The Yorkshire Post reports on Saturday's ceremony at Anne Brontë's grave.
Charlotte made the burial arrangements from Haworth and while she attended the service, it is thought she must have failed to check the headstone’s inscription, resulting in her sister’s age appearing as 28.
BRONTË fans from across the country gathered at Anne Brontë’s grave at the weekend to dedicate a new memorial slab which corrects a 164-year-old mistake in the original headstone. [...]
Charlotte made the burial arrangements from Haworth and while she attended the service, it is thought she must have failed to check the headstone’s inscription, resulting in her sister’s age appearing as 28.The Brontë Society had grown increasingly concerned about both the error and weather damage which has left the headstone’s writing almost unreadable. On Saturday, a service of dedication was held at the graveside to mark the official unveiling of the plaque, laid without publicity in 2011.
Brontë Society chairman Sally McDonald said: “This was a place Anne very much loved. I do not ever think of this as a tourist destination. I think of it as a place of pilgrimage and it is right Anne’s resting place is properly identified for those who arrive here.” bronteblog/a-place-of-pilgrimage
Charlotte made the burial arrangements from Haworth and while she attended the service, it is thought she must have failed to check the headstone’s inscription, resulting in her sister’s age appearing as 28
BeantwoordenVerwijderenOne wonders where they got thier information, or was it just made up? It's hilarious they are writing about the mistakes of others because there's plenty in that paragraph .
Of course Charlotte did not make the burial arrangements from Haworth, but at Scarborough when Anne died. She did not wait there until the stone was 1st cut and who can blame her.
And far from failing to check, when Charlotte returned to Anne's grave in 1852 to indeed check the stone ,she found 5 mistakes.
She then left instructions for corrections...so after that they still got Anne's age wrong.
One can hardly fault Charlotte.
I'm certainly glad there is a new memorial slab.
I'm reading "Agnes Grey " and it's wonderful. Anne is such a bonus for a Bronte fan. She's called the "normal" Bronte... lol which might explain how she could keep a job in the outside world vastly longer than any other Bronte. But while Anne was thoroughly a Bronte, one gains a view to the Bronte mind though Anne that is unique.
As Bronte scholar Margaret Lane wrote:
'Every reader who has felt the power of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights comes, sooner or later, to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Anne Bronte, with all the Bronte taste for violence and drama, and with her experience of the same rude scenes and savage Yorkshire tales that had fed the imaginations of her sisters, did not shrink.
She used the material at hand, and shaped it with singular honesty and seriousness One discovers from Wildfell Hall that Anne is a true Bronte.'
Indeed.
Charlotte checked Anne's stone. But I wish she stood up for Anne's work rather than agree with its critics. Charlotte never would have agreed with the critics of "Wuthering Heights" as she did with those of "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall". Sad