Rehabilitating Patrick Brontë

On the day of Patrick Brontë's death anniversary we bring you a couple of articles in praise of the real him.

First of all, Justine Picardie has written a review of Dudley Green's biography for The Times and both of them try to bring down the myth by pointing out how Patrick wasn't the ogre Mrs Gaskell created.

What made Patrick Brontë the father of genius? It's a question that has perplexed the biographers of his more famous daughters, but has never been fully answered. Dudley Green, a former chairman of the Brontë Society, is the most recent in a long line of biographers, though unusual in that his book is fully focused on Patrick Brontë, the first to do so in more than 40 years.
Green's aim is explicit: to rehabilitate a man misunderstood and maligned since Mrs Gaskell published her Life of Charlotte Brontë in 1857. Unlike Gaskell's portrayal of Patrick as “a remote father given to eccentric behaviour and strange fits of passion”, Green believes him to have been a kindly and loving parent with “a keen interest in his children's development”, and “an able and faithful clergyman”.
If this sounds worthy, verging on the dull, then the Patrick Brontë who emerges from the pages of Green's biography is far more compelling. Born into a poor Irish farming family in County Down on March 17, 1777 (St Patrick's Day), he was the eldest of ten children and exceptionally intelligent, becoming a schoolteacher at 16 and then, with the support of his local vicar, entering St John's College, Cambridge at the age of 25. He studied hard, but also found time to serve under the future Lord Palmerston in the volunteer militia.
By the time of his marriage in 1812 to Maria Branwell, Patrick was a Yorkshire curate and a published poet. Six children were born in rapid succession and in 1820 the family moved to Haworth, where Patrick was appointed curate. His wife fell ill soon afterwards and died of cancer in 1821.
According to Mrs Gaskell, the children's life after their mother's death at times was as harsh as that described in Wuthering Heights: “Mr Brontë wanted to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress... Mrs Brontë's nurse told me that one day when the children had been out on the moors, and rain had come on, she thought their feet would be wet, and accordingly she rummaged out some coloured boots... These little pairs she ranged round the kitchen fire to warm; but, when the children came back, the boots were nowhere to be found; only a very strong odour of burnt leather was perceived. Mr Brontë had come in and seen them; they were too gay and luxurious for his children, and would foster a love of dress; so he had put them into the fire.” Gaskell also has Patrick cutting up his wife's silk dress, setting the hearth rug on fire and sawing up chairs in irrational fits of rage, behaviour reminiscent of Heathcliff.
Dudley Green is not the first to show this to be based on the gossip of a disgruntled servant dismissed from the parsonage, but his rebuttal is scrupulously detailed, using the evidence of the children themselves. Whereas Mrs Gaskell told the tale that the Brontë children “had nothing but potatoes for their dinner”, Green quotes Emily and Anne's diary on November 24 1834: “We are going to have for Dinner Boiled Beef Turnips, potato's and applepudding.”
None of which explains the origins of genius, but the details of Green's biography are intriguing, nevertheless. We learn of Patrick Brontë's encouragement of his children's writing (he provided a wide variety of books for them to read - including volumes by Milton and Scott - along with newspapers that stimulated their avid interest in politics). Green also cites Charlotte's schoolfriend, Ellen Nussey: “Mr Brontë at times would relate strange stories ... of the extraordinary lives and doings of people who had resided in far-off, out-of-the-way places... stories which made one shiver and shrink from hearing; but they were full of grim humour and interest to Mr Brontë and his children.” And while his own writing - including books of poetry and stories - is not of great literary merit, he nevertheless provided an example to his children of the pleasures and possibilities of authorship.
One might cast Patrick as a tragic figure - he survived long after his wife and children, all of whom died too young - yet Green's portrait is of a stoic character who never lost faith, serving his congregation in Haworth for 40 years, successfully campaigning for their right to schooling and clean water. He died 147 years ago today, on June 7, 1861, at the age of 84, mourned by hundreds of local villagers, who knew him as far more than the father of Charlotte Brontë.
Dudley Green sees it as a measure of Patrick Brontë's tolerance and forbearance that he had supported Gaskell in the writing of her biography and defended her from critics afterwards, despite the inaccuracies in her account of him. Or perhaps this reveals Brontë's own understanding of the complications of what it might mean to be a writer searching for the truth. According to Mrs Gaskell, he had encouraged Charlotte during her writing of Villette to let the hero and heroine “marry and live happily ever after”. But his own life has something of the singularity of his daughters' characters, evading conventional narratives or happy-ever-afters, expressing rage as well as piety, and seeming all the more vividly true as a result.

And secondly, an article written by Imelda Marsden for the Brontë Parsonage Blog which discusses both Patrick Brontë and today's church service at the AGM.

The 7th June 1861 was the date Rev Patrick Brontë died. The BrontëSociety is holding its usual June weekend church service at St Michaels and All Angels, Haworth on the 7th June 2008.
Patrick is not mentioned on the member's leaflet about the church service. However, Sir James Roberts is mentioned, for we do not decry the generous gift of the Parsonage to the Brontë Society for use as a museum in 1928 - eighty years ago. An interesting fact about the Brontë Society AGM in 1927 held at Healds Hall, Liversedge, is that it was put to members that a fundraising effort was needed to purchase Haworth's Church Parsonage as the current museum was becoming too small.
The Church trustees were looking for a price of £3000 to build a new parsonage home for the vicar. Sadly some of the founder members of the Society, who worked very hard putting a lot of time and effort in to establish the Society and the first Brontë museum, did not live to see the Brontë museum move to the Parsonage in August 1928.
Next year, it will be 200 years since Rev Patrick Brontë came to Dewsbury as a curate and it is hoped the Society will acknowledge this fact. Mr W W Yates who was a prime instigator in setting up the Brontë Society and its first museum was on the Society's Council, and at one time, its chairman: one of his daughter's, Anna, was also on the Council. Both worked for the Dewsbury Reporter newspaper and are buried at Dewsbury Minster where their gravestones are still standing.

Categories: Patrick Brontë, Reminder