zaterdag 10 december 2011
'We don't think it's a painting of Emily'
An image issued by P Humbert Auctioneers of the portrait they believe to be of Emily Bronte.
The Bronte Society has cast doubt on claims a painting being auctioned in Northampton this month is a portrait of the famous literary figure Emily Bronte. Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said the society doubted the provenance of the oil painting and would not be bidding on it next Thursday. “We are not 100 per cent convinced it is Emily. There isn’t enough provenance on the painting and there is an element of doubt about it,” she said.
“There are two portraits of Emily, both in the National Portrait Gallery, and they don’t bare a striking resemblance to this one. The experts are saying the woman in the painting is wearing the kind of clothes Emily would have worn, which probably thousands of other women of that period were wearing. They have done a huge amount of research on that painting but we are still not convinced.”
But art experts, who have assessed the picture, say there is strong evidence to suggest it could be of Emily Bronte. The oil painting, which shows a young woman wearing a straw bonnet held in place by a silk scarf, was painted earlier than previously thought. The picture, recently given to auctioneers J P Humbert of Northamptonshire by a retired headmaster, was found to have been painted circa 1840, making it contemporary with the age of the possible subject – Emily Bronte died in 1848. It is almost identical to a print of a portrait of the writer published in the July 1894 issue of The Woman At Home, which itself was attributed to Charlotte Bronte. It is thought the artist responsible for the newly-found picture may be John Hunter Thompson (1808-1890) of Bradford who was a portrait artist and friend of Emily’s brother Branwell.
As well as that, written on the back is “Emily Bronte – Sister of Charlotte B... Currer Bell”, and on the backing paper “Emily Bronte/Sister of Charlotte Bronte/Ellis Bell”. Currer and Ellis Bell were the pen names of Charlotte and Emily Bronte from the winter of 1845 when the sisters published their poems and adopted pen names. Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert said the attribution confirms that the portrait is earlier than previously thought.
“After much research, we are confident this portrait, recently discovered, is of Emily Bronte,” he said. “So many factors support this contention and, as such, this represents a very important study of one of English literature’s most perennial figures.” The oil on panel painting is set to go on sale at JP Humbert Auctioneers in Towcester, Northants, at a provisional estimate of £10,000 to £15,000. The sale coincides with an auction where the society will be bidding for a rare Charlotte Bronte manuscript the Young Men’s Mhttp://www.keighleynews.co.uk/news//We_don_t_think_it_s_a_painting_of_Emily_/
vrijdag 9 december 2011
In the Footsteps of the Brontës
Chadwick, Ellis H., In the Footsteps of the Brontës (London, Pitman, 1914) pp. 199-230, 400-9, ill.. Reprinted in 1971.
Some good chapters onCharlotte Brussels
A few years after Esther Alice Chadwick (fl. 1882–1928) - who wrote under the name Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick - had read a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, she moved to a house near the Haworth vicarage where the Brontë family had lived. As a result, Chadwick was able to speak to many people who had known the family, and in 1914 she published this extensive biography of the family.
From this book:
Some good chapters on
A few years after Esther Alice Chadwick (fl. 1882–1928) - who wrote under the name Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick - had read a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, she moved to a house near the Haworth vicarage where the Brontë family had lived. As a result, Chadwick was able to speak to many people who had known the family, and in 1914 she published this extensive biography of the family.
From this book:
When some years afterwards Martha Brown, the servant, had an opportunity of visiting London, she was much interested in Paternoster Row and the Chapter Coffee House as well as the publishing firm in Cornhill. She had assured Charlotte Bronte that she should visit the two latter places and tell them that she came from Haworth parsonage. " You never will, Martha ! " said Charlotte. " But I will," replied Martha, in her broad Yorkshire, and her sister, Mrs. Ratcliffe, affirmed that she carried out her intention in part by making herself known at the Chapter Coffee House to the waiter, whilst at Cornhill she was content with seeing the young man behind the counter on which were books, some of which had " Currer Bell " on the cover. Her courage failed, however, and she did not dare to ask for the head of the firm, which very much amused Charlotte Bronte.-------------Charlotte Bronte left Hathersage on 23rd July, 1845. On her journey home from Sheffield to Leeds, she travelled with a gentleman, whose features and bearing betrayed him to be a Frenchman. Putting aside her natural shyness, she inquired in French if he were not a Frenchman, and on his replying in the affirmative, she further asked if he had not spent some time in Germany, as she detected the thick, guttural pronunciation. She evidently enjoyed the journey, pleasantly beguiled by conversation in the language in which she had become proficient. It is now known by the light of her recently published letters in The Times, sent to M. Heger in 1844-45, that the real reason for her conversation with the Frenchman was that he reminded her of M. Heger : " Every word was most precious to me, because it reminded me of you. I love French for your sake with all my heart and soul," she writes.--------------------As Charlotte and Emily tramped the moors " to the damage of their shoes, but the benefit of their health," Charlotte told her sister of her sorrow and anguish, and Emily had to bear with her for nearly two years. We read in her letter, dated November, 1845, " I have denied myself absolutely the pleasure ofspeaking about you even to Emily ; but I have been able to conquer neither my regrets nor my impatience." It is easy to understand Charlotte's never-ending sorrow for the loss of Emily, for it was she who comforted and bore with her during this wretched time. If Charlotte wrote down her dreams, and Emily wrote of her deliriums during her illness, no wonder Charlotte said on preparing a new edition of Withering Heights that, on looking over the papers, they left her prostrate and caused her sleepless nights.
woensdag 7 december 2011
Lucasta Miller's encyclopedic account of works inspired by the Brontës' books and lives is also a narrative of revelation through readers' reactions through the ages.
THE BRONTË MYTH
By Lucasta Miller
New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 2003
351 pp., $26.00
By Lucasta Miller
New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 2003
351 pp., $26.00
What is it about the Brontës that has made interest in them endure for two centuries, multiplying exponentially as we enter a third? In The Brontë Myth, Lucasta Miller, an Oxford-educated critic, journalist, and essayist and former deputy literary editor of the Independent, explores the split between
Read more ( interesting): worldandi.com/subscribers
First time a member of the Heger family visited Haworth August 26th, 1953
Wednesday, August 26th, 1953, will, henceforth, be a memorable date in the history of the Brontë Society, for on that day for the first time a member of the Heger family visited Haworth. Mme. Lucien Beckers, née Simone Heger, is the grand-daughter of M. and Mme. Constantin Heger through her father, Dr. Paul Heger. It was Dr. Paul Heger, it will be remembered, who presented the four letters written by Charlotte to his father, to the British Museum in 1913. Before coming to Yorkshire, M. and Mme. Beckers inspected these letters in their British Museum setting.
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 1953-01-01
Publication date: 1953-01-01
- Brontë Society Transactions: The Journal of Brontë Studies is the original title of Brontë Studies where you will find content for Volumes 27 onwards.Brontë Society Transactions: The Journal of Brontë Studies is the original title of Brontë Studies where you will find content for Volumes 27 onwards.
Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed Margaret Smith.
She wrote to Williams after the completion of Shirley:
"Its active exercise has kept my head above water since
its results cheer me now
for I feel they have enabled me to give pleasure to others
I am thankful to God who gave me the faculty
and it is for me a part of my religion
to defend this gift and to profit by its possession."
Most important, from posterity's point of view, are the letters to Charlotte's schoolfriend Ellen Nussey, "a conscientious, observant, calm, well-bred Yorkshire girl", without "romance" or intellectual pretension. Although Ellen later destroyed many letters that she considered too sensitive for publication, we have reason to be grateful to her for preserving so many which provide us with much detailed insight into the Brontës' lives. Among the most riveting in this selection are the four letters that Charlotte wrote from Haworth to her Brussels professor, Constantin Heger, after her return to England in 1844, which reveal the extent of her infatuation with him and her longing for the assurance of his continuing friendship for her. To her great distress, it was not forthcoming. In November 1845 she told him that: "To forbid me to write to you, to refuse to reply to me – that will be to tear from me the only joy I have on earth, to deprive me of my last remaining privilege... Day after day I await a letter and day after day disappointment flings me down again into overwhelming misery..." Her heart's loss was Charlotte's creative gain. From the relationship with Heger, and her time in Belgium, flowed the genius of Jane Eyre and Villette.
Margaret Smith has more than earned the plaudits of Brontë lovers for her patient and scrupulous work in establishing reliable texts of Charlotte's letters, and in annotating them so expertly. My only, very slight, regret about this selected edition is that she has omitted the extraordinary story of the letters' afterlife. This centres on the activities of one of the great forgers of the age, T J Wise, who wheedled Charlotte's letters from Ellen Nussey, promising that they would never be "scattered abroad", but would be preserved in the South Kensington Museum, and used "to enhance the honour & reputation of their gloriously gifted writer". In an act of blatant desecration, Wise proceeded to sell Charlotte's letters at auction. In his zeal for selling to the highest bidder, many of the letters were split up and lost forever to untraceable locations. It is a tale rich in skulduggery and deceit which still remains to be told in full. independent.co.uk/books/reviews/selected-letters-of-charlotte-bront--bront-ed-margaret-smith-
dinsdag 6 december 2011
New memorial for Bronte grave
In 2010 the Bronte Society commissioned a survey of the headstone to see if the erosion could be halted. The professional opinion, supported by York diocesan buildings officers, was that the fabric of the stone was now so compromised that nothing could be done to stop the erosion.
The Bronte Society then embarked on a wide consultation of interested parties to see what might be done.
Those included in the discussions were St Mary’s Church Council, diocesan officers, Scarborough Borough Council and visitors to the grave.
Stephen Whitehead, a conservation officer with the Bronte Society, said: “The overwhelming view was that the original stone should be left where it stands but a new plaque, interpreting the fading original should be installed.
“The plaque, which has been executed by J G Gardiner Ltd of Bridlington, is of slate, a native material that will last much longer than sandstone.
“It is now in situ and the Bronte Society would like to thank the officers of St Mary Church and the York diocese for their help and cooperation.”
The Rev Martyn Dunning, of St Mary’s Church, said he was delighted with the new addition.
He said: “The headstone had become quite difficult to read, which was detracting from people’s enjoyment of their visit to the site.
“The new plaque is a really good solution, which gives people the best of both worlds.
“There is a lot of interest in the grave and I think this will keep people coming for many years to come.”
He has already had excellent feedback from a number of visitors to the site.
Anne Bronte, the youngest of the three world-famous Bronte sisters, died in Scarborough at the age of 29 in 1849.
The plaque explains that there is a mistake on the original headstone inscription, which states that Bronte died aged 28.
Letter and newspaper article about Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte, 24th September 1848, to publishers Smith, Elder & Co. Concerning the publication of ‘Jane Eyre’, signed C.Bell, Charlotte’s male nom de plume.
http://womenshistorynetwork.org/blog/?tag=charlotte-bronte----------------------
www.facebook.com The British Newspaper Archive
The Death of Emily Bronte - as Described by Charlotte BronteSource: 'The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser' - Monday 20 November
maandag 5 december 2011
Charlotte Brontë's letter to Dr Epps, 1848.
www.heritage-images.com
Letters written by Louise Heger
I am searching for more information about these letters.
In this letter Louise Heger describes how one morning in 1913 she heard men selling the newspaper Le Petit Blue shouting about the ‘love affair’ of Monsieur Heger. She and her brother Paul had just given the letters Charlotte wrote to Monsieur to the British Museum, after which they were published in The Times.
Louise Heger was born in 1839, 3 years before Charlotte and Emily Brontë enrolled at the Pensionnat Heger. She studied under the Belgian Impressionist Alfred Stevens and painted in a studio at the bottom of the Pensionnat Heger garden. Louise was a successful landscape artist and exhibited a Coastal Landscape and a View of the River Ourthe at an 1893 exhibition inBrussels
She died in 1933 .thebrusselsbrontegroup.org/heger
Since the October excursion I have been greatly assisted by Renate Hurtmanns, who paid several more visits to Evere cemetery, as you can see from her report below, with the latest on this research. She has also helped me in transcribing letters written by Louise Heger, the daughter of Monsieur and Madame Heger. Some time ago I discovered that the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts has a large very interesting collection of letters written by her, including many she wrote to her parents, sisters and brother that give a valuable new insight into the family.In this letter Louise Heger describes how one morning in 1913 she heard men selling the newspaper Le Petit Blue shouting about the ‘love affair’ of Monsieur Heger. She and her brother Paul had just given the letters Charlotte wrote to Monsieur to the British Museum, after which they were published in The Times.Louise Heger was born in 1839, 3 years before Charlotte and Emily Brontë enrolled at the Pensionnat Heger. She studied under the Belgian Impressionist Alfred Stevens and painted in a studio at the bottom of the Pensionnat Heger garden. Louise was a successful landscape artist and exhibited a Coastal Landscape and a View of the River Ourthe at an 1893 exhibition in
She died in 1933 .thebrusselsbrontegroup.org/heger
Exhibition and Lecture at Museum M, in Leuven
On October 27, 2011 several members of the Brussels Brontë Group went to Leuven to an exhibition of paintings and drawings by two Belgian women artists, Isala van Driest (1842-1916) and Louse Heger (1839-1933), and in the evening to a lecture by Professor Sue Lonoff of Harvard University on Louise Heger and Charlotte Brontë. The exhibition was called ‘Isala & Louise, Two Women Two Stories’. Remarkably their surnames were not part of the title, probably to stress the invisibility of women in the professions at the time, for its theme was how these two gifted women overcame prejudice and forged a way into what were conventionally regarded as male preserves – Isala van Driest as a medical doctor, and Louise Heger as an artist specializing in landscape painting and drawing.
Of crucial interest was the role Louise played many years later when her parents were long dead, namely what was to become of the letters Charlotte wrote to her teacher M Heger when she had left Brussels for the last time. Louise knew that at least some of them had been kept, having first been torn up and subsequently pieced together, perhaps by Mme. Heger. The actual facts are not really known. But Louise did know that her mother wanted them to be preserved and had therefore bequeathed them to her. Even during Mme Heger’s lifetime Charlotte Brontë had become a very famous author and Mme wanted to scotch any insinuation that her relationship with her husband had been anything other than a schoolgirl’s crush. So it was Louise who initiated the quest to preserve the four letters for posterity – on the one hand to exonerate her father altogether and on the other, as part of British literary heritage. She discussed the case with her brother Paul who knew nothing about the existence of the letters. They decided to consult an eminent English art-critic, Marion Spielmann, and at his suggestion donated the letters to the British Museum (they are now in the British Library) in 1913. Later on they were published in The London Times -- and caused a sensation.
In his writings on the subject Spielmann seems to play down Louise’s role in the preservation of the letters, possibly, as Sue Lonoff implied, because he had a tendency to disregard the female in any but a conventional role; on the other hand, Louise herself may have been too modest a person (we might say under-assertive) to claim her true position. More might come to light as research is done on the life and work of Marion Spielmann. brusselsbronte.blogspot.com/exhibition-and-lecture-at-museum-m-in.html
In his writings on the subject Spielmann seems to play down Louise’s role in the preservation of the letters, possibly, as Sue Lonoff implied, because he had a tendency to disregard the female in any but a conventional role; on the other hand, Louise herself may have been too modest a person (we might say under-assertive) to claim her true position. More might come to light as research is done on the life and work of Marion Spielmann. brusselsbronte.blogspot.com/exhibition-and-lecture-at-museum-m-in.html
Spielmann, M.H., “Mlle. Louise Heger. Last link with the Brontës,” in The Times (
http://books.google.nl/books/Marion+Spielmann+bronte
Marion Harry Alexander Spielmann (1858–1948) was a prolific Victorian art critic and scholar who was the editor of The Connoisseur and Magazine of Art. Among his voluminous output, he wrote a history of Punch magazine, the first biography of John Everett Millais and a detailed investigation into the evidence for portraits of William Shakespeare. Spielmann was born in London May 22, 1858 and was educated at University College School andUniversity College, London. He soon established himself as an art journalist, writing for the Pall Mall Gazette from 1883 to 1890, most notably discussing the work of G. F. Watts.[1] By the 1880s, Spielmann had become "one of the most powerful figures in the late Victorian art world". Marion Spielmnn painted by John Henry Frederick Bacon.
zondag 4 december 2011
Charlotte Bronte's love for Constantin Heger
I received an a-mail with the question:
Where can I find the texts of Charlotte's letters to Heger?
I started searching and collected these items
"Day or night I find neither rest nor peace. If I sleep I have tortured dreams in which I see you always severe, always gloomy and annoyed with me. I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to every kind of reproach - all that I know - is that I cannot - that I will not resign myself to losing the friendship of my master completely - I would rather undergo the greatest physical sufferings. If my master withdraws his friendship entirely from me I will be completely without hope ... I cling on to preserving that little interest - I cling on to it as I cling on to life." Charlotte Bronte
Four of the most poignant love letters in English literature have returned to the Yorkshire village where their misguided writer posted them 160 years ago. After a century in storage at the British Library, the heartfelt notes from Charlotte Bronte have gone on display at the parsonage in Haworth, where she agonised over their phrasing during periods of depression in 1844.
Charlotte's portrayal of the temperamental M. Heger as she first saw him in 1842 again describes a striking man:
"He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament; a little black being, with a face that varies in expression. Sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena; occasionally, but very seldom, he discards these perilous attractions and assumes an air nor above 100 degrees removed form mild and gentlemanlike…”
"He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament; a little black being, with a face that varies in expression. Sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena; occasionally, but very seldom, he discards these perilous attractions and assumes an air nor above 100 degrees removed form mild and gentlemanlike…”
Brontë began writing to Heger after her return to Haworth and there is evidence to suggest that there were more letters than survive today. Brontë began writing to Heger after her return and there is evidence to suggest that there were more letters than survive today. In the letters that do remain, Kauffman notes a variety of characteristics that fit the ‘amorous epistolary discourse’ on which her study focuses. These include:
• ‘the denial of the reality of separation’;• ‘the desire for contact’;
• ‘despair at the master’s silence’;
• and ‘resigned desolation charlotte_bronts_letters/
""January 8, 1845
Monsieur, the poor have not need of much to sustain them --
they ask only for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table.
But if they are refused the crumbs they die of hunger.
Nor do I, either, need much affection from those I love.
I should not know what to do with a friendship entire and complete -
I am not used to it.
But you showed me of yore a little interest,
when I was your pupil in Brussels,
and I hold on to the maintenance of that little interest --
One of Louise Heger's letters at Ghent Museum of Fine Arts (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Documentatiecentrum voor Vlaamse Kunst)brusselsbronte.blogspot.com/ongoing-brussels-research
On this page she describes how one morning in 1913 she heard men selling the newspaper Le Petit Blue shouting about the ‘love affair’ of Monsieur Heger. She and her brother Paul had just given the letters Charlotte wrote to Monsieur to the British Museum, after which they were published in The Times.
Written in French, the letters later became historically valuable as Charlotte's fame grew, but Heger attempted to bin them a second time when his daughter showed them to him as he lay dying. They were bequeathed to the British Museum by Heger's son to help an accurate record of the writer's tormented youth.
Written in French, the letters later became historically valuable as Charlotte's fame grew, but Heger attempted to bin them a second time when his daughter showed them to him as he lay dying. They were bequeathed to the British Museum by Heger's son to help an accurate record of the writer's tormented youth.