Life of Charlotte Brontë | Page 5

Parsonage. The churchyard is on one side of this lane,
the school-house and the sexton's dwelling (where the curates formerly
lodged) on the other.
The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the
church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfried school-house,
form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to
the fields and moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled up
by a crowded churchyard, and a small garden or court in front of the
clergyman's house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side,
the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath
the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore,
although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there.
Within the stone wall, which keeps out the surrounding churchyard, are
bushes of elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square
grass-plot and a gravel walk. The house is of grey stone, two stories
high, heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might
strip off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a
hundred years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two
windows on the right (as the visitor stands with his back to the church,
ready to enter in at the front door) belonging to Mr. Bronte's study, the
two on the left to the family sitting-room. Everything about the place
tells of the most dainty order, the most exquisite cleanliness. The
door-steps are spotless; the small old-fashioned window-panes glitter
like looking-glass. Inside and outside of that house cleanliness goes up
into its essence, purity.
The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the
village; and the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full of
upright tombstones. The chapel or church claims greater antiquity than
any other in that part of the kingdom; but there is no appearance of this
in the external aspect of the present edifice, unless it be in the two
eastern windows, which remain unmodernized, and in the lower part of
the steeple. Inside, the character of the pillars shows that they were
constructed before the reign of Henry VII. It is probable that there
existed on this ground, a "field-kirk," or oratory, in the earliest times;

and, from the Archbishop's registry at York, it is ascertained that there
was a chapel at Haworth in 1317. The inhabitants refer inquirers
concerning the date to the following inscription on a stone in the church
tower:-
"Hic fecit Caenobium Monachorum Auteste fundator. A. D.
sexcentissimo."
That is to say, before the preaching of Christianity in Northumbria.
Whitaker says that this mistake originated in the illiterate copying out,
by some modern stone-cutter, of an inscription in the character of
Henry the Eighth's time on an adjoining stone:-
"Orate pro bono statu Eutest Tod."
"Now every antiquary knows that the formula of prayer 'bono statu'
always refers to the living. I suspect this singular Christian name has
been mistaken by the stone-cutter for Austet, a contraction of Eustatius,
but the word Tod, which has been mis- read for the Arabic figures 600,
is perfectly fair and legible. On the presumption of this foolish claim to
antiquity, the people would needs set up for independence, and contest
the right of the Vicar of Bradford to nominate a curate at Haworth."
I have given this extract, in order to explain the imaginary groundwork
of a commotion which took place in Haworth about five and thirty
years ago, to which I shall have occasion to allude again more
particularly.
The interior of the church is commonplace; it is neither old enough nor
modern enough to compel notice. The pews are of black oak, with high
divisions; and the names of those to whom they belong are painted in
white letters on the doors. There are neither brasses, nor altar-tombs,
nor monuments, but there is a mural tablet on the right-hand side of the
communion-table, bearing the following inscription:-
HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF MARIA BRONTE, WIFE OF THE
REV. P. BRONTE, A.B., MINISTER OP HAWORTH. HER SOUL
DEPARTED TO THE SAVIOUR, SEPT. 15TH, 1821, IN THE 39TH
YEAR OF HER AGE.
"Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man
cometh." MATTHEW xxiv. 44.
ALSO HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF MARIA BRONTE,
DAUGHTER OF THE AFORESAID; SHE DIED ON THE 6TH OF
MAY, 1825, IN THE 12TH YEAR OF HER AGE; AND OF

ELIZABETH BRONTE, HER SISTER, WHO DIED JUNE 15TH,
1825, IN THE 11TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as