Emily Brontë
in their babyhood; but never, short of neglect, were delicate children
less considered.
The little ones, familiar with serious illness in the house, expected
small indulgence. They were accustomed to think nothing so necessary as
that they should amuse themselves in quiet, and keep out of the way. The
lesson learned so young remained in the minds of the five sisters all
their lives. From their infancy they were retired and good; it was only
Patrick Branwell who sometimes showed his masculine independence by a
burst of natural naughtiness. They were the quietest of children by
nature and necessity. The rooms at Haworth Parsonage were small and few.
There were in front two moderate-sized parlours looking on the garden,
that on the right being Mr. Bronte's study, and the larger one opposite
the family sitting-room. Behind these was a sort of empty store-room and
the kitchens. On the first floor there was a servants'-room, where the
two servants slept, over the back premises; and a bedroom over each of
the parlours. Between these and over the entrance passage was a tiny
slip of a room, scarcely larger than a linen-closet, scarcely wider than
the doorway and the window-frame that faced each other at either end.
During the last months of Mrs. Bronte's illness, when it became
necessary that she should have a bedroom to herself, all the five little
girls were put to sleep in this small and draughty closet, formerly the
children's study. There can scarcely have been room to creep between
their beds. Very quiet they must have been; for any childish play would
have disturbed the dying mother on the one side, and the anxious
irritable father on the other. And all over the house they must keep the
same hushed calm, since the low stone-floored rooms would echo any
noise. Very probably they were not unhappy children for all their
quietness. They enjoyed the most absolute freedom, dearest possession of
childhood. When they were tired of reading the papers (they seemed to
have had no children's books), or of discussing the rival merits of
Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington, they were free to go along the
paven way over the three fields at the back, till the last steyle-hole
in the last stone wall let them through on to the wide and solitary
moors. There in all weathers they might be found; there they passed
their happiest hours, uncontrolled as the birds overhead.
One rule seems to have been made by their father for the management of
these precocious children with their consumptive taint, with their
mother dying of cancer--that one rule of Mr. Bronte's making, still
preserved to us, is that the children should eat no meat. The Rev.
Patrick Bronte, B.A., had grown to heroic proportions on potatoes; he
knew no reason why his children should fare differently.
The children never grumbled; so Mrs. Bronte's sick-nurse told Mrs.
Gaskell:
"You would not have known there was a child in the house,
they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures.
Maria would shut herself up in the children's study with a
newspaper and be able to tell one everything when she came
out; debates in Parliament, and I don't know what all. She
was as good as a mother to her sisters and brother. But
there never were such good children. I used to think them
spiritless, they were so different to any children I had
ever seen. In part, I set it down to a fancy Mr. Bronte had
of not letting them have flesh-meat to eat. It was from no
wish for saving, for there was plenty and even waste in the
house, with young servants and no mistress to see after
them; but he thought that children should be brought up
simply and hardily: so they had nothing but potatoes for
their dinner; but they never seemed to wish for anything
else. They were good little creatures. Emily was the
prettiest."
This pretty Emily of two years old was no mother's constant joy. That
early shaping tenderness, those recurring associations of reverent love,
must be always missing in her memories. Remembering her earliest
childhood, she would recall a constant necessity of keeping joys and
sorrows quiet, not letting others hear; she would recall the equal love
of children for each other, the love of the only five children she knew
in all the world; the free wide moors where she might go as she pleased,
and where the rabbits played and the moor-game ran and the wild birds
sang and flew.
Mrs. Bronte's death can have made no great difference to any of her
children save Maria, who had been her constant companion at Thornton;
friendly and helpful as a little maiden of six can be to the worried,
delicate mother of many babies. Emily and Anne would barely remember her
at all. Charlotte could only just recall the image of her mother playing
with Patrick Branwell one twilight afternoon. An empty room, a cessation
of accustomed business, their mother's death can have meant little more
than that to the younger children.
For about a year they were left entirely to their own devices, and to
the rough care of kind-hearted, busy servants. They devised plays about
great men, read the newspapers, and worshipped the Duke of Wellington,
strolled over the moors at their own sweet will, knowing and caring
absolutely for no creature outside the walls of their own home. To these
free, hardy, independent little creatures Mr. Bronte announced one
morning that their maiden aunt from Cornwall, their mother's eldest
sister, was coming to superintend their education.
"Miss Branwell was a very small, antiquated little lady. She
wore caps large enough for half-a-dozen of the present
fashion, and a front of light auburn curls over her
forehead. She always dressed in silk. She had a horror of
the climate so far north, and of the stone floors in the
Parsonage.... She talked a great deal of her younger
days--the gaieties of her dear native town Penzance, the
soft, warm climate, &c. She gave one the idea that she had
been a belle among her own home acquaintance. She took snuff
out of a very pretty gold snuff-box, which she sometimes
presented to you with a little laugh, as if she enjoyed the
slight shock of astonishment visible in your countenance....
She would be very lively and intelligent, and tilt arguments
against Mr. Bronte without fear."
So Miss Ellen Nussey recalls the elderly, prim Miss Branwell about ten
years later than her first arrival in Yorkshire. But it is always said
of her that she changed very little. Miss Nussey's striking picture will
pretty accurately represent the maiden lady of forty, who, from a
stringent and noble sense of duty, left her southern, pleasant home to
take care of the little orphans running wild at Haworth Parsonage. It is
easy to imagine with what horrified astonishment aunt and nieces must
have regarded each others' peculiarities.
It was, no doubt, an estimable advantage for the children to have some
related lady in authority over them. Henceforth their time was no longer
free for their own disposal. They said lessons to their father, they did
sewing with their aunt, and learned from her all housewifely duties. The
advantage would have been a blessing had their aunt been a woman of
sweet-natured, motherly turn; but the change from perfect freedom to her
old-maidish discipline was not easy to bear--a bitter good, a
strengthening but disagreeable tonic, making the children yet less
expansive, yet more self-contained and silent. Patrick Branwell was the
favourite with his aunt, the naughty, clever, brilliant, rebellious,
affectionate Patrick. Next to him she always preferred the pretty,
gentle baby Anne, with her sweet, clinging ways, her ready submission,
her large blue eyes and clear pink-and-white complexion. Charlotte,
impulsive, obstinate and plain, the rugged, dogged Emily, were not
framed to be favourites with her. Many a fierce tussle of wills, many a
grim listening to over-frivolous reminiscence, must have shown the aunt
and her nieces the difference of their natures. Maria, too, the whilom
head of the nursery, must have found submission hard; but hers was a
singularly sweet and modest nature. Of Elizabeth but little is
remembered.
Mr. Bronte, now that the children were growing out of babyhood, seems
to have taken a certain pride in them. Probably their daily lessons
showed him the character and talent hidden under those pale and grave
little countenances. In a letter to Mrs. Gaskell he recounts instances
of their early talent. More home-loving fathers will smile at the simple
yet theatric means he took to discover the secret of his children's real
dispositions. 'Twas a characteristic inspiration, worthy the originator
of the ancient name of Bronte. A certain simplicity of confidence in his
own subtlety gives a piquant flavour to the manner of telling the
tale:--
"A circumstance now occurs to my mind which I may as well
mention. When my children were very young, when, as far as I
can remember, the eldest was about ten years of age and the
youngest four, thinking that they knew more than I had yet
discovered, in order to make them speak with less timidity,
I deemed that if they were put under a sort of cover I might
gain my end; and happening to have a mask in the house I
told them all to stand and speak boldly from under cover of
the mask.
"I began with the youngest (Anne, afterwards Acton Bell),
and asked what a child like her most wanted; she answered,
'Age and experience.' I asked the next (Emily, afterwards
Ellis Bell) what I had best do with her brother Branwell,
who sometimes was 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 intellects 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.' I then asked the next
(Elizabeth, who seems to have taken Miss Branwell's teaching
to heart) what was the best mode of education for a woman;
she answered, 'That which would make her rule her house
well.' Lastly, I asked the oldest what was the best mode of
spending time; she answered, 'By laying it out in
preparation for a happy eternity.' I may not have given
precisely their words, but I have nearly done so, as they
have made a deep and lasting impression on my memory. The
substance, however, was exactly what I have stated."
The severely practical character of Emily's answer is a relief from the
unchildish philosophy of Branwell, Maria, and the baby. A child of four
years old who prefers age and experience to a tartlet and some sweets
must be an unnatural product. But the Brontes seem to have had no
childhood; unlimited discussion of debates, long walks without any
playfellows, the free perusal of Methodist magazines, this is the
pabulum of their infancy. Years after, when they asked some
school-children to tea, the clergyman's young daughters had to ask their
little scholars to teach them how to play. It was the first time they
had ever cared to try.
What their childhood had really taught them was the value of their
father's quaint experiment. They learned to speak boldly from under a
mask. Restrained, enforcedly quiet, assuming a demure appearance to
cloak their passionate little hearts, the five sisters never spoke their
inmost mind in look, word, or gesture. They saved the leisure in which