Brontë Country grows

We are in a holiday mood today, so reading this article in Dewsbury Today is extremely tempting!

The article looks into the links between the Brontës and Dewsbury. There is more to this connection than meets the eye, and visits to Dewsbury by Brontë lovers are ever increasing.

It is almost 200 years since Patrick Bronte arrived in Dewsbury to take up his first post as a curate at Dewsbury Parish Church, a job he held for three years before moving to Hartshead.

Some years later, his three daughters, Charlotte, Emily and Ann, also came to Dewsbury to be educated at Healds House, Healds Road, where Charlotte also taught.

Last week other relatives of Patrick visited Dewsbury, this time to learn about his connections with the town, and about his niece - Rose Ann Heslip - whose grave has recently been discovered in Whitechapel churchyard, Cleckheaton.

It is nice of them to make clear it was "other relatives". Phew, for a moment there we thought it was the Brontës and we had missed it! :P

For more info on Rose Ann Heslip's grave and its discovery, see this old post.

Patrick Bronte, who arrived in Dewsbury in 1809, was born in County Down, and had five sisters and four brothers, Sarah being the only sister to marry.

Her daughter Rose Ann, who had six children, five of whom sadly died of consumption, left her native Ireland to care for her sickly daughter, Emily, in Yorkshire, but she too tragically died at the age of 33, leaving five children.

Rose Ann stayed on to look after them and her son-in-law Hugh Bingham, and in later years people remarked on her close resemblance to her cousin Charlotte Bronte.

Sadly Rose Ann died in 1915, aged 93, in the Clayton Union Workhouse of senile decay, and members of the Bronte Society were present at her burial in Cleckheaton.

Unfortunately, we know this kind of tragedy does not belong exclusively to the Brontë story, but it adds sadness as well to the well-known part of the family tragedy, doesn't it? It's also sad to see she died in the workhouse.

Now this is interesting:

Indeed the very first meeting of the Bronte Society was held in Dewsbury, something Dewsbury Bronte lovers never let the Haworth-based Bronte Society forget.

After all, it all started here in Dewsbury, and a great deal of the Bronte artefacts and material were amassed by Mr Yates.

And we are indebted to him and the early readers of the Reporter who answered Mr Yates’s call for memories and recollections of Patrick’s stay in Dewsbury and that of his daughters.

It was Mr Yates who also persuaded Dewsbury Council to pass a resolution offering Crow Nest Park Museum to the newly-formed Bronte Society to use as their own.

But it seems someone tipped Haworth off about this and very quickly the people from Haworth got together and fought for the establishment of their own museum.

We humbly think that it's well the museum was housed in Haworth. Not to take merits off Dewsbury, but Haworth was where home was.

And finally a graphic, enlightening anecdote on Patrick Brontë's character:

One reader recollected the day when Patrick, while leading the Whitsuntide Procession from Dewsbury to Earlsheaton was confronted by a well-built man who was drunk. The man placed himself in front of the girls leading the march and spread his arms out and, with an oath, told them to get back to Dewsbury. Patrick, who had a fiery Irish temper, seized the drunkard by the collar and flung him across the road where he fell in a heap among his companions. The Irish curate then calmly resumed his place at the side of the parade and continued as though nothing had happened.

Charlotte used the episode in Shirley. And Mr Yates compiled all these stories and anecdotes in his book The Brontës in Dewsbury. Because of all this work, Mr Yates might be honoured with a plaque in Dewsbury in recognition for the work he did. Indeed we owe much to all these early Brontë biographers and 'reporters' who provided us with many details and some really illustrating stories :)

Who else is in a let's-go-to-Dewsbury holiday mood now, eh?

Categories: In_the_News, Patrick_Brontë, Shirley