Patrick Brontë

Ordination

in 1806 Patrick Brontë was ordained deacon in the Church of England, and became a priest in 1807.^[16] His first post on ordination as deacon was as curate at St Mary Magdalene Church, Wethersfield, Essex where the vicar was Joseph Jowett, Regius Professor of Law at Cambridge. Here in 1807 he met and fell in love with Mary Burder, the 18-year-old niece of his landlady.^[17] Mary's family were members of the dissenting or non-conformist Congregational Church, and objected to the connection.^[17] After a disagreement with Mary's uncle, who was her legal guardian, Patrick ended the relationship. Mary was sent away, and Patrick decided it was best to take a new curacy.^[18]

Poetry

In 1809, Patrick became assistant curate of Wellington, Shropshire, and in 1810 his first published poem, the 256-line Winter Evening Thoughts, appeared in a local newspaper. In 1811 he published a collection of moral verses, Cottage Poems, intended for ordinary people.^[19] In her biography of Charlotte Brontë, Claire Harman recounts that one of the Cottage Poems had been written to Mary Burder, and praised her sparkling blue eyes. Patrick later gave a copy of the book, with an annotated version of the poem, to another young lady, changing the line to "sparkling hazle eye".^[8] In 1813 he published The Rural Minstrel: A Miscellany of Descriptive Poems, and went on to publish The Cottage In the Wood in 1816, then a novel,The Maid of Killarney (1818) and The Signs of the Times (1835).

Dewsbury

In December 1809, Patrick moved to the West Riding of Yorkshire as curate at All Saints, Dewsbury (now Dewsbury Minster). The area was undergoing an evangelical revival under the incumbent vicar, John Buckworth. Brontë taught reading and writing at Dewsbury's Sunday School and was deputed by Buckworth to attend twice-weekly meetings of the Church Mission Society on his behalf. A memorial plaque to Brontë can be found in the south aisle of Dewsbury Minster.^[20]

Buckworth appointed Patrick as perpetual curate of the Church of St Peter, Hartshead, a daughter church of Dewsbury, in 1811.^[16][20] He served there until 1815.^[16] In 1812 he was appointed school examiner at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley. In 1815 he moved again to become perpetual curate of Thornton.^[16]

Marriage to Maria Branwell

At Guiseley, Patrick met Maria Branwell (1783–1821), the daughter of a wealthy merchant and civic leader from Penzance. Maria was twenty-nine, and Patrick six years her senior, and they rapidly fell in love. Patrick is reported to have frequently made the twenty-four mile round trip from Hartshead to visit Maria, and Maria often wrote to Patrick, addressing him in one letter as: "My dear saucy Pat."^[21]

The couple were married on 29 December 1812 in the Church of St. Oswald. They moved into a house on Halifax Road, Liversedge, where their first two children, Maria (1814–1825)^[22] and Elizabeth (1815–1825), were born. In 1816 they moved to Thornton, where their four other children, Charlotte (1816–1855), Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849), were born.

Haworth

in June 1819, Patrick Brontë was offered the perpetual curacy of St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth, and in April 1820 he moved with his young family into the five-roomed Haworth Parsonage. At this time, Haworth was notorious for its high death rate and poor sanitation;^[23] in 1850 Benjamin Babbage released a damning report, with accounts of appalling conditions, including open sewers, refuse in the streets and a water supply that was contaminated by run-off from the overcrowded cemetery.^[24] Throughout his years in Haworth, Patrick campaigned - against some opposition - for reform, calling for better sanitation, education and working conditions.^[25]

Death of Maria Branwell

In 1821 Patrick's sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell (1776–1842), who had lived with the family at Thornton in 1815, joined the household to help to look after the children and to care for their mother, who had fallen seriously ill soon after their arrival. In September, after a long illness, Maria Branwell Brontë died from what may have been uterine cancer or ovarian cancer, leaving Patrick a widower with six children, all under eight years old, and with significant debts incurred from the doctors' fees and nursing expenses during Maria's illness.^[26]Maria's annuity of £50 a year had ceased with her death, and Patrick's salary amounted to only £170 a year. Friends and benefactors raised money to enable Patrick to pay his debts, but Elizabeth Branwell did not intend to remain in Haworth, which would leave only the house servants, Nancy and Sarah Garrs, to care for his children.^[26]

Attempts to remarry

Three months after Maria's death, Patrick proposed marriage to Elizabeth Firth, the twenty-four-year-old daughter of a wealthy friend from Thornton, and godmother to two of his daughters. Elizabeth was deeply offended by the proposal and severed ties with the family. ^[26] Patrick then sought out Mary Burder, whom he had jilted fifteen years previously, offering marriage and describing his circumstances. Burder, who was still single, declined his offer.^[18] Although the refusal had been decisive,^[17] Patrick persisted, writing to her:^[27]

You may think and write as you please, but I have not the least doubt that if you had been mine you would have been happier than you now are, or can be as one in single life.

Other attempts to find a new wife were equally unsuccessful, and Patrick finally came to terms with widowhood at the age of forty-seven. He spent his time visiting the sick and the poor, giving sermons and communion,^[28] leaving the six children in the care of their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had agreed to stay on to help, and a maid, Tabitha Ackroyd (Tabby), who tirelessly recounted local legends in her Yorkshire dialect while preparing the meals.^[29]

Deaths of Maria and Elizabeth

With only his curate's salary, Patrick was keenly aware of the need to avoid unnecessary expense. In 1824, he sent his daughters Maria, Elizabeth, Emily and Charlotte to board at the newly opened Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. Conditions at the school were poor, with insufficient, badly-prepared food and frequent outbreaks of disease. In 1825, the two eldest daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent home ill after an outbreak of typhus, and both died shortly afterwards. Following this, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school, and the siblings were subsequently educated at home.

Family

As an Irish immigrant, Patrick attracted prejudice and hostility in Haworth. At the time, Irish people were often seen as feckless and lazy, and Patrick faced hostility and rumours that he was an alcoholic. He had retained a strong Irish accent, which his children shared, adding to their sense of isolation from the community.

He was an affectionate father, going on walks with his children, supplying them with toys and books, and encouraging them to read and to take an interest in literature and politics. He educated his son Branwell at home, teaching him in Latin, Greek and mathematics, and providing him with tutors in music and painting. He provided the toy soldiers which gave birth to the siblings' creation of the fictional lands of Angria and Gondal, which in turn formed their development as writers.^[30]

In a letter to Gaskell, he recounts a game he played with the children when they were young, during which he gave each child a mask to wear, and asked them to answer questions from behind it. He asked Anne (who was four years old):^[31]

...what a child like her most wanted; she answered, 'Age and experience.' I asked the next (Emily) what I had best do with her brother Branwell, who was sometimes a naughty boy; she answered, 'Reason with him, and when he won’t listen to reason, whip him.' I asked Branwell what was the best way of knowing the difference between the intellect of men and women, he answered, 'By considering the difference between them as to their bodies.' I then asked Charlotte what was the best book in the world; she answered, 'The Bible.' And what was the next best; she answered, 'The Book of Nature.'

Although he expected his daughters to seek employment as teachers or governesses, Patrick encouraged Branwell to look for a career in the arts. An enthusiastic poet himself, Patrick had high hopes for Branwell, which were disappointed by Branwell's decline into alcoholism and opium addiction.^[30]

Health

Although his health was generally robust, Patrick was short-sighted, and suffered increasing problems with his vision as he grew older. In August 1846 he travelled to Manchester with Charlotte to undergo surgery on his eyes. On 28 August he was operated upon, without anaesthetic, to remove cataracts. Eye surgery was then in its infancy and surgeons did not understand how stitches could be used to hold together the necessary incision in the eye. Their solution was to have the patient undergo a long period of recuperation in a dark room. Charlotte used this interval of a month^[17] to begin writing Jane Eyre.^[32]

Character

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë was for many years the primary source of information about Patrick Brontë. However it contains many inconsistencies, exaggerations, and omissions. Sources describe Patrick as a striking man, with red hair and glasses, often wearing a high neckerchief for fear of catching bronchitis.^[31]

Gaskell portrays him as a remote, tyrannical, eccentric character, with a volatile temper, describing him as a "domestic hyena."^[33][34] She also states that Patrick had no Irish accent when she met him,^[6] and wrongly claims that he did not keep in touch with his family in Ireland.^[17] She portrays him as a strict parent, and records the account of a former servant that he had burnt some coloured shoes that had been given to the children and sawed the backs from chairs because they were too ornate,^[17]although the house servant, Nancy Garrs, and Patrick himself denied this.^[33] Other reports from Gaskell include accounts of Patrick firing his gun from the Parsonage window every day, 'to work off his volcanic wrath', and denying his children meat - both claims strenuously denied by Patrick.^[31] He did carry a gun - since the Luddite riots he had felt the need for personal protection - but Gaskell and subsequent writers may have misrepresented his motives.^[31]

Other family servants, as well as Patrick's friends, describe him as being affable and kind,^[33] although he is also described in his professional life as being hot-tempered and impulsive. One Dewsbury lawyer recalls an episode where Patrick threw a drunkard, who was trying to disrupt a Sunday procession, into a ditch; another remembers him saving a boy from drowning in a river, even though he himself could not swim.^[35]

Patrick was a passionate advocate for social reform, and was responsible for the building of a Sunday school in Haworth, which he opened in 1832. He was a fervent abolitionist,^[36] and remained active in local causes into his old age. Between 1849 and 1850, he organised action to procure a clean water supply for the village, which was eventually achieved in 1856.^[37]