PATRICK BRONTE

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21536, 27 July 1935, Page 19

PATRICK BRONTE

(■gaciAixT wmrrrßi roa tub ram) IBy K. O. C. MoNAB.J Js there a daughter kind and good, Who ne'er a parent's wish withstood. Whose sweetest task, whose dally food Ti» to obey! Such were the sentiments, such the verse of the Rev. P. Bronte 1 . B-A., that husband who to his wif? was always virile and holy, and that father who to his children was ,'. »,J£hovah to be reverenced and ftg»ed. This sinister figure stands mysteriously behind the tragedy of the Bronte children. Only obliquely and incidentally have his character and actions been illumined. Humanity has indeed advanced if, in the twentieth century, children have no longer, consciously or unconsciously, to fear, the fatherhood of such parents, clergymen all, as those of Chatlotte BrontS, Samuel Butler, and Edmund Gosse. In selfishness and tyranny "Saucy Pat," as he was once known to his youthful wife, had an easy bad eminence. Bronte was. one of 10 children of Irish peasant stock. He escaped from the weaver's loom to become a pupil teacher, in which occupation he laboriously saved £7, entered the university, and attained ' a degree and ordination. After eight years of marriage, his gentle young wife died, having borne six children. <The successor upon whom the widower fixed his choice rejected his application.) The Tyrant The father's selflßh domination began when his children were small. He dined alone, perhaps using the same diet as his children. Potatoes were generously eaten by them and meat withheld. The depression which overtook the three sisters and their brother seems to have been physical, not mental; and was due in part to bad and insufficient food. The sternness of domestic discipline and'the desolate surroundings of their home darkened their gloom. As a young girl, Emily, dabbling in a pool, played .with the tadpoles and "fell to moralising on .the strong and the weak, the brave and the cowardly." As a young woman she punished her large, fierce ->g by beating its ey<ss with her fists till it could not see. When still young, the children, deprived at night of a candle, would pace up and down j in the darkness like restless wild i animals, trying to peer into the dim future. Their favourite verse was that melancholy poem, "The Castaway." The son died in early manhood, a' degenerate sot, inflamed by drugs and unlawful passion. He had been regarded by his family as the genius who would bring glory to their lives. While these events were preparing, their father was always ready with an apt adjuration or a threatening citation of Scripture. Very little of the real life of his children seems to have been known by him. While he studied in seclusion or sewed his elaborate cravats, his daughters and son were writing and discussing their strange tales of experience and imagination. (Six of their childish notebooks, biund for strength and economy in E*-som Salt wrappers, were sold m 1933 for £1750. Some of the notebooks were not two inches in length, and, for lack of money, the writing was microscopically small.) The father's exigence did not cease when only one daughter was left alive. Assiduous always in condemnation of marriage, his cruel selfishness became frenzied when the marriage of charlotte, then aged 37, with her dull, worthy Nicholls was in contemplation. At last overborne, his final protest was to remain in bed on her wedding day and to impose thus an additional anxiety upon the little company which had gathered to witness that pathetic sacrament. At 75, blind but still active in self regard* he remarked to one who spoke of Charlotte's greatness. And I knew nothing about it (her writing), positively nothing. Strange!. Perhaps I might have stopped it if I hadr-but I knew, nothing—nothing. The old gentleman lived to be 84, and survived bis longest-lived ,bv Six years. Long afterwards an old countrywoman who had known him related that, "he was not so ill as thery sav." One more miserable revelation of this man's character may be made. Charlotte had. returned to Haworth from one of her few pitiful visits to London, and had re-ported-that she had, through the -offices of her young publisher George Murray Smith, md.various ■ eminent people, among them Har riet Martineau and Thackerav. Her father complained that S™* h * d been remiss in not gathering to meet her some - persons of title.

Emily an 4 Anne Of Charlotte as a girl there is no Heed to say more-than that after the untimely deaths of her two elder sisters she became the guide and counsellor of the three younger children. The seeds of tuberculosis grew in her in, the same circumstances with her sister, although she was stronger to resist its attacks. Equally gloomy-at: home she was more unhappy than thev at schoo' and in the post of governess, and found her one romantic flash in the person of her preceptor in Brussels, Constants Heger. Back at honje. she took her part in quelling tn« maniacal and dangerous ■%»« " f her brother. He died on October 6. 1848. Ten weeks later Emily died after exhibiting the firmest fortitude but the most nainful inrienendence. Dying before her s eves, she refused the slightest ministration and demanded from her wasted limbs and enfeebled faculties **r '-» service th*v rented her m Va'th. On May 28, 1849. A-ne died at S<*arboro, her natience n°trt<? *■< remarkable as Emilv's resolution. hours before her death, from her seat in a window-recess, she declared her belief that t'eath was at hind, and asked for a »hvajci»;j. Her address to him was madewitn composure She asked him not to fear to soeak truth, as she had no f»ar of death, and, learning that her life was fast ending, she bid Charlotte and her friend - take courage, and, in a lodging-house sitting-roorr. with the household; clatter about her, calmly took leave of them. Charlotte Charlotte's fame and success brought only swift moments of relief. The habit of misery and the violence of unavoidable experience had renderetf uncongenial to her Use animated buwtUnga of Umfoxi, ,a*fl after a day or two she would return to Haworth and to affectionate attendance ■ upon her father. He *iways went early to bed. Charlotte, - , more wakeful and less easy in mina, would try to read or to »ew ana

would weep over her dead sisters. Mrs Gaskell has written about these lonely nights:

No one on earth can even imagine what those hours were to her. All th 3 grim superstitions of the north had been implanted in her during her childhood by the servants who believed in them. They recurred to her now, with no shrinking from the spirits of the dead, but with such an Intense longing once more to stand face to face with the souls of her sisters ... It seemed as if the very strength of her yearning should have compelled them to appear. On windy nights, cries, and sobs, and wailings seemed to go round the house, as of the dearly-beloved striving to force their way to her. Of the physical woman the young and perceptive publisher speaks with likelihood:

Perhaps few women ever existed more anxious to be pretty than she. or more angrily conscious of the circumstance that she was not pretty. All who knew her noticed her Strangeyes. Mrs Gaslcell wrote: "A light would shine out as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled which glowed behind those expressive orb'j. I never saw the like in any other human creature,"

The *Hogarth book i' an admirable as its predecessor in this series, the biography of Charles Lamb as recorded by his contemporaries. It leans rightly and heavily on the information collected by Mrs Gaskell and Clement Shorter;" Miss Delafield's preface is true, and moving; a just proportion is given to the sisters and their acquaintances, and the obvious is left unpointed. Mr Cook s •novel-biography is not so well proportioned. He is not sensitive to the implications of some of the sisters' experiences, he has hastened over their youth, and been too generous in his accounts of Charlottes dealings with the eminent. Her relations with Londoners, except Sir George Smith and W. S Williams, were, after all, brief episodes However—and there is no oehttlement in the "however"—he has generally done well in a difficult and delicate task He is accurate, sympathetic, and'complete. He who does not know the BrontMs well can do no better than to accept Mr Cook s presentation, but he who wishes to form his own conclusions from direct knowledge will turn to the records of contemporaries.

♦Th« Bronte*, Ifccte Ltw «^**,S with an Introduction by E. M. DeXfleldV The Hogarth Press. ThJr IJyed? A Bronte Novel, By E. Thorntcn Coci. John Murray. an pp. - "--■—-■;