Into the midst of the lawless yet not unkindly population of Haworth, in the West Riding, the Rev. Patrick Bronte brought his wife and six little children in February, 1820, seven heavily-laden carts lumbering slowly up the long stone street bearing the “new parson’s” household goods.

A native of County Down, Mr. Bronte had entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1802, obtained his B.A. degree, and after serving as a curate in Essex, had been appointed curate at Hartshead, in Yorkshire.  There he was soon captivated by Maria Branwell, a little gentle creature, the third daughter of Mr. Thomas Branwell, merchant, of Penzance.  In 1816 he received the living of Thornton, in Bradford Parish, and there, on April 21, Charlotte Bronte was born.  She was the third daughter, Maria and Elizabeth being her elder sisters, and fast on her heels followed Patrick Branwell, Emily Jane and Anne.

“They kept themselves to themselves very close,” in the account given by those who remember the family coming to Haworth.  From the first, the walks of the children were directed rather towards the heathery moors sloping upwards behind the parsonage than towards the long descending village street.  Hand in hand they used to make their way to the glorious moors, which in after days they loved so passionately.

They were grave and silent beyond their years.  “You would never have known there was a child in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures,” said one of my informants.  “Maria would often shut herself up” (Maria of seven!) “in the children’s study with a newspaper or a periodical, and be able to tell anyone everything when she came out, debates in parliament, and I know not what all.”

Mr. Bronte wished to make the children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress.  His strong passionate nature was in general compressed down with resolute stoicism.  Mrs. Bronte, whose sweet spirit thought invariably on the bright side, would say:  “Ought I not to be thankful that he never gave me an angry word?”

In September, 1821, Mrs. Bronte died, and the lives of those quiet children must have become quieter and lonelier still.  Their father did not require companionship, and the daughters grew out of childhood into girlhood bereft in a singular manner of such society as would have been natural to their age, sex and station.  The children did not want society.  To small infantine gaieties they were unaccustomed.  They were all in all to each other.  They had no children’s books, but their eager minds “browsed undisturbed among the wholesome pasturage of English literature,” as Charles Lamb expressed it.

Their father says of their childhood that “since they could read and write they used to invent and act little plays of their own, in which the Duke of Wellington, Charlotte’s hero, was sure to come off conqueror.  When the argument got warm I had sometimes to come in as arbitrator.”  Long before Maria Bronte died, at the age of eleven, her father used to say he could converse with her on any topic with as much freedom and pleasure as with any grown-up person.