Wheelwright family

an English doctor, his wife and daughters, who made the acquaintance of Charlotte and Emily in Brussels in 1842. The reasons for their sojourn there are unclear, though perhaps the large family of daughters (five) and the cost of educating them is the answer. It was the girls’ presence among the small contingent of English pupils at the Pensionnat Heger that began the relationship. Their parents Thomas (1786–1861) and Elizabeth (d. 1882) were clearly regarded affectionately by Charlotte, but they were not individualized in her letters. They were subsumed into the generalized happy, energetic, slightly philistine air exuded by the younger members of the family. The three youngest girls, Frances (1831–1913), Sarah Ann (1834–1900), and Julia (1835–42) are remembered for having been taught piano by Emily Brontë in recreation time, so that she did not lose any of her lessons. These were sessions from which the young girls sometimes emerged in tears. Julia died in Brussels, and it may be that the “primitive and wholly inadequate” (Frances’s words) sanitation at the Pensionnat was to blame (CBL, v. 1, p. 301). Emily (1829–88), as well as being a strong Christian, was a fine pianist, but this was not due to Emily Brontë, for she never taught her.The pupil at the Pensionnat who was closest to Charlotte was naturally the eldest, Laetitia Elizabeth (1828–1911), who seems to have resumed contact ...

Interessante link

Ik vind zonet

een heel interessante link

naar informatie over the Brontes....

http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/search?query=bronte


http://web.search.cornell.edu/search?output=xml_no_dtd&client=default_frontend&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&q=bronte%20sisters

Brontës’ piano

For the first time in over 160 years the Brontë family’s cabinet piano is to be heard again at their former home in Haworth. This historic occasion will take place at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in June following months of complex conservation work.

It is not known for certain when the Brontës acquired their piano. Branwell Brontë developed a talent for both piano and church organ and it was possibly at his instigation that the instrument was acquired. Emily was described as playing ‘with precision and brilliancy’, and during her time as a student in Brussels, her ability warranted the services of the best available professor of music. Anne preferred to sing, though she was able to accompany herself on the piano. The family exception was Charlotte, whose poor eyesight proved an impediment to sight reading.
The piano has an interesting history: it was lent to Mr Grant, the curate of Oxenhope by Patrick Brontë after his children’s deaths, and then sold at an auction of Brontë items in 1861. It then passed through numerous hands before being put up for sale at Sothebys in 1916 as part of the collection of J.H. Dixon. Dixon’s wife was not satisfied with the price offered and withdrew the piano from the sale, presenting it instead to the Brontë Museum in memory of her husband.

The piano was valued by many of these former owners as a relic of the remarkable Brontë family. Over the years little interest has been taken in it as a musical instrument and it was no longer in playable condition. Recently the piano has undergone a lengthy and complex restoration process carried out by a specialist conservator and made possible by the generosity of an American Brontë Society member. Many of the internal workings were either damaged or missing and the restoration was further complicated by the piano’s rarity and the lack of similar instruments available for comparison.

The piano will be back on display at the museum from Thursday 3 June. It will be played on the evening of Friday 4 June 2010, at a special event for Brontë Society members. Music has been carefully selected from the archive at the museum and will be played by Maya Irgalina from the Royal Northern College of Music. Further events are now being planned to allow the public to hear the piano played on a regular basis.

Victoria Brookland:

Friday 21 May - Sunday 18 July

A series of new paintings by artist Victoria Brookland, inspired by the dresses in the Brontë Parsonage Museum collection.

Victoria Brookland has been painting and exhibiting for over twenty years and has spent the past few years exploring the lives and writing of ninetheenth century women. Her first series of Brontë-inspiured paintings, Secret Self, was exhibited at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in 2007. Her most recent exhibbition, Seeing in the Night Time, was at the Mercer art Gallery in Harrogate and featured a series of works exploring the lives of the Brontës and Emily Dickinson.

The exhibition is free with admission to the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Brontes' piano restored to former glory

Published Date: 22 May 2010
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Brontes39-piano-restored-to-former.6312008.jp

The former home of the Brontë family will be filled with the sound of music after more than 160 years.
The family's piano was last played in the parsonage, now the Brontë Museum, in the mid-1800s but was sold following the deaths of Charlotte, Anne, Emily and their brother Branwell.

But now the ivories of the upright piano will be tinkled at a recital next month, following its restoration financed by a Brontë Society member living in America.
The piano will be back on display at the museum, in Haworth, from Thursday, June 3, and played at the next exclusive meeting for Brontë Society members.
The Brontës were the world's most famous literary family. Their works include Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Wuthering Heights TV costumes visit Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth

Fans of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights might like to visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum in the coming months as it plays host to some of the costumes from the latest TV adaptation of the classic novel.

Outfits seen in ITV's bank holiday costume drama, including dresses worn by Charlotte Riley as Cathy and the dramatic long black coat of Heathcliff, played with suitably brooding menace by Tom Hardy, are being displayed within the period rooms of the Museum.

Emily Brontë's only novel, Wuthering Heights, tells the story of the passionate but thwarted love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw and, perhaps more than any novel of the Brontë sisters, draws upon the bleak backdrop of the Yorkshire Moors to create a desolate, Gothic atmosphere

The parlour

This is the room in Haworth Parsonage, variously known as the dining room, the drawing room or the parlour, in which the Brontë sisters used to write and discuss their work with each other. When the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte's friend and future biographer, first visited in September 1853, she was struck by its exquisite cleanliness and neatness. In contrast to the "bleak cold colours" of the Yorkshire moors outside, "the room looked the perfection of warmth, snugness and comfort, crimson predominating in the furniture".
Despite having published Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette pseudonymously, Charlotte had, by that time, become a - somewhat reluctant - literary celebrity. Gaskell noted the portrait of her over the fireplace, commissioned by her publisher from the fashionable artist George Richmond. The experience of sitting for it had been a trial for the self-conscious Charlotte, who had collapsed into mortified tears when asked by the artist to remove something odd from the top of her head (he thought it was possibly a bit off the inside of her hat, but it may have been, even more embarrassingly, an unsuccessful hairpiece). Richmond nevertheless captured the fire in Charlotte's eyes, even if he flattered and conventionalised the rest of her face, which Gaskell found plain, with missing teeth and irregular features.

Despite the welcoming warmth of the décor, the parlour retained an aura of melancholy. Charlotte's sisters Emily and Anne had died in 1848 and 1849 - Emily is said to have died on the sofa in this room - and the space seemed to resonate with a sense of loss. After Gaskell had retired for bed in the room directly above, she could hear Charlotte's footsteps in the parlour. The servant told her how the three sisters had been used to walking round the table as they talked late into the night: "Miss Emily walked as long as she could, and when she died Miss Anne and Miss Brontë took it up - and now my heart aches to hear Miss Brontë walking, walking on alone."

Girl Power: de Brontë zusjes als actiefiguren

Film

Actrice Mia Wasikowska, die momenteel te zien is in Alice in Wonderland, speelt in de nieuwe verfilming van Jane Eyre de titelrol, zo werd in november vorig jaar bekend. Times Online heeft nu de primeur met de eerste foto van Wasikowska als Jane Eyre. De film wordt geregisseerd door Cary Fukanaga, die duidelijk voor een wat duistere uitstraling gaat.

Op het moment zijn de opnames nog in volle gang, de film komt naar verwachting in 2011 in de bioscoop. De cast is indrukwekkend: naast rijzende ster Wasikowska zullen ook Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) als St. John Rivers, Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) als Mr. Rochester, Judi Dench als Mrs. Fairfax en Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Persasion) als Mrs. Reed meespelen. Imogen Poots (Miss Austen Regrets) speelt Blanche Ingram.

(Bron: Firstshowing.net)

Selected Letters Of Charlotte Bronte by Margaret Smith

These letters give an insight into the life of a writer whose novels continue to be bestsellers. They reveal much about Charlotte Bronte's personal life, her family relationships, and the society in which she lived. Many of her early letters are written with vigour, vivacity, and an engaging aptitude for self-mockery. In contrast, her letters to her 'master', the Belgian schoolteacher Constantin Heger, reveal her intense, obsessive longing for some response from him. Other letters are deeply moving, when Charlotte endures the agony of her brother's and sisters' untimely deaths. We learn also of the progress of her writing, including the astonishing success of Jane Eyre, and of her contacts with her publishers, including the young George Smith; and we recognize in her letters the life-experiences which are transmuted into the art of her novels. Contemporary society is brilliantly described in her letters from London, when she writes of her encounters with famous writers and with critics of her novels. We hear too of her visits to art galleries, operas, and the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace.Dramatic letters written in December 1852 convey the 'turbulence of feeling' in the Haworth curate Arthur Nicholls's proposal of marriage to her and in Mr Bronte's violent reaction to it; and we subsequently hear of her secret correspondence with her suitor, her father's eventual consent, and her tragically brief happy marriage, cut short by her death in March 1855.

 Bol Com € 42,99

Wedding of Charlotte Bronte. Mrs Gaskell: ""She looks like a snow-drop""

 

Ik heb het boek

Charlotte Bronte

van Rebecca Fraser

uit de bibliotheek gehaald

ik vond daar een paar foto's in

die ik niet eerder had gezien

zoals deze

""Charlotte was eenvoudig gekleed

in een witte mousselinen jurk

met fraai groen borduursel

een kanten mantel

en een wit kapje

afgezet met kant 

en een lichte band

bloemetjes en blaadjes""

Zo beschrijft Juliet Barker

in haar boek de Brontes

de trouwkleren van Charlotte

de foto toont aan hoe het eruit heeft gezien

In het boek van Juliette Barker

staat bij de noten

De trouwjurk van Charlotte werd bewaard door  mijnheer Nichols, die hem naliet aan zijn nicht, jufrouw Charlotte Bronte Nichols, met de instructie dat zij hem voor haar dood moest verbranden, zodat zij niet kon worden verkocht, maar Miss Nichols eigen nicht, Margaret Ross, zag de jurk en gaf er een beschrijving van, waardoor er een copie kon worden gemaakt, die in 1976 in het Parsonage Museum  werd tentoongesteld. De hoed en de mantel bevinden zich in het BPM.

Andere foto's uit dit boek

Sieraden en schoenen van Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Brontë's corset

Notes

 

(1) The cover picture is indeed Charlotte Brontë's corset, slightly retouched to make it seem less intimate somehow. The Brontë Society is quite reluctant to put such private items on display at the Parsonage. Anne Dinsdale, Collections' Manager at the Museum, recently told us the anecdote that this corset - or another belonging to Charlotte Brontë, if there are several of them - was displayed at an exhibition at the end of the 19th century. Ellen Nussey was duly appalled by it. Charlotte's husband was still alive too, living in Ireland, and we don't know if he heard, but rather think it better if he didn't or we can't begin to imagine what he would have felt, poor man. 

 
Katrina Naomi, the first writer-in-residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum as part of its Contemporary Arts programme, has fulfilled many a Brontëite's dream: she has spent time at the Brontë Parsonage having all sorts of Brontëana items brought to her from the collection. She has been allowed to (carefully and with gloved hands) interact with them and just be inspired by them.
 
This collection serves to humanise the Brontës and see them as at home as possible. Katrina Naomi reports that judging from Charlotte Brontë's dainty boots she seems to have pronated, that a flimsy piece of paper written by Anne less than two months before she died was last valued at 180,000 pounds and that the Brontës' toy lion looks like 'he's been tortured'.

So these are the Brontës, lest we ever forget they were real people. Katrina Naomi's collection seems the perfect complement to another commission made in the framework of the Contemporary Arts Programme: Cornelia Parker's 2006 Brontëan Abstracts. Where Katrina Naomi states that she feels like 'a forensic examiner/unearthing layers of mid-thigh/socks' Cornelia Parker showed us a darn in Anne Brontë's stocking. Where Katrina Naomi admits that Anne Brontë is her favourite but she 'daren't touch/the original [letter] for fear I'd start to cough, my lungs/in revolt', Cornelia Parker showed us Anne Brontë's blood-stained handkerchief.

Just like Charlotte's tiny corset managed to contain the great author that was Charlotte Brontë, so does this small collection contain all of the Brontës, what they were, who they were, how they were, what they did and where they lived, and what they are today. This evocative, subtle collection bears endless readings - we have been drifting in and out of it ever since it arrived - and shows both the lasting and varied inspiration of the Brontë sisters in modern culture and, once again, the success of the Contemporary Arts Programme.

Life of Charlotte Brontë

When her Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857, Elizabeth Gaskell said she would never write another biography. The celebrated social and Unitarian novelist had, in addition to the emotional challenge of writing about her recently deceased friend, faced so many complaints and threats of legal action over the Life that it had to be rewritten for republication almost immediately.
Having accepted the invitation from Patrick Brontë to write the life of his daughter Gaskell was keen to bring the same “charm of locality and sense of detail” to the Life that had already characterised her novels Mary Barton, Cranford and North & South. She quickly realised that a visit to Brussels was needed. Gaskell’s investigations were however made more delicate by the fact that when Villette was translated into French, the fictitious city name was changed to ‘Bruxelles’. Individuals portrayed in the novel were thus left with even less to mask their identity and felt understandably wary of welcoming a second English novelist into their homes.
Undaunted, French-speaking Gaskell made contact with locals including the widow of the former English chaplain and the Brussels chief of police. Although failing to win an audience with Madame Heger (the inspiration for the almost certainly slanderous character of Madame Beck), Gaskell was able to meet with Charlotte’s beloved Monsieur Heger (Monsieur Paul).

Samplers of the Bronte sisters

Maria Branwell completed her sampler April 15, 1791. She was 8 years old. Her sampler was a simple one, comprised of an alphabet, biblical text and a simple geometric border. It is worked with dark green silk and pink and ginger brown wool on canvas.

Maria's sampler is the first of a unique family collection. The collection is not unique for the style or technical expertise displayed by the embroiderers. It's interest lies in the fact that three of Maria's daughters grew up to become noted Victorian authors; the Bronte sisters.

Maria's sisters, Ann, Margaret, and Elizabeth Branwell each completed a similar sampler worked in the same dark green silk. Ann Branwell, later Ann Kingston, signed but did not date her sampler. Margaret Branwell signed and dated her work March 23, 1799. Sister Elizabeth finished her signed sampler on 11 October.

Time at Haworth was also devoted to needlework. Emily completed her first sampler April 22, 1828. Anne finished her first piece November 28, 1828. Both of these pieces are again similar to those of their elder sisters, aunts, and mother. The sisters each completed a second, more lengthy piece:
Emily, March 1, 1829; Charlotte, April 1, 1829 and Anne January 23, 1830. All were worked with dark green silk on canvas. All of these pieces were previously in private collections. They are now in the possession of the Bronte Society and on display at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth.

This is a reproduction of a sampler which Anne Bronte worked when she was eight years old. The reproduction is authorized by the Bronte Society, and the original may be seen at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth, England.
 

This is a reproduction of a sampler which Emily Bronte worked when she was ten years old. The reproduction is authorized by the Bronte Society, and the original may be seen at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth, England.

This is a reproduction of a sampler which Charlotte Bronte worked when she was six years old. The reproduction is authorized by the Bronte Society, and the original may be seen at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth, England.

gate in Haworth

This photo is of an old metal kissing gate in Haworth, Yorkshire.

This footpath goes from the churchyard out across the moor towards Top Withins. Top Withins is said to be the inspiration for Heathcliff's abode "Wuthering Heights" in Emily Bronte's novel of the same name.