What would the Brontë sisters sew?

They stitched samplers long before Charlotte grew up to write “Jane Eyre,” before Emily wrote “Wuthering Heights” and before Anne wrote “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” [...]

Charlotte completed her sampler at age 13 in April 1829. Emily was done with hers at age 11 on March 1, 1829. Anne finished hers at age 10 on Jan. 23, 1830. They stitched their samplers at their home, Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire, after the girls had returned from school where their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, had died from privation and illness suffered at the boarding school.

It is easy to imagine the sisters sitting together, hoops and needles in hand, making row after row of cross-stitches to fashion each word. Perhaps the sewing was an occasion to sit together and talk about life in the village or to remember their sisters. Or perhaps the sewing was drudgery, an onerous task to be got through until they could go out to the moors where they let their imaginations run wild.

As might be expected of the daughters of Patrick Brontë, a clergyman, the Brontë sisters’ samplers consist of lengthy passages from the Bible, from Proverbs and Psalms.

Photographs of the Brontës’ samplers are included in “Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries” by Marcus Huish, first published in 1900 in London. Huish describes the samplers: “They show a strange lack of ornament, and a monotony of colour (they are worked in black silk on rough canvas) which deprive them of all attractiveness in themselves.” Judging from the photographs, it’s easy to see how Huish might arrive at that conclusion, but the samplers, to my eye, have an almost architectural beauty of composition.

Huish says in his book that the owner of the samplers at that time was Clement Shorter, a journalist who collected manuscripts, books and materials related to his favorite authors, including the Brontë sisters.

Each sampler differs somewhat from the others. The top verse in Charlotte’s sampler reads: “A house divided against itself can’t stand.” But horizontal bars of stitching separate the seven verses in the sampler. Did she intend that as a bit of drollery? It can be argued that “Jane Eyre” has the “house divided” idea as one of its themes. Rochester was certainly a “house divided against itself,” given the fact that he had a madwoman, his wife, living in the attic, while falling in love and persuading Jane, the governess, who didn’t know about the wife, to marry him.

A line in Emily’s sampler says: “Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man.” Was this line from a verse from Proverbs a foreshadowing of her character Heathcliff, whose callous behavior transgressed social and moral codes, in “Wuthering Heights”?

Anne’s sampler, also with verses from Proverbs, bears this line: “She is more precious than rubies and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.” It was Anne who created the character Helen, the wife of Arthur, the unfaithful, drunken husband who did not value his wife. Helen fled from him in “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

The three samplers are stitched with the same zigzag border, similar to a Greek key pattern.

I searched a long time on the Internet for images of the samplers so I could direct readers to them, but I was not successful. The only images I found are in Huish’s book.

I came across references stating that the samplers are housed at Haworth Parsonage, now a museum, but at websites pertaining to Haworth I did not find information to confirm that the samplers are, indeed, housed at the museum. I e-mailed a query but have not yet received a reply. (Ardeana Hamlin)

Well, we are not the Brontë Parsonage Museum but we can confirm that the samplers do indeed belong to their collection.
 
http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/

The children learned how to sew from Aunt Branwell.

Miss Branwell was a very small, antiquated little lady. She wore caps large enough for half-a-dozen of the present fashion, and a front of light auburn curls over her forehead. She always dressed in silk. She had a horror of the climate so far north, and of the stone floors in the Parsonage. She talked a great deal of her younger days — the gaiety's of her dear native town Penzance, the soft, warm climate, &c. She gave one the idea that she had been a belle among her own home acquaintance. She took snuff out of a very pretty gold snuff-box, which she sometimes presented to you with a little laugh, as if she enjoyed the slight shock of astonishment visible in your countenance. She would be very lively and intelligent, and tilt arguments against Mr. Bronte without fear."

So Miss Ellen Nussey recalls the elderly, prim Miss Branwell about ten years later than her first arrival in Yorkshire. But it is always said of her that she changed very little. Miss Nussey's striking picture will pretty accurately represent the maiden lady of forty, who, from a stringent and noble sense of duty, left her southern, pleasant home to take care of the little orphans running wild at Haworth Parsonage. Henceforth their time was no longer free for their own disposal. They said lessons to their father, they did sewing with their aunt, and learned from her all housewifely duties. Patrick Branwell was the favourite with his aunt, the naughty, clever, brilliant, rebellious, affectionate Patrick. Next to him she always preferred the pretty, gentle baby Anne, with her sweet, clinging ways, her ready submission, her large blue eyes and clear pink-and-white complexion. Charlotte, impulsive, obstinate and plain, the rugged, dogged Emily, were not framed to be favourites with her. Many a fierce tussle of wills, many a grim listening to over-frivolous reminiscence, must have shown the aunt and her nieces the difference of their natures. Maria, too, the whilom head of the nursery, must have found submission hard ; but hers was a singularly sweet and modest nature. Of Elizabeth but little is remembered. Meanwhile the regular outer life went oh — the early rising, the dusting and pudding-making, the lessons said to their father, the daily portion of sewing accomplished in Miss Branwell's bedroom, because that lady grew more and more to dislike the flagged flooring of the sitting-room.

Every day, some hour snatched for a ramble on the moors ; peaceful times in summer when the little girls took their sewing under, the stunted thorns and currants in the garden, the clicking sound of Miss Branwell's pattens indistinctly heard within. Happy times when six children, all in all to each other, told wonderful stories in low voices for their own entrancement.
Miss Branwell took care that the girls should not lack more homely knowledge.

Each took her share in the day's work, and learned all details of it as accurately as any German maiden at her cookery school. Emily took very kindly to even the hardest housework ; there she felt able and necessary ; and, doubtless, upstairs, grimly listening to prim Miss Branwell's stories of bygone gaiety's, this awkward growing girl was glad to remember that she too was of importance to the household, despite her tongue-tied brooding.
Read more about Aunt Branwell:
http://brontefamilyblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/aunt-elizabeth-branwell.html

Good news for the St Michael and All Angels Haworth church:

One of the most visited churches in the UK – where the crypt contains the bodies of famous literary sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë – has been gifted a £115,000 cash windfall.
The money from the Heritage Lottery pot will go towards financing the biggest refurbishment of St Michael and All Angels since it was re-built in 1879.
Also among the latest round of grants is St Peter’s Church in Birstall, where £199,000 will go to help finance roof and masonry repairs.
They come under the the lottery fund’s Repair Grants for Worship scheme.
The Haworth handout will help boost funding on a major repair project, which is expected to cost in the region of £1.4million when completed.
The Rector, the Reverend Peter Mayo-Smith, said it was good news for the parish, which saw about a million visitors a year coming to see the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the church where the sisters’ father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, was the vicar in the mid-1800s.
The money, which would be match- funded by the church through fund-raising, was to pay for repairs to the roof and internal fabric of the church, he said.
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“The first phase is to explore the problem in the south roof, which is badly leaking. We occasionally have to have buckets out to catch the water. The north roof, which isn’t as bad, will be tackled later,” said Rev Mayo-Smith. (The Telegraph & Argus)
The roof is the most important thing to get right, then we can tackle work inside the church including restoring a wall painting.
“The aim is to make the church an asset to the community, so it can be used by people such as the Brontë Society and for concerts.
“It is also visited by many people because of the Brontës, so we want to improve the experience for people who come into the church.” (Keighley News)
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THE rain is coming in and the masonry is crumbling at some of the region’s most treasured places of worship as they battle the elements.
But hard-pressed congregations were offered a lifeline yesterday with the announcement that £2.3m has been set aside by heritage organisations to finance urgent repairs at 16 listed church buildings across Yorkshire and the Humber region. They include St Michael and All Angels, Haworth, known for its connections to the Brontë family. (...)
St Michael and All Angels Church, at Haworth, where the Rev Patrick Bronte was incumbent from 1820 to 1861 and where members of the family including Emily and Charlotte, are buried in a family vault adjacent to the present south east chapel, has been awarded £115,000.It will be used to help pay for reroofing the south nave, side aisle and tower.
The honorary treasurer at St Michael’s, Averil Kenyon, welcomed the news saying: “The church roof is leaking badly and that in turn is causing serious damage to the 19th century wall paintings inside.” (...)
The head of the Heritage Lottery Fund for Yorkshire and the Humber, Fiona Spiers, said last night: “Historic places of worship are one of our most treasured cultural assets. They occupy a unique position at the heart of communities up and down the country, and are a focus for so many civil and social activities in addition to their central purpose as a place for prayer and contemplation.” (Yorkshire Post)

New Weblog

Today I receives this reaction:

Great post about Emily ! I also publish a post about Tabby on my blog this week : http://soeursbronte.wordpress.com/
Best regards,

Louise

I am  very happy with this reaction.
 Because I found a new weblog about the Bronte sisters. Really great!!!!!!
and I love it when people give a reaction.

Thank you Louise

Rare Brontë novel sells for record £163,250

By Keighley News reporter »

A rare first edition copy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has sold at auction for a record price.
The three-volume book, published in 1847, fetched £163,250 when it went under the hammer last Thursday, at Sotheby’s, in London. The figure — more than double the pre-sale estimate — is the most ever paid at auction for a copy of the classic novel.

The buyer was an unnamed American dealer.

Andrew McCarthy, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, at Haworth, said: “In the context of the worldwide recession it seems a lot of money and is quite surprising, but anything associated with Emily fetches that bit more.

The book was among 123 rare publications, mostly first editions, which together sold for more than £3.1 million.

The seller was a 75-year-old collector.

Also included in the lots was a first edition copy of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which sold for £85,250 — slightly above its estimate.

Keighley news

On this day in 1855 Tabitha Ackroyd "Tabby" faithful servant of the Bronte family died aged 85.

Tabitha Ackroyd "Tabby" faithful servant of the Bronte family died aged 85.

Tabitha' s grave

'Tabby' was the Cook/Housekeeper and for the first 15 of her 31 years at the Parsonage, she was the only servant living in, although the Brontë sisters themselves also cooked, cleaned and washed clothes. In December 1836 Tabby slipped on ice in Haworth's main street, badly breaking her leg. Aunt Branwell suggested that she leave the Parsonage to be nursed by her sister Susannah, but the Brontë children objected, even going on hunger strike, and Tabby stayed in the Parsonage nursed by the children. The leg never fully healed however, and over the next 3 years many of Tabby's duties were taken up by Emily.

Tabby was fond of her "childers" and they were fond of her. As Charlotte later wrote, "she was like one of our own family". Tabby took the girls for their walks on the moors, and, with her old-fashioned ways and broad Haworth accent, she was sometimes the butt of their boisterous games. Tabby was a great storyteller. She knew all the local families, all their complex inter-relationships and disputes, and, despite her belief in the Christian teachings of divine reward and retribution, she held also to the ancient anthropomorphic traditions of the countryside, claiming (according to Mrs. Gaskell) to have known people who had seen the fairies. Emily, who spent more time working in the kitchen than either of her sisters, was particularly close to Tabby, and Tabby's influence permeates the landscape of Wuthering Heights. Tabby has also been identified as the model for Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights, and for the housekeeper Martha in Charlotte's novel Shirley.

www.bronte.info

The  kitchen which Emily used to bake breads while reading German books

EMILY BRONTE HOUSEKEEPER AND MORE:

Yet shift it we should, if we are to get a more truthful, insightful and less romanticised version of this great writer. Read the biographies - Winifred Gérin, Juliet Barker and, in particular, Lucasta Miller - and you can begin to discern a more formidable woman who could cope with the world rather better than the image of the doomed Emily might suggest.

For instance, try to get your head around the fact that the real Emily Bronte was good at investing in the stock market. Not only that, but she invested her own and her sisters' money in railway shares - the dotcom stocks equivalent of the 1840s - and managed the investment attentively. A surviving letter from supposedly more worldly Charlotte is full of praise for Emily's careful reading of the newspapers for items of railway industry news.

Or consider the implications of the fact that the real Emily Bronte was a crackshot with a pistol. The Brontes lived in stirring times and in a turbulent region. Howarth in 1842 was not some remote moorland idyll, but a place of unemployment, riot and some real danger. Knowing how to handle a firearm was not an eccentric skill, and Emily was the best markswoman in the house. If the author of Wuthering Heights had met a real Heathcliff, the chances are she would have shot him dead.

Remember too that the real Emily Bronte could read and write French and German, that she attended art exhibitions in Leeds, and that music occupied a major place in her imaginative world. An accomplished pianist, she played Beethoven and Handel all her life, and she may even have heard no less a musician than Franz Liszt give a recital in Halifax in February 1841.

This picture of a woman who read newspapers, who was interested in the transport revolution and the markets, who could use a gun and make bread and who may even have been able to play the Appassionata Sonata, needs to be given its proper place. Too much of the time all we get is the fantasist of the Gondal stories, the chainless soul of the poems and the mystic visionary of that solitary novel.

Emily Bronte and her achievement need no help from me to endure. Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest imaginative achievements of English culture. It is a work of fibrous and poetic power worthy to rank with Milton, Blake and Conrad. But the book should not be banalised and its author should not be infantilised. In a world where Barcelona FC can claim to be "mas que un club", it is right to insist that Wuthering Heights is more, far more, than a love story.

Read more: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/148400.html

On this day in 1840. 'Fair Ellen, Fair Ellen', 'Away fond Love' and 'Soul divine'.

In Feb 1840, about six months after his arrival, Ellen Nussey came to the Parsonage for a three weeks stay. Neither she, nor the Brontë girls had ever received a Valentine card; so it caused quite a stir on the morning of February 14th. when they each received one. Of course, the culprit was the scheming Weightman. In his usual mode of conduct, he had made a bold attempt to add a little sparkle to the girls' lives, and in a vain attempt to disguise his handiwork, had walked the ten miles to Bradford to post them. He had written verses in each of the Valentines; however, only the titles of three of them are known, but these give a general idea of their content: 'Fair Ellen, Fair Ellen', 'Away fond Love' and 'Soul divine'. The girls were not to be fooled by the Bradford post-mark, and soon realised that the chirpy curate was the guilty party. However, being so delighted with that morning's events, the four conspired to write a poem which they promptly returned to Weightman
A Rowland for your Oliver

We think you've justly earned;

You sent us each a valentine,

Your gift is now returned.

We cannot write or talk like you;

We're plain folks every one;

You've played a clever trick on us,

We thank you for the fun.

Believe us when we frankly say

(Our words, though blunt are true),

At home, abroad, by night or day,

We all wish well to you.

And never may a cloud come o'er

The sunshine of your mind;

Kind friends, warm hearts, and happy hours,

Through life we trust you'll find.

Where'er you go, however far

In future years you stray,

There shall not want our earnest prayer

To speed you on your way. . .

The History of Valentine Cards

It seems that the writing of special notes and letters for Valentine’s Day gained widespread popularity in the 1700s. At that time the romantic missives would have been handwritten, on ordinary writing paper.

Papers made especially for Valentine greetings began to be marketed in the 1820s, and their use became fashionable in both Britain and the United States. In the 1840s, when postal rates in Britain became standardized, commercially produced Valentine cards began to grow in popularity. The cards were flat paper sheets, often printed with colored illustrations and embossed borders. The sheets, when folded and sealed with wax, could be mailed.

The legendary British illustrator of children’s books, Kate Greenaway, designed Valentines in the late 1800s which were enormously popular. Her Valentine designs proved sold so well for the card publisher, Marcus Ward, that she was encouraged to design cards for other holidays.

Some of Greenaway’s illustrations for Valentine cards were collected in a book published in 1876, Quiver of Love: A Collection of Valentines.

By some accounts, the practice of sending Valentine cards fell off in the late 1800s, and only revived in the 1920s. But the holiday as we know it today firmly has its roots in the 1800s.

Victorian Valentines Could Be Works of Art

Read more about: Kate greenaway.

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