Claire Bloom reading from a selection of letters by Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë

Listen to a young Claire Bloom reading from a selection of letters by Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë in "The Brontë Sisters," a 1957 program submitted for consideration to the Peabody Awards.

All three Brontë sisters were accomplished writers: Charlotte is best known for Jane Eyre, Emily for Wuthering Heights and Anne for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Their well-known, tragic story is told mostly through letters from 1841, 1845, 1848 and 1849 -- either to each other or to other recipients. Francis Steegmuller provides narrative cohesiveness.

This reading was part of a WNYC Program called WNYC Annual Book Festival, which ran for five years from 1953 to 1957.

54 years later, Ms. Bloom was interviewed on The Leonard Lopate Show. Listen to her interview here.
wnyc.archives/2011/may/23/bronte-sisters/

A weaver of imaginary tales

Daphne du Maurier was influenced mainly by women writers who were of the same opinions. She pays a huge tribute to Emily Bronte and acknowledges a big debt to all the Bronte sisters and Katherine Mansfield.

read more in the dailystar

The Irish roots of the Bronte sisters

The Irish roots of the Bronte sisters

BANBRIDGE, Northern Ireland—To most travellers who love Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and the other novels of the Bronte sisters, the Bronte Parsonage Museum in the west Yorkshire village of Haworth is the mecca. But the story didn’t start there. It began in Ireland, in rural County Down, and now fans can visit what is called the Bronte Homeland.
It’s an auto tour, clearly signposted with brown shingles, along a 16-kilometre circuit south and east of Banbridge and in the shadow of the famous Mountains of Mourne. This is where Patrick Brunty (the name change came later) taught school (and romanced one of his students!) and preached his first sermon after he was ordained in 1807. “Patrick was a very talented man in his own right. The girls got the talent from the father; it was in the genes,” says Jason Diamond of Banbridge District Council, who helps publicize the tour. “Here’s a man who came from a two-room stone cottage in Ireland and he produced not one but three of the greatest authors in the canon of famous literature.”

Emily and her Dog, Keeper

I found these interesting websites about Emily Bronte:

Emily Bronte - Did the Writer of Wuthering Heights Have Asperger's Syndrome?

Emily Bronte - the Female Victorian Writer Who Wrote Wuthering Heights

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/diary_papers#letters

 

 

 

Emily's sketch of Keeper

Emily and her Dog, Keeper

The gift came with a warning. Keeper was capable of love and loyalty to a select few but vicious toward others. When Keeper fought another large dog, the local men stood around to watch the spectacle. Emily dove into the fight. She grabbed Keeper by the neck and dashed pepper into the faces of the furious beasts.

Haworth was a clean and orderly home. Tabby, the elderly servant made sure of that. When Keeper decided to take his naps on the counterpane of one of the beds, Tabby demanded that Emily intervene. The mastiff was warned.
Found again on the bed, Keeper took a stand. Emily hauled the reluctant dog off the bed. If you've ever seen a bull mastiff, that was a feat in itself. The insulted, infuriated dog turned on his mistress. He growled menacingly as she dragged him down the stairs. But Keeper met with worse fury than he probably imagined. Emily clenched her fists and pummelled the angry dog into submission.
Nursing Keeper's swollen eye, Emily let him know there were no hard feelings. The ever obedient animal followed her everywhere. Emily often sat on a rug and used Keeper as a back rest. She sketched pictures of him. And her attachment to Keeper was illustrated in Charlotte's portrayal of Shirley in the book of the same name about a character based on Emily.
info and pictures of bull mastiefs

Charlotte Brontë's Teenage "Catalogue of Books"

huffington post./charlotte-brontes-teenage-papers:

Charlotte Brontë was only 10 years old when she penned her earliest known work, and she was barely a teenager when she began writing in earnest -- at her own count she had written over 20 complete works by the time she was 14.

One list, which she has headed Catalogue of my Books with the periods of their completion up to August 3, 1830, gives 22 titles, including A Book of Rhymes, which, now lost, apparently contained 10 poems. She has made a few errors and omitted the titles of at least eight manuscripts, though -- so the actual count of what this young, prolific writer had composed by 1830 is closer to thirty works. Penned in a tiny but still legible hand, Brontë has written the list on a sheet of paper that measures just over four inches -- about the length of a golf pencil. [...]

Her miniscule handwriting is very precise, and she has confidently dated the third title, Leisure Hours, a Tale; and two fragments, to July 6, 1829. But Brontë was working from memory when she compiled the Catalogue, and the manuscript of Leisure Hours actually dates to June 29, 1830, nearly a year after her remembered date and only a few months before she wrote this list. Perhaps she merely recalled writing it in the summer, or simply misprinted the year. And how could this 14-year-old girl have known that we would be pouring over her Catalogue, which at the time she could only have imagined would be seen by her family, or which she perhaps wrote out only for her own use, over 180 years later?

The thought of some future scholars scrutinizing her juvenilia might have seemed even more unimaginable after she received a letter in 1837 from poet laureate Robert Southey (the twenty-one year old had written to him for advice about her poems), where he tells her that:

Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life: & it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment & a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, & when you are you will be less eager for celebrity.

Brontë later explained that she and her sisters "had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice" -- an unsurprising view for the age, and one which must have been particularly driven home by the poet laureate's letter. But in 1837 Southey did not expressly tell her to stop writing, and she was still as prolific (maybe even compulsive?) a writer as she had been as a teen. Her writing became her means of support, but she clearly wrote for more than that and the volume of her work from such a young age suggests to me that she was driven by that inexplicable itch to put pen to paper. In any case, we are lucky that she did not take heed to Southey's hints, and ten years later the ever-determined Brontë published Jane Eyre, albeit under the ambiguously gendered pen name Currer Bell.

June 2, 2011 Emily Brontes Piano brought to life

On abigails ateliers  I read: Just heard that this weekend Emily Brontes piano will be heard again, there are to be several performances at the Bronte Parsonage museum on Sunday (June 5th), this is only the second time it has been heard in public since the Brontes day. It will be played in situ so that visitors will hear the music as part of their visit, there is no extra charge other than the normal parsonage admission fee.
Pianist will be Maya Irgalina from the Royal college of Music.The music has been chosen from the Brontes music books and includes Beethoven and Handel.

Maria Bronte

When Maria was six years old, she was characterised as "grave, thoughtful, and quiet, to a degree far beyond her years".

Soon after their mother's death in 1821, Maria and her sisters grew up largely with one another, staying away from society. Maria read the newspaper and revealed her findings to her sisters,

Maria was said to have been a precocious child. According to her father, when he asked 10-year-old Maria "what...the best mode of spending time [was]", she answered, "By laying it out in preparation for a happy eternity.  He later said that he could speak with Maria on any popular topic of the day as fluently as with an adult, and regretfully recalled her "powerfully intellectual mind".

A printer from Thornton also remembered Maria correcting the proofs of one of Mr. Brontë's long poems.
According to Charlotte, she was rather serious and silent than otherwise, and Mrs. Gaskell described her as "delicate, unusually clever and thoughtful for her age, gentle, and untidy".

photos cowan bridge

On 1 July 1824, Maria, 10, and Elizabeth, joined the Cowan Bridge School with Charlotte and Emily following soon after in September. The food provided by the school was generally poorly cooked and unhealthy, and the cook was reported to be "careless, dirty, and wasteful". Both Maria and Elizabeth had just recovered from measles and whooping cough, and despite hunger, they often did not eat. The school register read: Maria Brontë, aged 10 ... reads tolerably. Writes pretty well. Ciphers a little. Works badly. Very little of geography or history. Has made some progress in reading French, but knows nothing of the language grammatically. Miss Andrews, a teacher there, admitted that Maria had a "fine imagination and extra-ordinary talents
In spring 1825, a typhoid epidemic swept through the school, causing the departure of almost a sixth of the students, between February and June 1825. By the winter of 1824, Maria's health was already deteriorating due to consumption. On 14 February 1825, Maria was withdrawn from the school., She lived at Haworth for three months before dying at the age of 11.

Patrick attributed Maria's death to a divine aspect: "She exhibited during her illness many symptoms of a heart under Divine influence. Died of decline".

According to Elizabeth Gaskell, Maria inspired the pious character Helen Burns in Jane Eyre, and a teacher on whom Miss Scatcherd was modeled subjected Charlotte's "gentle patient dying sister [Maria]" to "worrying and cruelty".

One of these fellow-pupils of Charlotte and Maria Bronte's, among other statements even worse, gives me the following:--The dormitory in which Maria slept was a long room, holding a row of narrow little beds on each side, occupied by the pupils; and at the end of this dormitory there was a small bed-chamber opening out of it, appropriated to the use of Miss Scatcherd. Maria's bed stood nearest to the door of this room. One morning, after she had become so seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to her side (the sore from which was not perfectly healed), when the getting-up bell was heard, poor Maria moaned out that she was so ill, so very ill, she wished she might stop in bed; and some of the girls urged her to do so, and said they would explain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent. But Miss Scatcherd was close at hand, and her anger would have to be faced before Miss Temple's kind thoughtfulness could interfere; so the sick child began to dress, shivering with cold, as, without leaving her bed, she slowly put on her black worsted stockings over her thin white legs (my informant spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flashed out undying indignation). Just then Miss Scatcherd issued from her room, and, without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and frightened girl, she took her by the arm, on the side to which the blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement whirled her out into the middle of the floor, abusing her all the time for dirty and untidy habits. There she left her. My informant says, Maria hardly spoke, except to beg some of the more indignant girls to be calm; but, in slow, trembling movements, with many a pause, she went down stairs at last--and was punished for being late.

A very young Elisabeth Taylor as Helen Burns

• Lowood School's headmaster and treasurer is Mr. Brocklehurst, a grim and pious man who runs the institution as cheaply as possible. When Jane first encounters him the fleeting impression she gets at first glance is that of "a black pillar!" (I, 4, p.31). Mr. Brocklehurst has an original in the Reverend William Carus-Wilson (1791-1859), the founder of The Clergy Daughters' School. Carus-Wilson was a Calvinist Evangelist, ordained in 1816. He was also the son of a prosperous landowner. Revelations concerning Carus-Wilson's running of the school caused much controversy in later years.
  The kindly superintendent Miss Temple who Jane develops a close friendship with has a real life counterpart in Ann Evans, who was the superintendent at Cowan Bridge school. Charlotte's favourable depiction of Miss Temple is considered a 'just tribute' to Ann Evans's character.
  
  Another Lowood staff member who was modeled on an actual person is Miss Scatcherd, the History and Grammar teacher who mercilessly bullies Jane's friend Helen Burns. Miss Scatcherd is apparently based on a Miss Andrews, who taught at Cowan Bridge school when the Bronte sisters attended, and Charlotte's portrayal of her is quite the opposite to that of Ann Evans. In fact, along with John Reed, Miss Scatcherd is arguably the most unpleasant character in the novel. In her Life of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell alludes to the harsh behaviour of Miss Andrews, cruelties echoed in the Lowood section of Jane Eyre, such as when Helen is birched by Miss Scatcherd for having dirty fingernails, despite being unable to wash them due to the water being frozen that morning. Jane-Eyre---Charlotte-Brontes-Inspirations-for-Lowood-School&id=5778074
•  Rebecca Fraser also quotes in her biography on Charlotte Brontë (Vintage, 2003, p. 41), that the original Miss Scatcherd was also the writer (by the name A.H.) of one of the letters that the supporters of Carus-Wilson published around 1857 to discredit the way Charlotte Brontë had portrayed Cowan Bridge as Lowood School in Jane Eyre.
• More info: Brett Harrison, 'The real "Miss Temple'' ' BST 85 (1975)
• blackwell reference
• Susan (Susanna) Harben, born 16 June 1785. Christened 27 June 1785 at St Thomas in the Cliffs, Lewes. Died February 1848, "dear old aunt Sue" who did not marry and became matron of the Clergy Daughter's School at Kirkby, Lonsdale. This was the school Charlotte Bronte was sent to and, according to "Notes on the families of Chamberlain and Harben", Matron Harben was apparently the model for the Matron in "Jane Eyre". The picture to the right of Susan Harben is from "Notes on the families of Chamberlain and Harben".
  http://www.austenfamily.org/harben_main.html

• CB remembered Miss [Ann] Evans with gratitude and regard and pictured her as "Miss Temple" in Jane Eyre. Like Miss Temple, Miss Evans left school to be married on 6 July 1826 at Tunstall Church (...) Miss Evans was succeeded as superintendent of the school by Miss -or Mrs.- Harben, a close friend of Carus Wilson. The courtesy title of "Mrs." was given her of the tragic circumstance of her bridegroom having died in church on her wedding day. Mrs. Harben remained at school until 1843.
• This was the charge, too, that lay at the heart of Elizabeth Gaskell's epistolary feud with Rev Carus Wilson 20 years later. In 1857, Gaskell's biography of her late friend Charlotte Brontë suggested that Lowood, the nightmare school described in the early chapters of Jane Eyre, was a direct transcription of Cowan Bridge, the establishment attended by the Brontë sisters in the 1820s. Gaskell had since visited the place and found it dirty, serving up sour milk in which dust, dirt and goodness knows what floated. It was this "want of cleanliness", implied Gaskell, which had been responsible for the deaths of the two eldest Brontë girls.
  With a howl of indignation, the family of the school's founder, Rev Wilson, conducted a vicious letter campaign against Mrs Gaskell in which she was accused of being a fantasist. Battle lines were drawn, and a teary Mrs Gaskell marshalled her troops, including Charlotte Brontë's clerical widower, into responding on her behalf.  -Guardian-UK-news-

.wikipedia.

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Maria made the best of it in silence. Like all the members of her family she was endowed with unlimited power of resignation, and never did a complaint escape her lips; but she had an incurable disease. To add to her sufferings she was a prey to the malevolence of one of the teachers, who suspected her wrongly of affecting a mournful air to gain the compassion of her comrades. Maria died ten months after her arrival at Cowan Bridge and Elizabeth a few weeks later. Both sisters had succumbed to tuberculosis.

Charlotte and Emily returned to Haworth towards the end of 1825.
They, were two timid and studious little girls, happy only at home. Charlotte was the gayer and played and talked willingly when she felt at ease. Emily, almost never spoke, but she had so attentive and serious an air that it was difficult to forget her presence. They found at home their brother Branwell, already admired for a very precocious artistic sense, and Anne, who, in her gentleness and her gravity, must have reminded them of the sister Maria whom they had lost.
charlotte-bronte
Years later Mary Taylor told:

Charlotte used to speak of her two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who died at Cowan Bridge. I used to believe them to have been wonders of talent and kindness. She told me, early one morning, that she had just been dreaming; she had been told that she was wanted in the drawing-room, and it was Maria and Elizabeth. I was eager for her to go on, and when she said there was no more, I said, 'but go on! Make it out! I know you can.' She said she would not; she wished she had not dreamed, for it did not go on nicely; they were changed; they had forgotten what they used to care for. They were very fashionably dressed, and began criticising the room, etc.

01-0- 1825 The Bronte sisters left the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge

 

This punishment is described by Charlotte in Jane Eyre where reports by Mrs Gaskell, confirm this ill treatment. Furthermore, to Mr Williams, reader at Smith, Elder & Co, who congratulated her for the narrative vigour of her description, Charlotte, unusually vehemently, insisted that it was true, and that furthermore she had deliberately avoided telling everything so as not to be accused of exaggeration.

Indeed, it is difficult to think that Charlotte, having persistently repeated for twenty years the stories about the bad treatment inflicted on her sisters could have exaggerated or invented them. For example, the description given by an unidentified witness to Mrs Gaskell, of the little Maria who, very ill and having just received a suction cup placed on her right side by the doctor, rose suddenly on seeing Miss Andrews enter the room, and began to get dressed. Before she could slip into some clothing however, the mistress pulled her violently into the centre of the room, scolding her for negligence, and disorder, and punished her for being late, upon which Maria descended from the dormitory although she could hardly stand up. According to Mrs Gaskell, the witness spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flashed out undying indignation.

http://www.readbookonline.net/read/9802/23864/

kleurrijk bronte sisters clergy-daughters-school-

Bancrofts from Yorkshire

On the weblog Bancrofts from Yorkshire you will find interesting information about Haworth. You can see a beautiful picture of George Bancroft who was born in 1860. One year before Parick Bronte, the father of the bronte Sisters died.  Jar, the owner of Bancrofts from Yorkshire  is telling over the interesting assortment of papers, letter and photographs he received.

A rather non-descript exercise book in the collection hold a nice secret....amongst dozens of recipes is one for Maria's  Wedding Cake, or "Bride Cake", as it was know then, the receipe you can see on his weblog.

Plea to get the bells to ring out

Bell-ringers are appealing for new members to help them keep ringing the changes.

The Haworth Guild of Bell Ringers has recently rung the first full peal of bells heard in the village since 1950. It was performed by a band of six ringers headed by captain Simon Burnett on the bells which were installed in 1846 at the time the Rev Patrick Brontë, father of the three famous Brontë sisters, was in charge of the church.

The peal took two hours and 46 minutes and involved 5,040 individual strikes to ring the “Plain Bob Minor”. “We felt elated and mentally exhausted,” said Mr Burnett, a retired Bradford Grammar School teacher whose wife, Sue, is also in the team. “We have a team of ten people but we need more so that we have enough strength in depth to allow us to go on and ring another peal,” he said The band rang the peal at St Michael and All Angels to celebrate the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

“Undertaking a peal of this kind is quite an achievement for any bell-ringer as it requires total concentration for the whole of the time. Also there are not many towers around with a band of ringers capable of undertaking such a peal,” added Mr Burnett, who has been captain for 20 years. The peal marked the 19th since the first, which was rung in 1848, shortly after the six bells had been installed and paid for by subscription. Among the people who subscribed was Mr Brontë and his name is inscribed on one of the bells. The Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, the rector of Haworth Parish Church, said: “It was an amazing achievement and we hope that the people of Haworth thought that the sounding of the church bells in such a spectacular fashion enhanced their enjoyment of the royal wedding day.”
keighley news