Charlotte Bronte at Gawthorpe Hall

In March 1850 Charlotte went to stay with Sir James and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth at Gawthorpe Hall.

 

cottontimes Dr James Phillips Kay

The magnificent hall lies near Padiham in Lancashire, just off the present A671. The visit was a surrender to a sort of war of attrition waged by Sir James in an effort to get to know ‘Currer Bell’. He was a remarkable man, a great social reformer; in his younger days, as a doctor in Manchester, he had battled against problems of hygiene among the poor and was instrumental in opening schools in workhouses. He lobbied tirelessly for free libraries and free education, and suffered a series of nervous breakdowns throughout his life due to overwork He also had an artistic streak, which drew him to the company of writers. His interest had been aroused by the radical nature of Charlotte’s novel Shirley.

 

The publicity-shy Charlotte found Sir James uncomfortably overpowering, but the romantic in her was captivated by the monumental Jacobean hall with its reminiscences of her beloved Walter Scott, ‘gray, antique, castellated and stately’. She failed to warm to his wife, whom she found graceless and without dignity. Whether or not she felt that lady Kay-Shuttleworth’s 200-year-old ancestry and her family’s stately home (Sir James had taken her name, Shuttleworth, as the price of the inheritance) should have lent her aristocratic aloofness and condescension is not clear, but Charlotte found her hostess’s kind attempts to be friendly ‘painful and trying’. Their pressing invitation to stay with them in London over the season she described as a ‘menace hanging over my head’. The truth was that, apart from her appalling nervousness in strange company, Charlotte had a deep dread of being patronized. Though never completely at ease, she was to thaw somewhat in her attitude to the Kay-Shuttleworths in later years. grimshaw origin Gawt

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The Kay-Shuttleworths also came to hear about Charlotte Brontë who was becoming a well known author by this time and lived only 12 miles away in Haworth.  They invited her to come and stay, which she eventually did in 1850 and then again in 1855.  She also stayed with the Kay-Shuttleworths at their home in Windermere where she met Mrs Gaskell who became her great friend and wrote the first biography of Charlotte after her death.  During Charlotte’s second visit to Gawthorpe in January 1855 it is said that she insisted walking out in the grounds and caught a chill from which she never managed to recover, she died two months later on 31st March the same year. 



bbc/lancashire/history gawthorpe
wiki/Gawthorpe_Hall     wiki/Sir_James_Kay-Shuttleworth

What did the Bronte Sisters see in March while walking the Moors?

March - an overview

March brings with it the anticipation of Spring; 21st March is the Vernal or Spring Equinox when there is equal periods of night and day and officially marks the start of Spring. March can have warm days, but can still be a reminder that winter still has a grip with snow, heavy rain and cold north winds.

What to see

Lambs will be out on pasture and moorland.

Lapwings which arrived late February will be establishing their territory over pasture and moorland. They are so called because of their undulating flight, and also known as "peewit" due to its characteristic calling sound. You can see their aerobatic tumbling which is part of their courtship ritual and territory display.

Natural food for birds is easier for them to find as the insect population increases and buds appear. Birds such as the Blackbird, Blue Tit, Chaffinch and Robin will be singing more frequently, establishing territories in preparation for nest building and rearing young. Putting out food for them will still help at this time of year as the all too often sudden cold snap can make it difficult.

Frogs will continue to move to breeding ponds to spawn, replacing the frogspawn that may have died from frosts. 

The Brontës' piano

In 2010, for the first time in over 160 years the Brontë family’s cabinet piano was heard again at their former home in Haworth. This historic occasion took place at the Parsonage in June of that year following months of complex conservation work, made possible through the generosity of Florida member Virginia Esson. The piano was originally made by John Green of Soho Square.

 It is not known for certain when the Brontës acquired their piano. Branwell Brontë developed a talent for both piano and church organ and it was possibly at his instigation that the instrument was acquired. Emily was described as playing ‘with precision and brilliancy’, and during her time as a student in Brussels, her ability warranted the services of the best available professor of music. Anne preferred to sing, though she was able to accompany herself on the piano. The family exception was Charlotte, whose poor eyesight proved an impediment to sight reading.

The piano has an interesting history: it was lent to Mr Grant, the curate of Oxenhope by Patrick Brontë after his children’s deaths, and then sold at an auction of Brontë items in 1861. It then passed through numerous hands before being put up for sale at Sothebys in 1916 as part of the collection of J.H. Dixon. Dixon’s wife was not satisfied with the price offered and withdrew the piano from the sale, presenting it instead to the Parsonage in memory of her husband.

The piano was valued by many of these former owners as a relic of the remarkable Brontë family. Over the years little interest has been taken in it as a musical instrument and it was no longer in playable condition. The piano has undergone a lengthy and complex restoration process carried out byKen Forrest, a specialist conservator.  Many of the internal workings were either damaged or missing and the restoration was further complicated by the piano’s rarity and the lack of similar instruments available for comparison.

Cabinet pianos were popular in the 1830s and 1840s but today are rather unusual when compared to the more valuable pianos such as the Grand.

Top Withens

A professional photographer will chart the decay of a ruined farmhouse high on the Yorkshire hills, which is passed by thousands of walkers on the Pennine Way. Top Withens is also visited by countless tourists who make the walk to the ruins, almost 1,400ft (423m) up on the moors above Stanbury in West Yorkshire. Local photographer and videographer Simon Warner will showcase the progressive ruination of the building, said to be the location in which Emily Brontë set Wuthering Heights in her novel.“It’s a special place to so many people: ashes have been scattered there and I know of at least one person who has proposed to his girlfriend at Top Withens. “But why is it so important? Obviously it has the Brontës link; Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath both wrote poems about the site and many photographers have captured the scene over the years. But is there more to it than that? photographer--pennine-way-farm-building

‘L’Ingratitude’

From: charlotte-bronte

‘L’Ingratitude’ turned up in the course of my research for a biography of Constantin Heger, who taught Emily and Charlotte Brontë French during their time in Brussels and with whom Charlotte fell in love. I’d been trying to find out about his brother Vital, a sales representative for the royal carpet factory in Tournai and decided to look through the catalogue of the Musée royal de Mariemont for any mention of him – its eclectic holdings include carpets – and found a reference to a manuscript by Charlotte Brontë about a rat. It turned out to be the first piece of French homework Charlotte had written for Heger, lost since the First World War.

Early in February 1842, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, then aged 25 and 23, went to Brussels to board at the pensionnat run by Claire Zoë Parent on the long since demolished rue Isabelle. The sisters went to Belgium to complete their education, in the hope that they might one day open their own school back in Yorkshire. Parent’s husband, Constantin Heger, who taught at the nearby Athénée Royal, also taught French literature at the pensionnat. By all accounts a gifted and dedicated teacher, he gave Emily and Charlotte homework – devoirs – based on texts by the authors they had studied in class. They were to compose essays in French that echoed these models, and could choose their own subject matter: ‘I cannot tell on what subject your heart and mind have been excited. I must leave that to you,’ Heger told them, as he told Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte’s first biographer, after Charlotte’s death. Heger encouraged the Brontës’ writing, but demanded that they pay attention to their craft. ‘Poet or not … study form,’ he once admonished Charlotte. He often returned their essays drastically revised – sadly, there are no comments on this copy of ‘L’Ingratitude’.