The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell Page A

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. Brontë’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 Cæanobium Monachorum Auteste fundator. A. D. sexcentissimo.” 1
    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 EutestTod.”
    “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.” 2
    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 common-place; 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 BRONTË, WIFE
    OF THE
    REV P. BRONTE, A.B., MINISTER OF 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 BRONTË, DAUGHTER OF THE AFORESAID;
    SHE DIED ON THE
    6TH OF MAY, 1825, IN THE 12THYEAR OF HER AGE,
    AND OF
    ELIZABETH BRONTË, HER SISTER,
    WHO DIED JUNE 15TH, 1825, IN THE 11TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
    “Verily