Homeward Bound - Cork to Dublin, Dublin to Holyhead, Holyhead and home to Haworth.

Homeward bound leaving Ireland. 

We know that on Thursday 27th July 1854 Charlotte and Arthur were in Cork as Charlotte wrote to Catherine Winkworth, a friend of Elizabeth Gaskell whom she had met at Gaskell's Manchester home. We also know that the newlyweds expected to be back in Haworth on Tuesday 1st August 1854 as Charlotte wrote to Martha Brown at the Parsonage to alert her to their arrival home on that date.

Dear Martha,

I write a line to tell you that if all be well, we shall be home on Tuesday August 1st at about seven o'clock in the evening. I feel very anxious about Papa, the idea of his illness has followed me all through my journey and made me miserable sometimes when otherwise I should have been happy enough.

I longed to come home a fortnight since, though perhaps it would not have done much good and I am sure you would have done your best for him.

Have things ready for tea on Tuesday Evening and you had better have a little cold meat or ham as well as we shall probably get no dinner and Mr Nicholls will want something.

I hope you and Tabby have been and are well, and I do earnestly hope to find Papa better.

I am in haste and can only bid you good bye for the present.

Yours faithfully, C.B.N.

 Precisely where, and for how long in each location, our honeymooners stayed during this 5 night period (Thursday 27th to Monday 31st July) it is not possible to say.

Having travelled from Glengarriff to Bandon by road and then by train from Bandon to Cork, our couple probably would have stayed at least one night in Cork because Charlotte wrote a letter from there on 27th July, 1854 addressed to Catherine Winkworth. They may have stayed another day to see the sights of the city therefore staying a second night in Ireland's second city, but we don't know.

Pauline Clooney, in her excellent historical novel Charlotte & Arthur, has the newlyweds stay at The Imperial Hotel in Cork. Charlotte's literary hero William Makepeace Thackeray had had tea there once, so maybe they too chose this establishment as it had been one he had frequented. However, there is no definitive evidence to confirm this.

The next letter Charlotte wrote was from Dublin dated ?28th July 1854 and sent to her good friend Ellen Nussey. The question mark indicates this date is not certain. Charlotte and Arthur would have taken the steam train from Cork to Dublin and again probably stayed one night or possibly two before catching the packet steamer back to Holyhead on Anglesey. As Michael O'Dowd wrote in his first class book about Charlotte and Arthur's honeymoon journey , " their Irish odyssey was almost at an end"

We do not know for sure where the couple stayed in Dublin. Clooney has them stay at the Shelbourne Hotel. They could have stayed with Arthur's brother Allen who worked and lived in Dublin, but as he only had rented lodgings this might not have been feasible.

The couple would have then taken the steam packet back across the Irish sea from Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) to Holyhead on Anglesey in Wales. Again, we do not know if they made the journey by train from Holyhead to Haworth in one fell swoop, with several connections, or, if they would have stayed a night, or even two, en route in Wales to break the journey.

Leaving the port at Dun Laoghaire Dublin.

Farewell to the Emerald Isle

                                         

Arriving into Holyhead, Wales.

                      

What we do know, however, is that the honeymooners arrived back in Haworth on Tuesday 1st August at about 7.00p.m. They had been on the move for 34 days from Thursday 29th June 1854 to Tuesday 1st August 1854 which is 4 weeks and 5 days or just 2 days shy of a 5 week honeymoon.

When I got back home I had to finish my honeymoon journey by going to Haworth too. I felt a need to close the circle, to fully follow in Charlotte and Arthur's honeymoon footsteps. The heather was in blossom for me and the sun was out. It's always a wonderful and uplifting feeling to drive over the moors to Haworth...I am sure the feelings I had were very similar to those of Charlotte and Arthur. The sight of the moors and the village must have been a welcome one for them after so many days on the road.

The road to Haworth across the moors.

The road to Haworth across the moors.

Heading across the moors to Haworth.

Approaching Haworth

Our honeymooners may well have felt relief when they got back to Haworth after 34 days away,

                                       

Arthur's old lodgings with the Brown family...but now he would be living in the Parsonage after his wedding.

                                       

Heather on the moors. This would soon be blossoming in August after our honeymooners returned home.

                                  

The August heather would have made Arthur and Charlotte smile no doubt.

                                              

How would they have been feeling? I know that when my Bronte travelling companion Alison and I got back to our respective homes we felt a certain relief at no longer being on the move, a certain sense of achievement for having been so far and seen so much of beauty and interest whilst also trying to follow in the shadowy footsteps of those who had been there 168 years before us, but, also, an overriding sense of awe at the distances we had travelled and the sights and people we had met on the way. 

However, our sense of self-awe was not as great as the sense of awe we felt at what Charlotte and Arthur had achieved. They had not sailed on a fast Stena ferry from Wales to Ireland, nor had they been cocooned in a fast moving car to drive up into the mountains, down into the valleys and out to the wild Atlantic coast. They had not sailed in a modern river cruiser along the River Shannon. They had rattled along on steam trains, making changes here and there, with their large trunks in tow. They had "clippity-clopped" hither and thither by horse and carriage and travelled in the Irish side-facing, uncovered jaunting cars and taken turf-powered steamers along the river Shannon. They had been jolted along, frequently exposed to the elements, travelling long distances. No wonder Charlotte had had no time to write about her journey at the end of each day, coupled with, as Alison knowingly put it, their amorous honeymoon exploits!

The road distances they travelled in horse-drawn vehicles across the mountains in both Snowdonia, Wales and the mountains of Ireland, the return train journeys they took from Haworth to Holyhead in Wales together with the train journeys in Ireland, the return steam packet journey across the Irish sea and the River Shannon turf steamer journey...all of this would have taken time and required a huge amount of stamina. It is for this reason that, when I compare the distances we travelled using the modern modes of transport available to us with the transport available to them, I am left feeling mightily impressed with Charlotte and Arthur.

So how would they have felt when they got back to Haworth? Well probably the same as we did: a certain relief at no longer being on the move, a certain sense of achievement for having been so far and seen so much and maybe a great sense of awe that they had set off  34 days earlier probably feeling quite nervous and self-conscious of each other, but returned so much closer and in love after their epic, and I truly mean epic, honeymoon odyssey. 

Charlotte had had her doubts about Arthur Bell Nicholls, as she wrote in her letter to Catherine Winkworth,

"My husband,  is not a poet nor a poetical man, and one of my grand doubts before marriage was  about 'congenial tastes' and so on." 

However, on her honeymoon Charlotte grew to know Arthur and his vivacious family much better. Arthur and Charlotte laid loving foundations upon which to build their future lives together. Ireland had played a huge part in helping the loving couple cement their relationship...their future looked bright.