Blackwell Reference Online

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a pastor, later Bishop, of the Moravian Church, who was summoned to visit Anne when she lay ill at Roe Head School in 1837. Unlike Margaret Wooler, La Trobe had no doubts about the seriousness of Anne’s illness (“her life hung on a slender thread” he later wrote to William Scruton), and he paid her several visits, reading the Gospels with her (“The words of Jesus opened her ear to my words”), and discussing her religious doubts and fears. It is generally agreed that a version of Calvinism was rife in the Dewsbury and Mirfield parishes, and La Trobe’s doctrines, pointing the way to, if not actually embracing, a belief in universal salvation, was to be influential on Anne for the rest of her life, and in her writings. See Margaret Connor, “The Rescue: James La Trobe and Anne Brontë” (BST, v. 24, pt 1, 1999). ... log in or subscribe to read full text