'Aunt Branwell'



We do not have a clear description of Aunt Branwell. By the time she came to Haworth she was

forty-five years old and presumably a confirmed spinster. Her background in

Penzance had been privileged and comfortable. She had been used to polite society and balls, and, despite the break up of her family in 1811, she still had a private income of £50 a year. There were times when Aunt Branwell had wanted to leave the cold and draughts of Haworth and return to Penzance, but she never did. From her twenty one years in Haworth we have no record of her having any social contact with the village, and if her staunch Methodism caused any friction between herself and the Anglican minister that she shared house and family with, it is not recorded.

 

 

Aunt Branwell's shawl

After the Clergy Daughters' School disaster of 1824, Mr. Brontë kept his four remaining children at home for the next six years, sharing responsibility for their education with Aunt Branwell. Bringing up and educating four exceptionally bright children in a small house demanded that Aunt Branwell run a tight ship. The locals thought her 'a bit of a tyke', and claimed they could set their watches by the regularity of the Parsonage routine.

    Smelling Salts Bottles

Aunt Branwell's £50 a year was very much her own private money, so when, in 1841, Charlotte ventured to ask if Aunt Branwell might support Emily, Anne and herself in a venture to open their own school, Charlotte was pleasantly surprised when her aunt offered her £150. This venture never got off the ground, but Aunt Branwell was again forthcoming with funds the following year when Charlotte and Emily went to extend their education at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels.

     
Aunt Branwell's teapot and pattens.

 

Aunt Branwell had always enjoyed robust good health, but on the 25th October 1842, she suffered a constriction of the bowel, and died four days later. Charlotte and Emily were still in Brussels, and returned home too late for the funeral. But Aunt Branwell's two favourites' the 'baby' Anne, and the only boy, Branwell Brontë , were both there, and it is Branwell who has left us the warmest testimonial to his aunt. Writing to his friend Grundy on the day his aunt died, Branwell concludes " I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood." Elizabeth Branwell left most of her money to Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. They used some of it to finance their Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), the beginning of their careers as published writers.

Aunt Branwell's  Japanese Dressing Case