Was Patrick Brontë the Dr. Fauci of his Time?
How the Vicar Turned to Science after Disease Killed His Famous Daughters
In the time of the coronavirus pandemic, my imagination morbidly returns to Haworth, in Yorkshire, home of the Brontë sisters — Emily, Anne and Charlotte. In the mid-19th Century, epidemics of typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis ravaged the village.
It’s summer when we visit. The hike up to the Main Street from the Keighley and Worth Valley train station is steep and hot. The climb should not have come as a surprise. The moors west of York are situated on a high plateau, intersected with craggy ridges and deep dales. At the top of the hill, the road turns sharply to the right, the cobbled street narrows, and grey stone edifices crowd in.
Even on a brightly lit afternoon, with flowering pots in the sills and at the stoops, an other-worldly sense of dread filters through the sunlight, settling with a sigh into the shadowed corners.
There stands the Black Bull Tavern, where Branwell Brontë drank himself to death; there is the apothecary where he bought laudanum, only steps from the shop where John Greenwood sold stationery to the Brontë girls. And there at the top of the village stands the church and cemetery, grim threshold to the Brontë Parsonage. The starkly wild…
