John Robinson, Mr Nicholls and the Brontës

Abstract

Much is known about the people who were close to the Brontës, but John Robinson, a young boy who lived one mile from Haworth, in Stanbury, is given only a sentence or two in several major biographies. When he was thirteen, John became a pupil-teacher at the school in Haworth, a role for which he required extra tuition. He received this on Saturday mornings from the Rev Arthur Bell Nicholls. During his lessons, John witnessed first-hand Mr Nicholls' distress over his unrequited love for Charlotte Brontë—a situation John never forgot and was able to vividly recall later in life. Two newspaper articles featuring John's reminiscences add much to our knowledge about the private suffering of Mr Nicholls as well as John's closeness to his teacher. When Mr Nicholls married Charlotte, John was one of the few people invited to attend the ceremony. By the time he was eighteen, following the progress he had made in his studies, John was about to embark on a promising career when he received some very personal gifts from Patrick Brontë. In this paper, I hope to retrieve John from obscurity by examining the nature of his unique, close relationship with Mr Nicholls while revealing the esteemed place he held within the Brontë family.