To Bandon and then Cork

The next leg of Charlotte and Arthur's honeymoon odyssey.

 Charlotte and Arthur decided that the time was now right to return home to Haworth as Charlotte had heard that her dear Papa was unwell. She wrote to her good friend Ellen Nussey on 28th July 1854 from Dublin saying:

"I have been longing, longing intensely sometimes, to be at home. Indeed, I could enjoy and rest no more, and so home we're going."

Their next port of call was Bandon. This was where they would be able to catch a steam train to Dublin as can be seen from the advertisement below. Click on the photo to better view.

                                                          

So, Charlotte and Arthur left Glengarriff and travelled by horse and carriage to Bandon where they would collect the train. Their route took them along the beautiful road that hugs Bantry Bay. Travelling in their footsteps, we too set off on the same route. When we got to Bantry town we stopped to look back across the bay to Glengarriff with its magnificent backdrop of mountains. Indeed, the view of Glengarriff was the best from this viewpoint, because when one is actually in Glengarriff, one cannot see the mountains behind!

The view from Bantry across the bay in the Glengarriff direction.

Charlotte and Arthur would have taken this road with this view from Glengarriff to Bandon around Bantry Bay. 

Leaving the dramatic mountains and bay behind, we travelled through gently undulating green fields and small hills to Bandon. However, this was not the first time Arthur had been to Bandon because he had actually taught at a school there.

On 4th July 1836 Arthur had been admitted to Trinity College Dublin as a pensioner. But his time at Trinity was soon cut short when, after only just completing his first year of studies, he was called back home to Banagher to work for his uncle Alan who ran The Banagher Royal Free School in the building adjacent to the family home at Cuba Court.  Arthur was made the master of classics at an annual salary of £50. 

The financial situation at his uncle's school had not been going well and, to cut costs, his uncle had reduced the number of assistant masters he employed from four to two and decided it would be more economical to employ the more inexpensive Arthur. For the next two years, from 1837 - 1839, he worked diligently for his uncle. Unfortunately, his uncle died in 1839 leaving his wife Harriet at the helm. Harriet had only recently given birth to her ninth child and her eldest son had yet to turn 18. The family were obliged to move out of Cuba Court as the house came with the position of Headmaster of the school.

 Two new Headmaster's arrived at Cuba Court but both swiftly left when they realised the poor state of the school building and the lack of potential pupils. The second Headmaster was The Reverend John Brown who had run the Bandon Endowed School where there were eighty pupils. He decided to go back to his school in Bandon and offered Arthur a job there as his classics master. He was offered more than the £50 his uncle had paid him. 

Arthur only taught at the school for one year, but as he did not have a university degree, his prospects of promotion were limited. Fortunately, his aunt Harriet helped him to restart his studies at Trinity College Dublin and so Arthur returned there in 1840 and graduated in 1844.

We have no evidence to prove that Arthur took Charlotte to see his old school at Bandon. However, Bandon railway station, where they would catch the train to Cork, was just around the corner from his old school - so it is quite possible he did walk around with her to show her his old haunts..

We found Arthur's old school.

The school Arthur taught at from 1839-40. The Bandon Endowed School.

                                       

The Bandon Endowed School.

Arthur Bell Nicholls taught classics here in 1839-40

Part of the building is an estate agents today.

The bridge over the river Bandon.

Did Arthur worship here? It's just around the corner from the school where he worked. 

                                                  

Colourful Bandon.

     

I wonder if Charlotte had known about Arthur's year as a teacher in Bandon before she arrived? Maybe when they were in Bandon he would have told her for the first time about his sad and difficult year which was 1839-40. However, the experience he had as a teacher no doubt stood him in good stead when he taught at the school which Patrick Bronte would later build in Haworth.                 

Arthur and Charlotte would have taken the steam train to Cork. We know they were in Cork on 27th July 1854 as Charlotte wrote a letter to Elizabeth Gaskell's good friend, Catherine Winkworth, whom she had met at Gaskell's Plymouth Grove house in Manchester.

We too arrived in Cork, however, unlike our honeymoon couple we chose not to stay a night. Charlotte wrote in her letter on 28th July 1854 to Ellen Nussey, 

             "We have been travelling about...."

Similar to Charlotte, we too felt that we had done enough' travelling about' with little cessation. We didn't have a great desire to explore the city, probably because we had become acclimatised to being in the countryside, up in the mountains or by the dramatic Wild Atlantic Way. The traffic was busy as we drove through the city. We snapped a few photos as we crossed over the River Lee. However, like Charlotte, we had a 'longing' to be back in rural Ireland. The cityscape was not for us right then.

I will hopefully return to explore Cork city at a later date. But for now we moved off through the countryside in the direction of Dublin.        

Driving by the River Lee in Dublin. But we had little energy left to explore the city. Like Charlotte said in her letter to Ellen Nussey on 28th July 1854 - "I could enjoy and rest no more..."