Life of Charlotte Brontë | Page 4

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 fire-side; 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 outbuildings, 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