The Leeds and Skipton railway runs along a deep valley of the Aire; a
slow and sluggish stream, compared to the neighbouring river of Wharfe.
Keighley station is on this line of railway, about a quarter of a mile
from the town of the same name. The number of inhabitants and the
importance of Keighley have been very greatly increased during the last
twenty years, owing to the rapidly extended market for worsted
manufactures, a branch of industry that mainly employs the factory
population of this part of Yorkshire, which has Bradford for its centre
and metropolis.
Keighley is in process of transformation from a populous, old-fashioned
village, into a still more populous and flourishing town. It is evident
to the stranger, that as the gable-ended houses, which obtrude themselves
corner-wise on the widening street, fall vacant, they are pulled down to
allow of greater space for traffic, and a more modern style of
architecture. The quaint and narrow shop-windows of fifty years ago, are
giving way to large panes and plate-glass. Nearly every dwelling seems
devoted to some branch of commerce. In passing hastily through the town,
one hardly perceives where the necessary lawyer and doctor can live, so
little appearance is there of any dwellings of the professional middle-
class, such as abound in our old cathedral towns. In fact, nothing can
be more opposed than the state of society, the modes of thinking, the
standards of reference on all points of morality, manners, and even
politics and religion, in such a new manufacturing place as Keighley in
the north, and any stately, sleepy, picturesque cathedral town in the
south. Yet the aspect of Keighley promises well for future stateliness,
if not picturesqueness. Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built
of it have a kind of solid grandeur connected with their uniform and
enduring lines. The frame-work of the doors, and the lintels of the
windows, even in the smallest dwellings, are made of blocks of stone.
There is no painted wood to require continual beautifying, or else
present a shabby aspect; and the stone is kept scrupulously clean by the
notable Yorkshire housewives. Such glimpses into the interior as a
passer-by obtains, reveal a rough abundance of the means of living, and
diligent and active habits in the women. But the voices of the people
are hard, and their tones discordant, promising little of the musical
taste that distinguishes the district, and which has already furnished a
Carrodus to the musical world. The names over the shops (of which the
one just given is a sample) seem strange even to an inhabitant of the
neighbouring county, and have a peculiar smack and flavour of the place.
The town of Keighley never quite melts into country on the road to
Haworth, although the houses become more sparse as the traveller journeys
upwards to the grey round hills that seem to bound his journey in a
westerly direction. First come some villas; just sufficiently retired
from the road to show that they can scarcely belong to any one liable to
be summoned in a hurry, at the call of suffering or danger, from his
comfortable fireside; the lawyer, the doctor, and the clergyman, live at
hand, and hardly in the suburbs, with a screen of shrubs for concealment.
In a town one does not look for vivid colouring; what there may be of
this is furnished by the wares in the shops, not by foliage or
atmospheric effects; but in the country some brilliancy and vividness
seems to be instinctively expected, and there is consequently a slight
feeling of disappointment at the grey neutral tint of every object, near
or far off, on the way from Keighley to Haworth. The distance is about
four miles; and, as I have said, what with villas, great worsted
factories, rows of workmen's houses, with here and there an old-fashioned
farmhouse and out-buildings, it can hardly be called "country" any part
of the way. For two miles the road passes over tolerably level ground,
distant hills on the left, a "beck" flowing through meadows on the right,
and furnishing water power, at certain points, to the factories built on
its banks. The air is dim and lightless with the smoke from all these
habitations and places of business. The soil in the valley (or "bottom,"
to use the local term) is rich; but, as the road begins to ascend, the
vegetation becomes poorer; it does not flourish, it merely exists; and,
instead of trees, there are only bushes and shrubs about the dwellings.
Stone dykes are everywhere used in place of hedges; and what crops there
are, on the patches of arable land, consist of pale, hungry-looking, grey
green oats. Right before the traveller on this road rises Haworth
village; he can see it for two miles before he arrives, for it is
situated on the side of a pretty steep hill, with a back-ground of dun
and purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church,
which is built at the very summit of the long narrow street. All round
the horizon there is this same line of sinuous wave-like hills; the
scoops into which they fall only revealing other hills beyond, of similar
colour and shape, crowned with wild, bleak moors--grand, from the ideas
of solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from the
feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monotonous and
illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind in which the spectator
may be.
For a short distance the road appears to turn away from Haworth, as it
winds round the base of the shoulder of a hill; but then it crosses a
bridge over the "beck," and the ascent through the village begins. The
flag-stones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, in order to give
a better hold to the horses' feet; and, even with this help, they seem to
be in constant danger of slipping backwards. The old stone houses are
high compared to the width of the street, which makes an abrupt turn
before reaching the more level ground at the head of the village, so that
the steep aspect of the place, in one part, is almost like that of a
wall. But this surmounted, the church lies a little off the main road on
the left; a hundred yards, or so, and the driver relaxes his care, and
the horse breathes more easily, as they pass into the quite little by-
street that leads to Haworth Parsonage. The churchyard is on one side of
this lane, the school-house and the sexton's dwelling (where the curates
formerly lodged) on the other.
The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the
church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfried school-house,
form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to
the fields and moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled
up by a crowded churchyard, and a small garden or court in front of the
clergyman's house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side,
the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath
the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore,
although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. Within
the stone wall, which keeps out the surrounding churchyard, are bushes of
elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass-
plot and a gravel walk. The house is of grey stone, two stories high,
heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip
off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a hundred
years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two windows on
the right (as the visitor stands with his back to the church, ready to
enter in at the front door) belonging to Mr. Bronte's study, the two on
the left to the family sitting-room. Everything about the place tells of
the most dainty order, the most exquisite cleanliness. The door-steps
are spotless; the small old-fashioned window-panes glitter like looking-
glass. Inside and outside of that house cleanliness goes up into its
essence, purity.
The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the
village; and the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full
of upright tombstones. The chapel or church claims greater antiquity
than any other in that part of the kingdom; but there is no appearance of
this in the external aspect of the present edifice, unless it be in the
two eastern windows, which remain unmodernized, and in the lower part of
the steeple. Inside, the character of the pillars shows that they were
constructed before the reign of Henry VII. It is probable that there
existed on this ground, a "field-kirk," or oratory, in the earliest
times; and, from the Archbishop's registry at York, it is ascertained
that there was a chapel at Haworth in 1317. The inhabitants refer
inquirers concerning the date to the following inscription on a stone in
the church tower:--
"Hic fecit Caenobium Monachorum Auteste fundator. A. D.
sexcentissimo."
That is to say, before the preaching of Christianity in Northumbria.
Whitaker says that this mistake originated in the illiterate copying out,
by some modern stone-cutter, of an inscription in the character of Henry
the Eighth's time on an adjoining stone:--
"Orate pro bono statu Eutest Tod."
"Now every antiquary knows that the formula of prayer 'bono statu'
always refers to the living. I suspect this singular Christian name
has been mistaken by the stone-cutter for Austet, a contraction of
Eustatius, but the word Tod, which has been mis-read for the Arabic
figures 600, is perfectly fair and legible. On the presumption of
this foolish claim to antiquity, the people would needs set up for
independence, and contest the right of the Vicar of Bradford to
nominate a curate at Haworth."
I have given this extract, in order to explain the imaginary groundwork
of a commotion which took place in Haworth about five and thirty years
ago, to which I shall have occasion to allude again more particularly.
The interior of the church is commonplace; it is neither old enough nor
modern enough to compel notice. The pews are of black oak, with high
divisions; and the names of those to whom they belong are painted in
white letters on the doors. There are neither brasses, nor altar-tombs,
nor monuments, but there is a mural tablet on the right-hand side of the
communion-table, bearing the following inscription:--
HERE
LIE THE REMAINS OF
MARIA BRONTE, WIFE
OF THE
REV. P. BRONTE, A.B., MINISTER OF HAWORTH.
HER SOUL
DEPARTED TO THE SAVIOUR, SEPT. 15TH, 1821,
IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
"Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man
cometh." MATTHEW xxiv. 44.
ALSO HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF
MARIA BRONTE, DAUGHTER OF THE AFORESAID;
SHE DIED ON THE
6TH OF MAY, 1825, IN THE 12TH YEAR OF HER AGE;
AND OF
ELIZABETH BRONTE, HER SISTER,
WHO DIED JUNE 15TH, 1825, IN THE 11TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."--MATTHEW
xviii. 3.
HERE ALSO LIE THE REMAINS OF
PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTE,
WHO DIED SEPT. 24TH, 1848, AGED 30 YEARS;
AND OF
EMILY JANE BRONTE,
WHO DIED DEC. 19TH, 1848, AGED 29 YEARS,
SON AND DAUGHTER OF THE
REV. P. BRONTE, INCUMBENT.
THIS STONE IS ALSO DEDICATED TO THE
MEMORY OF ANNE BRONTE, {1}
YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTE, A.B.
SHE DIED, AGED 27 YEARS, MAY 28TH, 1849,
AND WAS BURIED AT THE OLD CHURCH, SCARBORO.'
At the upper part of this tablet ample space is allowed between the lines
of the inscription; when the first memorials were written down, the
survivors, in their fond affection, thought little of the margin and
verge they were leaving for those who were still living. But as one dead
member of the household follows another fast to the grave, the lines are
pressed together, and the letters become small and cramped. After the
record of Anne's death, there is room for no other.
But one more of that generation--the last of that nursery of six little
motherless children--was yet to follow, before the survivor, the
childless and widowed father, found his rest. On another tablet, below
the first, the following record has been added to that mournful list:--
ADJOINING LIE THE REMAINS OF
CHARLOTTE, WIFE
OF THE
REV. ARTHUR BELL NICHOLLS, A.B.,
AND DAUGHTER OF THE REV. P. BRONTE, A.B., INCUMBENT
SHE DIED MARCH 31ST, 1855, IN THE 39TH
YEAR OF HER AGE. {2}
This tablet, which corrects the error in the former tablet as to the age
of Anne Bronte, bears the following inscription in Roman letters; the
initials, however, being in old English.