The Brontes

12 THE BRONTES
any other in the village. But still it was a mere,
grey, dull-looking house, revealing nothing of its
history to the ardent gazer beyond that it was,
undoubtedly > the Parsonage, as such it was built,
in the eighteenth century, and, for sixty years and
more after the Rev* Patrick Bronte's death in 1861,
remained.
Now the house is a Memorial Museum. The
pilgrim opens the gate, walks along the path under
the windows of the room which used to be Mr.
Bronte's study, and enters. It is a romantic ex-
perience, this entrance into a house which in
every sense except the actual he already knows.
He needs no guide. He hesitates in the hall only
from a kind of fear, fear lest his spiritual acquaint-
ance with the house should blot out for him the
impression of sight. For it is just this impression
he is after. What he has wanted for so long and
has come to Haworth to get has been the exact
look of the inside of the Parsonage, the exact look
of the rooms, their look-out upon that front patch,
grey churchyard and tower, the experience of
moving about in the house, being actually in the
Brontes' home. There is a touching collection of
relics now in the Parsonage, bits of furniture once
belonging to the Brontes, dresses of Charlotte's, a
trunk, all sorts of family belongings and some of
the microscopic manuscripts. But the pilgrim is
less occupied with these tangible relics than with
the intangible echoes, resonances and reverbera-
tions that seem to him to be gathered there.
These odds and ends in glass cases, a mug labelled