Some Eminent Women of Our Times: Short Biographical Sketches
John Stuart Mill · en
The manner of her death has been already referred to. It was in unison
with her unselfish, devoted life. She died on the 19th February 1868,
and her body was committed to the earth of her beloved Ireland, at
Fahan, on Lough Swilly, the home of her early years.
XI
CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË
IN the quiet Yorkshire village of Haworth, on the bleak moorland
hillside above Keighley, were born two of the greatest imaginative
writers of the present century, Charlotte and Emily Brontë. The
wonderful gifts of the Brontë family, the grief and tragedy that
overshadowed their lives, and their early deaths, will always cast about
their story a peculiarly touching interest. Their father, the Rev.
Patrick Brontë, was of Irish birth. He was born in the County Down, of a
Protestant family—one that had migrated from the south to the north of
Ireland. His character was that which we are more accustomed to
associate with Scotland than with Ireland. Resolute, stern, independent,
and self-denying, he had the virtues of an old Covenanter rather than
the facile graces which so often distinguish those of Celtic blood. His
father was a farmer, but Patrick Brontë had no desire to live by
agricultural industry. At sixteen years of age he separated himself from
his family and opened a school. What amount of success he had in this
undertaking does not appear, but it is evident that he had a distinct
object in view, namely, to obtain money enough to complete his own
education; in this he was successful, for after nine years’ labour in
instructing others, he entered as a student in St. John’s College,
Cambridge, remained there four years, obtained the B.A. degree of the
University, and was ordained as a clergyman of the Church of England. He
kept up no intercourse with his family, and showed no trace of his Irish
blood, either in speech or character. He loved and married Miss
Branwell, of Penzance, a lady of much sweetness and refinement. Their
six children were destined, through the writings of two of them, to be
known wherever the English language is spoken, all over the world. After
holding livings in Essex and at Thornton, in Yorkshire, Mr. Brontë was
appointed to the Rectory of Haworth, which is now so often visited on
account of its association with the authors of _Jane Eyre_ and
_Wuthering Heights_.