Patrick Brontë

Abstract

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There is much in the Brontës which cannot be adequately appreciated without a knowledge of the life and character of their father. Only in recent years have amends been made by scholars to Patrick Brontë. In the popular mind, he still lingers as a rather grim despotic creature, a caricature of reality. He had his crotchets, but he was a conscientious, kind, and unusually tolerant parent; all the real evidence we have suggests that his children were lively and happy at home. His reputa­tion was guilelessly damaged by Mrs Gaskell, who came to her biographical task with certain preconceptions. Rumours retailed by Lady Kay-Shuttleworth¹ had already created her image of Patrick, and she turned a willing ear to any supportive Haworth gossip, though almost all of it related to a period so remote that little first-hand knowledge of it could have been available to the most thorough researcher.