It began calm, and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language. This grew to force—compressed, condensed, controlled.... Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines—election, predestination, reprobation—were frequent.... It seemed to me ... that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment—where moved troubling impulses of insatiable yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers, pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was—had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it ... than had I: with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium.
"Charlotte Brontë," says Miss Laura C. Holloway, "early exhibited antagonistic feelings towards the Calvinistic views of her father." And so I might continue at great length. Excluding the love passages necessary to "story" and the missionary suggestions for which it seems that Brussels priest whom I may call Charlotte Brontë's Fénelon was originally responsible, the portrayal of the Rev. Patrick Brontë, like that of Charlotte's sisters, is absolutely true to prototype and fact.[42] We discover that at heart Charlotte Brontë loved her father, hence she honoured him—the head of the "Rivers" family—by giving him the final word in her autobiography, speaking of him as he appeared to her: an old man whose days were drawing to a close. Jane relates of Morton:—
Near the churchyard, and in the middle of the garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage.
In Charlotte Brontë's mind this was Haworth Parsonage; but it is clear that, despite the church "spire" and other efforts at obfuscation, she did not dare to portray her sisters and father in the parsonage. Thus she placed the family in another house. And now we will have another glimpse of Tabitha Aykroyd, this time as "Hannah," speaking her Haworth Yorkshire dialect:—
"Have you been with the family long?"
"I've lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.... I thowt more o' th' childer nor of mysel'.... They've like nobody to tak' care on 'em but me ... I'm like to look sharpish."
Hannah was evidently fond of talking [see my chapter on Tabitha Aykroyd]. While I picked the fruit and she made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about ... her deceased ... mistress, and "the childer," as she called the young people.... There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they could speak; and they had always been "of a mak" of their own [had individual character]. They had lived very little at home for a long while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their father's [aunt's] death: but they did so like Marsh End and Morton [Haworth] and all these moors and hills about. They had been in ... many grand towns, but they always said there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each other—never fell out nor "threaped" [asserted beyond the argumentative point]. She did not know where there was such a family for being united.
Emily Brontë as Diana says it is "a privilege we exercise in our home to prepare our own meals when ... so inclined, or when Hannah [Tabby] is baking, brewing, washing or ironing," which of course was true at Haworth Parsonage. To give yet another description:—
The Rivers [Brontës] clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality, ... my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep.... The strong blast and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset ... developed for me ... the same attraction as for them—wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.