Brontës Read online

  Having overcome his first hurdle, acquiring the gentleman’s prerequisite, a classical education, Patrick faced the problem of obtaining entrance to university. Ostensibly there were three choices open to him: Trinity College in Dublin, the natural choice for an Irishman, Oxford or Cambridge.25 In reality, however, Cambridge – and indeed St John’s College – was Patrick’s only option. It was not simply that Tighe pushed him to go to his own college, which both his half-brothers and, more recently, his nephew, had attended.26 St John’s was renowned for its Evangelical connections and, perhaps most important of all as far as Patrick was concerned, it had the largest funds available of any college in any of the universities for assisting poor but able young men to get a university education. Unlike most other college foundations, these scholarships were not all tied to specific schools or particular areas of the country, so if Patrick was to get into any university, St John’s at Cambridge offered him the greatest chance of doing so.27 To be admitted, all that he required were letters from Tighe attesting to his ability, confirming that he had reached the necessary standard of education and recommending him for an assisted place as a sizar.

  Four long years after taking up the post as tutor to Thomas Tighe’s children, Patrick finally achieved his ambition. Leaving behind his family, his friends and his home, he embarked for England with his meagre savings in his pocket and, it would appear, with scarcely a backward glance.

  From the moment that he arrived in Cambridge in July 180228 to the day he graduated in 1806, Patrick Brontë was a distinctive and somewhat eccentric figure. His humble Irish background marked him out immediately, as did the fact that he was one of only four sizars in his year, though fortunately the menial tasks which went with the sizarship, such as waiting on the wealthier undergraduates at table, had recently been abolished.29 Although some of the other men were already graduates of other universities when they came to St John’s, Patrick, at twenty-five, was up to ten years older than many of his contemporaries. Most were wealthy young men who had been taught by private tutors or at public school; at worst they had been to long-established grammar schools which had links with the university going back centuries. For some, going to Cambridge was simply an opportunity for indulgence and a pleasant way of passing a few years before returning to the family estates or business.30 A degree was desirable but not essential. For Patrick, it was the passport to a promising future and he had no intention of being distracted from his purpose. He was, in every sense, an outsider and he had only to open his mouth to betray his origins. No doubt he suffered from the snobbery and elitism of some of his contemporaries but, on the other hand, he did not pass unnoticed. At the very least, the unorthodox and rather romantic circumstances of his arrival at Cambridge made an impression and within a couple of years he was already a legend at the college.

  Henry Martyn, for example, a leading Evangelical who was then a fellow of St John’s, wrote to William Wilberforce, the great anti-slavery campaigner, in February 1804, describing Patrick’s progress to college as having

  [a] singularity [which] has hardly been equalled, I suppose, since the days of Bp Latimer – He left his native Ireland at the age of 22 with seven pounds having been able to lay by no more after superintending a school ten years. He reached Cambridge before that was expended, & there received an unexpected supply of £5 from a distant friend. On this he subsisted some weeks before entering at St John’s, & has since had no other assistance than what the college afforded.31

  Another contemporary was the poet Henry Kirke White, who is now perhaps best remembered for his hymn ‘Oft in danger, oft in woe’. The son of a Nottingham butcher, he was admitted as a sizar to St John’s in April 1804. Beset by financial problems himself, he was filled with admiration for Patrick, who managed to get by on an even lower income than he did. In a letter home, written on 26 October 1805, he told his mother:

  I have got the bills of Mr [Brontë], a Sizar of this college, now before me, and from them, and his own account, I will give you a statement of what my college bills will amount to … 12£ or 15£ a-year at the most … The Mr [Brontë], whose bills I have borrowed, has been at college three years. He came over from [Ireland], with 10£ in his pocket, and has no friends, or any income or emolument whatever, except what he receives for his Sizarship; yet he does support himself, and that, too, very genteelly.32

  Life in the college would certainly be gracious compared to the farmhouse at Ballynaskeagh. Patrick probably shared rooms with John Nunn, a fellow sizar, who was to become his closest friend, in the third storey of the front quadrangle, provided free of charge by the college. Most rooms were already furnished, though Patrick may have been unlucky, like Henry Kirke White, and found himself assigned unfurnished rooms which would have cost him about fifteen pounds to equip. Economies were possible, however, and White got away with spending ‘only’ four pounds by sleeping on a horsehair mattress on the floor instead of a proper bed.33 He would also have had to pay for wood or coals to heat his rooms and candles to enable him to work outside daylight hours, though savings could be made even in this area. His own tutor, James Wood, the son of Lancashire weavers, had also once been a poor sizar at the college. He had lived in a small garret at the top of the turret in the southeast corner of the Second Court called ‘the Tub’ where, to save money, he used to study by the light of the rush candles on the staircase, with his feet wrapped in straw.34 All the sizars dined in hall and the provision of food was generous, as White explained:

  Our dinners and suppers cost us nothing; and if a man choose to eat milk-breakfasts, and go without tea, he may live absolutely for nothing; for his college emoluments will cover the rest of his expenses. Tea is indeed almost superfluous, since we do not rise from dinner till half past three, and the supper-bell rings a quarter before nine. Our mode of living is not to be complained of, for the table is covered with all possible variety; and on feast-days, which our fellows take care are pretty frequent, we have wine35

  St John’s was far and away the largest of all the colleges, its closest rival in terms of size being Trinity, next door. Most of the other dozen or so colleges were little more than small halls, lacking the grandeur of their two big brothers, though the magnificent Gothic chapel of King’s College dominated the townscape then as now. The libraries offered the opportunity for recreation as well as study to someone like Patrick, for whom the purchase of a book meant considerable financial self-sacrifice. The churches and college chapels, too, with their enviable choirs and organs, provided music of a quality that Patrick could never have heard before. More importantly, they were the platform for the Evangelical preachers who, led by Charles Simeon himself from his pulpit at Holy Trinity Church, were inspiring a new generation of clergymen with the missionary faith of Evangelicalism.36 If Patrick had not already been an Evangelical by the time he left Thomas Tighe in Ireland, he had every opportunity and incentive for conversion at Cambridge. He certainly seems to have been one of those ardent young men who met in Simeon’s rooms and were taught the necessity of preaching ‘to humble the sinner, to exalt the Saviour, and to promote holiness’.37

  Beyond the insular life of the colleges there was the town of Cambridge, with its bustling markets which served the surrounding countryside and the Cam, which was not the sleepy river of today, but an important and busy waterway.38 By comparison with the rural Ireland of Patrick’s earlier years, the town must have seemed like a metropolis, though the drab Fenlands must have been a poor substitute for the beautiful mountains of Mourne, especially to a great walker like Patrick.

  Though his sizarship relieved him of much of the burden of his living expenses at Cambridge, Patrick would still have had a struggle to make ends meet. The biggest expense was the fees payable to his college and the university. These were worked out on a sliding scale, so that where a fellow commoner (a nobleman) would pay £25 on admission and 17s.6d. quarterly for tuition fees to his college, a pensioner (younger sons of the aristocracy, the gentry and profess
ional classes) would pay £15 and 11s.6d., but Patrick, as a sizar, would pay only £10 and 6s.4d. respectively.39 The university, too, demanded fees on matriculation and on graduation so that it was vital to Patrick to maintain an income of some kind. He did this in two ways – both dependent on his academic success. Firstly, he taught pupils in his leisure hours, a practice which might earn him up to fifteen guineas for four months’ work in the long vacation. If he was lucky, there might be the additional bonus of gifts from grateful pupils, like the invaluable Lemprière’s Bibliotheca Classica, presented to him by Mr Toulmen.40 Secondly, he won exhibitions and books through excelling in his college examinations.

  Patrick was fortunate in having three outstanding tutors at St John’s: James Wood, Joshua Smith and Thomas Catton. All three had held sizarships themselves, so they fully understood the difficulties of and actively encouraged the sizars in their care. James Wood, an Evangelical who later became Master of the college and a Vice-Chancellor of the university, was especially active on Patrick’s behalf.41 Under their guidance, Patrick’s academic career flourished.

  Fortunately, the records of the college examinations still exist, so we can see exactly how well he did in comparison with the rest of his year. It is significant that the lowest he ever came in the order of merit was in his very first attempt, in December 1802, when he came twenty-fifth out of thirty-seven in an examination on the geometry of Euclid and the theology of Beausobre and Doddridge.42 It is a mark of his achievement that, despite lacking the advantages of a public school or private tutor which were available to most of his contemporaries,43 Patrick still managed to scrape into the first class in this examination. James Wood noted against his name and those of the three men immediately above him that they were ‘Inferior to the above but entitled to prizes if in the first class at the next examination’.44

  From this moment on, Patrick’s academic career never faltered. In each of the half-yearly exams that followed, Patrick maintained his place in a first class which grew steadily smaller over the years. The set books were alternately in Greek for the June examinations and Latin for the December ones, but all were chosen from the standard classics of the ancient world. In 1803 the set texts were histories: in June the Anabasis of Xenophon and in December, Tacitus’ Agricola, at which point his friend, John Nunn, slipped from the first to the second class. In 1804 the subject was poetry with Euripides’ verse tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis set for June, and books 1 and 4 of Virgil’s Georgics set for December, when poor Nunn, whose Latin was obviously not as good as his Greek, dropped even further down into the third class. In June 1805, Patrick’s last college examinations, the set book was Mounteney’s edition of the speeches of Demosthenes, the Athenian orator and statesman. To crown his college career, Patrick was one of only seven men to get into the first class and, even more impressively, one of only five who had managed to maintain an unbroken record of first-class successes.45

  Those who were in the first class in both the annual examinations were entitled to prize books. It is surprising, therefore, that only two of Patrick’s are still extant, especially as he clearly regarded them with great pride. They were both standard works: Richard Bentley’s 1728 edition of the works of Horace and Samuel Clarke’s 1729 edition of Homer’s Iliad in a dual Greek and Latin text.46 Though both were nearly eighty years old, they had been rebound in stout leather and, as he pointed out in his inscriptions at the beginning, each bore the college arms on the front cover. On the title page of the Iliad, Patrick carefully noted: ‘My Prize Book, for having always kept in the first Class, at St John’s College – Cambridge – P. Brontê, A.B. To be retained – semper—’. A similar statement was inscribed in the Horace. The odd phrase ‘To be retained – semper’ (always) was one that Patrick was to use again and again over the years in books and manuscripts and it was a habit he was to pass on to his children.47

  Patrick’s pride was natural and justified. He had worked hard and the prize books were concrete evidence of his achievement. Another tangible result was the awarding of college exhibitions which, though not in themselves very substantial sums, together made an invaluable contribution towards his income. They were paid half-yearly, at the end of June and the end of December, following the college examinations. The most valuable was the Hare exhibition, worth £5 a year, which he was awarded in February 1803 and which was paid to him from June 1803 until December 1807 – a full eighteen months after he had left the college. The Suffolk exhibition, which should have been worth £3 6s. 8d. annually, was only worth half that amount because Patrick had to share it with a graduate, Dr A. Brown; although awarded it at Christmas 1803, he had to wait till the following June for his first payment, but again it was paid to him up to and including December 1807. Finally, he held the Goodman exhibition for the six months from June to December 1805, receiving the half-yearly payment of 14s. at the end of that time.48 Altogether, the exhibitions would give him an annual income of £6 13s. 4d., rising to £7 7s. 4d. for the short period when he held the Goodman exhibition.

  By scrimping and saving, Patrick contrived to make ends meet, but by his own account to Henry Kirke White he needed between twelve and fifteen pounds a year for college bills alone. The shortfall had to be made up somehow – and in a way that would not detract from his studies. The obvious solution was to seek sponsorship of some kind and so, at the beginning of 1804, Patrick sought out Henry Martyn, who, though four years younger than Patrick, was already a fellow of St John’s. Martyn, who had been Senior Wrangler (the student with the highest marks) of the university in 1801, was Charles Simeon’s curate at Holy Trinity Church and therefore sympathetic towards a young man with Evangelical aspirations.49 He took up Patrick’s case immediately, writing first of all to John Sargent:

  An Irishman, of the name of Bronte entered at St John’s a year & half ago as a sizar. During this time he has received no assistance from his friends who are incapable of affording him any – Yet he has been able to get on in general pretty well by help of Exhibitions &c which are given to our sizars. Now however, he finds himself reduced to great straits & applied to me just before I left Cambridge to know if assistance could be procured for him from any of those societies, whose object is to maintain pious young men designed for the ministry.50

  Patrick had now taken the plunge and committed himself to a career in the Church of England. Sargent contacted Henry Thornton, patron of one of the Evangelical societies, who, with his more famous cousin, William Wilberforce, himself a graduate of St John’s College, agreed personally to sponsor Patrick through university. Martyn wrote to Wilberforce to thank him:

  I availed myself as soon as possible of your generous offer to Mr Bronte & left it without hesitation to himself to fix the limits of his request. He says that £20 per annm. will enable him to go on with comfort, but that he could do with less.51

  Wilberforce himself endorsed the letter ‘Martyn abt Mr Bronte Heny. & I to allow him 10L. each anny.’ The fact that Patrick was able to attract the attention of men of the calibre of Martyn, Thornton and Wilberforce is further proof of his commitment to his faith and his outstanding qualities. Henry Martyn himself had no doubts about him, telling Sargent unequivocally, ‘For the character of the man I can safely vouch as I know him to be studious, clever, & pious –’. Recounting Patrick’s long struggle to get to Cambridge from Ireland to Wilberforce, Martyn added another unsolicited testimonial: ‘There is reason to hope that he will be an instrument of good to the church, as a desire of usefulness in the ministry seems to have influenced him hitherto in no small degree.’52

  The fact that Patrick was now joining the majority of St John’s undergraduates in working towards a career in the Church did not prevent him or them, from taking part in the more secular activities of the university. Most prominent among these were the preparations for an invasion of England by the French which, after the renewal of hostilities by Napoleon and the declaration of war by Great Britain on 18 May 1803, seemed a daily possibility. Througho
ut the summer of 1803 Napoleon was putting together an invasion flotilla and restructuring the defences of his Channel ports. Volunteers were called for and by December 1803, 463,000 men had enrolled in the local militia of the three kingdoms. Among them was Patrick Brontë, who had a lifelong passion for all things military.53 By September of that year the gentlemen of the university had obtained leave to drill as a separate volunteer corps from the men of the town. The following month, the heads of colleges and tutors gave reluctant permission for all lay members of the university to be allowed one hour a day for military drill, on condition that none of the officers were to be gazetted so as to be called up into the regular army; those who were already ordained were, of course, excluded from taking any active part in the drilling.54

  On 25 February 1804 the Cambridge Chronicle published a list of 154 gentlemen of the university who, ‘in the present crisis’, had been instructed in the use of arms by Captain Bircham of the 30th Regiment.55 The St John’s men were headed by Lord Palmerston, who had been admitted to the college on 4 April 1804.56 Though he was only eighteen, his social standing made him the obvious candidate to be elected as officer in charge of the fourth division, which was made up of the men of St John’s and Peterhouse. Patrick Brontë, with his friend John Nunn, had joined the corps before Christmas and for nine months they trained in the Market Square under the command of Palmerston and under the watchful eye of Captain Bircham. Just before the university volunteer corps was effectively temporarily disbanded with the advent of the long vacation, they gathered to drill at Parker’s Piece; after performing a series of manoeuvres, the volunteers formed into a hollow square to witness the presentation to the Captain by Palmerston of a letter containing two hundred guineas as ‘a token of their acknowledgment for his unremitted attention to them … and to express the high sense they entertained of his services’.57 For the rest of his life Patrick was to be inordinately proud of the fact that he had drilled under Lord Palmerston, not least because by 1809, when he was still only a humble curate, Palmerston had been appointed Minister for War, and was already embarking on a long political career which was to make him an outstanding foreign secretary and prime minister.