On this day in 1842 Elizabeth Branwell died. Branwell wrote" I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood."

Elizabeth Branwell, Aunt to the Bronte children who brought them up, was buried at Haworth. She had died aged 66 on 29th October.

Aunt Branwell had always enjoyed robust good health, but on the 25th October 1842, she suffered a constriction of the bowel, and died four days later. Charlotte and Emily were still in Brussels, and returned home too late for the funeral. But Aunt Branwell's two favourites' the 'baby' Anne, and the only boy, Branwell Brontë , were both there, and it is Branwell who has left us the warmest testimonial to his aunt. Writing to his friend Grundy on the day his aunt died

Branwell concludes " I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood." Elizabeth Branwell left most of her money to Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. They used some of it to finance their Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), the beginning of their careers as published writers. www.bronte.org.uk


When Maria Brontë was terminally ill with cancer in 1821; her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moved into the Parsonage to help run the household. She subsequently spent the rest of her life there raising the Brontë children - to whom she was known as 'Aunt Branwell'. She provided much of the children's education, including needlework and embroidery for the girls. This rarely seen portrait was sketched in 1799, when Elizabeth was 23 years old - and many years before Maria had even met Patrick Brontë. Ellen Nussey declared that Anne was her aunt's favourite. Elizabeth Branwell died at the age of 66, on 29 October 1842, after a short, but agonising illness (believed to be a blockage of the bowel). The whole Brontë family were devastated; in particular Branwell, who, later that day, wrote to his friend Grundy:

'I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood.'mick-armitage

Edith Wharton's copy of ‘Jane Eyre' returns to The Mount in Lenox

Thanks to the generosity of a resident of Lincolnshire, England, and a friend with access to the internet, Edith Wharton's copy of "Jane Eyre" has come back safely to rest among the books in Wharton's library at The Mount.

Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece -- her story of suspense and madness and wild nights on the moors -- traveled on a still-unknown route from a trove of works Wharton had collected in The Mount, the home she built in 1902, to the far side of the Atlantic. Wharton lived in Lenox for 10 years before she left for France, where she died in 1937.   

Read more of this interesting story: 

Berkshire eagle

Miss Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785-1861), one of the first female book collectors in Europe, scholar, acquaintance of Charlotte Bronte (and possibly the inspiration for Charlotte Bronte's pen name).

The name Bell may have been chosen by the arrival that summer of their father's new curate, Arthur Bell Nichols. While a governess at the Sidgwicks, Charlotte had certainly heard much of their neighbour, Miss Frances Mary Richardson Currer, of Eshton Hall, Skipton, whose property touched Stonegappe, and whose library was famous throughout the north. She was one of the founder patrons of the Clergy Daughters' School, so that her name must have been doubly familiar to Charlotte. The poetess Eliza Acton (1777-1859) [theDictionary of National Biography gives Acton's birth year as 1799], who had considerable success in her day and was patronized [246/247] by royalty, may have suggested Anne's pseudonym to her. There appears to be no clue to the origin of Emily's choice of name, Ellis. 
It is not impossible that Charlotte herself had access to Miss Currer's books at some point. An avid reader from childhood, the latter had inherited a fine library, kept adding to it, and ensured that her books were expertly catalogued. (See Dictionary of National Biography, XIII, 340). The second catalogue, compiled by C.J. Stewart, was privately printed (100 copies) in 1833 and is a treasure-trove for anyone interested in the reading habits of the educated pre- and early-Victorian upper class. While Miss Currer's collection featured many respectable works of natural science, she was sufficiently interested in the pseudo-scientific fashions of her day to acquire a copy of the Physiognomical System of Drs Gall and Spurzheim. The doctors were pioneers of phrenology, a school of thought whose influence on Charlotte [247/248] and Anne is patent in their novels.³ Another of the interests that Miss Currer shared with the Brontës was mental improvement, and she owned educational works by like-minded women such as Mrs Hester Chapone and Maria Edgeworth.

The fact that F.M.R. Currer supported the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge suggests that she was one of those 'wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county' (Jane Eyre's description of the subscribers to a new and improved Lowood Institute (opening of Chapter 10). Charlotte is not likely to have blamed a founder patron for subsequent misfortunes at the institution.) whose munificence ensured the survival of charitable institutions. Her character (she was 'extremely accomplished and amiable', according to the DNB biographer) seems to have been as irreproachable as her scholarship; in 1836, the Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin placed her 'at THE HEAD of all female Collectors in Europe', calling her 'a sort of modern CHRISTINA of the North' (p. 949). Read more:Victorianweb

Mechanics institut at Keighley

The movement to found mechanics’ institutes was an early nineteenth-century phenomenon that quite soon became predominantly middle-class. Keighley’s was founded in 1825, and Patrick joined in 1833. The library was strong on theology and science, but the young Brontës could also find there history, biography, and poetry, which would be more to their taste, as well as fiction, including the novels of Walter Scott and the eighteenth-century novelists for whom Charlotte conceived such an aversion. Lectures were also part of the education program of the institutes: an early speaker at Keighley was Edward Baines Jr, whose 1830 lecture on “The Moral Effects of Unrestricted Commerce” was listened to by 700 people “with almost breathless silence” ( Leeds Intelligencer , 4 Mar 1830). Later lectures included William Weightman defending the study of the classics and Patrick Brontë on “The Influence of Circumstances,” which must have given him plenty of scope.
Keighley/mechanics
 

James Bancroft, was born on 27th November 1835, and baptised by the famous Patrick Bronte at Haworth Parish Church

From Bancrofts from Yorkshire

James Bancroft, was born on 27^th November 1835, and baptised by the famous Patrick Bronte at Haworth Parish Church on 2^nd June 1836. He was always known as “Jim o’ Abes”, which was the local way of saying James, son of Abraham. It was quite a common practice in those times to give people a nickname such as this, particularly where there were several people with the same name in a village....and there were several 'James Bancrofts', both related and unrelated, in the area around this time.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

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Branwell Bronte, Freemasonry and the Knights Templar

From  Ferndean Manor

Branwell Bronte, Freemasonry and the Knights Templar 

The origins and evolution of Freemasonry are a matter of some debate and conjecture which has been reinforced by the esoteric nature of the society and it's apparent secrecy. One particular Masonic oath reads "To all of which I do most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear, without the least equivocation, mental reservation, or self evasion of mind in me whatever; binding myself under no less penalty than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the roots, and my body buried in the rough sands of the sea at low-water mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours" This oath is sworn by the initiate whilst kneeling, blindfolded at the alter, with his hands placed on a sacred text. 
Times have changed however and many of the roots of freemasonry have now become public, it's aims, beliefs and symbols. The following explores some of the connections between the Haworth branch of freemasonry, the Knights Templar and the Brontë family. An intriguing and sometimes surprising story that will expanded on in the future including the connection with the Cavendish family and their title of Duke of Devonshire and alchemy!
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