A scan of Patrick Brontë's recently discovered letter

Lambeth Palace Library, current owners of Patrick Brontë's recently discovered letter, have uploaded a scan of the letter on their website. Unfortunately, it's hardly readable, so we will have to make do with the partial transcript for the time being.

The letter was written only ten days after Charlotte Brontë's death and thus is written in the typical mourning stationery used at the time.

Brontë scholars are intrigued and excited by a letter from the Revd. Patrick Brontë, found among papers of Archbishop Charles Longley acquired by the Library in 2004 (MSS. 4545-4549). The letter, written from Haworth on 10th April 1855, ten days after Charlotte Brontë’s death, thanks Longley, who was Bishop of Ripon at the time, for his condolences, describing him as “one who is justly esteemed the Father of His Clergy”. It vividly portrays Brontë’s struggle to pray “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” from the midst of his own grief and his distress for his son-in-law, the Revd. Arthur Nicholls.
Other letters written during Longley’s travels around his diocese describe the desolate landscape surrounding the village of Haworth and give lively pen portraits of both Charlotte and her father. Charlotte appears as looking “like a clever little boy” and her father as “a man of a superior cast of mind”. But Longley also repeats curious anecdotes about Brontë’s background,
“I always knew he was an Irishman. I thought Bronté [sic] a strange name for that Country. I am told his original name was O’Brien, & that he was in some capacity in the service of the Duke of Wellington, that he was a great admirer of Nelson [created Duke of Brontë by the King of Naples]; & fancying Bronté a much prettier name than O’Brien, to say nothing of its connexion with his Hero, he adopted it. How he managed to become a Clergyman I do not exactly know.”
In fact, Brontë studied at St. John’s College, Cambridge, one of his first curacies was at Wellington in Shropshire and his surname was originally Prunty or Brunty.

Picture courtesy of Lambeth palace Library.

Categories: Patrick Brontë, Brontëana