sting strive in his mangled breast did longing for affection lost barb every deadly dart love unrepaid and faith betrayed did these torment his heart no leave to man his proper doom these are the pangs that rise around the bed of state and gloom where adam's offspring dies end of chapter five volume one chapter six part one of the life of Charlotte Bronte this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Hayden McAlef the life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Clegghorn Gaskell volume one chapter six part one this is perhaps a fitting time to give some personal description of Miss Bronte in 1831 she was a quiet thoughtful girl of nearly 15 years of age very small in figure stunted was the word she applied to herself but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the slight fragile body no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to her with soft thick brown hair and peculiar eyes of which i find it difficult to give a description as they appear to me in her later life they were large and well shaped their color a reddish brown but if the iris was closely examined it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints the usual expression was of quiet listening intelligence but now and then on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation a light would shine out as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled which glowed behind those expressive orbs i never saw the like in any other human creature as for the rest of her features they were plain large and ill set but unless you began to catalog them you are hardly aware of the fact for the eyes and power of the countenance overbalanced every physical defect the crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten and the whole face arrested the attention and presently attracted all those whom she herself would have cared to attract her hands and feet were the smallest i ever saw when one of the former was placed in mine it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my palm the delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of sensation which was one reason why all her handy work of whatever kind writing sewing knitting was so clear in its minuteness she was remarkably neat in her whole personal attire but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and gloves i can well imagine that the grave serious composure which when i knew her gave her face the dignity of an old venetian portrait was no acquisition of later years but dated from that early age when she found herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children but in a girl only just entered on her teens such an expression would be called to use the country phrase old-fashioned and in 1831 the period of which i now write we must think of her as a little set antiquated girl very quiet in manners and very quaint in dress for besides the influence exerted by her father's ideas concerning the simplicity of attire befitting the wife and daughters of a country clergyman her aunt on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved had never been in society since she left pensance eight or nine years before and the pensance fashions of that day was still quite dear to her heart in january 1831 charlotte was sent to school again this time she went as a pupil to mr b who lived at rowhead a cheerful roomy country house standing a little apart in a field on the right of the road from Leeds to Huddersfield three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow windows run from basement to roof and look down upon a long green slope of pasture land ending in the pleasant woods of Kirkleys st. George armatges park although rowhead and how off are not 20 miles apart the aspect of the country is as totally dissimilar as if they enjoyed a different climate the soft curving and heaving landscape around the former gives a stranger the idea of cheerful airiness on the heights and of sunny warmth on the broad green valleys below it is just such a neighborhood as the monks loved and traces of the old Plantagenet times are to be met with everywhere side by side with the manufacturing interests of the west riding of today there is the park of Kirkleys full of sunny glades speckled with black shadows of immemorial yew trees the gray pile of building formally a house of professed ladies the mouldering stone in the depth of the wood under which Robin Hood is said to lie close outside the park an old stone gabled house now a roadside inn but which bears the name of the three nuns and has a pictured sign to correspond and this quaint old inn is frequented by fustian dressed millhands from the neighbouring worsted factories which strew the high road from Leeds to Huddersfield and form the centres around which future villages gather such are the contrasts of the modes of living and of times and seasons brought before the traveller on the great roads that traverse the west riding in no other part of england i fancy are the centres brought into such close strange contact as in the district in which rowhead is situated within six miles of miss w's house on the left of the road coming from Leeds lie the remains of howley hall now the property of lord cardigan but formerly belonged to a branch of the saviles near to it is lady ann's well lady ann according to a tradition having been worried and eaten by wolves as she sat at the well to which the indigo died factory people from burstall and batley woollen mills would formally repair on palm sunday when the waters possess remarkable medicinal efficacy and is still believed by some that they assume a strange variety of colours at six o'clock on the morning of that day all around the land held by the farmer who lives in the remains of howley hall are stone houses of today occupied by the people who are making their living and their fortunes by the woollen mills that encroach upon and shoulder out the proprietors of the ancient halls these are to be seen in every direction picturesque many gabled with heavy stone carvings of coats of arms for heraldic ornament belonging to decayed families from whose ancestral lands field after field has been shorn away by the urgency of rich manufacturers pressing hard upon necessity a smoky atmosphere surrounds these old dwellings of former yorkshire squires and blights and blackens the ancient trees that overshadow them cinderpaths lead up to them the ground roundabout is sold for building upon but still the neighbors though they subsist by a different state of things remember that their forefathers lived in agricultural dependence upon the owners of these halls and to treasure up the traditions connected with the stately households that existed centuries ago take oakwell hall for instance it stands in a pasture field about a quarter of a mile from the high road it is but that's distance from the busy whir of the steam engines employed in the woollen mills at burstall and if you walk to it from burstall station about mealtime you encounter strings of mill hands blue with woollen dye and cranting in hungry haste over the cinderpaths bordering the high road turning off from this to the right you ascend through an old pasture field and enter a short byroad called bloody lane a walk haunted by the ghost of a certain captain bat the reprobate proprietor of an old hall close by in the days of the stewards from the bloody lane overshadowed by trees you come into the field in which oakwell hall is situated it is known in the neighborhood to be the place described as field head sherry's residence the enclosure in front half court half garden the paneled hall with the gallery opening into the bed chambers running round the barbarous peach colored drawing room the bright lookout through the garden door upon the grassy lawns and terraces behind where the soft hood pigeons still love to coo and strut in the sun are described in sherry the scenery of that fiction lies close around the real events which suggested it took place in the immediate neighborhood they show a bloody footprint in a bed chamber of oakwell hall and tell a story connected with it and with the lane by which the house is approached captain bat was believed to be far away his family was at oakwell when in the dusk one winter evening he came stalking along the lane and through the hall and up the stairs into his own room where he vanished he had been killed in a duel in london that very same afternoon of december 9th 1684 the stones of the hall formed part of the more ancient vicarage which an ancestor of captain bats had seized in the troublesome times for property which succeeded the reformation this henry bat possessed himself of houses and money without scruple and at last stole the great bell of burst old church for which sacrilegious theft a fine was imposed on the land and has to be paid by the owner of the hall to this day but the oakwell property passed out of the hands of the bats at the beginning of the last century collateral descendants succeeded and left this picturesque trace of their having been in the great hall hangs a mighty pair of stag's horns and dependent from them a printed card recording the fact that on the first of september 1763 there was a great hunting match when this stag was slain and that fourteen gentlemen shared in the chase and dined on the spoil in that hall along with fairfax fernley esquire the owner the fourteen names are given doubtless mighty men of yore but among them all sir fletcher norton attorney general and major general birch were the only ones with which i had any association in 1855 passing on from oakwell their liehouses right and left which were well known to miss bronty when she lived at rowhead as the hospitable homes of some of her school fellows lanes branch off for three or four miles to heaths and commons on the higher ground which formed pleasant walks on holidays and then comes the white gate into the field path leading to rowhead itself one of the bow windowed rooms on the ground floor with the pleasant lookout i have described was the drawing room the other was the school room the dining room was on one side of the door and faced the road the number of pupils during the year and a half that miss bronty was there ranged from seven to ten and as they did not require the whole of the house for their accommodation the third story was unoccupied except by the ghostly idea of a lady whose rustling silk gown was sometimes heard by the listeners at the foot of the second flight of stairs the kind motherly nature of miss w and the small number of the girls made the establishment more like a private family than a school moreover she was a native of the district immediately surrounding rowhead as were the majority of her pupils most likely charlotte bronty in coming from howarth came the greatest distance of all e's home was five miles away two other dear friends the rose and jesse york of charlie lived still nearer two or three came from huddersfield one or two from leeds i shall now quote from a valuable letter which i have received from mary one of these early friends distinct and graphic in expression as becomes a cherished associate of charlotte bronty's the time referred to is her first appearance at rowhead on january 19th 1831 i first saw her coming out of a covered cart in very old-fashioned clothes and looking very cold and miserable she was coming to school at miss w's when she appeared in the school room her dress was changed but just as old she looked a little old woman so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it she was very shy and nervous and spoke with a strong irish accent when a book was given to her she dropped her head over it until her nose nearly touched it and when she was told to hold her head up up went the book after it still close to her nose so that it was not possible to help laughing this was the first impression she made upon one of those whose dear and valued friend she was to become in later life another of the girls recalls her first sight of charlotte on the day she came standing by the school room window looking out on the snowy landscape and crying while all the rest were at play e was younger than she and her tender heart was touched by the apparently desolate condition in which she found the oddly dressed odd-looking little girl that winter morning as sick for home she stood in tears in a new strange place among new strange people any over demonstrative kindness would have scared the wild little maiden from health but e who is shadowed forth in the caroline health zone of shirley managed to win confidence and was allowed to give sympathy to quote again from mary's letter we thought her very ignorant for she had never learnt grammar at all and very little geography this account of her partial ignorance is confirmed by her other school fellows but miss w was a lady of remarkable intelligence and of delicate tender sympathy she gave a proof of this in her first treatment of charlotte the little girl was well read but not well grounded miss w took her aside and told her that she was afraid that she must place her in the second class for some time till she could overtake the girls of her own age in the knowledge of grammar etc but poor charlotte received this announcement with so sad a fit of crying that miss w's kind heart was softened and she wisely perceived that with such a girl it would be better to place her in the first class and allow her to make up by private study in those branches where she was deficient she would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range altogether she was acquainted with most of the short pieces of poetry that we had to learn by heart she would tell us the authors the poems they were taken from and sometimes repeat a page or two and tell us the plot she had a habit of writing in italics printing characters and said she had learnt it by writing in their magazine they brought out a magazine once a month and wished it to look as like the print as possible she told us a tale out of it no one wrote in it and no one read it but herself her brother and two sisters she promised to show me some of these magazines but retracted it afterwards and would never be persuaded to do so in our play hours she sat or stood still with a book if possible some of us once urged her to be on our side in a game at ball she said she had never played and could not play we made her try but soon found that she could not see the ball so we put her out she took all our proceedings with pliable indifference and always seemed to need a previous resolution to say no to anything she used to go and stand under trees in the playground and say it was pleasanter she endeavoured to explain this pointing out the shadows the peeps of the sky etc we understood but little of it she said that at Cohen bridge she used to stand in the burn on a stone to watch the water flow by i told her she should have gone fishing but she said she never wanted she always showed physical feebleness in everything she ate no animal food at school it was about this time i told her she was very ugly some years afterwards i told her i thought i'd been very impertinent she replied you did me a great deal of good poly so don't repent of it she used to draw much better and more quickly than anything we had ever seen before and knew much about celebrated pictures and painters whenever an opportunity offered of examining a picture or cut of any kind she went over it piecemeal with her eyes close to the paper looking so long that we used to ask her what she saw in it she could always see plenty and explained it very well she made poetry and drawing at least exceedingly interesting to me and then i got the habit which i have yet of referring mentally to her opinion on all matters of that kind along with any more resolving to describe such and such things to her until i start at the recollection that i never shall to feel the full force of this last sentence to show how steady and vivid was the impression which miss bronte made on those fitted to appreciate her i must mention that the writer of this letter dated january 18th 1856 in which she thus speaks of constantly referring to charlotte's opinion has never seen her for 11 years nearly all of which have been passed among strange scenes in a new continent at the antipodes we used to be furious politicians as one could hardly help being in 1832 she knew the names of the two ministries the one that had resigned and the one that succeeded and passed the reform bill she worshipped the duke of wellington but said that sir robert peale was not to be trusted he did not act from principle like the rest but from expediency i being of the furious radical party told her how could any of them trust one another they are all of them rascals then she would launch into praises of the duke of wellington referring to his actions which i could not contradict as i knew nothing about him she said she had taken her interest in politics ever since she was five years old she did not get her opinions from her father that is not directly but from the papers etc he preferred in illustration of the truth of this i may give an extract from a letter to her brother written from rowhead may 17th 1832 lately i had begun to think that i had almost lost all of the interest which i used formally to take in politics but the extreme pleasure i felt at the news of the reform bills being thrown out by the house of lords and the expulsion or resignation of earl grey etc convinced me that i have not as yet lost all my penchant for politics i'm extremely glad that art has consented to take in phrases magazine for though i know from your description of its general contents it will be rather uninteresting when compared with blackwood still it would be better than remaining the whole year without being able to obtain a site of any periodical whatever and such would assuredly be our case as in our little wild moorland village where we reside there would be no possibility of borrowing a work of that description from a circulating library i hope with you that the present delightful weather may contribute to the perfect restoration of our dear papa's health and that it may give aunt pleasant reminiscences of the salubrious climate of her native place etc to return to mary's letter she used to speak of her two elder sisters maria and elizabeth who died at cohen bridge i used to believe them to have been wonders of talent and kindness she told me early one morning that she had just been dreaming and she had been told that she was wanted in the drawing room and it was maria and elizabeth i was eager for her to go on and when she said there was no more i said but go on make it out i know you can she said that she would not she wished she had not dreamed for it did not go nicely they were changed they had forgotten what they used to care for they were very fashionably dressed and began criticizing the room etc this habit of making out interests for themselves that most children get who have none in actual life was very strong in her the whole family used to make out histories and invent characters and events i told her sometimes they were like growing potatoes in a cellar she said sadly yes i know we are someone at school said she was always talking about clever people johnson sherrydon etc she said now you don't know the meaning of clever sherrydon might be clever yes sherrydon was clever scamps often are but johnson hadn't a spark of cleverality in him no one appreciated the opinion but they made some trivial remark about cleverality and she said no more this is the epitome of her life at our house she had just as little chance of a patient hearing for though not schoolgirlish we were more intolerant we had a rage for practicality and laughed all poetry to scorn neither she nor we had any idea but that our opinions were the opinions of all the sensible people in the world and we used to astonish each other at every sentence charlotte at school had no plan of life beyond what circumstances made for her she knew that she must provide for herself and chose her trade at least chose to begin it once her idea of self-improvement ruled her even at school it was to cultivate her tastes she always said there was enough of hard practicality and useful knowledge forced upon us by the necessity and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds she picked up every scrap of information concerning painting sculpture poetry music etc as if it were gold what i have heard of her school days from other sources confirms the accuracy of the details in this remarkable letter she was an indefatigable student constantly reading and learning with a strong conviction of the necessity and value of education very unusual in a girl of 15 she never lost a moment of time and seemed almost to grudge the necessary leisure for relaxation and play hours which might be partly accounted for by the awkwardness in all games occasioned by her shortness of sight yet in spite of these unsociable habits she was a great favorite with her school fellows she was always ready to try and do what they wished though not sorry when they called her awkward and left her out of their sports then at night she was an invaluable storyteller frightening them almost out of their wits as they lay in bed on one occasion the effect was such that she was led to scream out aloud and miss w coming upstairs found that one of the listeners had been seized with violent pulpitations in consequence of the excitement produced by charlotte's story end of chapter six part one volume one chapter six of the life of charlotte bronte this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org recording by gail madden the life of charlotte bronte by elizabeth cleco and gaskell volume one chapter six her indefatigable craving for knowledge tempted miss w on into setting her longer and longer tasks of reading for examination and towards the end of the year and a half that she remained as a pupil at rowhead she received her first bad mark for an imperfect lesson she had had a great quantity of blairs lectures on bellettas to read and she could not answer some of the questions upon it charlotte bronte had a bad mark miss w was sorry and regretted that she had set charlotte's along a task charlotte cried bitterly but her school fellows were more than sorry they were indignant they declared that the infliction of ever so slight a punishment on charlotte bronte was unjust for who had tried to do her duty like her and testified their feeling in a variety of ways until miss w who was in reality only too willing to pass over her good people's first fault withdrew the bad mark and the girls all returned to their legions except mary who took her own way during the week or two that remained of the half year choosing to consider that miss w in giving charlotte bronte so long a task had forfeited her claim to obedience of the school regulations the number of pupils was so small that the attendance to certain subjects at particular hours common in larger schools was not rigidly enforced when the girls were ready with the lessons they came to miss w to say them she had a remarkable knack of making them feel interested in whatever they had to learn they said to their studies not as to tasks or duties to be got through but with a healthy desire and thirst for knowledge of which she had managed to make them perceive the relishing savor they did not leave off reading and learning as soon as the compulsory pressure of school was taken away they had been taught to think to analyze to reject to appreciate charlotte bronte was happy in the choice made for her of the second school to which she was sent there was a robust freedom in the out-of-doors life of her companions they played at merry games in the fields around the house on saturday half holidays they went long scrambling walks down mysterious shady lanes then climbing the uplands and thus gaining extensive views over the country about which so much had to be told both of its past and present history miss w must have had in great perfection the french art concher to judge from her pupils recollections of the tales she related during these long walks of this old house or that new mill and of the states of society consequent on the changes involved by the suggestive dates of either building she remembered the times when watchers or awakeners in the night heard the distant word of command and the measured tramp of thousands of sad desperate men receiving a surreptitious military training in preparation for some great day which they saw in their visions when right should struggle with might and come off victorious when the people of england represented by the workers of york shire lancashire and nottingham shire should make their voice heard in a terrible slogan since their true and pitiful complaints could find no hearing in parliament we forget nowadays so rapid have been the changes for the better how cruel was the condition of numbers of laborers at the close of the great peninsular war the half ludicrous nature of some of their grievances has lingered on in tradition the real intensity of their sufferings has become forgotten they were maddened and desperate and the country in the opinion of many seemed to be on the verge of a precipice from which it was only saved by the prompt and resolute decision of a few in authority miss w spoke of those times of the mysterious nightly drillings of thousands on lonely moors of the mudded threats of individuals too closely pressed upon by necessity to be prudent of the overt acts in which the burning of cartwright's mill took a prominent place and these things sank deep into the mind of one at least among her hearers mr. Cartwright was the owner of a factory called raw folds in liversedge not beyond the distance of the walk from rowhead he had dared to employ machinery for the dressing of woolen cloth which was an unpopular measure in 1812 when many other circumstances conspired to make the condition of the mill hints unbearable from the pressure of starvation and misery mr. Cartwright was a very remarkable man having as i've been told some foreign blood in him the traces of which were very apparent in his tall figure dark eyes and complexion and singular though gentlemanly bearing at any rate he had been much abroad and spoke french well of itself is suspicious circumstance to the bigoted nationality of those days altogether he was an unpopular man even before he took the last step of employing shears instead of hands to dress his wool he was quite aware of his unpopularity and of the probable consequences he had his mill prepared for an assault he took up his lodgings in it and the doors were strongly barricaded at night on every step of the stairs there was placed a roller spiked with barbed points all around so as to impede the scent of the riders if they succeeded in forcing the doors on the night of saturday the 11th of april 1812 the assault was made some hundreds of starving cloth dresses assembled in the very field near Kirkley's that sloped down from the house which miss w afterwards inhabited and were armed by their leaders with pistols hatchets and bludgeons many of which had been extorted by the nightly bands that prowled about the country from such inhabitants of lonely houses as had provided themselves with these means of self-defense the silent sullen multitude marched in the dead of that spring night to raw folds and giving tongue with a great shout roused mr cartwright up to the knowledge that the long expected attack was come he was within walls it is true but against the fury of hundreds he had only four of his own workmen and five soldiers to assist him these ten men however managed to keep up such a vigorous and well-directed fire of musketry that they defeated all the desperate attempts of the multitude outside to break down the doors and force away into the mill and after a conflict of 20 minutes during which two of the assailants were killed and several wounded they withdrew in confusion leaving mr cartwright master of the field but so dizzy and exhausted now the peril was passed that he forgot the nature of his defenses and injured his leg rather seriously by one of the spiked rollers in attempting to go up his own staircase his dwelling was near the factory some of the rioters vowed that if he did not give in they would leave this and go to his house and murder his wife and children this was a terrible threat for he had been obliged to leave his family with only one or two soldiers to defend them mrs cartwright knew what they had threatened and on that dreadful night hearing as she thought steps approaching she snatched up her two infant children and put them in a basket up the great chimney common in old fashioned yorkshire houses one of the two children who had been thus stowed away used to point out with pride after she had grown up to woman's estate the marks of musket shot and the traces of gunpowder on the walls of her father's mill he was the first that had offered any resistance to the progress of the luddites who had become by this time so numerous as almost to assume the character of an insurrectionary army mr cartwright's conduct was so much admired by the neighboring mill owners that they entered into a subscription for his benefit which amounted in the end to three thousand pounds not much more than a fortnight after this attack on raw folds another manufacturer who employed the obnoxious machinery was shot down in broad daylight as he was passing over crossland more which was skirted by a small plantation in which the murderers lay hidden the readers of surely will recognize these circumstances which were related to miss bronte years after they occurred but on the very spots where they took place and by persons who remembered full well those terrible times of insecurity to life and property on one hand and of bitter starvation and blind ignorant despair on the other mr bronte himself had been living amongst these very people in 1812 as he was then clergyman at heart's head not three miles from raw folds and as i have mentioned it was in these perilous times that he began his custom of carrying a loaded pistol continually about with him for not only his Tory politics but his love in regard for the authority of the law made him despise the cowardice of the surrounding magistrates who in their dread of the Luddites refused to interfere so as to prevent the destruction of property the clergy of the district were the bravest men by far there was a mr roberson of Healds Hall a friend of mr Bronte's who has left a deep impression of himself on the public mind he lived near Heckman Dwight a large straggling dirty village not two miles from Rowhead it was principally inhabited by blanket weavers who worked in their own cottages and Healds Hall is the largest house in the village of which mr roberson was the vicar at his own cost he built a handsome church at liversedge on a hill opposite the one on which his house stood which was the first attempt in the west riding to meet the wants of the overgrown population and made many personal sacrifices for his opinions both religious and political which were of the true old-fashioned Tory stamp he hated everything which he fancied had a tendency towards anarchy he was loyal in every fiber to church and king and would have proudly laid down his life any day for what he believed to be right and true but he was a man of an imperial will and by it he bore down opposition till tradition represents him as having something grimly demoniac about him he was intimate with Cartwright and aware of the attack likely to be made on his mill accordingly it is said he armed himself and his household and was prepared to come to the rescue in the event of a signal being given that aid was needed thus far as likely enough mr roberson had plenty of warlike spirit in him man of peace though he was but in consequence of his having taken the unpopular side exaggerations of his character lingers truth in the minds of the people and a fabulous story is told of his forbidding anyone to give water to the wounded luddites left in the mill yard when he rode in the next morning to congratulate his friend Cartwright on his successful defense moreover the stern fearless clergymen had the soldiers that were sent to defend the neighborhood billeted at his house and this deeply displeased the work people who were to be intimidated by the redcoats although not a magistrate he spared no pains to track out the luddites concerned in the assassination I have mentioned and was so successful in his acute unflinching energy that it was believed he had been supernaturally aided and the country people stealing into the field surrounding Healds Hall on dusky winter evenings years after this time declared that through the windows they saw a parson roberson dancing in a strange red light with black demons all whirling and eddying around him he kept a large boy school and made himself both respected and dreaded by his pupils he added a grim kind of humor to his strength of will and the former quality suggested to his fancy strange out-of-the-way kinds of punishment for any refractory pupils for instance he made them stand on one leg in a corner of the schoolroom holding a heavy book in each hand and once when a boy had run away home he followed him on horseback reclaimed him from his parents and tying him by a rope to the stirrup of his saddle made him run alongside of his horse for the many miles they had to traverse before reaching Healds Hall one other illustration of his character may be given he discovered that his servant Betty had a follower and watching his time till Richard was found in the kitchen he ordered him into the dining room where the pupils were all assembled he then questioned Richard whether he had come after Betty and on his confessing the truth Mr. Robeson gave the word off with him lads to the pump the poor lover was dragged to the courtyard and the pump was set to play upon him and between every drenching the question was put to him will you promise not to come after Betty again for a long time Richard bravely refused to give in when pump again lads was the order but at last the poor soaked follower was forced to yield and renounce his Betty the Yorkshire character of Mr. Robeson would be incomplete if I did not mention his fondness for horses he lived to be a very old man dying sometime nearer to 1840 than 1830 and even after he was 80 years of age he took great delight in breaking refractory steeds he would sit motionless on their backs for half an hour or more to bring them to there is a story current that once in a passion he shot his wife's favorite horse and buried it near a quarry where the ground some years after miraculously opened and displayed the skeleton but the real fact is that it was an act of humanity to put a poor old horse out of misery and that to spare it pain he shot it with his own hands and buried it where the ground sinking afterwards by the working of a coal pit the bones came to light the traditional coloring shows the animus with which his memory is regarded by one set of people by another the neighboring clergy who remember him riding in his old age down the hill on which his house stood upon a strong white horse his bearing proud and dignified his shovel hat bent over and shadowing his keen eagle eyes going to his Sunday duty like a faithful soldier that dies in harness who can appreciate his loyalty to conscience his sacrifices to duty and his stand by his religion his memory is venerated in his extreme old age a rubric meeting was held at which his clerical brethren gladly subscribed to present him with a testimonial of the deep respect and regard this is the specimen of the strong character not seldom manifested by the Yorkshire clergy of the established church Mr. Robeson was a friend of Charlotte Bronte's father lived within a couple of miles of rowhead while she was at school there and was deeply engaged in transactions the memory of which was yet recent when she heard of them and of the part which he had had in them I may now say a little on the character of the dissenting population immediately surrounding rowhead for the Tory and clergyman's daughter taking interest in politics ever since she was five years old and holding frequent discussions with such of the girls as were dissenters and radicals were sure to have made herself as much acquainted as she could with the condition of those to whom she was opposed in opinion the bulk of the population were dissenters principally independence in the village of Heckman Dwight at one end of which rowhead is situated there were two large chapels belonging to that denomination and one to the Methodists all of which were well filled two or three times on a Sunday besides having various prayer meetings fully attended on weekdays the inhabitants were a chapel going people very critical about the doctrine of their sermons tyrannical to their ministers and violent radicals in politics a friend well acquainted with the place when Charlotte Bronte was at school has described some events which occurred then among them a scene which took place at the lower chapel at Heckman Dwight will give you some idea of the people at that time when a newly married couple made their appearance at chapel it was the custom to sing the wedding anthem just after the last prayer and as the congregation was quitting the chapel the band of singers who performed this ceremony expected to have money given them and often passed the following night in drinking at least so said the minister of the place and he determined to put an end to this custom in this he was supported by many members of the chapel and congregation but so strong was the democratic element that he met with the most violent opposition and was often insulted when he went into the street a bride was expected to make her first appearance and the minister told the singers not to perform the anthem on their declaring they would he had the large pew which they usually occupied locked they broke it open from the pulpit he told the congregation that instead of their singing a hymn he would read a chapter hardly had he added the first word before up rose the singers headed by a tall fierce looking weaver who gave out a hymn and all saying it at the very top of their voices aided by those of their friends who were in the chapel those who disapproved of the conduct of the singers and sided with the minister remained seated till the hymn was finished then he gave out the chapter again read it and preached he was just about to conclude with prayer when up started the singers and screamed forth another hymn these disgraceful scenes were continued for many weeks and so violent was the feeling that the different parties could hardly keep from blows as they came through the chapel yard the minister at last left the place and along with him went many of the most temperate and respectable part of the congregation and the singers remained triumphant I believe that there was such a violent contest respecting the choice of a pastor about this time in the upper church at Huckman's Wike that the riot act had to be read at a church meeting certainly the swades on Christians who forcibly ejected Mr. Redhead at Hayworth ten or twelve years before held a very heathen brotherhood with the swades on Christians of Huckman's Wike though the one set might be called members of the Church of England and the other dissenters the letter from which I have taken the above extract relates throughout to the immediate neighborhood of the place where Charlotte Bronte spent her school days and describes things as they existed at that very time the writer says having been accustomed to the respectful manners of the lower orders in the agricultural districts I was at first much disgusted and somewhat alarmed at the great freedom displayed by the working classes of Huckman's Wike and Gommersall to those in his station above them the term last was as freely applied to any young lady as the word wench is in Lancashire the extremely untidy appearance of the villagers shocked me not a little though I must do the housewives the justice to say that the cottages themselves were not dirty and had an air of rough plenty about them except when trade was bad that I had not been accustomed to see in the farming districts the heap of coals on one side of the house store and the brewing tubs on the other and the frequent perfume of malt and hops as you walked along proved that fire and homebrewed were to be found at almost every man's hearth nor was hospitality one of the main virtues of Yorkshire wanton oat cake cheese and beer were freely pressed upon the visitor there used to be a yearly festival half religious half social held at Huckman's Wike called the lecture a fancy it had come down from the times of the non-conformists a sermon was preached by some stranger at the lower chapel on a weekday evening in the next day two sermons in succession would live it at the upper chapel of course the service was a very long one and as the time was June and the weather often hot it used to be regarded by myself in my companions as no pleasurable way of passing the morning the rest of the day was spent in social enjoyment great numbers of strangers flocked to the place booths were erected for the sale of toys and gingerbread a sort of holy fair and the cottages having had a little extra paint and whitewashing assumed quite a holiday look the village of gommersall where charlotte bronte's friend Mary lived with her family which was a much prettier place than Huckman's Wike contained a strange looking cottage built of rough unhewn stones many of them projecting considerably with uncouth heads and grinning faces carved upon them and upon a stone above the door was cut in large letters spite hall it was erected by a man in the village opposite to the house of his enemy who had just finished for himself a good house commanding a beautiful view down the valley which this hideous building quite shut out fearless because this people were quite familiar to all of them amidst such a population lived and walked the gentle miss W's eight or nine pupils she herself was born and bred among this rough strong fierce set and knew the depth of goodness and loyalty that lay beneath the wild manners and insubordinate ways in the girls talked of the little world around them as if it were the only world that was and had their opinions and their parties and their fierce discussions like their elders possibly their betters and among them beloved and respected by all laughed at occasionally by a few but always to her face lived for a year and a half the plain short-sighted oddly dressed studious little girl they called charlotte bronte end of chapter six