CHARLOTTE Brontë's hero-worship of the Duke of Wellington

Wellington was to remain an important figure in the Brontë household. A steady flow of newspapers, reviews, books and magazines would provide all the material that was to feed the Brontës’ hero-worship of the Duke of Wellington, later called the ‘Iron Duke’ when he became Prime Minister. The children inherited their father’s thirst for politics and military leaders; Wellington and Napoleon both appear in various guises in their juvenilia. We all know the story of the box of soldiers their father gave Branwell, from which the children would create an entire fictional world, based on military heroes and actions.

Charlotte in particular was obsessive in her adoration of Wellington, which emerges time and again. Her fictional characters Charles and Arthur Wellesley feature prominently in her early Angrian writings. In Brussels she wrote an essay on ‘The Death of Napoleon’, in which she praises Wellington, making his genius superior to Napoleon’s. Throughout her life she would follow her hero's progress, finally seeing him in the flesh when she visited London in 1850.

Although the main reason for Charlotte and Emily's stay in Brussels in 1842 was educational, there can be little doubt that Waterloo, where their hero Wellington had defeated Napoleon, would be in their minds when they crossed the channel to Belgium. We know that Patrick Brontë visited the site. After leaving his daughters at the Pensionnat Heger, he remained in Brussels for about a week longer, seeing the sights of the city, and availed himself of the opportunity of seeing the historic battlefield for himself. He mentioned it in his first sermon after his return to Haworth. A member of the congregation, Benjamin Binns, writing in the Bradford Observer in 1894, recollected Patrick describing in vivid and vigorous language the field of Waterloo which he had visited from Brussels.