On this day in 1855 Tabitha Ackroyd "Tabby" faithful servant of the Bronte family died aged 85.

Tabitha Ackroyd "Tabby" faithful servant of the Bronte family died aged 85.

Tabitha' s grave

'Tabby' was the Cook/Housekeeper and for the first 15 of her 31 years at the Parsonage, she was the only servant living in, although the Brontë sisters themselves also cooked, cleaned and washed clothes. In December 1836 Tabby slipped on ice in Haworth's main street, badly breaking her leg. Aunt Branwell suggested that she leave the Parsonage to be nursed by her sister Susannah, but the Brontë children objected, even going on hunger strike, and Tabby stayed in the Parsonage nursed by the children. The leg never fully healed however, and over the next 3 years many of Tabby's duties were taken up by Emily.

Tabby was fond of her "childers" and they were fond of her. As Charlotte later wrote, "she was like one of our own family". Tabby took the girls for their walks on the moors, and, with her old-fashioned ways and broad Haworth accent, she was sometimes the butt of their boisterous games. Tabby was a great storyteller. She knew all the local families, all their complex inter-relationships and disputes, and, despite her belief in the Christian teachings of divine reward and retribution, she held also to the ancient anthropomorphic traditions of the countryside, claiming (according to Mrs. Gaskell) to have known people who had seen the fairies. Emily, who spent more time working in the kitchen than either of her sisters, was particularly close to Tabby, and Tabby's influence permeates the landscape of Wuthering Heights. Tabby has also been identified as the model for Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights, and for the housekeeper Martha in Charlotte's novel Shirley.

www.bronte.info

The  kitchen which Emily used to bake breads while reading German books

EMILY BRONTE HOUSEKEEPER AND MORE:

Yet shift it we should, if we are to get a more truthful, insightful and less romanticised version of this great writer. Read the biographies - Winifred Gérin, Juliet Barker and, in particular, Lucasta Miller - and you can begin to discern a more formidable woman who could cope with the world rather better than the image of the doomed Emily might suggest.

For instance, try to get your head around the fact that the real Emily Bronte was good at investing in the stock market. Not only that, but she invested her own and her sisters' money in railway shares - the dotcom stocks equivalent of the 1840s - and managed the investment attentively. A surviving letter from supposedly more worldly Charlotte is full of praise for Emily's careful reading of the newspapers for items of railway industry news.

Or consider the implications of the fact that the real Emily Bronte was a crackshot with a pistol. The Brontes lived in stirring times and in a turbulent region. Howarth in 1842 was not some remote moorland idyll, but a place of unemployment, riot and some real danger. Knowing how to handle a firearm was not an eccentric skill, and Emily was the best markswoman in the house. If the author of Wuthering Heights had met a real Heathcliff, the chances are she would have shot him dead.

Remember too that the real Emily Bronte could read and write French and German, that she attended art exhibitions in Leeds, and that music occupied a major place in her imaginative world. An accomplished pianist, she played Beethoven and Handel all her life, and she may even have heard no less a musician than Franz Liszt give a recital in Halifax in February 1841.

This picture of a woman who read newspapers, who was interested in the transport revolution and the markets, who could use a gun and make bread and who may even have been able to play the Appassionata Sonata, needs to be given its proper place. Too much of the time all we get is the fantasist of the Gondal stories, the chainless soul of the poems and the mystic visionary of that solitary novel.

Emily Bronte and her achievement need no help from me to endure. Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest imaginative achievements of English culture. It is a work of fibrous and poetic power worthy to rank with Milton, Blake and Conrad. But the book should not be banalised and its author should not be infantilised. In a world where Barcelona FC can claim to be "mas que un club", it is right to insist that Wuthering Heights is more, far more, than a love story.

Read more: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/148400.html

On this day in 1840. 'Fair Ellen, Fair Ellen', 'Away fond Love' and 'Soul divine'.

In Feb 1840, about six months after his arrival, Ellen Nussey came to the Parsonage for a three weeks stay. Neither she, nor the Brontë girls had ever received a Valentine card; so it caused quite a stir on the morning of February 14th. when they each received one. Of course, the culprit was the scheming Weightman. In his usual mode of conduct, he had made a bold attempt to add a little sparkle to the girls' lives, and in a vain attempt to disguise his handiwork, had walked the ten miles to Bradford to post them. He had written verses in each of the Valentines; however, only the titles of three of them are known, but these give a general idea of their content: 'Fair Ellen, Fair Ellen', 'Away fond Love' and 'Soul divine'. The girls were not to be fooled by the Bradford post-mark, and soon realised that the chirpy curate was the guilty party. However, being so delighted with that morning's events, the four conspired to write a poem which they promptly returned to Weightman
A Rowland for your Oliver

We think you've justly earned;

You sent us each a valentine,

Your gift is now returned.

We cannot write or talk like you;

We're plain folks every one;

You've played a clever trick on us,

We thank you for the fun.

Believe us when we frankly say

(Our words, though blunt are true),

At home, abroad, by night or day,

We all wish well to you.

And never may a cloud come o'er

The sunshine of your mind;

Kind friends, warm hearts, and happy hours,

Through life we trust you'll find.

Where'er you go, however far

In future years you stray,

There shall not want our earnest prayer

To speed you on your way. . .

The History of Valentine Cards

It seems that the writing of special notes and letters for Valentine’s Day gained widespread popularity in the 1700s. At that time the romantic missives would have been handwritten, on ordinary writing paper.

Papers made especially for Valentine greetings began to be marketed in the 1820s, and their use became fashionable in both Britain and the United States. In the 1840s, when postal rates in Britain became standardized, commercially produced Valentine cards began to grow in popularity. The cards were flat paper sheets, often printed with colored illustrations and embossed borders. The sheets, when folded and sealed with wax, could be mailed.

The legendary British illustrator of children’s books, Kate Greenaway, designed Valentines in the late 1800s which were enormously popular. Her Valentine designs proved sold so well for the card publisher, Marcus Ward, that she was encouraged to design cards for other holidays.

Some of Greenaway’s illustrations for Valentine cards were collected in a book published in 1876, Quiver of Love: A Collection of Valentines.

By some accounts, the practice of sending Valentine cards fell off in the late 1800s, and only revived in the 1920s. But the holiday as we know it today firmly has its roots in the 1800s.

Victorian Valentines Could Be Works of Art

Read more about: Kate greenaway.

Read all about   Valentinesday

Bonnie Greer, new president of the Brontë Society

Bonnie Greer, new president of the Brontë Society

The Brontë Society, founded in 1893, is one of the oldest Literary Societies in the world and now has an international membership. The Society is based at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, home of the famous writers, Charlotte, Emily and Anne BrontëIn 2010 Bonnie Greer spoke in Haworth as part of the Brontë Society’s Contemporary Arts Programme, returning soon after to open a newly refurbished exhibition space at the Parsonage museum. She joined members of the Society and spoke eloquently at a fundraising event at Watermen’s Hall, in London, in November, having earlier that day received an OBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. Bonnie Greer is also the judge of the short story section of the 2010-2011 Brontë Society Literary Competition.

Born in Chicago, Bonnie Greer is well known in Britain as an award-winning playwright, novelist, and broadcaster. Her latest play, "Marilyn and Ella" ran at The Apollo Theatre in London in November 2009, and her new book, a biography for young people of the poet and novelist, Langston Hughes, entitled “Rebel with a Cause”, will be published by Arcadia in the spring. Her libretto for the new opera “Yes”, composed by Errollyn Wallen, will premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden’s Lindbury Theatre in autumn, 2011

Diary

A Dark and Stormy Night: Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855). Fed up with teaching young girls their lessons, future novelist Charlotte Brontë began a diary entry that grew into a fictional fantasy.

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.

Ten years before she wrote this entry, Charlotte's brother Branwell had received a set of toy soldiers as a gift from their father. He and his sisters—Charlotte, Anne, and Emily—were delighted, and they did what children do: They named the soldiers and made up stories about them. But the stunningly imaginative Brontës took typical childhood play to a new level, spinning a complex series of interconnected tales in exotic settings, documenting their creations in tiny handmade books written in a minuscule script appropriate to the scale of their soldier-characters. Charlotte's and Branwell's invented world was called 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.

This is one of 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."

Manchester history

Manchester became the obvious place to build textile factories. Large warehouses were also built to store and display the spun yarn and finished cloth. The town's population grew rapidly. With neighbouring Salford, Manchester had about 25,000 inhabitants in 1772. By 1800 the population had grown to 95,000. The rich manufacturers built large houses around the Mosley Street area. At first the cheap housing for the factory workers were confined to New Cross and Newtown. However, as the population grew, close-packed houses were built next to factories all over Manchester.

The Stockton & Darlington line opened in 1825 successfully reduced the cost of transporting coal from 18s. to 8s. 6d. a ton. It soon became clear that large profits could be made by building railways. A group of businessmen in Manchester and Liverpool led by William James recruited George Stephenson to build them a railway.
The Liverpool & Manchester railway was opened on 15th September, 1830. The prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, and a large number of important people attended the opening ceremony that included a procession of eight locomotives. Large crowds assembled along the line and when the train entered Manchester the passenger carriages were pelted with stones by weavers, who remembered the Duke of Wellington's involvement in the Peterloo Massacre and his strong opposition to the the proposed 1832 Reform Act.

The Liverpool & Manchester railway was a great success. In 1831 the company transported 445,047 passengers. Receipts were £155,702 with profits of £71,098. By 1844 receipts had reached £258,892 with profits of £136,688. During this period shareholders were regularly paid out an annual dividend of £10 for every £100 invested.

The railway rapidly increased the population of Manchester. By 1851 over 455,000 people were living in the city. Housing conditions were appalling. It was reported that in some parts of the city the number of toilets averaged only two to two hundred and fifty people. Only forty per cent of the children living in this area reached their fifth year.

Manchester is famous for its libraries. The library founded by Humphrey Chetham (1580-1653) was the first free public library in Britain. Joseph Brotherton, a local MP, played an important role in 1849 in helping Salford become the first municipal authority in Britain to establish a library, museum and art gallery. The following year Brotherton joined William Ewart in persuading Parliament to pass the Public Libraries Act.

In 1846 John Owens, a successful Manchester cotton merchant, died and left most of his wealth to help establish a further education college for men that would not have: "to submit to any test whatsoever of, their religious opinions". His Unitarian friends, John Fielden and Thomas Ashton, also raised money for the venture and arranged to purchase the former home of Richard Cobden, in Quay Street, Deansgate. This became the first premises of Owens College when it was opened in 1851.

The Nonconformist business community in Manchester continued to raise money for the project and supported by Charles Prestwich Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, the trustees were able to arrange the building of new premises at Oxford Street. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the new Owens College was opened in 1873. Seven years later, the college, along with those in Liverpool and Leeds, became Victoria University (Manchester University after 1902).

Manchester history

Elisabeth Gaskell and Manchester.

In 1832 Elizabeth married William Gaskell, who was at the time the assistant minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester. They settled in Manchester and she joined him there in his work with the poor distributing food and clothes at Cross Street Chapel.

Cross Street Chapel,

Manchester 1835During their early married life the Gaskells were resident for a time in Dover Street which was on the south-west side of the town, off the busy Oxford Road in the Ardwick district of Manchester. In 1842 the Gaskell family moved to 121 Upper Rumford Street which was a slightly larger house still in the
same district.

42 (now 84) Plymouth Grove

In 1850 they moved to 42 (now 84) Plymouth Grove, a large house beyond the manufacturing district in view of open fields. Here Elizabeth tried to bring some countryside to the town by keeping a vegetable garden, a cow and poultry. The house was always bustling and they entertained a stream of visitors there over the years including many eminent literary personages of the day.
More domestic staff were needed at 42 Plymouth Grove, where there were seven bedrooms, two attics, three living rooms and kitchen premises in the basement. They took on a cook and several maids, at one time employing a staff of five including a man for outside work, and also using the services of a washer- woman and sempstress.

Although relieved of many domestic tasks Elizabeth never relinquished the running of the household and worked in close harmony with the staff, training them well and taking a keen interest in their welfare. It is perhaps sometimes forgotten that the Victorians who employed young domestic staff took on serious responsibilities, standing in loco parentis. William and Elizabeth were exemplary employers, taking a close interest in the personal problems of those who worked for them, readily granting leave of absence so that they could go home at times of family crises, and in 1851 their cook Mary was married by 'the Master'.

Once Elizabeth was established as an authoress and was earning money from her books she travelled a great deal with her daughters to further their education and it was imperative to have trustworth servants to keep the household running smoothly for William while she was away and his chapel duties kept him in Manchester. Of necessity their scale of entertaining increased in frequency and in numbers of visitors, so domestic help was essential. Their style of life was gradually changing and perhaps they sometimes looked back with nostalgia to the informalities of their early married life, such as the occasion when they thought nothing of walking, Elizabeth in great thick shoes and William in boots and without gloves, to a christening party in north Manchester, walking back home in daylight at 3.30 a.m., as she described in a letter in midsummer 1838.


The Manchester or the Gaskell’s time was a city of extremes. It was a great cultural and intellectual centre, boasting institutions like the Literary and Philosophical Society, the Mechanics Institute and the Athenaeum. It was also the symbol of the new industrial age and the rapid growth of industry made a huge impact on the landscape of the city. Uncontrolled urban development created extreme poverty and squalor. Friedrich Engels described the homes of the factory operatives in The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844 writing:-

“The workers dwellings of Manchester are dirty, miserable and wholly lacking in comforts. In such houses only inhuman, degraded and unhealthy creatures would feel at home.”

It was also a time of great political change with Manchester as a centre of Chartist activity. Elizabeth Gaskell observed all these social tensions intimately and used her observations (and the hypocrisy that she saw at work) in her novels that have become known since as her ‘industrial novel’ genre.

Elizabeth Gaskell house

Patrick Bronte cataract operation Manchester

Charlotte Bronte accompanied her father Patrick Bronte to Manchester when he underwent a successful cataract operation. Mr Wilson a famous oculist recommended comfortable lodgings which were ran by a former servant of his.

The Brontes lodged with an old servant of the surgeon. This house, as appears from a note of Mr. Shorter's, was 83, Mount Pleasant, Boundary Street, Oxford Road. "Mount Pleasant" was the name given to a terrace of houses, numbered 73 to 93. The houses have been taken down, and the back part of the Municipal School of Art stands on their site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tpqnw
Read more about the operation.
More information about Manchester.
salutation pub.

The Real Story of 'O': Anonymity Has Its Perils - Newsweek

Many of the greatest writers in the English literary canon (Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot) began by publishing anonymously or pseudonymously. Guessing the gender of an unknown author became part of the pleasure of reading.

Read more:
The Real Story of 'O': Anonymity Has Its Perils - Newsweek

To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Brontë sisters adopted androgynous first names. All three retained the first letter of their first names: Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell, and Emily became Ellis Bell.


female and publishing under pseudonym

.

25-01-1846

On this day in 1846

Emily Bronte wrote the poem,

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:

I see Heaven's 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 men's hearts: unutterably vain;

Worthless as withered weeds,

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by Thy 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 moon 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.

no-coward-soul-is-mine-
guardian

First Edition Jane Eyre An Autobiography in Three Volumes for sale on ""Antiq Book"

On Antiq book
CURRER BELL ( CHARLOTTE BRONTE) Jane Eyre An Autobiography in Three Volumes, for sale

London, Smith, Elder, & Co. 1847, First Edition. H. Back, 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. First edition - collated with text errors of first edition including title page of Vol III printed with no comma following the publisher Elder as in the first two volumes. Three volume set, bound in full dark green wavy rippled leather. Triple ruled gilt border to boards. Five raised bands to spine, gilt rule to raised bands, titling to the second compartment, volume number and author to the third compartment, tooled floral decoration to other compartments with date embossed towards bottom of spine. Spines of all three volumes are darkened and show slight rubbing/scuffing to top and tail and to raised bands. Upper board of Vol. I is lightly scratched/marked. Corners of all three volumes are a little bumped and scuffed. Binding is uniformly tight. Top edge gilt, gilt inner dentelles and marble endpapers. Contents are clean showing no inscriptions but fore edge and margins show the usual browning with age. A number of small tears to the bottom edge have been expertly repaired in all volumes. pp 304 + 304 + 311. A delightful first edition copy of Charlotte Bronte's first and greatest work.

GBP 35000.00 [Appr.: EURO 41225.25 US$ 55982.5
JP¥ 4627971]

-- St Marys Books. Book number: 049311

Keywords: Bronte First-Edition Leather Jane-Eyre

antiq book

At Juliet Barker

At Juliet Barker

Juliet Barker can see wild moorland and open countryside from almost every mullioned window of the 100-year-old former vicarage in the Yorkshire Pennines that has been her home for more than two decades. Not surprising, then, that the historian and biographer — her definitive The Brontës sold more than 70,000 copies shares a talent for predicting the weather with Charlotte, the eldest sister of the prodigious literary family, who lived just 12 miles away in the village of Haworth.

Charlotte’s first biographer and friend, Elizabeth Gaskell, noted: “I was struck by Miss Brontë’s careful examination of the shape of the clouds and the signs of the heavens, in which she read, as from a book, what the coming weather would be.” The Brontës were hugely affected by the landscape, so it ties me to them like an umbilical cord. (...)“

We had only seen a rather unprepossessing picture of the house,” she says. “When we turned off the main road, it was like heading into the land time had forgotten, and the house was fantastic.”
It was built in 1901 by Helen Strickland, the only daughter of a wealthy mill owner with with the wonderful name of Hinchliffe Hinchliffe, in his memory. A plaque on the end wall of the property, built using stone from one of her father’s burnt-out mills, records his name.

“Everything is so Brontë-esque, and Hinchliffe is such a Heathcliff name — yet it’s away from Haworth, with all the tourists ,” says the Yorkshire-born Barker.The daughter of a Bradford wool merchant, she was “obsessed with the Brontës as a child”, and later beat other Brontëphiles to the job of librarian and curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, at the house in Haworth that Charlotte, Anne, Branwell and Emily shared with their father, Patrick, a vicar.

Barker and James, a company director, settled in their own former church property. The six-bedroom family home is, says Barker, “large but very adaptable". She charted the lives of the Brontës from a first-floor study overlooking the church and rolling countryside. When her daughter, Sophie, was born, it became a bedroom. Next, she researched and wrote the life of the equally weather-obsessed Lakeland poet William Wordsworth, followed by Henry V, from a second-floor attic with views of bleak Yorkshire moorland. Her dedication prompted her son, Edward, then eight — he is now 25, and a lieutenant in the Royal Dragoon Guards — to write a school essay entitled, “the mad woman in the attic”. (...)Now the couple have decided it is time to downsize and are leaving the Pennines for a home in the Yorkshire Dales, one with open views.“I love living in Yorkshire,”

Barker says. “I like the anonymity — it’s something the Brontës appreciated. Charlotte enjoyed being lionised in London, but liked being anonymous in Haworth.” She also has no illusions about her status locally. “We were once approached by the churchwarden hosting the annual fête,” she recalls. “He said they were looking for someone famous to open it — I thought for a moment they were going to ask me. But instead they chose the local damp-proofing and dry-rot expert.” (Lynne Greenwood)The Old Vicarage is for sale at £1.1m with Charnock Bates.

Brontës in Brussel: de roman

De Vlaams/Nederlandse journaliste en schrijfster Jolien Janzing is bezig met een roman over de Brusselse periode van de Brontë-zussen Charlotte en Emily. Helen MacEwan van Brussels Brontë Blog wist de schrijfster in een vorige week gepubliceerde blog al wat informatie te ontfutselen over de roman die waarschijnlijk in het najaar van 2011 of begin 2012 wordt gepubliceerd bij De Arbeiderspers.

In het blog vertelt de schrijfster die in 2009 debuteerde met de roman ‘Grammatica van een obsessie’, dat ze voor haar tweede fictiewerk graag een historische roman wilde schrijven over iemand die echt bestaan heeft. Ondanks dat ze Villette van Charlotte Brontë wel gelezen had, dacht daarbij niet meteen aan de Brontës. Pas na een zoektocht kwam ze erachter dat Charlotte en Emily een tijd in Brussel hebben gestudeerd bij Pensionat Heger.

In het blog zegt Janzing onder andere dat ze invloed van religie op de relatie tussen Charlotte en haar leraar Heger verder wil uitdiepen. Het is een onderwerp dat haar persoonlijk raakt omdat ze zelf ook als protestants meisje opgroeide in een katholieke omgeving. Ook zal er volgens Janzing in het boek parallellen worden getrokken met het verhaal van Arcadie Claret die als maitresse van de Belgische Koning Leopold I net als Charlotte met Heger verliefd was op een getrouwde man. Het is een van de manieren waarop de schrijfster in haar roman probeert te onderzoeken hoe echte gebeurtenissen in 19de eeuws Brussel invloed kunnen hebben gehad op de zussen uit Yorkshire.
Mogelijk omdat je van een ongepubliceerde roman niet kunt eten, heeft Janzing eind vorig jaar ook haar research-tripje naar Haworth te gelde gemaakt. Ze beschreef haar pelgrimage naar de ‘toeristische trekpleister’ voor een reisbijlage van de Vlaamse kwaliteitskrant De Standaard.

In het verhaal geeft ze toe ‘lichtelijk bezeten door de Brontës’ te zijn. Ze doet verslag van hoe ze in de voetsporen treedt van eigenlijk iedereen die het stadje om Brontë-redenen bezoekt. Ze bekijkt natuurlijk de Parsonage en de kerk met het Brontëgraf, koopt een Brontë-boek bij het lokale antiquariaat met Brontë-specialisatie en wandelt naar de Brontë watervallen.

Over de gesprekken die ze voert met ‘mensen die het dorp en de geschiedenis van de familie door en door kennen’, vertelt ze helaas bitter weinig. Of ze daar iets van heeft opgestoken zullen we pas merken als we haar nieuwe boek lezen. Onze interesse is na deze twee ‘teasers’ in ieder geval gewekt.
Het interview met Janzing is te vinden op bronteblog
Een pdf van het verhaal in De Standaard staat op de website van Janzing.
brussels bronte.blog
website Jolien Janzing

Barbara Whitehead. In Memoriam

    Barbara Whitehead. In Memoriam

The Telegraph & Argus reports the sad news of the death of Barbara Whitehead (1930-2011). Writer of historical romances and crime fiction, author of the only available biography of Ellen Nussey: Charlotte Brontë and her Dearest Nell and former owner of the Brontë's birthplace in Thornton which she helped to restore and make available for public viewing. Regrettably her illness and retirement made it impossible for her to keep it and the house was sold in an auction.

In January 1831, a chance meeting in a Yorkshire school between a new arrival and a homesick pupil was to develop into the most important friendship of the two girls' lives. That homesick pupil was fourteen year old Charlotte Brontë, and the new arrival was to become her 'dearest Nell' - Ellen Nussey.

Charlotte Brontë and her Dearest Nell
Barbara Whitehead

As the two girls grew into adulthood, their friendship strengthened and deepened. They confided in one another at every important point in their lives, and corresponded constantly. Ellen was a frequent visitor to Haworth Parsonage, as was Charlotte to the Nussey family home. Ellen was, Charlotte told her, the closest to Emily outside the family. Ellen's brother proposed to Charlotte; with Ellen she visited his vicarage at Hathersage, and nearby North Lees Hall was the inspiration for Jane Eyre. Indeed, many of the themes, characters and settings in the novels can be traced back to Ellen’s own background.

Charlotte 's experience of the society in which Ellen moved formed the background of her novel Shirley, and its character of Caroline Helstone was based on Ellen. Charlotte’s final letter to Ellen was penciled in her last illness; and it was Ellen who suggested to Mr. Brontë that Mrs. Gaskell be asked to write a posthumous biography of Charlotte.
Ellen, the closest friend of the family, was the last surviving link with the Brontës after their deaths. To Bronte enthusiasts she was 'the mine from which they take their ore'. Although Charlotte's husband had demanded their destruction, Ellen kept her collection of some 500 letters from Charlotte. 'What would we have known of the sisters but for you?', said a contemporary, and were it not for Ellen, we would know very little about the Brontës today.

Charlotte Bronte and her 'dearest Nell' - the result of twelve years' research, much of it based on previously unseen Nussey family archives - presents the clearest picture yet or this deep, lifelong friendship. Everyone interested in the Brontës owes Ellen a debt. In her own right, Ellen is fascinating; as an aid to understanding the Brontës, she is invaluable.

21-01-1821 Maria Bronte wife of Patrick Bronte was diagnosed with cancer.

Maria was petite, plain, pious, intelligent and well read with a ready wit. She made friends easily, and the friends that the Brontë's made in Thornton remained life-long friends to Patrick and his children. Her only extant written work, apart from letters, is the tract, The Advantages of Poverty, In Religious Concerns, but it was never published. The essay can be found in the book Life and Letters by Clement Shorter.

Maria Branwell was the eighth child of twelve born to Thomas Branwell and Anne Carne in Penzance, Cornwall, though only five daughters and one son grew to adulthood. Thomas Branwell was a successful merchant and owned many properties throughout the town. The Branwell family was involved with local politics, several serving as Mayor in the 19th century and other civic offices. The family were prominent Methodists,Thomas's sister and two of his daughters marrying clergymen of Wesleyan leanings. With the Carne family and others, they initiated and developed the first Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Penzance.
 

Maria had an annuity of £50 a year, which would have been a great help to Patrick Brontë who had nothing but his stipend. Their first home was Clough House, Hightown, near Hartshead, and their first two children, Maria and Elizabeth were born there in 1814 and 1815.
Clough House, which is in Halifax Road just above Quaker Lane. This is also a 17th century house.

The Peters Church, Heartshead, near Brighouse

See also: hartshead

 

 

Thornbush Farm, known in those days as Lousy Thorn Farm, at Windybank Hightown

 

Patrick Bronte was the minister at St Peter’s from 1811 to 1815 and had lodged at Thornbush Farm near the end of Miry Lane before this.

Clough House, Hightown, near Hartshead 

 

Maria and Elizabeth were born here

 

He moved to Clough House, Halifax Road, Hightown (pictured above), on his marriage to Maria Branwell in 1812.

He was at Clough House when the croppers banded together to try to destroy the cropping machines being installed in the large mills. They called themselves Luddites, and met at the Shears inn in Halifax Road to plan the attack. The Shears inn was built in 1773.

Thornbush Farm (Hightown)

The village of Hartshead was the model for Nunneley in “Shirley” by Charlotte (1849).

Left: Market Street, Thornton

In 1815 Mr. Brontë moved to a larger living at Thornton, three miles north of Bradford, where, in a house in Market Street, the other four children were born, Charlotte (1816), Patrick Branwell (1817), Emily Jane (1818) and Anne (1820).

 

In 1820 the family moved to Haworth. Soon after the move to Haworth, Maria Branwell Brontë, exhausted from bearing six children in seven years, died of cancer after a long illness. A servant heard her cry, "Oh God, my poor children!" Charlotte was only five years old. The youngest, Anne, was less than a year old.

19-01- 1880 Martha Brown servant of the Brontes died aged 52.

Martha was one of the six daughters of John and Mary Brown of Haworth. John Brown was the village Sexton and, although thirteen years older, he was a close friend of Branwell Brontë. The Browns lived in Sexton's House, which John himself had built on the eastern end of the Church School, shortly after the school was built in 1832. Most of John Brown's daughters worked at the Parsonage at one time or another, cleaning, washing and running errands, but Martha was the only one to live in.

Since 1826, Tabitha Aykroyd had been the only servant living in at the Parsonage. In 1836 she broke a leg very badly, which left her lame. Emily Brontë took on many of Tabby's duties, but by 1839 it was clear that permanent extra help would be needed, and eleven year old Martha Brown moved in to share the bedroom of sixty eight year old Tabby. This arrangement continued until Tabby's death sixteen years later, when, with only Mr. Brontë and Mr. Nicholls left to look after, Martha finally had the room to herself. Her duties ranged from basic washing, cleaning and laying fires, to running errands and, after Tabby's death, preparing food. She was also called upon to help nurse the sick of the household, and for all this she was paid £6 a year when she started, rising to £10 a year by 1858.

On the death of Patrick Brontë in 1861, the Brontë household was broken up, and Martha went with Arthur Bell Nicholls (Charlotte's widower) back to Northern Ireland. Whether this was just to help Mr. Nicholls settle in to his new home, or whether it was intended that she settle there as his housekeeper, we do not know, but by Christmas 1862, Martha was back in Haworth, living with her widowed mother at Sexton's house (John Brown had died of 'dust on his lungs' in 1855). Martha took domestic work in the village, including a stint with Dr. Amos Ingham (lately the Brontë family physician) at the Manor House in Cookgate. Martha's mother died in 1866, and in 1868 Martha, who increasingly by then was in poor health, went to live with her sister Anne Binns and her family at Saltaire. She stayed there for nine years, until the domestic tensions between her sister and her husband Ben became intolerable for her, and she returned to Haworth, where she spent the last three years of her life living alone in a small damp cottage in what is now Sun Street. She died there of stomach cancer on the 19th January 1880.

Throughout her post-Parsonage years, Martha and Arthur Bell Nicholls maintained a regular correspondence, and Martha visited Mr. Nicholls (and his second wife after 1864) a number of times. He always asked her to stay, and she always declined. Martha had featured in Elizabeth Gaskell's best selling biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), and in her later years she became something of a celebrity. Martha treasured a large collection of Brontë memorabilia that she was happy to display, but reluctant to sell. On her death however, this collection was divided between her sisters and it gradually dispersed.