Great-great Grandad knew the Brontes (From Craven Herald)

Great-great Grandad knew the Brontes

10:10am Saturday 19th December 2009

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Giggleswick historian WR Mitchell ponders on the strange but compelling story of Dr William Cartman, his great-great grandfather on his mother’s side. He was headmaster of Ermysted’s Grammar School, Skipton, for over three decades and included the Bronte family among his friends. Cartman often took services at Haworth Church and dined with the Brontes at the Parsonage. He officiated at the funeral services for both Charlotte Bronte and her father.

The friendship between Patrick Bronte and William Cartman dated from the time when Patrick was curate at Haworth and William had become curate at Bingley. A Lambeth Doctor of Divinity was awarded to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury in recognition of his powers as a preacher.

Born in Ripon in 1800, Cartman had a grammar school education. At the age of 18, he became usher at the grammar school in Bingley. It was said he inspired awe even when he blew his nose.

He was ordained to the curacy of Bingley and subsequently, in 1827, became curate of Skipton Parish Church and assistant-master of Ermysted’s Grammar School. Cartman succeeded the Rev W Sidgwick as headmaster when the latter died. He was headmaster for almost 40 years.

Cartman married Hannah O’Callahan Bacon at Skipton Parish Church on December 24 1828. She was the daughter of Major Charles Bacon, who was killed in battle during the Peninsula War, leaving a wife, nine daughters and a son. His wife and the nine girls travelled to London to plead with George III for a pension. They were granted £10 each per annum. Hannah’s sister married into the banking family of Alcock, whose Skipton home was the stately Aireville Hall.

At one time, members of Dr Cartman’s family – John, Charles and Harry – made up the entire teaching staff of Ermysted’s, a relatively small school with between 40 and 90 scholars on the register. The second master was the Rev John Cartman, MA.

Academic standards suffered when he had to give way on the subject of teaching Latin, which some of the parents regarded as a useless language. A compromise solution, reached in 1841, was that each boy should receive instruction in Latin “according to his ability”. This split the school into two departments. The smallest consisted of those being taught Latin.

Harry, who became head of the grammar school at Linton-in-Craven, earned local notoriety when he shot a hare from Tom Airey’s horse-bus as the latter bowled along the road from Grassington to Skipton.

Cartman cherished his continuing Haworth connection. He often preached from the three-decker pulpit of Haworth Old Church after which he would join Patrick, a widower, and daughter Charlotte for a meal at the Parsonage.

A generous man, in January 1854 Cartman presented Bronte with “an ice apparatus” (a pair of heel spikes). In thanking Cartman for his gift, the pastor wrote that he valued the gift “as much for the sake of the donor as its own intrinsic worth. It will serve as another prop to Old Age”. Charlotte, in a missive to “Dear Papa”, expressed pleasure that “you continue in pretty good health” and that “Mr Cartman came to help you on Sunday.”

Tales about Cartman were relayed to me by Grannie Cartman, a dumpy, black-clad figure, by appearance not unlike Queen Victoria. My paternal grandfather, a devout Methodist who lived at Bradley, wrote sentimental articles about the Brontes, interspersing his observations with verses from hymns.

As a lad, I visited Haworth with my father at least once a year, usually in winter when the graveyard twixt church and parsonage was damp and mossy, the silence broken only by husky-voiced rooks.

Old Haworth had a sense of mystery that vanished with the clearance, from the bottom of the street, of what someone called “a hotch-potch of snickets and allotments”. It was part of a scheme to improve the traffic flow. A descendant of Jack Toothill, the village barber, told me he charged three farthings for a shave. Patrick Bronte was among his customers.

When Harold G Mitchell (no relation) was curator at the Parsonage, he spent an hour showing two old ladies around the premises. As he bid farewell to them on the doorstep, one asked: “Who did you say lived here?”

The Brontes have bobbed into my consciousness at regular intervals throughout my life. When I was researching the visits to Giggleswick of distinguished writer Virginia Woolf in 1904, I found a link with the old Bronte museum.

Virginia’s cousin, Will, had been appointed head of Giggleswick School. With Madge, her sister-in-law, Virginia entrained for Haworth, via Keighley, and surveyed “a pallid and inanimate collection of objects” of Bronte interest. Virginia’s impressions, printed in The Guardian, a London weekly, in December of the same year included this note about Charlotte: “Her shoes and her thin muslin dress have outlived her”.

Cartman, a close friend of the Haworth curate, the Rev AB Nicholls, was a calming influence when relations between Patrick Bronte and his curate were strained following his declaration of his love for Charlotte.

The story, in brief, is that Patrick was against it and Nicholls, repulsed, planned to leave Haworth to preach the gospel in Australia. Minds were changed. Nicholls and Charlotte subsequently had a loving – but very brief – marriage.

Charlotte, becoming pregnant, suffered violent nausea, which was more than her frail body could stand. She died at the age of 38. Cartman conducted the funeral service. Patrick sat erect and attentive as Cartman preached from the text: “And all wept and bewailed her, but he said, Weep not, she is not dead, but sleepeth” (Luke 8, v52).

Six years later, Cartman returned to Haworth for the funeral of Patrick, who had died on June 7 1861, aged 84. The church was packed. Several hundred people thronged the churchyard as the coffin – preceded by Dr Burnet (Vicar of Bradford) and Dr Cartman – was borne through the eastern gate of the parsonage garden on its way to the church. Lowered into the vault within the altar rails, it came to rest beside the coffin of Charlotte.

The Bradford Review observed: “Thus they left Patrick sleeping amidst the ashes of genius.”

The photograph of Cartman that accompanies this article shows a stocky man with a drum-tight stomach. He is clad, like many another Victorian parson, in crow-black, with a white preaching collar. His frock coat comes down to his knees.

He carries a well-brushed top hat and looks contented as he stands in a photographer’s studio, with drapes and operatic-type scenery providing a rather stuffy setting. He had doubtless been told not to smile – as if a Victorian parson would think of doing such a thing.

In June 1867, Cartman resigned the headship of Ermysted’s. No reason for his resignation was given. In September of that year, he was at Portobello, near Edinburgh, in charge of St Mark’s Episcopal Church. There was a whiff of scandal. His companion was a French lady who had been employed as a maid at Ermysted’s, Skipton.

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