William Wilberforce and Patrick Bronte.

On 12-07-1827, William Wilberforce arrived at Keighley for a four-day visit to Theodor Dury. Given his friendship with Dury and his own connections with Wilberforce, it seems more than likely that Patrick Bronte was one of those fortunate  enough to be invited to Keighley vicarage to meet the great man.

William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) was a British politician,philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native ofKingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian, resulting in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform. In 1787, he came into contact withThomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave-trade activists, including Granville Sharp,Hannah More and Charles Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition, and he soon became one of the leading English abolitionists. He headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. wiki/William_Wilberforce

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It was this connection that led Bronte to St John's College (renowned for its evangelical tradition) where he was personally sponsored by William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton.

discover/ancestors_bronte

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Patrick Bronte, Emily’s father, was a friend of William Wilberforce’s and joined the campaign to end slavery. wuthering heights

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Wilberforce’s concerns consolidated into 10 categories.

Human rights

1. Literacy programs
2. Universal education
3. Arts
4. Encouraging the talents and gifts of others
5. Science
6. Health care
7. Prisoner Rehabilitation and Re-entry
8. Broadening Philanthropy
9. Faith Leadership the better hour

The Three Brontes by May Sinclair

 

bronte/stories/society/gazette

Unknown woman, formerly known as Charlotte Brontë (Mrs A.B. Nicholls)
by Unknown artist
watercolour, 1850
urchased, 1906

Then there is that other "sensational discovery" of the Heger portrait, that little drawing (now in the National Portrait Gallery) of Charlotte Bronte in curls, wearing a green gown, and reading Shirley. It is signed Paul Heger, 1850, the year of Shirley's publication, and the year in which Charlotte sat to Richmond for her portrait. There are two inscriptions on the back: "The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's death"; and below: "This drawing is by P. Heger, done from life in 1850." The handwriting gives no clue. Mr. Malham-Dembleby attaches immense importance to this green gown, which he "identifies" with the pink one worn by Lucy in Villette. He says that Lady Ritchie told him that Charlotte wore a green gown at the dinner-party Thackeray gave for her in June, 1850; and when the green gown turns out after all to be a white one with a green pattern on it, it is all one to Mr. Malham-Dembleby. So much for the green gown. Still, gown or no gown, the portrait  may  be genuine. Mr. Malham-Dembleby says that it is drawn on the same paper as that used in Mr. George Smith's house, where Charlotte was staying in June 1850, and he argues that Charlotte and M. Heger met in London that year, and that he then drew this portrait of her from the life. True, the portrait is a very creditable performance for an amateur; true, M. Heger's children maintained that their father did not draw, and there is no earthly evidence that he did; true, we have nothing but one person's report of another person's (a collector's) statement that he had obtained the portrait from the Heger family, a statement at variance with the evidence of the Heger family itself. But granted that the children of M. Heger were mistaken as to their father's gift, and that he did draw this portrait of Charlotte Bronte from Charlotte herself in London in 1850, I cannot see that it matters a straw or helps us to the assumption of the great tragic passion which is the main support of Mr. Malham-Dembleby's amazing fabrication. The-Three-Brontes

BOOKS REVIEWED
 

Since Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte and Maeterlinck's eloquent tribute to Emily in Wisdom and Destiny, which last Miss Sinclair writes she has " unblushingly ' lifted,'" no one has more clearly and adequately dealt with the great trio of sisters. Not once does Miss Sinclair's right instinct fail her in this beautiful appreciation. She understands and sets forth Charlotte's method and inspiration as could one only who shared the same inspiration and practised the same art; she feels Emily's power as one who has felt in the same kind; and it is important to add that she lays her finger on the very heart of Emily's mysticism as could This latter fact recalls to memory certain acknowledgments made to Miss Sinclair in Evelyn IJnderhill's fine volume on Mysticism. As to Charlotte, Miss Sinclair's great service is the clearing away of rubbish and gossip, the tracing to its true source, her finer inspiration and her splendid vindication of Charlotte's women, her prophetic vision of the submerging of the futile and vain mid-Victorian type and the survival of a braver and nobler woman. ' In setting aside the idle gossip of a love-affair which wakened Charlotte Bronte's powers, Miss Sinclair says the great thing to realize is that " it is always the inner life that counts, and with, the Brontes it 

supremely counted."  It counted and accounted indeed for almost everything. Because Charlotte Bronte wrote a novel about a little French professor in love, the critics must necessarily try to build up a gossiping romance about her relations to M. Heger. " It may be," says Miss Sinclair with fine irony,  " t h a t I have no more authority for my belief that Emily Bronte was in love with the Absolute than the other people have for theirs that Charlotte was in love with M. Heger." Miss Sinclair quotes from a letter of Charlotte's written in Brussels at the time when her passion was supposed to be at high-water mark. She writes, " I lead an easeful, stagnant, silent life."  " M ay I point out," asks the unerring psychologist in Miss Sinclair, " that you may be ' silent' in the first workings of a tragic and illegitimate passion, you are not ' stagnant' and certainly not ' easeful.' " Not M. Heger in the French Pensionnai and a futile passion taught Charlotte Bronte to turn her genius free upon the reproduction of life. Charlotte could be inspired, but she was not easily taught. Her schoolmistresses, indeed, taught her to " indite," " peruse," and " retain " where she had much better have "written," "read," and "kept," and doubtless M. Heger corrected her French syntax, but her genius was awakened by reading her untrammeled sister's Wuthering Heights. This discovery is Miss Sinclair's most valuable and entirely original contribution to Bronte biography. Miss Sinclair, who knows so well that the great event is in the inner life, knows also what a high adventure is the reading of a great and vitalizing book. After the " strange grayness " of the Professor, the 

" stillness and grayness of imperfect hearing, imperfect seeing," Charlotte Bronte suddenly awakens and produces a book pulsing with vitality. Through whatever flaws of method and of style, the life, sincerity, reality, of the book breaks. The critics, amazed, search the biographical data for an event to account for the sudden blossoming. Miss Sinclair shows conclusively that the event was spiritual.  It was not a French professor who awakened the genius's soul; it was a book.  It was Emily, who knew none of the " cold deliberations born of fear " ; whose own book was the fruit of a divine freedom, a divine unconsciousness," who lifted her sister to the plane where she too could freely use her powers. " The experience may seem insufficient," says Miss Sinclair, and adds, authoritatively, " it is of such experiences that a great writer's life is largely made." For this insight, this fact so self-evident, once it is pointed out, all readers of Charlotte Bronte owe Miss Sinclair a debt of deep gratitude, as well as for her discriminating, fine-seeing analysis of Charlotte's development of style, method, and spirit. The eulogy of Emily Bronte surpasses any that has yet been accorded that great, unacclaimed writer. If Swinburne has praised her exuberantly and Maeterlinck exquisitely, May Sinclair has sung her truly, proving her praise as she sings. She has paused at the very passages, the lines, the attitudes which give the " unapproachable, the unique and baffling quality of her temperament and of her genius." " Born with a profound, incurable indifference to the material event," chary of alien and external contacts, self-sufficing and heroic, there came to her " nothing of all that passes in love, sorrow, passion, or anguish; still did she possess all that abides when emotion has faded away." Emily Bronte was of those souls born complete who do not realize their being 

through contact with external reality. She was. She lived and thought and produced splendidly aloof from the stream of circumstance. If we would, as critic, desire to find flaws in a book so remarkable as this, we should say that Miss Sinclair was perhaps somewhat too scornful of Anne's gentle and submissive spirit. And it might be pointed out that the method of repetition used especially in the first half of the book, the continual refrain of " their destiny," " their happiness," belongs rather to the method of poetry than of prose. Still no critic need fear to say of Miss Sinclair's book that it is one of the most vital and splendid achievements of literary appreciation and analysis of our times. NorthAmericanRev-

Sotheby's auction

Results of the Sotheby's auction: 

English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustrations 
London, 10 July '12
2:30PM BST

LOT 60
Brontë, Charlotte

Derwent Water
95 by 154mm., fine pencil drawing, signed and dated "C. Brontë October 15th [18]32", together with title in author's hand, mounted, framed and glazed, some spotting.

Estimate 6,000-8,000 GBP

SOLD: 13,000 GBP

LOT 61
Brontë, Charlotte
Portrait of a Young Woman
160 by 120mm., pencil drawing, inscribed by Patrick Brontë "By my daughter, Charlotte P. Bronte, Min[iste]r.", framed and glazed, slight spotting.

Estimate 10,000-15,000 GBP
SOLD: 26,000 GBP

LOT 62

Brontë, Charlotte

Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell. Smith, Elder and Co., 1847

8vo (198 x 123mm), 3 volumes, first edition of the author's first published novel, half-titles, publisher's 32pp. catalogue dated June 1847 at the end of volume 1, without the extra advertisement leaf present in some copies (no priority), original dark greyish reddish brown vertically-ribbed cloth, covers decorated in blind with triple line border enclosing decorative trellis-like border, pale yellow endpapers, preserved in green cloth chemise and quarter green morocco slipcase, a few minor paper flaws, a few leaves slightly stained, other occasional spotting, some early repairs to joints, hinges slightly fragile or starting, repair to endpaper of volume 1, some edge-wear to covers.

Estimate 60,000-80,000 GBP

SOLD: 55,000 GBP 

Bronte Blog/Sothebys-auction-results

I was thin when I went, but I was meagre indeed when I returned

On 10-07-1848 Charlotte and Anne visited the Royal Academy exhibition in the National Gallery. They dined again  at the Smiths' but spent the evening with Mr. Williams and his family.

On Tuesday morning 11-07-1848 we left London, laden with books Mr. Smith had given us, and got safely home. A more jaded wretch than I looked, it would be difficult to conceive. I was thin when I went, but I was meagre indeed when I returned, my face looking grey and very old, with strange deep lines ploughed in it—my eyes staring unnaturally. I was weak and yet restless. 

Charlotte Bronte 

Their wish had been to hear Dr. Croly on the Sunday morning 09-07-1848, and Mr. Williams escorted them to St. Stephen's, Walbrook;

Jost Amon/north-london

 But they were disappointed, as Dr. Croly did not preach. Mr. Williams also took them (as Miss Bronte has mentioned) to drink tea at his house. 

kensingtonmansion.org/restoration/1890s.

On the way thither, they had to pass through Kensington Gardens, and Miss Bronte was much struck with the beauty of the scene, the fresh verdure of the turf, and the soft rich masses of foliage." From remarks on the different character of the landscape in the South to what it was in the North, she was led to speak of the softness and varied intonation of the voices of those with whom she conversed in London, which seem to have made a strong impression on both sisters. All this time those who came in contact with the "Miss Browns" (another pseudonym, also beginning with B), seem only to have regarded them as shy and reserved little country-women, with not much to say. Mr. Williams tells me that on the night when he accompanied the party to the Opera, as Charlotte ascended the flight of stairs leading from the grand entrance up to the lobby of the first tier of boxes, she was so much struck with the architectural effect of the splendid decorations of that vestibule and saloon, that involuntarily she slightly pressed his arm, and whispered, "You know I am not accustomed to this sort of thing." Indeed, it must have formed a vivid contrast to what they were doing and seeing an hour or two earlier the night before, when they were trudging along, with beating hearts and high-strung courage, on the road between Haworth and Keighley, hardly thinking of the thunder-storm that beat about their heads, for the thoughts which filled them of how they would go straight away to London, and prove that they were really two people, and not one imposter. It was no wonder that they returned to Haworth utterly fagged and worn out, after the fatigue and excitement of this visit..

gaskell/elizabeth/bronte

On this day in 1848 Charlotte and Anne Bronte visited London to meet their publisher and revealed their true identity. The Bronte sisters had been using the pseudonyms Acton Currer and Bell.

With rapid decision, they resolved that Charlotte and Anne should start, for London, that very day, in order to prove their separate identity to Messrs. Smith and Elder, and demand from the credulous publisher his reasons for a "belief" so directly at variance with an assurance which had several times been given to him. Having arrived at this determination, they made their preparations. with resolute promptness. 
There were many household duties to be performed that day; but they were all got through. The two sisters each packed up a change of dress in a small box, which they sent down to Keighley by an opportune cart; and after early tea they set off to walk thither--no doubt in some excitement; for, independently of the cause of their going to London, it was Anne's first visit there. 

A great thunderstorm overtook them on their way that summer evening to the station; but they had notime to seek shelter. They only just caught the train at Keighley, arrived at Leeds, and were whirled up by the night train to London. About eight o'clock on the Saturday morning, they arrived at the Chapter Coffee-house, Paternoster Row--a strange place, but they did not well know where else to go. They refreshed themselves by washing, and had some breakfast. Then they sat still for a few minutes, to consider what next should be done.

When they had been discussing their project in the quiet of Haworth Parsonage the day before, and planning the mode of setting about the business on which they were going to London, they had resolved to take a cab, if they should find it desirable, from their inn to Cornhill; but that, amidst the bustle and "queer state of inward excitement" in which they found themselves, as they sat and considered their position on the Saturday morning, they quite forgot even the possibility of hiring a conveyance; and when they set forth, they became so dismayed by the crowded streets, and the impeded crossings, that they stood still repeatedly, in complete despair of making progress, and were nearly an hour in walking the half-mile they had to go. Neither Mr. Smith nor Mr. Williams knew that they were coming; they were entirely unknown to the publishers of "Jane Eyre", who were not, in fact, aware whether the "Bells" were men or women, but had always written to them as to men.

On reaching Mr. Smith's, Charlotte put his own letter into his hands; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. "Where did you get this?" said he,--as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell, for whom curiosity had been hunting so
eagerly in vain. An explanation ensued, and Mr. Smith at once began to form plans for their amusement and pleasure during their stay in London. He urged them to meet a few literary friends at his house; and this was a strong temptation to Charlotte, as amongst them were one or two of the writers whom she particularly wished to see; but her resolution to remain unknown induced her firmly to put it aside.

The sisters were equally persevering in declining Mr. Smith's invitations to stay at his house. They refused to leave their quarters, saying they were not prepared for a long stay.  When they returned back to their inn, poor Charlotte paid for the excitement of the interview, which had wound up the agitation and hurry of the last twenty-four hours, by a racking headache and harassing sickness. Towards evening, as she rather expected some of the ladies of Mr. Smith's family to call, she prepared herself for the chance, by taking a strong dose of sal-volatile, which roused her a little, but still, as she says, she was "in grievous bodily case," when their visitors were announced, in full evening costume.

The sisters had not understood that it had been settled that they were to go to the Opera, and therefore were not ready. Moreover, they had no fine elegant dresses either with them, or in the world. But Miss Bronte resolved to raise no objections in the acceptance of kindness. So, in spite of headache andweariness, they made haste to dress themselves in their plain high-made country garments.

The-Life-of-Charlotte-Bronte-Volume-2

Bronte sisters/chapter-coffee-house

Bronte sisters/ Smith, Elder & Co. -