In 1836 at the age of 12, Alice Dewhurst was sent to boarding school in Halifax, where she spent 3 years. Only a couple of years earlier, John Hopkinson had been sent to school near Halifax and had run away – Alice's experience was far better.
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| Halifax, 1847 |
Her school was run by the Misses Chippendale and it was on Temple Street, a cul de sac off New Road, Halifax. Across New Road, there were open fields, and at the other end of Temple Street lay the grounds of Summerville House. This large villa, built in about 1800, can be seen in the centre of the picture on the right. I think Temple Street is one of the roads on the left.
Meanwhile, a couple of miles away and outside town, was Miss Elizabeth Patchett's Law Hill School in Southowram – and while Alice was at the Misses Chippendales', Emily Brontë was at the Miss Patchett's, trying through gritted teeth to be a schoolteacher. Her sister Charlotte wrote of Emily's duties in October 1838
Hard labour from 6 in the morning until near 11 at night, with only one half-hour of exercise in between – this is slavery. I fear she will never stand it
Emily lasted about 6 months and then left a life totally unsuited to her physically and mentally. We can only hope that at the Misses Chippendales' the staff had an easier time.
And then, as Alice was leaving school, Branwell Brontë came to work as clerk in charge at the new railway station at Luddenden Foot, about 4 miles on the other side of Halifax from the Misses Chippendales' school – a good position in the booming new industry. But while he went out drinking, the man he left in charge was embezzling the money and Branwell's failure of duty led to his dismissal after about 18 months. After that, he hung around Halifax, spending a great deal of time, and money he didn't have, at the Old Cock Inn, not 2 minutes' walk from Alice's old school.
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| Mary, 15 year old servant girl, 1836 by Mary Ellen Best |
Alice's school was kept by the Misses Margaret, Agnes, Ann and Elizabeth Chippendale – they were between 41 and 33 years old when Alice went to the school
- their sister Mrs Mary Hall sometimes visited the school and on one of her visits was particularly kind to Alice, looking after her at night when she was very ill with something like "brain fever"
- the 1841 Census (taken after Alice left) shows that the live-in staff consisted of the 4 Misses Chippendale, plus a French or German governess (her name is illegible), and 3 women servants
- there were 17 pupils – most of them were aged 15 – but there was also a girl of 9
- the Misses Chippendale will have taken day pupils too
In the same census, Law Hill School at Southowram had 3 staff (Miss Patchett and 2 teachers), with 3 women servants and a male servant in his 50s, and 20 teenage boarders
- we know that Miss Patchett had a school of 40 pupils, so it seems reasonable to suppose that the Misses Chippendales' school was the same size
Alice's parents will have known all about the Misses Chippendale, because they came from Skipton. They were the daughters of the banker Mr Robinson Chippendale, and their sister Mary's husband was the Skipton lawyer Stephen Bailey Hall – he ran the Skipton Savings Bank alongside his legal practice
- Mr Bailey Hall was well known in the town as a poet – in 1839 he had a volume of didactic poems published called The Test of Faith, Israel a Warning to Britain, and other Poems (it can be read for free on Google Books)
- the serious, high-toned nature of the school can be guessed from Mr Bailey Hall's poems and the fact that Robinson Chippendale was not only a banker but also a churchwarden – in fact, he sided with the vicar and his curate in the unseemly dispute over the appointment of the Revd Withnell as master of the Grammar School
- but, while the Misses Chippendale were Anglicans, they were Evangelicals and this will have appealed to Alice's Nonconformist parents – besides, two of the Misses Chippendale were "truly devout" and had a great influence on some of the girls
It was during this time that Alice's brother James, her merry and mischievous childhood playmate and the closest in age to her of all her siblings, died aged 15 of tuberculosis – his death certificate gives the cause of death starkly as "Decline". He was buried at the Zion Chapel burial ground on 4 May 1838.
The 1830s brought a great deal of grief and trouble to the family – the fire at the mill was only the beginning
- John Dewhurst's sister Eleanor was widowed in 1837, and left with 4 boys under the age of 7 and an ironmongery business to run
- Alice's grandmother Ellen Dewhurst died in 1839, aged 82
- for Alice's mother, it was a particularly bad time – not only did she lose her son, but her sister Betty was widowed in 1830, her mother died in 1831, her brother George was found dead in a ditch in 1834, and her brothers Richard and Robert hit financial disaster in 1838
So it is perhaps not coincidental that it was at this time, during the three years that Alice spent in the devotional atmosphere of the Misses Chippendales' school, that she decided to apply to the Zion Chapel in Skipton for membership
- her new conviction brought her very close to her eldest sister Jane – their shared spiritual experience bridged the gap of 8 years between them
As well as being "carefully taught both from the Bible and Prayer Book" (in Mary Hopkinson's words), the girls were taught the usual range of subjects of the time, including music and drawing. Mary Hopkinson found an exercise book of her mother's dated May 1839, which contained notes written in a "clear hand" and "well executed sketches" copied from prints, which she thought were drawn by Alice herself.
Ellen Ewing gives the text of a letter from Miss Margaret Chippendale, dated 19 December. No year is given, but it's clear that Alice had been in the "first class". Readers of Jane Eyre may remember that it was "the tall girls of the first class" who whisper their disgust at the burnt porridge. So – as Mary Hopkinson said Alice spent 3 years at boarding school from 1836 – this would be Alice's final report, written in 1839.
Miss Chippendale informs John Dewhurst in this stately letter that, during all her time at the school and particularly over the last half year, Alice has been
exceedingly diligent in all those pursuits to which she directed her attention and has invariably pleased us by general good conduct and ready and cheerful compliance with all our wishes. In the musical department she has more than exceeded our expectations.
Perhaps Alice came home a little aggrieved about not winning first prize in her class. Miss Chippendale explains that Alice was a candidate for the first prize in the half-yearly exam, together with "three other young ladies in the first class" – but unfortunately they all deserved the prize and so it was decided by lot and Alice didn't win. However,
the honour of ranking one of the first in our establishment will, I have no doubt, compensate her for any little disappointment she may feel in not obtaining the book
(We don't know how stiff the competition was for this desirable – and surely very edifying – prize)
Miss Agnes Chippendale died in 1844, Miss Margaret married a Halifax clergyman in 1845 – they were both in their fifties and lived into their eighties – and the Misses Ann and Elizabeth retired to live on the income from their Railway Shares. (We don't know if they were lucky in their investments – the Brontë sisters lost the money they invested)
Two particular friends from Alice's schooldays are recorded by her daughter Mary
- Sarah Jackson was "an extremely musical girl" from Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland – her father Henry Jackson was a solicitor
- Mary Harrison was born in Penrith in Cumberland in 1823, her mother's 9th & youngest child
Mary's father was Anthony Harrison, a Penrith solicitor, who died aged 54 when Mary was 4
- Mary was then adopted by her father's childless sister Ann, who was married to Captain William Buchanan RN – they lived in the Friarage in Friargate
- Alice and Mary had "a very warm friendship". Mary had a "particularly sensitive and refined nature" which "made her a truly kindred spirit" and they exchanged "long interesting letters"
The letters that are quoted by Ellen Ewing date from 1840 and 1843, after the girls had left school, but they give an idea of their friendship they made at Halifax. None of Alice's replies survive. It isn't possible to tell from the brief sentences quoted by Ellen Ewing where the balance in the friendship lay, but she describes Mary's
innocent gaieties and harmless pleasure in music and beautiful scenery and society and friendship, her guileless interest in the other sex, her efforts at self-improvement and the acquisition of knowledge, her religious doubts and hesitations, which she seems to have faced with courage and common sense
and she comments that Mary was often "afflicted with introspection of a depressing character" which was perhaps made worse by "her unusual interest in death beds, of which she seems to have been often a witness" (Mary described the deathbed of her old schoolmistress Miss Agnes Chippendale in 1844 as "delightful")
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| Giulia Grisi (1811-69) operatic soprano |
It's impossible to say whether this was a sort of competitive gloom picked up at their very earnest school, nor who was the leader between the two girls. But perhaps we can guess from Mary writing this, on 2 October 1843, that she could be very light-hearted
Will you be sadly shocked if I tell you I have been down to Carlisle lately, to hear Grisi. And really, Alice dear, I did not feel I had done anything wrong. I hope it is not a proof of a hardened conscience.
They wrote to each other about literature – we know that Alice was always a great reader – and that at one point Alice "recognized too strong an inclination for novels" and so she gave them up for "something more worth while". (Not much like the Brontë sisters of nearby Haworth? Alice was a near contemporary of theirs, four years younger than Anne Brontë)
Perhaps we see a bit of Alice's seriousness here, when Mary writes on 3 October 1840
Recommend to me, if you can, some poetry to commit to memory which will have the effect of raising the mind … For my mind is one of those which requires solid nourishment. The work of digestion never ceases. Therefore, if substantial food is not administered it will feed on light, unwholesome things which, though palatable to the taste, do not strengthen the soul …
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| Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1795 |
and, very interestingly, Mary continued
… Mama does not think she has a single autograph of S. T. Coleridge … My Father was very intimate with him. As I think I told you, his powers of conversation were amazing and fascinating. Aunt Buchanan tells me she once heard him talk for hours on end on the character of King David – a voluminous subject truly …
because it turns out that Mary's father was the Anthony Harrison mentioned by Dorothy Wordsworth in her journal on 28 August 1800:
I was rouzed by a shout that Anthony Harrison was come. We sate in the orchard till tea time, drank tea early & rowed down the lake which was stirred by Breezes
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| William Wordsworth 1798 |
Anthony Harrison was at Hawkshead Grammar School with Wordsworth, one of Alice Dewhurst's favourite poets. The friendship was renewed when Wordsworth returned to live in the Lakes, and Anthony Harrison became – for a while – part of the Lake Poets' circle. He had Samuel Taylor Coleridge to stay with him in 1809, and helped him to proof-read his journal The Friend.
"There was unpleasant gossip about his habits at Penrith, where he stayed with one Anthony Harrison, an attorney" wrote E K Chambers tersely in his 1938 biography of Coleridge.
Luckily Mary never knew what the Lake Poets were writing about her father to each other.
Anthony Harrison seems to have been filled with the longing to be a Lake Poet too, and in 1806 he published his own verse. Poetical Recreations came out in 2 volumes when he was 33, the year before his marriage to Mary's mother (you can actually still buy it as a reprint).
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| Robert Southey 1805 |
On 2 September 1805 Robert Southey wrote to a friend
We have also had two evening parties – one for the Calverts & a poor fellow who having been a good Lawyer is gone crazy & turnd bad poet; – of course he brought me two vols his poems – two great books full!
Unfortunately Anthony had parodied Wordsworth's 'Hart-leap Well' in his 'The Barkhouse-Beck Leap'. Wordsworth did not take this well. The critics panned Anthony's verse.
In 1840 Alice's schooldays were over and she was back at home with her family in the High Street at Skipton. She would be 16 that November – her eldest sister Jane would be 24 that year and Tom, the youngest of them, would be 11 in December. There was, of course, the dreadful gap where James should have been.
Her brother Bonny, now 20, had started work in the business and was already travelling on behalf of the firm. Within a few years he would see a good deal of England, Scotland and Ireland. He wrote long descriptive letters to the family back at home. In one letter of 1840 he reported on his coach journey to Durham, describing Thirsk and Northallerton as "very dull and uninteresting places with no sort of manufacturers in the neighbourhood" but he approved of the railway:
… the great North of England Railway was in a very forward state. It runs from York to Darlington and will be opened, it is supposed, in the month of November. It crosses the Tees, about three miles from Darlington, by a very fine skew bridge
So now Alice would spend her time
romping with the younger children, teaching Sunday School and staying with
friends and family. We know she visited
Sarah Jackson in Kirkby Stephen, Mary Harrison in Penrith, John & Alice
Bonny in Blackpool – and that, after her sister Ellen married in 1843, Alice
stayed with her in Manchester. There
must have been many other visits in the years after school ended.
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| Miss Ellen Milne, Miss Mary Watson, Miss Watson, Miss Agnes Milne and Sarah Wilson by Hill & Adamson National Galleries of Scotland |
Alice and her friends must have looked rather like these young ladies, photographed by Hill & Adamson in Edinburgh in the mid-1840s.
The fashions were subdued, romantic, sentimental – the outline created was one of sloping shoulders, a low, pointed waist and bell-shaped skirts that skimmed the floor. To get this look, a girl would have to wear a long, inflexible bodice and a couple of petticoats for standard day wear – and at least one of the petticoats would have to be made from horsehair crinoline to be stiff enough to hold up the skirt. By the end of the decade, a woman might need to wear as many as 6 or 7 petticoats.
But perhaps that was for the very fashionable, and I don't think Alice's religious principles would have permitted that sort of thing.
Next: 20: What was Alice Dewhurst like?
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