zaterdag 17 december 2011

Blackfriars Bridge (1896)

I found this on a very interesting weblog http://theedwardians.blogspot.com
Full of remarkable pictures. 
This movie is  of a  later period than the Bronte Sisters were living in. But, it gives a very good idea how it could have be.


Vroeg werk Charlotte Brönte voor kapitaal geveild | (Dutch)

Vroeg werk Charlotte Brönte voor kapitaal geveild
de Volkskrant
Een boekje dat de Britse schrijfster Charlotte Brontë als tiener had
geschreven, heeft op een veiling in Londen veel meer opgebracht dan
verwacht. ...
<http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2668/Buitenland/article/detail/3078562/2011/12/15/Vroeg-werk-Charlotte-Bronte-voor-kapitaal-geveild.dhtml>

Manuscript Charlotte Brontë levert acht ton op
Nieuws.nl
(Novum) - AMSTERDAM - Een vroeg manuscript van Charlotte Brontë uit 1830,
The Young Men's Magazine Number 2, is donderdag geveild voor 796 duizend
euro. ...
<http://buitenland.nieuws.nl/673648/manuscript_charlotte_bronte_levert_acht_ton_op>

Manuscript Charlotte Brontë levert 8 ton op
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) schreef Young Men's Magazine, Number 2 in
augustus 1830. Ze was toen 14 jaar oud. ,,Dit is de eerste creatieve
uitbarsting van ...
<http://www.bnr.nl/feeds/anp/820948-1112/manuscript-charlotte-bront-levert-8-ton-op>

Manuscript Charlotte Bronte levert acht ton op | Red Magazine
(Novum) - AMSTERDAM - Een vroeg manuscript van Charlotte Bronte uit 1830,
The Young Men's Magazine Number 2, is donderdag geveild voor 796 duizend
...
<http://www.red.nl/nieuws/Manuscript-Charlotte-Bronte-levert-acht-ton-op>

Vroeg-werk-charlotte-brnte-voor-kapitaal-geveild - Q-music
Vroeg werk Charlotte Brönte voor kapitaal geveild ... Een boekje dat de
Britse schrijfster Charlotte Brontë als tiener had geschreven, heeft op
een veiling in ...
<http://www.q-music.nl/page/nieuws_bekijken/1259881/vroeg-werk-charlotte-brnte-voor-kapitaal-geveild>

Vroeg werk Charlotte Brönte voor kapitaal geveild | Bogobogo
Een boekje dat de Britse schrijfster Charlotte Brontë als tiener had
geschreven, heeft op een veiling in Londen veel meer opgebracht dan
verwacht. Een ...
<http://www.bogobogo.nl/nieuws/algemeen-dagblad/vroeg-werk-charlotte-bronte-voor-kapitaal-geveild/>

Jefferson’s Granddaughter in Queen Victoria’s England

Ellen Wayles Coolidge arrived in London in June 1838 at the advent of Queen Victoria’s reign – the citizens were still celebrating the coronation. During her nine-month stay, Coolidge kept a diary that reveals the uncommon education of her youth, when she lived and studied at Monticello with her grandfather Thomas Jefferson. This volume brings the full text of her diary to publication for the first time, opening up her text for today’s reader with carefully researched annotations that provide the historical context. 

London’s clocks, theaters, parks, public buildings, and museums all come under Coolidge’s astute gaze as she and her husband, Joseph Coolidge, Jr., travel the city and gradually gain entry into some of the most coveted drawing rooms of the time. Coolidge records the details of her conversations with writers such as Samuel Rogers, Thomas Carlyle, and Anna Jameson and activists including Charles Sumner and Harriet Martineau. She gives firsthand accounts of the fashioning of the young queen’s image by the artists Charles Robert Leslie and Sir Francis Chantrey and takes notes as she watches the queen open Parliament and battle the first scandal of her reign. Her love of painting reawakened, Coolidge chronicles her opportunities to view over four hundred works of art held in both public and private collections, acknowledging a new appreciation for the modern art of J. M. W. Turner and a fondness for the Dutch masters. victorianamagazine

vrijdag 16 december 2011

Look how tiny the manuscript is.


Many, many sites are echoing the news of Charlotte Brontë's unpublished manuscript going to a French museum, but the only one seemingly posting something new is BBC News, which has a video interview with Andrew McCarthy and shows images from the auction as well as of the manuscript.  bronteblog/many-many-sites-are-echoing-news
Lookon the video how tiny the manuscript is.


Un manuscrit inédit de Charlotte Brontë, auteur deJane Eyre, a été acheté par le Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits de Paris pour 822 000 euros. lexpress.fr/culture/livre/un-manuscrit-inedit-de-charlotte-bronte-

Un manuscrit inédit de Charlotte Brontë vendu à 822 000 euros

L'Express - ‎4 uren geleden‎
Un manuscrit inédit de Charlotte Brontë, auteur de Jane Eyre, a été acheté par le Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits de Paris pour 822 000 euros. 822 000 euros. C'est la somme déboursée par le Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits de Paris pour l'acquisition ...

Record pour un inédit de Charlotte Brontë acheté par un musée français

RTL.be - ‎9 uren geleden‎
Un manuscrit inédit de Charlotte Brontë, l'auteur de "Jane Eyre", a atteint un record jeudi à Londres, où il a été acheté par le Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits à Paris pour 690.850 livres, soit 821.687 euros, a annoncé la maison d'enchères Sotheby's. ...

Un manuscrit de Charlotte Brontë vendu à un prix record

Cyberpresse - ‎21 uren geleden‎
AP La maison de vente aux enchères Sotheby's a affirmé jeudi qu'un manuscrit inédit signé Charlotte Brontë a été vendu 1,1 million $ US à l'encan, soit plus du double du montant anticipé. The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2 a été écrit en 1830. ...

1,1 million $ pour un manuscrit inédit de Charlotte Brontë

Radio-Canada - ‎15 dec. 2011‎
Un manuscrit inédit de Charlotte Brontë, l'auteure de Jane Eyre, a été acheté par le Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits à Paris pour 1,1 million de dollars. La maison d'enchères Sotheby's, qui en a fait l'annonce jeudi, précise que ce montant représente ...

donderdag 15 december 2011

Paris museum wins Bronte bidding war


The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2
The miniature magazine contains 19 pages, each measuring 35mm x 61mm (1.4in x 2.4in)

A French museum has won a bidding war for an unpublished Charlotte Bronte manuscript, dashing hopes that it could return to the author's former home.

The Musee des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris bought the second issue of Young Men's Magazine at auction £690,850. It outbid the Bronte Parsonage Museum, based in the family's former house in Haworth, West Yorkshire.The work, written when Bronte was 14, is regarded as important for the light it sheds on her literary development. The miniature manuscript, dated 1830, smashed its pre-sale estimate of £200,000 - £300,000 and set a new auction record for a manuscript by any of the Bronte sisters. Charlotte Bronte, best known for Jane Eyre, created six hand-written editions of the
magazine as part of an imaginary world she built with her famous sisters and her brother.The issue sold on Thursday contains a story that is a precursor to the famous passage in Jane Eyre in which Mr Rochester's insane wife, who is kept in the attic, seeks revenge by setting fire to his bed curtains.Dr Philip Errington, director  of books and manuscripts at auction house Sotheby's,  said the work, which contains over 4,000 words on 19 pages, had "huge literary significance"."This tiny manuscript represents her first burst of creativity and provides a rare and intimate insight into one of history's
great literary minds," he said.
Start Quote
t
The Bronte Parsonage Museum already owns four of the six copies of the magazine.The whereabouts of the remaining edition are unknown. The museum was awarded a grant of £613,140 by the National Heritage Memorial Fund to buy the artefact, as well as receiving a number of smaller donations. But it was not enough to secure the book, which will now go on display in Paris in January.Andrew McCarthy, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, said it was "the most significant manuscript to come to light in decades" Author and Bronte Society president Bonnie Greer said the book "puts down in luminous prose not only the daydreams of a little Yorkshire girl, but it also contains the seed of the work of one of the greatest writers in the English language". 
"It will not be going home, back to the place where it all began, the Parsonage at Haworth," she said. "Its presence there would have placed it not only at the heart of the proud community in which she was born and raised, but would have brought full circle a Yorkshire story, a northern story, a British story, a world story. "The Young Men's Magazine Number Two was sold by an anonymous private European collector.
 
 

Manuscript Charlotte Brontë levert acht ton op ( Dutch).

Laatste update:  15 december 2011

AMSTERDAM - Een vroeg manuscript van Charlotte Brontë uit 1830, The Young Men's Magazine Number 2, is donderdag geveild voor 796 duizend euro.

Foto:  AFP
Dat is ruim twee keer meer dan verwacht. Veilinghuis Sotheby's in Londen had de waarde geraamd tussen 250 en 350 duizend euro.
Tijdens de veiling boden het Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits in Parijs en het Brontë Parsonage Museum in het Engelse Haworth tegen elkaar op. Het Franse instituut trok aan het langste eind.
Brontë schreef The Young Men's Magazine Number 2 toen ze 14 was, in een boekje van 3,5 bij 6 centimeter. Het verhaal wordt gezien als een voorloper van een van de bekendste scènes uit Brontë's Jane Eyre.
Daarin steekt een boze echtgenote het bed van haar man in brand. Het veilinghuis sprak van het belangrijkste manuscript van Brontë dat de afgelopen dertig jaar te koop is aangeboden.

Zusjes

Ook de zusjes van de auteur deden het goed op de veiling. Een exemplaar van Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights uit 1847 leverde 181 duizend euro op. Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall uit 1848 ging voor ongeveer 37 duizend euro onder de hamer. 

Manuscript will not come home

The Brontë Society has been thwarted in its attempts to return an important Charlotte Brontë manuscript to the writer’s home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
The manuscript, which went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on Thursday 15 December, was previously untraced and unpublished. It was expected to fetch between £200,000 - £300,000, though in the end sold for £580,000. The Society had been awarded a grant of £613,140 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), the UK’s fund of last resort for saving great heritage at risk. There was also support from the John Murray Archive, who pledged £20,000, the Friends of National Libraries, £10,000, and many donations in response to a public appeal launched by the Society. 
Unfortunately, this was not enough on the day as the hammer price plus the significant buyer’s commission took the final price to above the amount of money we could raise. Read more: bronteparsonagemanuscript-will-not-come-home

Bonnie Greer, President of the Brontë Society, said:
This 'Little Book' puts down in luminous prose not only the daydreams of a little Yorkshire girl, but it also contains the seed of the work of one of the greatest writers in the English language, Charlotte Bronte. It will not be going home, back to the place where it all began, the Parsonage at Haworth. Its presence there would have placed it not only at the heart of the proud community in which she was born and raised, but would have brought full circle a Yorkshire story, a Northern story, a British story, a world story. We are hugely grateful to all those who supported our bid to bring this wonderful manuscript back to Haworth, especially the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

woensdag 14 december 2011

HAWORTH NEWS

Sat /Sun 17th & 18th December 10- 4pm
Christmas Craft market in the Old School Rooms, Haworth. Lots of stalls selling handmade crafts and gifts. With Home Front Kitchen refreshments. Admission £1 inc free cuppa. 
www.haworthcraftfairs.co.uk
Monday 26th December  11am  Guided Walk, - Bronte Bridge  5miles Packed lunch. Meet Phil Hatton & 
Barbara Walker. 11am at TIC, Main St, Haworth

dinsdag 13 december 2011

December - What did the Bronte sisters see when they were walking in December?


December 21st is the Midwinter Solstice and our shortest hours of daylight, you can take a 24 hour time-lapse of the day here... It also marks the official arrival of winter. Shorter daylight hours and long cold nights make for difficult times for wildlife such as Birds and Mammals.

What to see
Winter food is scarce for all wildlife and any berries such as Holly, Rowan Hawthorn will be eaten by birds. They are active after dawn foraging for food and hour before sunset eating in readiness for the long night ahead. This is a good time to feed birds as they will appreciate a meal and you may be rewarded by seeing other species such as Bullfinch as their need for food makes them less timid.
Redwing and Fieldfare which have migrated from Northern Europe to winter in Britain can be seen. If you are lucky you may also see Waxwings; a winter visitor from Russia and Northern Europe. They are usually spotted where berries such as Rowan are found.


Plants are in their dormant stage and there are very few signs of growth at this time of year.

maandag 12 december 2011

International Protestant Church. “One Sunday afternoon, having walked the distance of half a league to the Protestant church, I came back weary and exhausted” Villette, chapter 31

The photo' s of the International Protestant Church of Brussels were the Brontës used to worship. It’s still active today.

The Protestant community worshipped in the Chapelle Royale on the Place de Musée. An Anglican service was held there each Sunday morning and afternoon.
It was here that Charlotte and Emily went on most Sundays to worship. The chaplain in 1842 was the Revd. Jenkins, an acquaintance of Patrick Brontë.thebrusselsbrontegroup.org/history
------
The Reverend Evan Jenkins started a school in Brussels in the 1820s in the rue des Champs Elysées, in the house where the family lived. When the Jenkins family moved to the rue St. Bernard, the school came to be known as St. Bernard's. Jack's father, the Rev. John C. Jenkins, was born in Brussels and graduated from Cambridge in 1859. He became assistant chaplain to his elder brother, then in charge of the English congregation in Brussels after the death of their father Evan probably in 1849. The Jenkins family was very "High Church," and the more Protestant members of the Church of England occasionally criticised the somewhat Catholic nature of the services in the church. Unfortunately the church was bombed in World War II, and nothing survives of the church or the memorial windows to the Jenkins family. stbernards.org/newslet/
-----------
Charlotte Bronte in a letter:
 


""We avoid them, which it is not difficult to do, as we have the brand of Protestantism and Anglicism upon us. People talk of the danger which Protestants expose themselves to, in going to reside in Catholic countries, and thereby running the chance of changing their faith. My advice to all Protestants who are tempted to do anything so besotted as turn Catholics is, to walk over the sea on to the Continent to attend mass sedulously for a time; to note well the mummeries thereof; also the idiotic, mercenary aspect of all the priests; and then, if they are still disposed to consider Papistry in any other light than a most feeble, childish piece of humbug, let them turn Papists at once - that's all. I consider Methodism, Quakerism, and the extremes of High and Low Churchism foolish, but Roman Catholicism beats them all. At the same time, allow me to tell you, that there are some Catholics who are as good as any Christians can be to whom the Bible is a sealed book, and much better than many Protestants." EG-Charlotte
charlottemathieson/charlotte-brontes-brussels/
bruxelles,chapelle-royale-protestante

zondag 11 december 2011

Emily and Charlotte Bronte in Brussels

Grand place 
From: readbookonline
  • M. Heger informs me that, on receipt of a letter from Charlotte, making very particular inquiries as to the possible amount of what are usually termed "extras," he and his wife were so much struck by the simple earnest tone of the letter, that they said to each other:--"These are the daughters of an English pastor, of moderate means, anxious to learn with an ulterior view of instructing others, and to whom the risk of additional expense is of great consequence. Let us name a specific sum, within which all expenses shall be included."
  • After the age of twenty, having meantime studied alone with diligence and perseverance, she went with me to an establishment on the continent. The same suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her upright heretic and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system. Once more she seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere force of resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on her former failure, and resolved to conquer, but the victory cost her dear. She was never happy till she carried her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the old parsonage-house, and desolate Yorkshire hills."
  • And yet there was much in Brussels to strike a responsive chord in her powerful imagination. At length she was seeing somewhat of that grand old world of which she had dreamed. As the gay crowds passed by her, so had gay crowds paced those streets for centuries, in all their varying costumes. Every spot told an historic tale, extending back into the fabulous ages when Jan and Jannika, the aboriginal giant and giantess, looked over the wall, forty feet high, of what is now the Rue Villa Hermosa, and peered down upon the new settlers who were to turn them out of the country in which they had lived since the deluge. The great solemn Cathedral of St. Gudule, the religious paintings, the striking forms and ceremonies of the Romish Church--all made a deep impression on the girls, fresh from the bare walls and simple worship of Haworth Church. And then they were indignant with themselves for having been susceptible of this impression, and their stout Protestant hearts arrayed themselves against the false Duessa that had thus imposed upon them.
A lot of beautiful pictures of Brussels skyscrapercity.com

St. Gudule, Brussels


But then Emily left, and Charlotte, after a brief holiday at home, returned alone. Years after, writing to her friend, she speaks of her return in these words: "I returned to Brussels after aunt's death against my conscience, prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of mind." Why did she thus go back "against her conscience?" Her friends declared that her future husband dwelt somewhere within sound of the chimes of St. Gudule, and that she insisted upon returning to Brussels because she was about to be married there. We know now how different was the reality. The husband who awaited her was even then about to begin his long apprenticeship of love at Haworth. Yet none the less had her spirit, if not her heart, been captured and held captive in the Belgian city. It is not in her letters that we find the truth regarding her life at this time. The truth indeed is there, but not all the truth. "In catalepsy and dread trance," says Lucy Snowe, "I studiously held the quick of my nature…. It is on the surface only the common gaze will fall." The secrets of her inner life could not be trusted to paper, even though the lines were intended for no eyes but those of her friend and confidante. There are some things, as we know well, that the heart hides as by instinct, and which even frank and open natures only reveal under compulsion. Writing to her friend from Brussels in October, 1843, she says:

 "I have much to say, Ellen; many little odd things, queer and puzzling enough, which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day, perhaps, or rather one evening, if ever we should find ourselves again by the fireside at Haworth, or at B——, with our feet on the fender, curling our hair, I may communicate to you." 

One of the hardest features of the last year she spent at Brussels was the necessity she was under of locking all the deepest emotions of her life within her own breast, of preserving the calm and even cold exterior, which should tell nothing to the common gaze, above the troubled, fevered heart that beat within.
www.gutenberg.org/files

ST. GUDOLE, BRUSSELS
 

One little incident in "Villette"—Lucy's impulsive visit to a Roman Catholic confessor—is taken direct from Charlotte's own experience. During one of the long lonely holidays in the foreign school, when her mind was restless and disturbed, her heart heavy, her nerves jarred and jangled, she fled from the great empty schoolrooms to seek peace in the street; and she found, not peace perhaps, but sympathy at least, in the counsels of a priest, seated at the Confessional in a church into which she wandered, who took pity on the little heretic, and soothed her troubled spirit without attempting to enmesh it in the folds of Romanism. It was from experiences such as these, with a chastened heart and a nature tamed down, though by no means broken, that she returned to familiar Haworth, to face "the rough realities of the world."
egaskell/bl-egaskell-cbronte-

Quartier Isabelle, Brussels

A small piece of Quartier Isabelle still remains. See the plaque between the doors? 


The Pensionnat Héger in Quartier Isabelle, where the sisters lived, has long been destroyed, but the Group placed a plaque in the only piece of original street still visible above ground (there’s another part in the catacombs of a local museum).


A piece of rue d’Isabelle in the Belvue Museum
 
 
Brussels Park Royal, the inspiration for the Park Lucy crossed with Dr. John on arriving at Villette
http://thesleeplessreader.com/tag/bronte/