the Brontë Sisters: Charlotte Brontë at the Sir John Soane Museum.

zondag 13 maart 2016

Charlotte Brontë at the Sir John Soane Museum.

Sir John Soane's Museum

The Sir John Soane's Museum was designed by the architect himself to house his personal collection of paintings and architectural salvage. On the first Tuesday of each month the museum is open until 9 pm and some parts are lit by candlelight. The Picture Room is now as it was in Soane’s day and features paintings by Canaletto and others. Restoration work, part of a three year ‘Opening up the Soane’ project is underway – Number 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields designed by Soane. This is a neoclassical townhouse built and decorated by John and Eliza Soane for their own use in 1792.
Sir John Soane’s Museum
13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields
WC2A 3BP

Charlotte Cory Hi everyone, Charlotte Cory here. If you enjoy the drama series this week and are in london, i have some of the actors from the cast coming to the Sir John Soane's Museum on Friday night for a candlelit Jane Eyre themed evening around this magical house. And you can see the very dress that Charlotte Bronte wore to the Thackeray dinner (episode 3) and her little account book (from episode 1) and meet some celebrated Bronte experts and enjoy a nice glass of wine or an 1859 Colonel Fox's gin. I think there are a few tickets left. but you can visit the exhibition at any other time for free and soak in the atmosphere of this perfectly preserved architectural gem. With many thanks to the BPM for their kind loan of Bronte related items. Best wishes, Charlotte C (life member since 1967!!) facebook/Bronte-Parsonage-Museum

From the website of the soane Museum:

Toast the great English novelist Charlotte Brontë, at this special candlelit evening with drinks and live readings. To celebrate the opening of our exhibition Charlotte Brontë at the Soane, join us for this after-hours party. Experience 'pop up' live readings of Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre (1847) in the Museum’s atmospheric interiors, enjoy complimentary gin cocktails by Colonel Fox and wine by Joseph Mellot, and get a chance to see the exhibition with the curator Charlotte Cory.
And with an opportunity to see all the other treasures in the Soane Museum, as well as getting 10% off everything in the shop, it's the perfect way to salute a writer who changed the landscape of British culture forever.

Charlotte Brontë: A Celebration 15 Mar 2016 to 07 May 2016

We are delighted to announce an exhibition celebrating 200 years since the birth of Charlotte Brontë will open at the Museum on 15 March 2016.
Charlotte Brontë at the Soane is an imaginative and fascinating free display which is inspired by the five trips Brontë made to London in the 1840s and ‘50s to see her publisher after the meteoric success of Jane Eyre. Curated by artist Charlotte Cory, the show brings together an incredible selection of objects: from the personal effects Brontë brought with her to London, to Cory’s own artworks inspired by these visits to the capital.

Visitors will be able to see the guidebook Brontë used to explore the city - featuring Sir John Soane’s Museum - and a dress that she wore to a dinner with her publisher; the first time the dress has returned to London since she wore it. Also, on display for the first time ever are newly discovered sketches of the Brontë sisters, drawn by their sister Anne. Although Charlotte Brontë’s busy itinerary meant that she didn’t make it to the Museum, we are one of the few places in her guidebook which remain the same today as on her visits in the mid-nineteenth century. This show is therefore a unique opportunity to bring Brontë to the Museum for the first time, and to reflect on the Soane’s position on London’s tourist trail – frozen in time – for the past 180 years.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, we will host a special evening event on Friday 18 March, where Charlotte Brontë and her novel Jane Eyre will be celebrated with ‘pop-up’ readings, candlelight and cocktails. Tickets are £30. Buy here. On April 21st 2016, the day of the bicentenary, the Soane will lead a unique public participation live reading event across the capital. Inspired by the famous plinths in Trafalgar Square, a ‘mobile’ Fifth Plinth will host readings of Brontë’s novels at various locations including the Soane, the National Portrait Gallery and the British Library. More details, including how you can get involved, will be announced shortly.

Sir John Soane's Museum was formerly the home of the neo-classical architect Sir John Soane. It holds many drawings and models of Soane's projects and the collections of paintings, drawings and antiquities that he assembled. The museum is in the Holborn area of central London. wiki/Sir_John_Soane Museum

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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.