Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-04-05
JANE EYRE'S AUTHOR.
Wakeman Visits the Dreary Town
Where Charlotte Br0nte Lived.
HIS PEN PICTURE OF RAW0RTH.
Interesting Relics Gathered by Devoted
Friend of the Family.
THE CURATE WHO HATES THE NAME
rcoRxhspoNDENcK OF THE pIsPArcH.I

| Lne entire history OF tne relation OIL woman
to English literature there cannot be found
anything like the same winsome, if some
what melancholy, interest that will always
cling to the irreproachable name. the OBJ
scure surroundings and the extraordinary
| personality of the author of Jane Eyre. Z"
Because OF this, Haworth, though inter-
esting for little else than once having been
the nome of the Bronte family, is worth 60
ing long way to see. And it is long and
dreary way one has to come. Perched up
here among the bleak hills of the West Rid
ing of Yorkshire alongside the moors and
fells OF Lancashire, the place is almost as
unknown and inaccessible as the grave of
Byron at Hucknall Torkard, in Noting
hamshire. If your impulse is to visit
| Haworth come in the summer only. Then
there is at least sunshine. The tiny Haworth
railway station stands in the center of the
horseshoe shaped valley head to which you
| have come from the north. There could be
no more cherries sight than that pre-
senting itself in every direction as you
| alight from your railway carriage. The
| stationmaster, the single human in sight, in
a sparsely-cut, threadbare uniform, trots
around shiveringly for moment as if
feeble, starved and cold; and then snaps
| himself up in his little den with sharp
click, as ii in flight
From the Surrounding Dreariness.
Across the track where there has sometime
been little patch of flowers lonely. almost
featherless, altogether bedraggled hen pecks
at the dead stalks feebly, querulously. This
is all of life there is near the station. Over
to the lett, a long distance away on the level
bed of the valley, are several huge mills.
in Oh
smoke rolls sullenly from their stacks. But
no human being is visible. Then there are
half score rows of workmens' houses, little,
mean, hard and cramped, huddled in grimy,
denuded spaces, or set on the bra-side in all
manner of angles, as though they had set
out to run away from the place, and, too
feeble to escape, had stuck fast where they
now stand.
High above this modern Haworth, Brow
more stretches away in interminabie swells
of savage, treeless hills. These circle around
to the south and west, and your eye follows
them until it catches a steely-gray line of
what at first seems ragged. jagged cubes of
rock, cutting in diagonal transverse from
the bottom to nearly the top of the bare
escarpment of another bolder hillside, term
mating in the loftier, drearier Haworth
moor. This half-defned, ragged line of
gray is the ancient village of Haworth.
Slipping and sliding along the sinuous,
clayey path, you reach the lower end of the
long, climbing, winding village street.
Everything is of stone-the houses, the gut
ters, the rain-troughs, the gargoyle-spouts,
and the cobbled way. like an open stone
sewer cut along the hillside to carry off the
seepy oozngs Of the moor-mosses above.
Everybody in the Mills.
There is but the single street; Main street
it is called. Dank, dark closes sometimes
extend for house length to the right and
left. The yard-wide pavements are series
of stone stairs and platforms. Beneath the
latter are shadowy shops and living rooms.
All stand open; but few inhabitants are to
be seen. Those of whom glimpses can be
caught are little children, still too young to
be ground in the mills, and bowed old
crones of women already ground by the
mills into voicelessness and shapelessness.
Up, up, up, for mile, you piod, and at last
reach a tiny open space. The houses are set
around it closely. Quaint shops and ancient
inns crowd it at all sorts of curious angles.
This is the head of the village, Topographic
cally, in habitations and in aristocracy.
Not for its attractiveness, but because it
seems an outlet to somewhere, you pass into
little court behind the Black Bull Inn.
1t is maze of angles and wynds. Sud-
denly another tiny open space confronts
you. Here an old, oblong, two-storied
stone house, with few yards of grass plot at
its side; little stone church, attached to,
rather than blended with. a grim Norman
tower; a grave yard cluttered with crumb-
ling stones; the whole covering barely an
acre OF ground. These were Haworth par
sonage, church and church yard; the
earthly. and final, home of the Brontes; and
their living eyes ever rested on Haworth
szI H.
church yard like wall of rounded stone.
History of the Family.
Here, within the village nest of the moor
side eerie, one may fttingly pause and re-
call the history of the Brontes as a family.
The father, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, was a
son of County Down, Ireland, farmer.
whose real name was Prunty. He was born
Patrickmas day, 1777, his name being
changed to Bronte at the suggestion of his
benefactor, the Rev. Mr. Tighe, rector of
Drumgooland parish. in Down. Fine in
physique, handsome and ambitious. he for
swore peasant-life, and, much after the man
ner of the Poor Scholar in Cartoons
pathetic tale, gained enough learning at 16,
to teach a small private school; soon be-
came a tutor: entered st. Johns College,
Cambridge, in 1902; obtained his B. A. de-
gree four years later; was ordained to a
curacy; and We find him, on his marriage,
in 1872, to Maria Branwell, swee. and
gentle Cornish maiden OF Penzance, the in
cumbent of the church living at Hartshead.
little village near Hudderstield, about 20
miles across the moors, to the southeast OF
Haworth.
They were five years at Hartshead. Then
Mr.. Bronte was transferred to Thornton,
another Yorkshire West Riding moorland
hamlet, "owre the staires'' that is, over the
stair, or hills, four miles south of Haworth;
the gray old octagonal chapel tower at
Thornton being visible from the heights of
Browmoor, just over there across the valley.
The Mecca of the Writers.
Haworih in 1920, and with his family took
possession of the old parsonage inst as you
see it to-day. He remained until his death
in 1861, period of Al years, the incumbent
of St. Michael and All Angels, this now
world-famed church, which with the par
sonage, the graveyard and these closely
huddled houses of stone make up grim old
village picture.
1t will be your fortune to be driven from
this parsonage door, just as was Miss
Thackery and scores of English literators in
the past; as was the Rev. DR.. Theodore F.
Clarke, of Brooklyn, only last summer; and
as 1 was yesterday. But you may see the
old graves the Brontes saw; wander upon
the moors they knew; study the ancient
tower that escaped the vandals' hands; and
stand beside the memorial tablets to the one
family that made all Haworth shrine.
Then. if you will be cautious, and will as
sure the simple-hearted old creature that
you will not betray her condolences to the
present precious incumbent of st. Michael's,
D., ILL