Patrick Brontë

Patrick Brontë (, commonly ; born Patrick Brunty; 17 March 1777 – 7 June 1861) was an Irish Anglican minister and author who spent most of his adult life in England. He was the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, and of Branwell Brontë, his only son. Patrick outlived his wife, the former Maria Branwell, by forty years, by which time all of their six children had also died.

Early life

Brontë was born at Imdel (or Emdale) in the parish of Drumballyroney, County Down, the eldest of the ten children of Hugh Brunty, an Anglican, and Elinor Alice (née McClory), an Irish Catholic. His father was a "farmhand, fence-fixer, and road-builder". The family was very poor, owning four books (including two copies of the Bible) and subsisting on a restricted diet of porridge, buttermilk, bread and potatoes, to which Patrick attributed his lifelong digestive issues.

He had several apprenticeships (to a blacksmith, aged twelve, then to a linen draper, and a weaver) until he was befriended by a local clergyman, who saw his potential and provided him with an education. In 1798 he became a teacher, then moved to England in 1802, having won a scholarship to study theology as a sizar at St John's College, Cambridge. He first registered his name as "Branty" or "Brunty", then as Brontë, receiving his AB degree in 1806.

In adult life, Patrick Brunty formally changed the spelling of his name to the more gentrified Brontë; while the reason for this change remains unclear, there are a number of prominent theories to explain it, including that it may have been in tribute to his hero, Lord Nelson, who had received the title of Duke of Bronte.

Curate

He was appointed curate at Wethersfield, near Braintree in Essex, where he was ordained a deacon of the Church of England in 1806, and then a parson in 1807.

Brontë's first post as curate was at St Mary Magdalene Church, Wethersfield, Essex with the vicar being Joseph Jowett, Regius Professor of Law at Cambridge. Here in 1807 he met and fell in love with Mary Burder, the 18-year-old niece of his landlady. Mary's family were members of the dissenting, or non-conformist Congregational Church, and objected to the connection. After a disagreement between Brontë and Burder's uncle, her legal guardian, Patrick ended the relationship. Mary was sent out of town, and Patrick decided it was best to take a new curacy. Thus in 1809, Patrick became assistant curate at Wellington, Shropshire, and in 1810 his first published poem, the 256 line ''Winter Evening Thoughts'', appeared in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verses, ''Cottage Poems''. In her biography of Charlotte Brontë, Claire Harman recounts that one of Patrick's poems written to Mary Burder, and praising her sparkling blue eyes, was published in ''Cottage Poems''. He later gave a copy of the book, with an annotated version of the poem, to another young lady, correcting the line to “sparkling hazle eye”.

In December 1809, Patrick Brontë moved to the West Riding of Yorkshire as a curate at All Saints, Dewsbury (now Dewsbury Minster). The area was undergoing an evangelical revival under the incumbent vicar John Buckworth. Brontë taught reading and writing at Dewsbury's Sunday School and was deputised by Buckworth to attend twice weekly meetings of the Church Mission Society on his behalf. A memorial plaque to Brontë can be found on the South Aisle of Dewsbury Minster.

Buckworth appointed Brontë as an assistant curate to the Church of St Peter, Hartshead, a daughter church of Dewsbury in 1811. He served at Hartshead until 1815. In the meantime (1812) he was appointed a school examiner at a Wesleyan academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley. In 1815 he moved on again to become perpetual curate of Thornton.

Family

At Guiseley, Brontë met Maria Branwell (1783–1821), whom he married on 29 December 1812 in the Church of St. Oswald. They moved into a house on Halifax Road, Liversedge, where their first two children, Maria (1814–1825) and Elizabeth (1815–1825) were born. Their remaining children Charlotte (1816–1855), Patrick Branwell (1817–1848), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849) were born after they moved to Thornton.

Brontë was keenly aware of his immigrant status and of the prejudice that accompanied it: at the time the Irish were often represented as feckless and lazy, and Patrick faced hostility and rumours spread by locals that he was an alcoholic. Elizabeth Gaskell, in her biography of Charlotte Brontë, downplayed the family's Irish accents and claimed that Patrick had severed ties with his family, although this was untrue.

Brontë was offered the perpetual curacy of St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth in June 1819, and he took the family there in April 1820. His sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell (1776–1842), who had lived with the family at Thornton in 1815, joined the household in 1821 to help to look after the children and to care for Maria Brontë, who was ill, possibly suffering the final stages of what may have been uterine cancer or ovarian cancer. Elizabeth decided to move permanently to Haworth to act as housekeeper.

At this point Patrick Brontë once more sought out Mary Burder, whom he had jilted fifteen years previously, inquiring after her hand in marriage and telling her that he was a widower with six small children. Burder declined. Although Mary's refusal had been decisive, Patrick wrote to her again, saying:

You may think and write as you please, but I ''have not the least doubt'' that if you had been mine you would have been happier than you ''now'' are, or ''can'' be as one in ''single life''.

After several further attempts to seek a new spouse, Patrick came to terms with widowhood at the age of 47, and spent his time visiting the sick and the poor, giving sermons and communion, leaving the three sisters Emily, Charlotte, Anne, and their brother Branwell alone with their aunt and a maid, Tabitha Aykroyd (Tabby), who tirelessly recounted local legends in her Yorkshire dialect while preparing the meals.

As a father, Patrick encouraged his children to read and to take an interest in literature and politics, and arranged for tuition for them in music and painting. However he was also distant and idiosyncratic in his behaviour. A household servant describes him burning coloured shoes that had been given to the children and cutting the backs from chairs because they were too ornate.

Brontë was responsible for the building of a Sunday school in Haworth, which he opened in 1832. He remained active in local causes into his old age, and between 1849 and 1850 organised action to procure a clean water supply for the village, which was eventually achieved in 1856.

In August 1846 Brontë, with Charlotte as a companion, travelled to Manchester to undergo surgery on his eyes. On 28 August he was operated upon, without anaesthetic, to remove cataracts. Eye surgery was then in its infancy and surgeons did not understand how stitches could be used to hold together the necessary incision in the eye. Their solution was to have the patient undergo a long period of recuperation in a dark room. Charlotte used this interval to begin the writing of ''Jane Eyre''.

After the death of his last surviving child, Charlotte, nine months after her marriage, he co-operated with Elizabeth Gaskell on the biography of his daughter. He was also responsible for the posthumous publication of Charlotte's first novel, ''The Professor'', in 1857. Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1819–1906), who had been Brontë's curate, stayed in the household until he returned to Ireland after Patrick Brontë's death, at the age of 84, in 1861. Brontë outlived not only his wife (by 40 years) but all six of his children.

Publications

*''Winter Evening Thoughts'' (1810)
*''Cottage Poems'' (1810)
*'' The Rural Minstrel: A Miscellany of Descriptive Poems'' (1813)
*''The Cottage In the Wood'' (1816)
*''The Maid of Killarney'' (1818)
*''The Signs of the Times'' (1835)

Portrayals

* Montagu Love portrayed Patrick Brontë in '' Devotion'' (1946)
* Alfred Burke portrayed Patrick Brontë in ''The Brontës of Haworth'' (1973)
* Patrick Magee portrayed Patrick Brontë in '' The Brontë Sisters'' (1979)
* Jonathan Pryce portrayed Patrick Brontë in '' To Walk Invisible'' (2016)
* Adrian Dunbar portrayed Patrick Brontë in '' Emily'' (2022)

References

Further reading

* ''The Letters of the Reverend Patrick Brontë'' Edited by Dudley Green Foreword by Asa Briggs (Nonsuch Publishing Ltd 2005)
* ''A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters, and Times of the Rev. Patrick Brontë'', John Lock and Canon W.T. Dixon, (1965)
* ''The Brontës'', Juliet Barker (1995)
* ''Charlotte Brontë: Evolution of Genius'' Winifred Gerin,(1967)
* ''The Letters of Charlotte Brontë'' (3 vols, edited by Margaret Smith), (1995–2003)

External links

Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth
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Poems by Patrick Brontë

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bronte, Patrick
1777 births
1861 deaths
18th-century Irish Anglican priests
19th-century Irish writers
19th-century English Anglican priests
Patrick
Christian clergy from County Down
Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
19th-century Irish biographers
Irish male non-fiction writers
19th-century British biographers