BRONTE, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, English novelists. Their father, Patrick Bronte (1777-1861), belonged to a family of Irish Prot estants named Prunty or Brunty. He was born in the village of Emdale, in county Down, Ire land. By schoolmastering he earned money enough to take him to the University of Cam bridge, where he graduated B.A., at Saint John's College in 1806. Ordained the same year to a curacy in Essex, he subsequently migrated to Yorkshire, and in 1811 obtained the living of Hartshead-cum-Clifton, to the east of Halifax. There he met his future wife, Maria Branwell of Penzance, then on a visit to her friends in the north. They were married on 29 Dec. 1812. Both husband and wife, it is interesting to note, had a zest for writing. A little manu script in Mrs. BrontC's hand is still extant; and Mr. Brontė published between 1811 and 1818 two volumes of meditative verse and two didactic stories, one of which follows the lines of Richardson's 'Pamela.' In 1815 Hartshead was exchanged for Thornton, another small parish near Bradford, in a bleak and lonely district. To this new home the Brontės brought with them two children, Maria and Elizabeth. At Thornton were born Charlotte (21 April 1816), Patrick Branwell (26 June 1817), Emily Jane (30 July 1818), and Anne (17 Jan. 1820).
A month after the birth of their last child, the Brontes moved to Haworth, near Keighley, a village that then consisted mainly of a street of gray stone houses running irregularly up a hillside by the church and the graves to the parsonage near the summit. As perpetual cur ate of the parish, the elder Brontė there passed his life; and there the children all grew up within sight of the broad and sweeping moors, wild and bleak in winter but grand and glorious in summer. Mrs. BrontE, a frail woman like her daughters, died in September 1821, worn out by the birth and care of six children; and the next year Miss Branwell, an unmarried sister, came to Haworth to manage the house hold with the aid of the faithful old servant *Tabby.* After the death of his wife, Mr. Brontė, always eccentric and austere, grew morose; and Miss Branwell seems to have been rather prim and reserved. Wherefore the chil dren were left much to themselves. In 1824 the daughters were placed in a school at Cowan Bridge, a hamlet on the road between Leeds and Kendal, where they remained for about a year to their great discomfort. Just after leav
ing school Maria and Elizabeth died of con sumption, brought on, Charlotte thought, by bad food and brutal treatment.
Soon after this, Charlotte, Emily and Bran well for so they always called their brother began to write "original compositions* in a curious microscopic hand, which they stitched into booklets and covered with brown paper. The specimens of Charlotte's stories, such as 'The Adventures of Ernest Alembert,' which have been printed as literary curiosities, show a facile pen and a remarkable command of vague and ornate phrases. She, and no doubt Emily and Branwell, had been reading Scott and the Gothic romances. In January 1831 Charlotte was sent to a school kept by Mar garet Wooler at Roehead, between Leeds and Huddersfield. Though she remained there but a year, she formed a strong attachment for Miss Wooler and several of the girls, especially for Ellen Nussey, with whom she kept up a life-long correspondence. In 1835 she returned to Roehead as a teacher, in company with Emily as a pupil. After three months Emily became homesick and her place was taken by Anne. Charlotte stayed on with Anne till Christmas, when both returned to Haworth. Charlotte was completely worn out by the work, for which she was ill adapted. During the next years Emily remained at home, while Anne and Charlotte went out as governesses. Charlotte had a hard time of it in her first posi tion, but received better treatment on a second trial in 1841. In the meantime, she rejected two offers of marriage. With a view to setting up a school of their own, Charlotte and Emily went over to Brussels in 1842 to prepare them selves, especially in French and German, at the Pension Heger, a large school under the man agement of M. Paul Heger and his wife. They advanced rapidly in their studies, receiving high praise from their master. Called home within a year by the death of Miss Branwell, Emily remained with her father, but Charlotte returned for a year as teacher of English. Homesickness and anxiety for her father, whose eyesight was failing, brought Charlotte back to theparsonage. Brief as was the so journ abroad, it was of the greatest value to the sisters. Without that experience, neither of them would likely have written novels that are still read.