the Brontë Sisters: 13-12-2015

zaterdag 19 december 2015

Historic photographes Haworth.

facebook/Jack Hargreaves.

Bottom of Main Street Haworth c1890- 1900

Beautiful view on the Church. Not many trees in that time.

c1910-20 pre Park

donderdag 17 december 2015

The Bronte Society was formed 122 years ago today!

Opening of the Haworth Parsonage Museum

In 1893 The Brontë Society was founded to organise a permanent home for these treasures, and to keep them together as a collection.

Even before Charlotte died in 1855 enthusiastic visitors were making their way to Haworth to spot the famous author around the village. Mr Brontë's Sunday afternoon congregations were sometimes swollen with sightseers, eager for a glimpse of his daughter, or, failing that, happy just hear her father preach.

Towards the end of the century, when cheaper editions of the novels appeared, and after Mrs Gaskell's 'Life of Charlotte Brontë' made popular the story of the three doomed and tragic sisters, interest in the Brontës boomed. Anyone who had known them was besieged with requests for anecdotes and souvenirs. Mr Brontë had died in 1861, at which point the Parsonage contents had been sold off and moved out. Many items had gone with Charlotte's husband Arthur Bell Nicholls to his new home in Ireland; others had been given to friends and servants as keepsakes. The sisters' manuscripts, letters and personal belongings began to appear in salerooms, and many fetched high prices on the American market.

In 1893 The Brontë Society was founded to organise a permanent home for these treasures, and to keep them together as a collection. The first Museum opened in 1895 above the Yorkshire Penny Bank on Haworth Main Street. The Society began to purchase Brontë treasures at auction, and many others were loaned or donated. By the following summer 10,000 visitors had passed through. In 1928 the Church put up for sale Haworth Parsonage at a price of £3000, and it was bought by Sir James Roberts, a Haworth-born wool merchant and lifetime Brontë Society member, who handed the Society the deeds. It was, of course, the perfect home for their collection.

The wealthy Philadelphia publisher Henry Houston Bonnell bequeathed to the Society his extensive collection of Brontë manuscripts, letters, first editions and personal effects, which arrived at the Museum upon his sudden death in 1926. From then on the Museum could boast the world's largest collection of Brontëana, and many subsequent bequests allowed them to bid successfully for Brontë items coming up for sale at auction. Today the Brontë Society is one of the world's oldest and most respected literary societies, with a worldwide membership of around 1500. bronte/bronte-society/history

From; bronte/bronte-society We are one of the oldest literary societies in the world, founded in 1893 and today we have a thriving worldwide membership. The Brontë Society is a charity and depends entirely on admissions and the generosity of members for its income. The Society is responsible for running the famous Brontë Parsonage Museum in the picturesque village of Haworth in West Yorkshire, once the home of the Brontë family and also for promoting the Brontës' literary legacy within contemporary society.

The Brontë collections at the Brontë Parsonage Museum are the largest and most important in the world and continue to inspire scholars, writers and artists. Our Contemporary Arts Programme includes literary events, exhibitions, artistic responses, a competition and festivals, and our lifelong learning programme enables us to reach students of all ages across the country.

Becoming a member of the Brontë Society supports our work especially as we approach the celebrations for the bicentenaries of Charlotte Brontë in 2016, Emily Brontë in 2018 and Anne Brontë in 2020. By joining today you will assist us maintain the legacy of this remarkable family whose novels remain as popular today as when they were first published in the first half of the nineteenth century. You can join online or when visiting the Brontë Parsonage Museum. members.bronte./Join-Online

woensdag 16 december 2015

Campaigners in fight to save Bronte landmark from threat of cash cuts

EVOCATIVE: The ruins of Wycoller Hall in the village of Wycoller, said to be the setting of Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre

AN EAST Lancashire landmark which inspired Charlotte Bronte is under threat – and a petition to support it has already been signed by more than 700 people. Wycoller Hall, on the outskirts of Colne, was the model for ‘Ferndean Manor’ in Bronte’s Jane Eyre – and the historic venue is the starting point for the Bronte Way which leads to the Parsonage Museum in nearby Haworth.

But the countryside service offered by Lancashire County Council is under threat, as part of the £262m cuts required over the next five years, which has sparked a wave of protest.

Also under threat are the Queen Street Mill in Burnley and Helmshore Textile Mill near Haslingden.
The Friends of Wycoller is behind the petition on the change.org website, citing the hall’s links with one of Bronte’s most memorable characters, Mr Rochester.
The petition reads: “‘Ferndean Manor’ is the centrepiece of the gorgeously romantic Wycoller hamlet, clustered around a stream at the heart of Wycoller Country Park. Its moody scenery and residents inspired the Bronte sisters.

Read more: lancashiretelegraph/Campaigners_in_fight_to_save_Bronte_landmark_from_threat_of_cash_cuts

How the moors changed my mind about the Brontës

Read everything of this article on: theguardian/moors-brontes-charlotte-emily-anne

I’ve just got back from a week’s filming in Haworth and its environs – its bleak, freezing, inhospitable, endlessly compelling environs – for a documentary about … yes, you guessed it: the Brontës. There were three of us presenting, each going in to bat for a different member of the family.
The novelist Helen Oyeyemi was Emily’s champion, the BBC stalwart Martha Kearney was Charlotte’s, and I was there to represent Anne. She’s the only Brontë sister I can really cope with. The others, with their Wuthering Heights and their Jane Eyres, are just … too much. T’Sturm und t’Drang are not my way, in life or in reading. Give me the quiet, forensic scrutiny of Agnes Grey, the eponymous heroine of Anne’s first book, based on her miserable experiences as a governess for two rich families full of semi-feral children. Or the slow, pitiless anatomising of the effects of alcoholism on a Victorian family, so accurate that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall could have been written yesterday.

maandag 14 december 2015

CHARLOTTE Brontë married her sweetheart

CHARLOTTE Brontë married her sweetheart – watched by a huge crowd of well-wishers in Haworth churchyard. The BBC today recreated the 1800s wedding of Charlotte, then the only surviving Brontë sister, to her clergyman father’s assistant Arthur Bell Nicholls. A crew filmed the ceremony inside Haworth Parish Church with a costumed wedding party made up of professional actors and Brontë Parsonage Museum staff. Brontë enthusiasts and local people, invited along by the museum, lined the churchyard to cheer the happy couple and throw confetti.

The event was filmed by BBC Bristol as part of a series due to be shown in 2016 to mark the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth. Living Like A Brontë will be part of a year-long BBC season focusing on classic literature in a bid to get more people in the UK reading. During today’s ceremony Rebecca Yorke, the parsonage museum’s marketing officer, played bridesmaid Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontë’s best friend. She said: “The ceremony was really moving. The two people playing Charlotte and Arthur were really well cast and it felt very real, being in the Brontë Chapel. “When we were in the church we could hear the rain hammering down, so it was amazing that so many people were outside to greet us.

“I’d had lots of inquiries so I knew a lot of people were interested in going. We had responses from people all over the world.” Ann Dinsdale, a Brontë historian and collections manager at the parsonage museum, said she was surprised how touching the event was. She said: “We spent a week with a film crew around Haworth to got used to them, but it was quite moving to see the actual ceremony. Mrs Dinsdale said the replica dress was created from descriptions of the actual dress and the design of the real wedding bonnet and veil from the museum’s collection. She added: “The real dress didn’t survive. Arthur Bell Nicholls kept it for many years but left instructions that it should be burned after his death. Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls after publication of her novel Jane Eyre and the death of sisters Anne and Emily. Filming is being carried out with support from staff at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Living Like a Brontë will be screened next spring as two 60-minute episodes.

Journalist and broadcaster, Martha Kearney; columnist and author, Lucy Mangan; and novelist, Helen Oyeyemi, are travelling to the parsonage, home of the Brontë sisters, to discover the stories behind their classic novels Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. A BBC spokesman said: “With help from a range of experts, each presenter will explore one of the Brontës in detail.

“By re-living the sisters’ daily routines, visiting the key places in their world and immersing themselves in their letters and diaries, and through the sisters’ interactions with each other, they’ll discover what it was that served as their sources of inspiration.” The BBC Get Reading season will also include Brontës At The BBC, showcasing excerpts from the many TV adaptations of Brontë works, and To Walk Invisible, a new drama about the Brontë sisters written by Last Tango In Halifax and Happy Valley creator, Sally Wainwright. thetelegraphandargus

The wedding took place at eight o’clock in the morning, but one important man was not to be there. At the last moment Patrick said that he felt too ill to attend, although we’ll never know if this was true or if he was still harbouring some resentment at the marriage itself. Margaret Wooler stepped into the breach and it was she who gave Charlotte away, with Reverend Morgan, Patrick’s friend who had baptised Charlotte, conducting the ceremony.Also present at the church were Joseph Grant, a friend of Nicholls, and his wife, Sutcliffe Sowden, the vicar of Hebden Bridge, the sexton John Brown and his daughter Martha, Joseph Redman, the parish clerk, and John Robinson, a local boy and former pupil of Charlotte’s. We can also assume that the by now aged and infirm Tabby Aykroyd would also have been there if she was well enough on the day. It was a low key affair, as Charlotte wanted, and they held a reception afterwards at the Sunday school building that lay between the church and the Parsonage. annebronte/the-wedding-of-charlotte-bronte

zondag 13 december 2015

the torchlight procession in Haworth

.facebook/the torchlight procession in Haworth

Charlotte Bronte

Presently the door opened, and in came a superannuated mastiff, followed by an old gentleman very like Miss Bronte, who shook hands with us, and then went to call his daughter. A long interval, during which we coaxed the old dog, and looked at a picture of Miss Bronte, by Richmond, the solitary ornament of the room, looking strangely out of place on the bare walls, and at the books on the little shelves, most of them evidently the gift of the authors since Miss Bronte's celebrity. Presently she came in, and welcomed us very kindly, and took me upstairs to take off my bonnet, and herself brought me water and towels. The uncarpeted stone stairs and floors, the old drawers propped on wood, were all scrupulously clean and neat. When we went into the parlour again, we began talking very comfortably, when the door opened and Mr. Bronte looked in; seeing his daughter there, I suppose he thought it was all right, and he retreated to his study on the opposite side of the passage; presently emerging again to bring W---- a country newspaper. This was his last appearance till we went. Miss Bronte spoke with the greatest warmth of Miss Martineau, and of the good she had gained from her. Well! we talked about various things; the character of the people, - about her solitude, etc., till she left the room to help about dinner, I suppose, for she did not return for an age. The old dog had vanished; a fat curly-haired dog honoured us with his company for some time, but finally manifested a wish to get out, so we were left alone. At last she returned, followed by the maid and dinner, which made us all more comfortable; and we had some very pleasant conversation, in the midst of which time passed quicker than we supposed, for at last W---- found that it was half-past three, and we had fourteen or fifteen miles before us. So we hurried off, having obtained from her a promise to pay us a visit in the spring... ------------------- "She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen, she wanted much to draw; and she copied nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings out of annuals, ('stippling,' don't the artists call it?) every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to draw stories, and not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing; but in so small a hand, that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this time.

I asked her whether she had ever taken opium, as the description given of its effects in Villette was so exactly like what I had experienced, - vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc. She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling to sleep, - wondering what it was like, or how it would be, - till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word for word, as it had happened. I cannot account for this psychologically; I only am sure that it was so, because she said it. ----------------------She thought much of her duty, and had loftier and clearer notions of it than most people, and held fast to them with more success. It was done, it seems to me, with much more difficulty than people have of stronger nerves, and better fortunes. All her life was but labour and pain; and she never threw down the burden for the sake of present pleasure. I don't know what use you can make of all I have said. I have written it with the strong desire to obtain appreciation for her. Yet, what does it matter? She herself appealed to the world's judgement for her use of some of the faculties she had, - not the best, - but still the only ones she could turn to strangers' benefit. They heartily, greedily enjoyed the fruits of her labours, and then found out she was much to be blamed for possessing such faculties. Why ask for a judgement on her from such a world?" elizabeth gaskell/charlotte bronte

Poem: No coward soul is mine

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the worlds storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heavens glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast.
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life -- that in me has rest,
As I -- Undying Life -- have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move mens hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast Rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou -- Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

-- Emily Bronte

Family tree

The Bronte Family

Grandparents - paternal
Hugh Brunty was born 1755 and died circa 1808. He married Eleanor McClory, known as Alice in 1776.

Grandparents - maternal
Thomas Branwell (born 1746 died 5th April 1808) was married in 1768 to Anne Carne (baptised 27th April 1744 and died 19th December 1809).

Parents
Father was Patrick Bronte, the eldest of 10 children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor (Alice) McClory. He was born 17th March 1777 and died on 7th June 1861. Mother was Maria Branwell, who was born on 15th April 1783 and died on 15th September 1821.

Maria had a sister, Elizabeth who was known as Aunt Branwell. She was born in 1776 and died on 29th October 1842.

Patrick Bronte married Maria Branwell on 29th December 1812.

The Bronte Children
Patrick and Maria Bronte had six children.
The first child was Maria, who was born in 1814 and died on 6th June 1825.
The second daughter, Elizabeth was born on 8th February 1815 and died shortly after Maria on 15th June 1825. Charlotte was the third daughter, born on 21st April 1816.

Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls (born 1818) on 29th June 1854. Charlotte died on 31st March 1855. Arthur lived until 2nd December 1906.

The first and only son born to Patrick and Maria was Patrick Branwell, who was born on 26th June 1817 and died on 24th September 1848.

Emily Jane, the fourth daughter was born on 30th July 1818 and died on 19th December 1848.

The sixth and last child was Anne, born on 17th January 1820 who died on 28th May 1849.

the Brontë Sisters