Elisabeth Gaskell tells about her visit to Charlotte Bronte in 1953: ""We went, not purposely, but accidentally, to see various poor people in our distant walks. From one we had borrowed an umbrella; in the house of another we had taken shelter from a rough September storm. In all these cottages, her quiet presence was known. At three miles from her home, the chair was dusted for her, with a kindly "Sit ye down, Miss Bronte;" and she knew what absent or ailing members of the family to inquire after. Her quiet, gentle words, few though they might be, were evidently grateful to those Yorkshire ears. Their welcome to her, though rough and curt, was sincere and hearty""

Watercolor of Elizabeth Gaskell by Meta, the daughter of Elizabeth Gaskell 1865

We were so happy together; we were so full of interest in each other's subjects. The day seemed only too short for what we had to say and to hear.

I understood her life the better for seeing the place where it had been spent - where she had loved and suffered. Mr. Bronte was a most courteous host; and when he was with us, - at breakfast in his study, or at tea in Charlotte's parlour, - he had a sort of grand and stately way of describing past times, which tallied well with his striking appearance. He never seemed quite to have lost the feeling that Charlotte was a child to be guided and ruled, when she was present; and she herself submitted to this with a quiet docility that half amused, half astonished me. But when she had to leave the room, then all his pride in her genius and fame came out. He eagerly listened to everything I could tell him of the high admiration I had at any time heard expressed for her works. He would ask for certain speeches over and over again, as if he desired to impress them on his memory.

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Mrs Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte, what did they talk about?

We talked over the old times of her childhood; of her elder sister's (Maria's) death, - just like that of Helen Burns in Jane Eyre; of those strange, starved days at school; of the desire (almost amounting to illness) of expressing herself in some way, - writing or drawing; of her weakened eyesight, which prevented her doing anything for two years, from the age of seventeen to nineteen; of her being a governess; of her going to Brussels; whereupon I said I disliked Lucy Snowe, and we discussed M. Paul Emanuel; and I told her of ----'s admiration of Shirley, which pleased her; for the character of Shirley was meant for her sister Emily, about whom she is never tired of talking, nor I of listening. Emily must have been a remnant of the Titans, - great-grand-daughter of the giants who used to inhabit earth. 

One day, Miss Brontë brought down a rough, common-looking oil-painting, done by her brother, of herself, - a little, rather prim-looking girl of eighteen, - and the two other sisters, girls of sixteen and fourteen, with cropped hair, and sad, dreamy-looking eyes. . . . Emily had a great dog - half mastiff, half bull-dog - so savage, etc. . . . This dog went to her funeral, walking side by side with her father; and then, to the day of its death, it slept at her room door; snuffing under it, and whining every morning.

I asked her whether she had ever taken opium, as the description given of its effects in Villette was so exactly like what I had experienced, - vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc.
She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling to sleep, - wondering what it was like, or how it would be, - till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word for word, as it had happened.


I cannot account for this psychologically; I only am sure that it was so, because she said it.
I recollect, too, her saying how acutely she dreaded a charge of plagiarism, when, after she had written Jane Eyre; she read the thrilling effect of the mysterious scream at midnight in Mrs. Marsh's story of the Deformed. She also said that, when she read the Neighbours, she thought every one would fancy that she must have taken her conception of Jane Eyre's character from that of "Francesca," the narrator of Miss Bremer's story. For my own part, I cannot see the slightest resemblance between the two characters, and so I told her; but she persisted in saying that Francesca was Jane Eyre married to a good-natured "Bear" of a Swedish surgeon.


We talked about the different courses through which life ran. She said, in her own composed manner, as if she had accepted the theory as a fact, that she believed some were appointed beforehand to sorrow and much disappointment; that it did not fall to the lot of all - as Scripture told us - to have their lines fall in pleasant places; that it was well for those who had rougher paths, to perceive that such was God's will concerning them, and try to moderate their expectations, leaving hope to those of a different doom, and seeking patience and resignation as the virtues they were to cultivate. I took a different view: I thought that human lots were more equal than she imagined; that to some happiness and sorrow came in strong patches of light and shadow, (so to speak), while in the lives of others they were pretty equally blended throughout. 
She smiled, and shook her head, and said she was trying to school herself against ever anticipating any pleasure; that it was better to be brave and submit faithfully; there was some good reason, which we should know in time, why sorrow and disappointment were to be the lot of some on earth. It was better to acknowledge this, and face out the truth in a religious faith.

Mrs Gaskell tells.....

"I don't know that I ever saw a spot more exquisitely clean; the most dainty place for that I ever saw. To be sure, the life is like clock-work. No one comes to the house; nothing disturbs the deep repose; hardly a voice is heard; you catch the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, or the buzzing of a fly in the parlour, all over the house. Miss Bronte sits alone in her parlour; breakfasting with her father in his study at nine o'clock. She helps in the housework; for one of their servants, Tabby, is nearly ninety, and the other only a girl. Then I accompanied her in her walks on the sweeping moors the heather-bloom had been blighted by a thunder-storm a day or two before, and was all of a livid brown colour, instead of the blaze of purple glory it ought to have been. Oh those high, wild, desolate moors, up above the whole world, and the very realms of silence! Home to dinner at two. Mr. Bronte has his dinner sent in to him. All the small table arrangements had the same dainty simplicity about them. Then we rested, and talked over the clear, bright fire; it is a cold country, and the fires were a pretty warm dancing light all over the house. The parlour had been evidently refurnished within the last few years, since Miss Bronte's success has enabled her to have a little more money to spend. Everything fits into, and is in harmony with, the idea of a country parsonage, possessed by people of very moderate means. The prevailing colour of the room is crimson, to make a warm setting for the cold grey landscape without. 

There is her likeness by Richmond, and an engraving from Lawrence's picture of Thackeray; and two recesses, on each side of the high, narrow, old-fashioned mantelpiece, filled with books, - books given to her; books she has bought, and which tell of her individual pursuits and tastes; not standard books.

"She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen, she wanted much to draw; and she copied nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings out of annuals, ('stippling,' don't the artists call it?) every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to draw stories, and not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing; but in so small a hand, that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this time.


art of the brontes

The moors were brown and dull.

24 corners sent me a reaction:

Hello Geri! I'm so happy that Charlotte and Elizabeth had met...there couldn't have been a better person at the time to write the biography...Mrs. Gaskell did a beautiful, realistic, and very touching job of it. If I remember right, the heather on the moors had had a bad time of it that September and Elilzabeth never got to see the moors in all their purple glory, much to Charlotte's chagrin. xo J~

19 century cab

Hi Jessica,What you write is true. In the Brontes of Juliet Barker I read: When Mrs. Gaskell was in her cab to go to the parsonage she found everything lead-coloured, even the moors, which should have been a blaze of purple, were brown and dull.

Greetings from Geri.

Elisabeth Gaskell visit on 19-09-1853. "the room looked the perfection of warmth, snugness and comfort, crimson predominating in the furniture".

At the parsonage gate Elisabeth Gaskell was ”half blown back by the wild vihemence of the wind which swept along the narrow gravel walk"". 
Charlotte gave Mrs. Gaskell the warmest welcome. 

Mrs Gaskell about the dining room: "the room looked the perfection of warmth, snugness and comfort, crimson predominating in the furniture".  Everything in her departure has been new within the last few years; and everything is admirable for its simple, good, sufficient for every possible  reasonable want and of the most delicate and scrupulous cleanliness. "I don't know that I ever saw a spot more exquisitely clean; the most dainty place for that I ever saw". 

Mrs. Gaskell had been given Aunt Branwell's old bedroom, the largest in the house, and she tried hard  to find something favourable to say about it. "The view is really beautiful in certain lights, moon light especially. "
From Juliet Barker "the "Brontes""
Dining room picture: guardian.co.uk//writers.rooms.charlotte.bronte

September 1853 Elisabeth Gaskell visits the Parsonage and stayed for four days.

It was a dull, drizzly Indian-inky day, all the way on the railroad to Keighley, which is a rising wool-manufacturing town, lying in a hollow between hills - not a pretty hollow, but more what the Yorkshire people call a 'bottom,' or 'botham.' I left Keighley in a car for Haworth, four miles off - four tough, steep, scrambling miles, the road winding between the wavelike hills that rose and fell on every side of the horizon, with a long illimitable sinuous look, as if they were a part of the line of the Great Serpent, which the Norse legend says girdles the world. 

The day was lead-coloured; the road had stone factories alongside of it, - grey, dull-coloured rows of stone cottages belonging to these factories, and then we came to poor, hungry-looking fields; - stone fences everywhere, and trees nowhere. 
Haworth is a long, straggling village one steep narrow street - so steep that the flag-stones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, that the horses' feet may have something to cling to, and not slip down backwards; which if they did, they would soon reach Keighley.

But if the horses had cats' feet and claws, they would do all the better. Well, we (the man, horse, car; and I) clambered up this street, and reached the church dedicated to St. Autest (who was he?); then we turned off into a lane on the left, past the curate's lodging at the Sexton's, past the school-house, up to the Parsonage yard-door. I went round the house to the front door, looking to the church; - moors everywhere beyond and above. The crowded grave-yard surrounds the house and small grass enclosure for drying clothes.

Voice of the Valleys

We want to introduce a new monthly community newspaper serving the Haworth area: Voice of the Valleys.The changing world of the media means that most of us now look online for our news, views and information. Here at Voice of the Valleys we aim to bring you the best of all worlds by combining an online magazine with some of the traditional newspaper values. Our first Voice of the Valleys newspaper is now available. It is a free full colour, tabloid which is "by the community for the community". Read it HERE , the pages will take a few minutes to load depending on your connection speed but it's worth waiting for!
We will bring you local news and features, pictures and sounds from an area including Keighley, Haworth, Oakworth, Oxenhope, Cross Roads, Stanbury and beyond. Areas rich in history, tourism and business which attract visitors from all over the world. Our readership will be world-wide meaning that advertisers have an outlet which no single hard copy publication can ever give with a much longer shelf life and at a fraction of the cost charged by low circulation traditional media.
We want everyone to be involved and will accept contributions from across the broad spectrum of our communities to make us a publication "by the people for the people".
E-mail us on voiceofthevalleys@gmail.com or call 07092 103738 so we can hear your voice.Voice of the Valleys

Haworth, Oxenhope & Stanbury From Old Photographs Volume 1. A Review

The pictures and Steven Wood's concise yet thorough descriptions take us to places that no longer exist (as elsewhere in England the 1960s were demolishing-crazy in Haworth) and which would have been familiar to the Brontës, a regular feature of their daily lives, particularly with their father's profession. Of particular interest are the pictures connected to Haworth's old church, the church where the Brontë family worshipped. Some of the pictures we hadn't seen before and we certainly didn't know a few things about it and what became of some of its parts. Likewise, some very interesting pictures of the first Brontë Museum are to be seen.

Haworth, Oxenhope & Stanbury From Old Photographs Volume 1. A Review

Wuthering Heights

Frannie+~Wuthering+Heights

A production of Emily Brontë's classic Wuthering Heights backed by Screen Yorkshire has scooped accolades at an international film festival.

Wuthering Heights was shot throughout North Yorkshire and supported by Screen Yorkshire, which invested in the production as well as providing crewing and locations support.

Andrea Arnold's interpretation of Wuthering Heights has won Best Cinematography at the 68th Venice International Film Festival with the Yorkshire landscape being described as "another character".

Locations that feature in the film include: Thwaite, Cotescue Park, Coverham, and Moor Close Farm, Muker, Swaledale.

Hugo Heppell, head of production at Screen Yorkshire, said: "Andrea was absolute in her desire to make the film in Yorkshire and this award shows how important it was to her vision for this unique film. We are looking forward to this film being talked about throughout the autumn."

insidermedia.yorkshire/screen-yorkshire-investment-bears-fruit 
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bronteblog/wutheringly-apoplectic

Brontë Studies. Volume 36, Issue 3

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2011) is already available online.

Brontë Studies. Volume 36, Issue 3

The day I visit, the people of Haworth will enjoy an advance screening of the new big-screen version of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska as a not-so-plain Jane and Michael Fassbender as her brooding employer, Mr Rochester. To celebrate the film’s release, the Sunday Express was given exclusive access to the archives of the family’s former home, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Library and collections officer Sarah Laycock has raided the archives for a selection of treasured artefacts off limits to the public, displayed in plastic folders on tissue-covered lecterns and handled by Sarah wearing surgical gloves. Only about two per cent of the collection is on display at any one time.

The Brontë legend grew up in the wake of Charlotte’s 1847 classic novel Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was published in the same year as was their sister Anne’s Agnes Grey. The novels of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, their male alter egos, represented an unprecedented outpouring of talent from one household.

The most moving piece of memorabilia in the Parsonage collection is the only known letter in which Charlotte refers to the fact that her siblings died in such close succession, written on black-bordered mourning stationery to her friend Letitia Wheelwright. The Brontë Society paid £70,000 for the letter when it came up for auction, its tiny, faded script barely decipherable.

“We are also shown two of the miniscule books, about 1.5ins long, that Charlotte and Branwell made out of sugar bags or wallpaper fragments and hand-bound themselves. Unless you were among the collection of toy soldiers for whom the stories were intended, you would need a magnifying glass to decipher the minute script. Their size serves a dual purpose. “Sometimes the content was a little bit inappropriate, quite gruesome, like children being hanged. They didn’t want their father to be able to read it!”

Charlotte’s talent for drawing and painting is also relatively unknown but evident on a pencil drawing of Bolton Abbey, which was even exhibited in a Leeds art gallery, and a watercolour, Wild Roses From Nature.

A letter written to her best friend Ellen Nussey in 1843 shows a small caricature of them both in which Charlotte portrays herself as an ugly dwarf character.

Read more: .express.co.uk/Film-Review-Jane-Eyre

Costumes for Jane Eyre

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What inspired you when you were creating the costumes for Jane Eyre?
"Inspiration came firstly from Charlotte Brontë's novel and Jane's personal struggle. Inspiration also came from artists of the time including Ingres, Winterhalter and Mary Ellen Best also early victorian photographers such as Robert Adamson. i also found looking at original costumes to be very inspiring."  (...)
And when you're working on something like Jane Eyre, how important is historical accuracy?
"Historical accuracy was important to the project because it helped to keep a rule in terms of patterns of costume, making and the technique of making. The fun of projects like Jane Eyre is trying to understand the past. This doesn't mean that it restricts one totally but knowing how something was achieved and why can help with understanding the society of the time."
Lastly, what's your own favourite costume from the film?
"One of my favourite costumes is when, at the end of the film, Jane returns to Thornfield and wears a brown with ribbon print dress which was made from an imported american cotton print fabric based on prints of the time. She wears a bonnet made from a combination of antique and modern straw, fabricated in an openwork design to give it a lightness." (Philippa Warr)
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Crappy Book

Haworth, the hillside hamlet where the Brontes spent their lives, has rabidly tenuous links to the literary sisters coming out of its freezing, rain-sodden ears.

The Bronte Weaving Shed, for instance, promotes itself as very much the kind of weaving shed the Bronte sisters would have been into, had they been into weaving sheds – so much so, that it is perfectly acceptable to suggest it is, indeed, the Brontes’ own weaving shed. Having set foot within the establishment in question, we would beg to differ.
Allow us to explain why.
The Bronte Weaving Shed is, undoubtedly, a shop. Anyone taking a contrary position would be very hard-pressed to make a case. The signs of being a shop are everywhere – the shelves displaying items for sale, the blatant pricing information on the goods, the tills in front of people pressing them and receiving money in exchange for goods. A distant cousin of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill (which lives in exile in England), it sells goods designed to keep you warm when it’s a bit chilly out. However, it has absolutely nothing to do with Emily, Anne or Charlotte Bronte, so don’t even ask.

Read more on http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/
haworthvillage The Bronte Weaving Shed

SCARBOROUGH’S Royal Hotel

 

 Image of the plaques on the Grand Hotel, Scarborough. By John Stephenson, released to the Public domain.

SCARBOROUGH’S Royal Hotel has gone into administration, along with three other

 hotels, putting 159 jobs at risk.

 The famous hotel, built in the 1830s and stayed in by Prime Ministers Winston

 Churchill and Harold Wilson, along with the town’s 70-bedroom Clifton Hotel,

 appointed administrators MCR.

 The 118-bedroom Royal Hotel, which employs 77 people, is known for its famous

 staircase and atrium of the Regency style after the site used to be The Long

 Room, a social venue frequented by the upper classes in the 1700s. It was

 extended in 1863 over six or seven houses, one of which was where Anne Bronte

 died.

 Read more: Gazette Herald Fears_for_future_of_four_Scarborough_hotels/

 royalhotelscarborough

Brontë Parsonage Blog: The Brontës and the Bible - Conference Report

Brontë Parsonage Blog: The Brontës and the Bible - Conference Report: Maddalena De Leo writes: The Brontë Society Conference was held this year at Homerton College, Cambridge from Friday 26 to Sunday 28 Au...