Pilgrimage and Parsonage: The Brontë Legacy
By Jonathon Van Maren, European Conservative.
Each year, 80,000 literary pilgrims make the trek into Brontë country in West Yorkshire. If you go by car, you emerge out of the sheep-spotted emerald dales to see the rugged, rusty-colored moors suddenly sweeping up from the road, which climbs steadily towards a little village. There, three sisters, none of whom would survive their father or see their fortieth birthday, wrote some of the greatest classics penned on English soil. Haworth is a village of less than 7,000, a captivating confusion of stone bridges, brick houses, and narrow streets first mentioned in 1209 but dating from much earlier. The Haworth Parish Church is at least eight centuries old; Patrick Brontë was appointed curate in 1820.
All the Brontës but Anne are buried beneath a pillar near the front of the church, which rises from the floor where the family pew used to stand (Anne died in Scarborough and is buried in the church there). Patrick buried his entire family here; just outside the grey stone church, the cemetery is crowded with topsy-turvy gravestones greened with moss and lichen. Many of the dates are faded; those discernable are very, very old. The church itself feels damp; on display inside the Brontë Memorial Chapel are the burial records for Haworth from 1848. Emily Jane Brontë, No. 1775, is the second last name recorded there. The text marking the family crypt is from Corinthians:
The sting of death which is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Much has been made of the tragic lives of the Brontë children, but it was perhaps their father who suffered most. Patrick was widowed in 1821 when his wife Maria died at the age of 38 of uterine cancer.
Read here.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
