Under the Canopy of Heaven

Under the Canopy of Heaven

Charlotte Brontë & Mary Taylor

Susan Geason

In confidence June 2007: ©Susan Geason

No one understood them as they understood each other. Their joint affairs were to themselves the most interesting things in the world, and their comments on them could have been uttered to no one else.

Mary Taylor in Miss Miles, speaking of Maria and Dora.

1

Haworth Parsonage

While the dogs barked hysterically and the horses stamped and whinnied, Anne Taylor admonished her headstrong daughters one last time to comport themselves like ladies on their journey. Mary and Martha Taylor exchanged a long-suffering look, and then they were off, their carriage winding its way down the drive of Red House, the Taylor family home in Gomeral in Yorkshire. It was a fine morning in June 1838, and the girls were on their way to visit Mary’s best friend, Charlotte Brontë in Haworth, about twenty miles away. Charlotte was at home again after five unhappy years teaching at Roe Head School where the girls had met. It was the girls’ first visit to Haworth, and the timing was fortuitous, for all the Brontë children were at home.

The Taylors’ groom drove the horses north-west along a dusty road and passed through the village of Birstall, where the girls’ friend Ellen Nussey lived. As Mary often rode out to visit Ellen, they did not interrupt their journey. Leaving Birstall, they made their way through of Bradford. After the quiet of the countryside, the industrial town, with its crowded slums, its din and its smokestacks belching noisome fumes into the skies, was an assault on the senses. As the town receded into the distance, Martha broke into Mary’s reverie. “What do you suppose Charlotte’s sisters are like, Pol?” she asked.

Although Charlotte Bronte was Mary’s friend, Martha knew her from her visits to Red House when she’d been first a pupil then a teacher at Roe Head, and she had seen Branwell Brontë years earlier, when he had visited his sister at school. But although Mary had heard so much about Emily and Anne Bronte that she felt she knew them, neither sister had ever met Charlotte’s sisters. “From everything Charlotte has told me, I think Anne will be a sweet girl, but I fear Emily is difficult.”

“How?”

“Charlotte is very protective of her, but I get the impression she lives in a world of her own and does not allow anybody to too close. And she has a will of iron. She hated Roe Head and forced Miss Wooler to let her leave by starving herself half to death.”

Martha, who had a healthy appetite, was astonished. “Perhaps she was ill.”

Her older sister shrugged. “I suppose starving yourself is a kind of illness, Patty, but she seems to have recovered once she got home. It may simply be that she cannot survive outside of Haworth.”

“But didn’t you tell me she had a position as a teacher at Law Hill School?”

“Yes, but she didn’t stay long. She’s like one of those wild animals that pines in captivity.”

They jogged along the rutted road in silence for a time, then Martha said: “Do you suppose Branwell still looks like a startled red bantam?”

Mary laughed. “For heavens sake don’t say that in front of Charlotte! She idolises him.”

According to Charlotte, Branwell was preparing to move to Bradford to set himself up as a portrait painter, after an abortive attempt to study art in London. He had apparently lost his nerve and had spent all his father’s money in taverns. Mary clearly remembered his arrival at Roe Head, after he’d walked twenty miles from Haworth to comfort his homesick older sister. He had been fourteen then, small and thin, with a quiff of carrot-coloured hair, dead white skin and small blue eyes flashing behind rimless spectacles. His nose, like Charlotte’s, was too long and his chin a little underslung. Some of the girls had sniggered at the sight of him, but Mary had been impressed by his loyalty. As for Charlotte, she was clearly besotted and Branwell appeared to take her adulation as his due. With only thirteen months between them, they were as close as twins.

When the travellers reached Keighley, the road took them past smoke-belching textile mills and began to wind uphill through the Worth Valley until they reached the village of Haworth, perched precipitously on the very edge of the moor. It was Mary’s first glimpse of Charlotte’s home. The road through the village was steep and narrow, and the carriage wheels set up a clatter on the cobblestones. Two-storey cottages and three-storey stone houses begrimed with factory smoke crowded in along the street like snaggle teeth.

As the carriage toiled up the hill, ragged, bare-footed children darted by shrieking, and silent women in headscarves and clogs stared from doorways as they emptied slop buckets into the street, where the water lay in puddles with other stinking refuse, no doubt until a heavy rain washed it down the hill. In the alleys and side streets radiating off Main Street the cobbles gave way to narrow dirt tracks with stone pavements.

It was a warm day, and the sisters had to cover their noses with their handkerchiefs. “I am not surprised Miss Brontë suffers poor health,” observed Martha. “You would need the constitution of an ox to withstand this. Or no sense of smell.”

“Hush, Patty,” warned Mary, averting her eyes from a public privy and hoping fervently that the parsonage had its own water closet.

At the top of Main Street they passed a crowded tenement of back-to-back stone cottages and narrow lanes where the wool spinners lived. After this the road widened and divided, and three and four-storeyed wool warehouses appeared, dwarfing the houses. At the summit were two public houses, the Black Bull, which had its own stables and brew-house, and facing it, the White Lion.

Almost at the top of the hill stood Mr Brontë’s church, a small eighteenth-century building with a double gabled roof and arched windows along each side. Then they were at the parsonage, a low, grey-stone house, plain but pleasing to the eye. It faced down into Haworth and backed onto miles of open moor land.

“What a lovely view,” cried Mary.

“Yes, but I’m not sure that I would like to live next door to a graveyard,” replied Martha, shuddering.

At the sound of the carriage, the door flew open and Charlotte rushed out and embraced her friends. Emily and Anne watched from the doorway, and when they entered, Mr Brontë and the children’s aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, greeted them cordially. The two servants, Tabby and Martha, about whom Mary had been hearing for years, came to the parlour door and bobbed a greeting. Branwell was nowhere to be seen.

The Brontë household was scrupulously clean and neat, though Spartan in its appointments, with stone flagged floors and wooden shutters instead of curtains—because of Mr Brontë’s fear of fire, Charlotte explained, but Mary suspected the real reason was lack of money. It was little wonder Charlotte revelled in the Axminster rugs and elegant furniture at Red House. To accommodate the Taylor girls, Charlotte doubled up with Anne, and Mary and Martha had to share a bed.

Supper was plain but well-cooked and plentiful, and accompanied by much chatter and merriment. Mary, who tended to listen rather than talk, gazed around the table at her friend’s family. Mr Brontë, who must have been about sixty years of age, was a lean, fit man with piercing pale blue eyes, a shock of white hair, and an Irish accent. His black clerical suit was rusty-looking with age, and around his neck he wore an old-fashioned high, snow-white stock. Charlotte was inordinately proud of her father. The eldest of ten children of an farm labourer and his wife, Patrick Brontë had forged a path from a village in the backblocks of Ireland to Cambridge University, where he studied theology and classics, by sheer willpower and brains. And, Mary suspected, the gift of the gab. A proud man, she judged, and one verging on the ridiculous. But she had to acknowledge that he took his job as pastor seriously, walking miles a day visiting his far-flung flock, and taking a lively interest in their physical welfare as well as their souls. Charlotte boasted that he campaigned tirelessly to have the water supply to Haworth cleaned up to prevent the epidemics of typhoid that plagued the district.

Mary’s eyes moved from father to son. Branwell had definitely improved with age: he would never be handsome but the red bantam had flown. In seven years he had grown into his face and had developed an engaging, if voluble, manner. He was a little too confident for his own good; perhaps his family’s belief that he was destined for great things had turned his head.

Emily, who was between Charlotte and Anne in age, was reed thin and pale, with dark hair and dark blue eyes. She contributed little to the conversation, but had such a forceful air of self-possession that Mary’s eyes were drawn again and again to her. Anne the youngest, was also the prettiest, with a strong nose, curly hair, blue eyes and clear, translucent skin. Like Emily, Anne had been ill in her final year at Roe Head but had suffered a religious crisis as well. The eighth member of the dinner party was the Bronte children’s aunt, Laetitia Branwell, who seemed to hie from an earlier era. Mary caught Martha staring at the old lady and frowned.

After dinner, Mr Brontë shut himself in his study, as was his custom, and Branwell disappeared off to the Black Bull, as was his. Aunt Branwell retired to her room to sew, and the girls retired to the sitting room.

“Polly, do you remember how Miss Wooler used to walk us up and down the parlour talking and reading, at Roe Head?” Charlotte asked Mary.

“Of course.”

“We have taken up the practice here, to give ourselves some exercise after dinner.”

So the women lined up—Charlotte, Mary and Martha at the front, arms around each other’s waists, and Emily and Anne bringing up the rear—and began to circumnavigate the table.

When the sisters retired for the night, Martha whispered: “I think the Brontës must be very poor. I don’t know how they bear it so cheerfully.”

“I shall remind you of those words next time you complain to me about not being able to buy a new pair of kid gloves.”

Martha groaned: “Oh, Pol, you sound just like our mother.”

Outraged, Mary picked up a pillow and whacked her sister with it. Martha laughed, dodged out of the way and said: “Isn’t Aunt Branwell a caution!”

Having heard about Aunt Branwell antics for years, Mary had not been surprised by the old woman, but to Martha she seemed a relic. “That false fringe, those clogs, that gown!”

“Hush, Patty. Miss Branwell has dedicated her life to her sister’s children. She came from Cornwall when Mrs Brontë died and stayed on. I don’t know what Mr Brontë would have done without her. He tried very hard to get himself a wife, but could not…”

“Well, who would want a penniless pastor with four children?” said Martha. “And speaking of marriage, Branwell Brontë was very attentive tonight. I think he has designs on you.”

“Don’t be silly,” chided Mary. “He just likes to show off. He has always possessed a very high opinion of himself.”

“I cannot for the life of me see why,” said Martha, “but I suppose he cannot be all bad if Charlotte thinks so highly of him.”

Mary hoped her sister was right. If Branwell did not turn out to be the genius his family thought him, it would mean that all his sisters’ sacrifices and his father’s preferential treatment had been wasted. But more importantly, it would break Charlotte’s heart if he failed.

The next morning, Mary was awakened by a loud noise. Springing out of bed, she threw open the window and craned out. And there was Mr Brontë, at another window, holding a pistol which he proceeded to discharge over the garden. A flock of birds squawked in alarm and took flight in a great flapping of wings. Martha, who had woken at the second shot, dissolved in fits of laughter when her sister described the scene.

After breakfast, when she had Charlotte to herself, Mary mentioned the incident.

Charlotte flushed. “Papa keeps his pistols primed and discharges them each day to make sure they are in working order.”

“But why? Is there some danger?”

“He was at Cambridge University when Napoleon’s armies were at Boulogne,” explained Charlotte. “The students formed a volunteer force, and he discovered his true vocation, I think. If he could have afforded a commission, I’m sure he would have been a soldier.”

“Was he in the district during the Luddite riots?”

“Yes, they happened when he was a curate at Hartshead, when he was newly wed. He told me that he went about his duties armed in case the rioters threatened his parishioners.”

No wonder the Brontë children are odd, thought Mary. “But did he not feel any sympathy with the people whose jobs had been taken away?”

“Of course,” said Charlotte, frowning. “But he could not condone lawlessness.”

“Surely, as one who came from humble beginnings himself…”

“Papa bettered himself by hard work, not violence,” interrupted Charlotte. “He worked within the existing order. He did not attempt to overthrow it.”

“But the weavers were afraid their children would starve,” persisted Mary.

“But Polly, your grandfather brought the machines into the mills at Hunsworth, and when trade turned down, he and your father put people off. What of their responsibility?”

It was Mary’s turn to blush. Like her father and brothers, Mary was a Methodist and a dyed-in-the-wool Radical. At school she had argued heatedly with Charlotte, a Tory and an Anglican like her father, about the way the country should be run. But of late the Tories had transformed themselves into the champions of the working classes, if only to discomfort the industrialists. Worse, public opinion was turning against the mill owners like the Taylors, who were accused of ruthlessly exploiting their workers in the pursuit of wealth. Mary felt trapped: she was living off the backbreaking labour of others, but she knew that they would be even worse off without that work.