Roe Head, Mirfield. This now is part of Hollybank Special School

 

I was searching for Roe Head on Google Earth

and found out that it still is a school

with the name Hollybank Special School 

 

 

Roe Head, Mirfield.

 
The blue plaque reads: Roe Head - Built on land bought from the Armytage Kamily of Kirklees Hall in the mid-17C and rebuilt in 1740. The building became a school in 1830, attended by the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, 1831-32, Emily, 1836, Anne 1836-7. Charlotte returned in July 1835 as a teacher. Headmistress of the school was Margaret Wooler (Mrs Prior in Shirley) and Charlotte's Friends at school were Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor (Caroline Helstone and Rose Yorke in Shirley).

This now is part of Hollybank Special School. 

           Read more: The+Bronte+sisters+at+Roe+Head

Virtual+Tour
 

 

geograph.uk

Google Earth

 

 

 

Crofton Hall at Wakefield

  

The Wakefield Express informs of the unveiling of a new blue plaque by the Wakefield Civic Society with Brontë connections:

Brontë fans could soon be making a detour from Haworth to visit Crofton after a blue plaque was unveiled this week in honour of a lady who links the village to the famous family.
The plaque was unveiled at the Young People’s Centre on High Street, which sits on the site where part of Crofton Hall School once stood – the school where Elizabeth and Maria Brontë were once pupils.

Richmal Mangnall was the school’s headteacher in 1802, and author of one of the country’s best-selling books of the time, called Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People. Charlotte Brontë’s copy is on display at the Brontë parsonage in Haworth.

Bonnell43
Title	HISTORICAL/ AND/ MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS, / FOR THE USE OF YOUNG PEOPLE
Description	hardback; brown leather covers and spine; gilt tooling to spine; 442 pages; incomplete; fair; 180mm l x 105mm w x 32mm d
Production place	London
Production dating	1813 - 1813
Material	leather, paper, gilt
Dimensions	whole 180 mm whole 105 mm whole 32 mm bronte.adlibsoft.

 Miss Mangnall was born in Manchester in 1769, but came to Crofton in 1780 to attend Crofton Hall School for young ladies. She stayed on as a teacher when she finished her education, before becoming its owner and headteacher.

Her book was used by teachers, tutors, governesses and parents to educate and inspire children.

Maria and Elizabeth attended the school in 1823.  bronteblog

In summer 1824, Patrick sent Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily to Crofton Hall in Crofton, West Yorkshire  wiki/Anne_Bronte

In 1823 Elizabeth and her older sister Maria were sent to the fashionable girls' boarding school Elizabeth Firth had attended, Crofton Hall at Wakefield. Fees were high, and it is believed Elizabeth Firth may have helped pay them. Mr Brontë had three other daughters, though, and could not afford to educate them all at Crofton Hall on his small stipend. bronte.org.uk

Richmal Mangnall (1769–1820) was an English schoolmistress and writer of a famous schoolbook.

Richmal Mangnall by John Downman watercolour, 1814 collections//Richmal-Mangnall

Richmal was born on 7 March 1769, probably in London. She was one of seven children of James Mangnall of Hollinhurst, Lancashire, and London, and Richmal, daughter of John Kay of Manchester to survive infancy. One brother, James, became a London solicitor, another, Kay, died in the East Indies in 1801. Her parents died about 1781, when she was adopted by an uncle, also John Kay, a Manchester solicitor.^[1] 

Richmal Mangnall began to attend a successful school of about 70 pupils, at Crofton Hall, a Georgian mansion near Wakefield, Yorkshire, built in about 1750.^[2] There it was found possible for a teacher or senior pupil to teach big classes using a system of question and answer. She herself graduated from being a pupil to being a teacher there. The first edition of her Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People (1798) was printed privately and anonymously for use in the school. It was then taken up by the London publishing firm Longman, whose still anonymous 1800 edition was dedicated to John Kay.^[3]
The book became generally known as Mangnall's Questions and was "the stand-by of generations of governesses and other teachers." It had appeared in 84 editions by 1857. Its "level, plain, humane" judgements have been associated with the Age of Enlightenment, and became more open to criticism in the Victorian age, although the catechism type of textbook remained dominant. The British Constitution met with her approval, as did her country's abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, but Wellington was rebuked for vanity and egotism, and Rabelais for lacking "that delicacy without which genius may sparkle for a moment, but can never shine with pure, undiminished lustre."^[4]
Miss Mangnall took over at Crofton about 1808 and supported two unmarried sisters from her highly successful school and publishing earnings. She continued to head it until her death there on 1 May 1820 "after a severe illness, which was borne with the utmost Christian resignation."^[5] She was buried in Crofton churchyard.^[6]
Details of life at Crofton House school appear in an unpublished childhood diary of Elizabeth Firth (born 1797 at Thornton, near Bradford). It was her recommendation that persuaded Patrick Brontë to send his daughters Elizabeth, Mary, Charlotte, and Anne there for a short while in 1823.^[7] A later account of English social history recalls it as "one of the best known girls' schools" and states, "Here the girls learnt some literature, which consisted of Scott's longer poems and The Vicar of Wakefield, read aloud by Miss Mangnall herself, geography, spelling, the catechism, and a little pencil drawing. For bad spelling the young ladies were invariably sent to bed."^[8] 

Cowan Bridge

 

From Google Earth

 

I was searching on Google Earth to see Cowan Bridge, Streetview is amazing. Going back in the time, searching for the school the Bronte Sisters visited, and see.......it is still all there ( not all, part of it is demolished).

 

 

 

 

VISIT to Cowan Bridge, where part of the Lowood School of Jane Eyre is still in existence, reveals a beautiful little hamlet near Kirkby Lonsdale. A drive from the hotel in Kirkby Lonsdale, where, in the old coaching days the conveyance in which the Bronte sisters travelled made its last halt, takes one over the Devil's Bridge, a narrow stone structure, which spans the river Lune, and after a quarter of an hour's drive Cowan Bridge is reached.

Through Cowan Bridge the Leeds and Kendal coach used to pass, and in the days when the Brontes were there it was busier than now, for not only did the stage coaches pass to and fro, but the pack-horses were constantly on the road, taking the wool from the outlying districts to Leeds and Bradford.

Leck
 

I always thought the period of the Cowan Bridge School was full of sad memories for Charlotte Bronte. So, I was surprised to read about these happy memories.

The little stream, with the huge stones in its bed, flowing past the old school, Charlotte Bronte described as her favourite spot when at Cowan Bridge. Along its banks she used to wander, frequently taking off her shoes and stockings and wading in its waters. Here she was free from intrusion, and could enjoy her broken day dreams. In later years she told Mary Taylor how she enjoyed this beautiful spot, sitting on a stone in the middle of the stream. Mary told her she should have gone fishing, but she replied that she had no inclination

Just where the Leck-fells swoop into the plain; and by the course of the beck alder-trees and willows and hazel bushes grow. The current of the stream is interrupted by broken pieces of grey rock; and the waters flow over a bed of large round white pebbles, which a flood heaves up and moves on either side out of its impetuous way till in some parts they almost form a wall."

Elizabeth Gaskell; "The Life of Charlotte Bronte" (1857)

A large sycamore tree overhangs the end cottage, and on the opposite side of the road is a small house, now known as Lowood Cottage. It was formerly the Rev. W. Cams- Wilson's stable and coach-house ; he was the founder of the Clergy Daughters' School, and known in Jane Eyre as the black marble clergyman Mr. Brocklehurst. In addition to being the manager of the school, he was vicar of two parishes, Tunstall and Whittington, which were a few miles apart.

Formerly the old part of the school consisted of one house, at one time the residence of an old Yorkshire family of the name of Picard. This building was purchased in 1824 by Mr. Carus- Wilson, who adapted it as a residence for the teachers of the school. At right angles to this he added a long building for a school-room and dormitories for the pupils.

It is a pity that Mrs. Gaskell and other writers have com mented only on Charlotte Bronte's description of Lowood in winter, for during her stay from August, 1824, to June, 1825, she had the benefit both of the autumn and the spring. The garden was always a source of attraction to her

" The garden was a wide enclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect ; a covered verandah ran down one side, and a broad walk bordered a middle space divided into scores of little beds : these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate, and each bed had an owner."

 In these days, when it is considered quite a modern move ment to interest children in rural and suburban schools in gardening, it is well to remember that nearly ninety years ago the pupils at this school for clergymen's daughters were encouraged to keep a small plot of garden in good order, so that they might be interested in such work, and have their powers of observation improved.
infootstepsofbrontes
 

Anne Bronte at Roe head.

At fifteen, it was Anne's first time away from home. She was quiet and hard working, and determined to stay and get the education that would allow her to support herself.^[33][34] Anne stayed for two years, winning a good-conduct medal in December 1836, and returning home only during Christmas and the summer holidays. Anne and Charlotte do not appear to have been close during their time at Roe Head (Charlotte's letters almost never mention Anne) but Charlotte was concerned about the health of her sister. At some point before December 1837, Anne became seriously ill with gastritis and underwent a religious crisis.^[35]

Towards the end of 1837, and while still at Roe Head School, the 17 years old Anne suffered a very serious illness. Charlotte described her symptoms as 'pain' and 'difficulty of breathing', the latter was assumed to be a symptom of asthma, from which she had suffered since early childhood. Concurrent with her illness, she also underwent a religious crisis: 56  she was experiencing deep depression and fear on account of the hard-line preachings of the local churches: a circle of clergy that tended to follow the scriptures to the letter, and made great emphasis on the Calvinist doctrines of hell-fire and eternal damnation, with the suggestion that only the 'elect few' would earn themselves a place in heaven. This was far removed from the much milder convictions of her Wesleyan aunt, and those preached by her father; whose emphasis was on the 'goodness and infinite mercy of God', and the belief that salvation was attainable by anyone who sought it. With the acute illness she was experiencing, Anne must have felt that death was near, and desperately needed reassurance on these religious matters. In the event, she did not turn for help to the local Methodist churches, of whose clergy were known to her and her father, but to a stranger.

James La Trobe
 

The stranger in question was one reverend James La Trobe - the minister of the Moravian chapel at Wellhouse in Mirfield. The Moravian sect preached doctrines more akin to Patrick Brontë's, than those being advocated at Roe Head. They firmly believed in Universal Salvation, where, 'after a period of purifying purgatory, all men, however wicked, could attain heaven'. Many years later, in 1897, La Trobe sent a letter to his friend and Brontë biographer, William Scrutton of Thornton, and in it recited the occasions he had attended Anne at Roe Head so many years earlier. The extract relating to Anne reads: 'She was suffering from a severe attack of gastric fever which brought her very low, and her voice was only a whisper; her life hung on a slender thread. She soon got over the shyness natural on seeing a perfect stranger. The words of love, from Jesus, opened her ear to my words, and she was very grateful for my visits. I found her well acquainted with the main truths of the Bible respecting our salvation, but seeing them more through the law than the gospel, more as a requirement from God than His gift in His Son, but her heart opened to the sweet views of salvation, pardon, and peace in the blood of Christ . . . and, had she died then, I should have counted her His redeemed and ransomed child. It was not till I read Charlotte Brontë's 'Life'that I recognised my interesting patient at Roe Head, where a Christian influence pervaded the establishment and its decided discipline.' 57

In December Patrick withdrew Anne from the school, and back at home she made a gradual recovery. James La Trobe went on to attain 'bishop' status: he died in 1897 at the age of 95.
-------------------------

A Word To The Calvinists

You may rejoice to think yourselves secure, You may be grateful for the gift divine, That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine. But is it sweet to look around and view Thousands excluded from that happiness, Which they deserve at least as much as you, Their faults not greater nor their virtues less? And wherefore should you love your God the more Because to you alone his smiles are given, Because He chose to pass the many o'er And only bring the favoured few to Heaven? And wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove Because for all the Saviour did not die? Is yours the God of justice and of love And are your bosoms warm with charity? Say does your heart expand to all mankind And would you ever to your neighbour do, -- The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind -­ As you would have your neighbour do to you? And, when you, looking on your fellow men Behold them doomed to endless misery, How can you talk of joy and rapture then? May God withhold such cruel joy from me! That none deserve eternal bliss I know: Unmerited the grace in mercy given, But none shall sink to everlasting woe That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven. And, O! there lives within my heart A hope long nursed by me, (And should its cheering ray depart How dark my soul would be) That as in Adam all have died In Christ shall all men live And ever round his throne abide Eternal praise to give; That even the wicked shall at last Be fitted for the skies And when their dreadful doom is past To life and light arise. I ask not how remote the day Nor what the sinner's woe Before their dross is purged away, Enough for me to know That when the cup of wrath is drained, The metal purified, They'll cling to what they once disdained, And live by Him that died. Anne Bronte

Heald's House, Dewsbury Moor.

Heald's House

The house was taken on in 1837 by Miss Margaret Wooler, to be a new home for the girls' school she had previously run at Roe Head.

The new school was in a house that has interesting associations. Heald's House, Dewsbury Moor, had been used by the followers of George Fox, the Quaker, as a meeting place in an earlier period, and later it was the birthplace of the Rev. W.M. Heald, the clergyman who is supposed to have possessed many of the characteristics of the Rev. Cyril Hall [of Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley].
Thomas James Wise and John Alexander Symington (eds), The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Shakespeare Head Press, 1932) vol I, p. 159
Charlotte Brontë had been a star pupil at Roe Head in 1831-32, and a teacher with Miss Wooler since 1835. Among the pupils were her two younger sisters, Emily and Anne.
According to Charlotte Brontë's biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell, the change was not for the better:
"About this time Miss Wooler removed her school from the fine, open, breezy situation of Roe Head, to Dewsbury Moor, only two or three miles distant. Her new residence was a much lower site, and the air much less pure and exhilarating to one bred at the wild hill-village of Haworth. Charlotte felt the change extremely, and regretted it not merely on her own account, but for the sake of her sister Anne. ...[Charlotte] bent her whole energy towards the fulfilment of the duties in hand; but her occupation was not sufficient food for her great forces of intellect, and they cried out perpetually, "Give, give," while the flat and comparatively stagnant air of Dewsbury Moor told upon her health and spirits more and more. ...
She had another weight on her mind this Christmas [1837]. I have said that Dewsbury Moor was low and damp, and that the air did not agree with her, though she herself was hardly aware how much her life there was affecting her health. But Anne had begun to suffer just before the holidays, and Charlotte watched over her younger sisters with the jealous vigilance of some wild creature, that changes her very nature if danger threatens her young. Anne had a slight cough, a pain at her side, a difficulty of breathing. Miss Wooler considered it as little more than a common cold; but Charlotte felt every indication of incipient consumption as a stab at her heart, remembering Maria and Elizabeth, whose places once knew them, and should know them no more.
Stung by anxiety for this little sister, she upbraided Miss Wooler for her fancied indifference to Anne's state of health. Miss Wooler felt these reproaches keenly, and wrote to Mr. Bronte about them. He immediately sent for his children, who left Dewsbury Moor the next day. Meanwhile, Charlotte had resolved that Anne should never return as a pupil, nor she herself as a governess. But, just before she left, Miss Wooler sought for the opportunity of an explanation of each other's words, and the issue proved that "the falling out of faithful friends, renewing is of love." And so ended the first, last; and only difference Charlotte ever had with "good and kind Miss Wooler".

Read more:healdsbronte_connections

Charlotte Bronte as pupil at Roe Head

In January 1831, Charlotte was sent to school again. This time she went as a pupil to the Miss Woolers, who lived at Roe Head.  Although Roe Head and Haworth are not twenty miles apart, the aspect of the country is as totally dissimilar as if they enjoyed a different climate. The soft curving and heaving landscape around the former gives a stranger the idea of cheerful airiness on the heights, and of sunny warmth in the broad green valleys below.


Mary Taylor tells of the first appearance of Charlotte at Roe Head, on January 19th, 1831.
"I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She was coming to school at Miss Wooler's. When she appeared in the schoolroom, her dress was changed, but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched it, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing."
This was the first impression she made upon one of those whose dear and valued friend she was to become in after-life. Ellen Nussey  recalls her first sight of Charlotte, on the day she came, standing by the school-room window, looking out on the snowy landscape, and crying, while all the rest were at play. Charlotte was younger than she, and her tender heart was touched by the apparently desolate condition in which she found the oddly-dressed, odd-looking little girl that winter morning, as "sick for home she stood in tears," in a new strange place, among new strange people. Any over-demonstrative kindness would have scared the wild little maiden from Haworth; but Ellen managed to win confidence, and was allowed to give sympathy.

To quote again from "Mary's" letter:--
"We thought her very ignorant, for she had never learnt grammar at all, and very little geography."

This account of her partial ignorance is confirmed by her other school fellows. But Miss Wooler was a lady of remarkable intelligence and of delicate tender sympathy. She gave a proof of this in her first treatment of Charlotte. The little girl was well-read, but not well-grounded. Miss Wooler took her aside and told her she was afraid that she must place her in the second class for some time, till she could overtake the girls of her own age in their knowledge of grammar, etc.; but poor Charlotte received this announcement by so sad a fit of crying, that Miss Wooler's kind heart was softened, and she wisely perceived that, with such a girl, it would be better to place her in the first class, and allow her to make up by private study in those branches where she was deficient. egaskell-cbronte

Diary of Charlotte Bronte, teacher in Roe Head School page 1 and 2

 Roe Head School

                                              

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View from Roe Head School

diary-tales-charlotte-bronte:

Favorite is the diary of Charlotte Bronte at 19. 

 

Charlotte is teaching in a bleak Yorkshire school called Roe Head.  She’s 20 miles from home and family and most unhappy with her pupils and her situation. Each night she retreats to her room for the day’s solace  – her diary, which she writes in minuscule, barely readable handwriting.

Bronte begins like  a typical diarist with her day in school: Well, here I am at Roe-Head. It is seven o’clock at night, the young ladies are all at their lessons, the school-room is quiet, the fire is low, a stormy day is at this moment passing off in a murmuring and bleak night.

A few more sentences roll along in this vein and then suddenly she shift gears, and we see more than a glimmer of the romantic novelist who will write Jane Eyre in 12 years.. As curator Christine Nelson tells us, Bronte, her sister Emily, and brother Branwell from childhood on had concocted elaborate fantasy stories about mythical realms based on her brother’s toy soldiers. Here in her diary Charlotte steps from the drudgery of school into another world, triggered by her experience of a storm.
There are several diary entries that Charlotte Brontë made during her three years teaching at Roe Head School. She folded the single sheet of paper to form four pages, each a bit smaller than a 5 x 7 inch photograph, and filled the space with nearly two thousand words. She packed explosive imagination into this miniature canvas, depicting herself as the breathless observer of the debauch of Quashia Quamina, one of the characters she and Branwell had created: "I watched the fluttering of his white shirt ruffles starting through the more than half-unbuttoned waistcoat." She emerged from the erotic reverie of the diary-story only when Miss Wooler—one of the schoolmistresses—appeared at the door with a plate of butter in her hand. "'A very stormy night my dear!' said she. 'It is ma'am,' said I."

Note: Brontë's entry has been lightly punctuated for readability.

Well, here I am at Roe-Head. It is seven o'clock at night, the young ladies are all at their lessons, the school-room is quiet, the fire is low, a stormy day is at this moment passing off in a murmuring and bleak night. I now assume my own thoughts; my mind relaxes from the stretch on which it has been for the last twelve hours & falls back onto the rest which no-body in this house knows of but myself. I now, after a day's weary wandering, return to the ark which for me floats alone on the face of this world's desolate & boundless deluge. It is strange. I cannot get used to the ongoings that surround me. I fulfil my duties strictly & well, yet, so to speak, if the illustration be not profane, as God was not in the wind, nor the fire, nor the earth-quake, so neither is my heart in the task, the theme or the exercise. It is the still small voice alone that comes to me at eventide, that which like a breeze with a voice in it [comes] over the deeply blue hills & out of the now leafless forests & from the cities on distant river banks of a far & bright continent. It is that which wakes my spirit & engrosses all my living feelings, all my energies which are not merely mechanical, & like Haworth & home, wakes sensations which lie dormant elsewhere. Last night I did indeed lean upon the thunder-wakening wings of such a stormy blast as I have seldom heard blow, & it whirled me away like heath in the wilderness for five seconds of ecstasy, and as I sat by myself in the dining-room while all the rest were at tea the trance seemed to descend on a sudden, & verily this foot trod the war-shaken shores of the Calabar & these eyes saw the defiled & violated Adrianopolis shedding its lights on the river from lattices whence the invader looked out & was not darkened. I went through a trodden garden whose groves were crushed down. I ascended a great terrace, the marble surface of which shone wet with rain where it was not darkened by the mounds of dead leaves which were now showered on & now swept off by the vast & broken boughs which swung in the wind above them. Up I went to the wall of the palace to the line of latticed arches which shimmered in light, passing along quick as thought, I glanced at what the internal glare revealed through the crystal. There was a room lined with mirrors & with lamps on tripods, & very darkened, & splendid couches & carpets & large half lucid vases white as snow, thickly embossed with whiter mouldings, & one large picture in a frame of massive beauty representing a young man whose gorgeous & shining locks seemed as if they

[p. 2] would wave on the breath & whose eyes were half hid by the hand carved in ivory that shaded them & supported the awful looking coron[al?] head—a solitary picture, too great to admit of a companion—a likeness to be remembered full of luxuriant beauty, not displayed, for it seemed as if the form had been copied so often in all imposing attitudes, that at length the painter, satiated with its luxuriant perfection, had resolved to conceal half & make the imperial Giant bend & hide under his cloudlike tresses, the radiance he was grown tired of gazing on. Often had I seen this room before and felt, as I looked at it, the simple and exceeding magnificence of its single picture, its five colossal cups of sculptured marble, its soft carpets of most deep and brilliant hues, & its mirrors, broad, lofty, & liquidly clear. I had seen it in the stillness of evening when the lamps so quietly & steadily burnt in the tranquil air, & when their rays fell upon but one living figure, a young lady who generally at that time appeared sitting on a low sofa, a book in her hand, her head bent over it as she read, her light brown hair dropping in loose & unwaving curls, her dress falling to the floor as she sat in sweeping folds of silk. All stirless about her except her heart, softly beating under her satin bodice & all silent except her regular and very gentle respiration. The haughty sadness of grandeur beamed out of her intent fixed hazel eye, & though so young, I always felt as if I dared not have spoken to her for my life, how lovely were the lines of her small & rosy mouth, but how very proud her white brow, spacious & wreathed with ringlets, & her neck, which, though so slender, had the superb curve of a queen's about the snowy throat. I knew why she chose to be alone at that hour, & why she kept that shadow in the golden frame to gaze on her, & why she turned sometimes to her mirrors & looked to see if her loveliness & her adornments were quite perfect. However this night she was not visible—no—but neither was her bower void. The red ray of the fire flashed upon a table covered with wine flasks, some drained and some brimming with the crimson juice. The cushions of a voluptuous ottoman which had often supported her slight, fine form were crushed by a dark bulk flung upon them in drunken prostration. Aye, where she had lain imperially robed and decked with pearls, every waft of her garments as she moved diffusing perfume, her beauty slumbering & still glowing as dreams of him for whom she kept herself in such hallowed & shrine-like separation wandered over her soul, on her own silken couch, a swarth & sinewy moor intoxicated to ferocious insensibility had stretched his athletic limbs, weary with wassail and stupefied with drunken sleep. I knew it to be Quashia himself, and well could I guess why he had chosen the queen of Angria's sanctuary for the scene of his solitary revelling. While he was full before my eyes, lying in his black dress on the disordered couch, his sable hair

the Morgan Library
the Morgan Diaries


Roe Head Diaries

Series of six fragments written while Charlotte was a teacher at Roe Head, 1836–7. They shift obsessively between her life as a teacher and the glorious intensity of the Angrian visions which she can indulge in only in occasional free time or while the girls are working by themselves. They are sometimes hysterical and self-pitying, and are full of contempt for the “dolts” she teaches – these are the passages frequently quoted by biographers. The six fragments are usually known by their first words. 1. “Well here I am at Roe Head” starts in the schoolroom but shifts to a magnificent palace where Zamorna’s wife awaits him while he is away at the war. The picture is superseded by another, as the palace apparently falls to Zamorna’s enemies, and the ottoman the Duchess had sat lonely on is now occupied by “a swart and sinewy Moor” (Quashia, in transition from a near-comic villain figure to one of Byronic sexual appeal with violent overtones). As the fragment climaxes with “his broad chest heaving wildly as the breath issued in snorts from his distended nostrils” Miss Wooler interrupts the reverie: “‘A very stormy night, my dear’ said she.”blackwellreference

Charlotte Bronte, diary Roe Head School

Charlotte Bronte, engraved portrait by James Charles Armytage, after a painting by George Richmond. 

Fed up with teaching young girls their lessons, future novelist Charlotte Brontë began a diary entry that grew into a fictional fantasy.

About the Diary

Charlotte Brontë's first job did not suit her fiery sensibility. At nineteen, with little heart for marriage and the need to earn a living, she began teaching at Roe Head School in the north of England, about twenty miles from her home in Haworth. She found the atmosphere stultifying and the pupils idiotic. Forced to maintain an outward semblance of professional grace, she concealed her considerable emotional energy and rage. One evening in February 1836, "after a day's weary wandering," she began a diary entry on a loose sheet of paper: "Well here I am at Roe-Head," she wrote, "it is seven o'clock at night, the young ladies are all at their lessons, the school-room is quiet, the fire is low, a stormy day is at this moment passing off in a murmuring and bleak night."

During this rare moment alone, Brontë confessed her feelings of alienation. "It is strange," she wrote, "I cannot get used to the ongoings that surround me. I fulfil my duties strictly & well," but "as God was not in the wind, nor the fire, nor the earth-quake, so neither is my heart in the task, the theme or the exercises." Over the course of her teenage years, Brontë had found a creative way to get through such uncomfortable moments. She had learned to listen to what she called the "still small voice alone that comes to me at eventide"—an imaginative voice that granted her escape and release. "It is that which wakes my spirit & engrosses all my living feelings," she wrote in this diary entry, "all my energies which are not merely mechanical, &, like Haworth & home, wakes sensations which lie dormant elsewhere."

Brontë recalled how the previous night's "stormy blast . . . whirled me away like heath in the wilderness for five seconds of ecstasy." While the others were at tea, she said, she approached an exotic palace in the kingdom of Angria, peered through the windows at a lushly appointed room, and observed a drunken man shamelessly stretched out on the queen's voluptuous ottoman. But this, of course, was pure invention. Having begun writing a straightforward diary entry—a real-time description of her life at Roe Head—Brontë had stepped seamlessly into fiction. She allowed her high-flown storytelling to provide an antidote to the dreary everyday, her diary serving as a gateway from the real world into the fantastical.

Charlotte's and Branwell's invented Angria, and it was to this kingdom (and this script) that she returned that evening in 1836 when took a much-needed break from her schoolroom duties.

Go here to read the complete entry and see Charlotte's handwritten page.
two nerdy history girls

Maria Bronte

When Maria was six years old, she was characterised as "grave, thoughtful, and quiet, to a degree far beyond her years".

Soon after their mother's death in 1821, Maria and her sisters grew up largely with one another, staying away from society. Maria read the newspaper and revealed her findings to her sisters,

Maria was said to have been a precocious child. According to her father, when he asked 10-year-old Maria "what...the best mode of spending time [was]", she answered, "By laying it out in preparation for a happy eternity.  He later said that he could speak with Maria on any popular topic of the day as fluently as with an adult, and regretfully recalled her "powerfully intellectual mind".

A printer from Thornton also remembered Maria correcting the proofs of one of Mr. Brontë's long poems.
According to Charlotte, she was rather serious and silent than otherwise, and Mrs. Gaskell described her as "delicate, unusually clever and thoughtful for her age, gentle, and untidy".

photos cowan bridge

On 1 July 1824, Maria, 10, and Elizabeth, joined the Cowan Bridge School with Charlotte and Emily following soon after in September. The food provided by the school was generally poorly cooked and unhealthy, and the cook was reported to be "careless, dirty, and wasteful". Both Maria and Elizabeth had just recovered from measles and whooping cough, and despite hunger, they often did not eat. The school register read: Maria Brontë, aged 10 ... reads tolerably. Writes pretty well. Ciphers a little. Works badly. Very little of geography or history. Has made some progress in reading French, but knows nothing of the language grammatically. Miss Andrews, a teacher there, admitted that Maria had a "fine imagination and extra-ordinary talents
In spring 1825, a typhoid epidemic swept through the school, causing the departure of almost a sixth of the students, between February and June 1825. By the winter of 1824, Maria's health was already deteriorating due to consumption. On 14 February 1825, Maria was withdrawn from the school., She lived at Haworth for three months before dying at the age of 11.

Patrick attributed Maria's death to a divine aspect: "She exhibited during her illness many symptoms of a heart under Divine influence. Died of decline".

According to Elizabeth Gaskell, Maria inspired the pious character Helen Burns in Jane Eyre, and a teacher on whom Miss Scatcherd was modeled subjected Charlotte's "gentle patient dying sister [Maria]" to "worrying and cruelty".

One of these fellow-pupils of Charlotte and Maria Bronte's, among other statements even worse, gives me the following:--The dormitory in which Maria slept was a long room, holding a row of narrow little beds on each side, occupied by the pupils; and at the end of this dormitory there was a small bed-chamber opening out of it, appropriated to the use of Miss Scatcherd. Maria's bed stood nearest to the door of this room. One morning, after she had become so seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to her side (the sore from which was not perfectly healed), when the getting-up bell was heard, poor Maria moaned out that she was so ill, so very ill, she wished she might stop in bed; and some of the girls urged her to do so, and said they would explain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent. But Miss Scatcherd was close at hand, and her anger would have to be faced before Miss Temple's kind thoughtfulness could interfere; so the sick child began to dress, shivering with cold, as, without leaving her bed, she slowly put on her black worsted stockings over her thin white legs (my informant spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flashed out undying indignation). Just then Miss Scatcherd issued from her room, and, without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and frightened girl, she took her by the arm, on the side to which the blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement whirled her out into the middle of the floor, abusing her all the time for dirty and untidy habits. There she left her. My informant says, Maria hardly spoke, except to beg some of the more indignant girls to be calm; but, in slow, trembling movements, with many a pause, she went down stairs at last--and was punished for being late.

A very young Elisabeth Taylor as Helen Burns

• Lowood School's headmaster and treasurer is Mr. Brocklehurst, a grim and pious man who runs the institution as cheaply as possible. When Jane first encounters him the fleeting impression she gets at first glance is that of "a black pillar!" (I, 4, p.31). Mr. Brocklehurst has an original in the Reverend William Carus-Wilson (1791-1859), the founder of The Clergy Daughters' School. Carus-Wilson was a Calvinist Evangelist, ordained in 1816. He was also the son of a prosperous landowner. Revelations concerning Carus-Wilson's running of the school caused much controversy in later years.
  The kindly superintendent Miss Temple who Jane develops a close friendship with has a real life counterpart in Ann Evans, who was the superintendent at Cowan Bridge school. Charlotte's favourable depiction of Miss Temple is considered a 'just tribute' to Ann Evans's character.
  
  Another Lowood staff member who was modeled on an actual person is Miss Scatcherd, the History and Grammar teacher who mercilessly bullies Jane's friend Helen Burns. Miss Scatcherd is apparently based on a Miss Andrews, who taught at Cowan Bridge school when the Bronte sisters attended, and Charlotte's portrayal of her is quite the opposite to that of Ann Evans. In fact, along with John Reed, Miss Scatcherd is arguably the most unpleasant character in the novel. In her Life of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell alludes to the harsh behaviour of Miss Andrews, cruelties echoed in the Lowood section of Jane Eyre, such as when Helen is birched by Miss Scatcherd for having dirty fingernails, despite being unable to wash them due to the water being frozen that morning. Jane-Eyre---Charlotte-Brontes-Inspirations-for-Lowood-School&id=5778074
•  Rebecca Fraser also quotes in her biography on Charlotte Brontë (Vintage, 2003, p. 41), that the original Miss Scatcherd was also the writer (by the name A.H.) of one of the letters that the supporters of Carus-Wilson published around 1857 to discredit the way Charlotte Brontë had portrayed Cowan Bridge as Lowood School in Jane Eyre.
• More info: Brett Harrison, 'The real "Miss Temple'' ' BST 85 (1975)
• blackwell reference
• Susan (Susanna) Harben, born 16 June 1785. Christened 27 June 1785 at St Thomas in the Cliffs, Lewes. Died February 1848, "dear old aunt Sue" who did not marry and became matron of the Clergy Daughter's School at Kirkby, Lonsdale. This was the school Charlotte Bronte was sent to and, according to "Notes on the families of Chamberlain and Harben", Matron Harben was apparently the model for the Matron in "Jane Eyre". The picture to the right of Susan Harben is from "Notes on the families of Chamberlain and Harben".
  http://www.austenfamily.org/harben_main.html

• CB remembered Miss [Ann] Evans with gratitude and regard and pictured her as "Miss Temple" in Jane Eyre. Like Miss Temple, Miss Evans left school to be married on 6 July 1826 at Tunstall Church (...) Miss Evans was succeeded as superintendent of the school by Miss -or Mrs.- Harben, a close friend of Carus Wilson. The courtesy title of "Mrs." was given her of the tragic circumstance of her bridegroom having died in church on her wedding day. Mrs. Harben remained at school until 1843.
• This was the charge, too, that lay at the heart of Elizabeth Gaskell's epistolary feud with Rev Carus Wilson 20 years later. In 1857, Gaskell's biography of her late friend Charlotte Brontë suggested that Lowood, the nightmare school described in the early chapters of Jane Eyre, was a direct transcription of Cowan Bridge, the establishment attended by the Brontë sisters in the 1820s. Gaskell had since visited the place and found it dirty, serving up sour milk in which dust, dirt and goodness knows what floated. It was this "want of cleanliness", implied Gaskell, which had been responsible for the deaths of the two eldest Brontë girls.
  With a howl of indignation, the family of the school's founder, Rev Wilson, conducted a vicious letter campaign against Mrs Gaskell in which she was accused of being a fantasist. Battle lines were drawn, and a teary Mrs Gaskell marshalled her troops, including Charlotte Brontë's clerical widower, into responding on her behalf.  -Guardian-UK-news-

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Maria made the best of it in silence. Like all the members of her family she was endowed with unlimited power of resignation, and never did a complaint escape her lips; but she had an incurable disease. To add to her sufferings she was a prey to the malevolence of one of the teachers, who suspected her wrongly of affecting a mournful air to gain the compassion of her comrades. Maria died ten months after her arrival at Cowan Bridge and Elizabeth a few weeks later. Both sisters had succumbed to tuberculosis.

Charlotte and Emily returned to Haworth towards the end of 1825.
They, were two timid and studious little girls, happy only at home. Charlotte was the gayer and played and talked willingly when she felt at ease. Emily, almost never spoke, but she had so attentive and serious an air that it was difficult to forget her presence. They found at home their brother Branwell, already admired for a very precocious artistic sense, and Anne, who, in her gentleness and her gravity, must have reminded them of the sister Maria whom they had lost.
charlotte-bronte
Years later Mary Taylor told:

Charlotte used to speak of her two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who died at Cowan Bridge. I used to believe them to have been wonders of talent and kindness. She told me, early one morning, that she had just been dreaming; she had been told that she was wanted in the drawing-room, and it was Maria and Elizabeth. I was eager for her to go on, and when she said there was no more, I said, 'but go on! Make it out! I know you can.' She said she would not; she wished she had not dreamed, for it did not go on nicely; they were changed; they had forgotten what they used to care for. They were very fashionably dressed, and began criticising the room, etc.