1905 ten-volume set of the works of the Brontë sisters, valued at more than $1,000

Public Opinion has an alert for this weekend in Chambersburg, PA:
bronte blog

Franklin County Library System's Fall Book and Bake Sale will be held this weekend in the Norlo Park community building off U.S. 30 in Guilford Township.
The sale has more than 20,000 items, including 100 collectible books. Proceeds will benefit library improvements at all Franklin County Library System locations.
A silent auction features first editions and notable items such as a 1905 ten-volume set of the works of the Brontë sisters, valued at more than $1,000; The Carpenter's New Guide, 1854, featuring designs by Samuel Sloan, 19th century architect, valued at $600; and a 1928 collection of gospel poetry written by Rev. Walter R. Gobrecht, pastor of St. John's Reformed Church, Chambersburg. Bidding closes 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
The sale will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

BRUSSELS BRONTË BLOG. Jane Eyre in context

On 15 October the Brussels Bronte Group heard a talk from Dr Sandie Byrne of the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. Rather than taking one theme for her presentation, Dr Byrne gave her audience of students and Bronte fans an overview of the context in which Jane Eyre was written.
This began with a reminder of the historical background to Charlotte Bronte’s most famous novel. Chartism, Catholic emancipation, and the Irish Famine were just some of the issues in the newspapers of Charlotte’s day. In addition, Dr Byrne told listeners that the 1840s – the decade in which Jane Eyre was published – are known as ‘the hungry 40s’, and follow the beginning of economic depression in the mid-1830s. The Napoleonic wars meanwhile had left Britain with a shortage of men.
Jane Eyre is not, as many have claimed, a feminist novel, added Dr Byrne. Rather it is an individualist novel, created in an age when the romantic idea of ‘self’ was being formed. This linked to the “romantic eye”, seen also in Wordsworth and Byron, with the self the centre of all things.  brusselsbronte.blog

Welcome to Voice of the Valleys on-line

I received the following message:

•  I am writing a series for the Haworth newspaper Voice of the Valleys (www.VotV.co.uk) about Branwell and thought i'd share the link with you http://www.voiceofthevalleys.net/branwell-alchemist-sorcerer-artist-junkie.html  Ian.

I really am happy with this information. Thank you very much for sending me.
--------------------------
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Our current issue can be read online by clicking on the front page. 
On this site you will also find more in depth coverage of the articles in the newspaper, so please click on the links below to delve deep into the heart of one of Britain's most famous and exciting locations. Voice of the Valleys.

Patrick Bronte teaching methods

Lessons were an integral part of life in the Brontë household. Patrick gave instruction to his children at regular times each day, “adapted to their respective ages and capacities” (Dearden 1857, qtd. in Barker 1994, 855), but he expected them to take responsibility for managing the outcomes. They were encouraged to commit their lessons to memory and they did so by discussing, playing and weaving new information  into their latest stories and journals. This was a far cry from the dull reciting of numbers and grammar practised in most schools at the time and satirised by Dickens in  Hard Times. At Crofton Hall, Maria and Elizabeth had used Mangnall’s Historical Questions, a standard textbook for repeated question and answer lessons that Charlotte again encountered with less rigour at Roe Head. Patrick Brontë’s teaching methods were radically different. The early biographer Mrs. Chadwick, possibly on the authority of the servant Nancy Garrs, reported that he regularly “made a practice of telling them stories to illustrate a geographical or history lesson, and they had to write it out the next morning. Consequently they thought it out in bed—a habit Charlotte continued all her life in connection with her stories” (63). His accent on storytelling and the primacy of the imagination marks Patrick Brontë as an inheritor of the Romantic tradition. For him, storytelling was as important in cultivating the mind as history and globes. He delighted in tales of adventure and regaled his  children and their friends with “strange stories . . . of the extraordinary lives and doings of people who resided in far off out of the way places but in contiguity with Haworth—stories which made one shiver and shrink from hearing, but they were full of grim humour & interest for Patrick Brontë and his children” (Brontë 1995, I: 600). It was just such local histories of family scandal and usurpation that later fed into the strange events of Emily’s Wuthering Heights. No doubt Patrick also entertained them with tales of Ireland. Charlotte’s mix of political allegory and  fairytale in  Tales of the Islanders (Brontë 1987, I: 21, 99, 140, 196) displays the same fascination for the gothic and the supernatural. Despite her shyness, she had inherited her father’s gift for storytelling and gained a reputation at Roe Head for regaling her schoolmates with stories of sleepwalkers, combining “all the horrors her imagination could create, from surging  seas, raging breakers, towering castle walls, high precipices, invisible chasms and dangers” (Brontë 1995, I: 592). 

A study of natural history and a love of nature was also part of Patrick Brontë’s Romantic ethos. Natural Theology sanctioned the study of nature as a means of revering the earthly grandeurs and design of Creation. Natural history could be justified as morally useful, and the Evangelical movement, which Patrick Brontë supported, gave religious sanction to such pursuits as bird watching and geology. Thus he subscribed to Wordsworth’s view that the beauties of nature were a beneficent force, and he allowed his children to roam freely on the moors accompanied by a servant and later by the family dog. Locals reported that he himself took the children with him on his own “rambles among the hills” (Barker 1994, 108), drawing attention to particular birds, plants or geological formations. 

His books by the naturalists Bewick, Audubon, Goldsmith, and “White of Selbourne” (recommended by Charlotte to one of her  school friends) indicate the extent of his interest in this field and his belief that the hand of providence was in every page of the “great book of  Nature”, the young Charlotte’s second “best book” and a phrase often repeated in the Brontë juvenilia (Alexander and Smith 2003, 338). Patrick’s own verse typically proclaims the beauty of nature as a manifestation of God: 

With heart enraptured, oft have I surveyed, 

The vast, and bounteous works, that God has made. 

The tinkling rill, the floods astounding roar, 

The river’s brink, and ocean’s frothy shore

Patrick Bronte teaching methods

The Brontes and the Bible.

In all his teachings and writing Patrick had emphasised the importance of reading the Bible and his children knew their Bibles inside out. The children each had their own Bible and Prayer Book. Emily was given a bible by her father. Anne had a Book of Prayer from her godmother Fanny Outhwaite and a Bible by her other godmother Elisabeth Firth. Charlotte's New Testament was a gift of the Morgans. 
Patrick was to use the various copies of the Bible and Prayer Books as a tool for instructing the children in the classics. 
the Brontes and religion
The Evangelical Revival

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

Diary of Charlotte Bronte, teacher in Roe Head School. p 3 and 4

[p. 3] dishevelled on his forehead, his tusk-like teeth glancing vindictively through his parted lips, his brown complexion flushed with wine, & his broad chest heaving wildly as the breath issued in spurts from his distended nostrils, while I watched the fluttering of his white shirt ruffles starting through the more than half-unbuttoned waistcoat, & beheld the expression of his Arabian countenance savagely exulting even in sleep, Quashia triumphant Lord in the halls of Zamorna! in the bower of Zamorna's lady! while this apparition was before me, the dining-room door opened and Miss W[ooler] came in with a plate of butter in her hand. "A very stormy night my dear!" said she. "It is ma'am," said I.

Feby the 4th 1836

Friday afternoon. Now as I have a little bit of time, there being no French lessons this afternoon, I should like to write something. I can't enter into any continued narrative—my mind is not settled enough for that—but if I could call up some slight and pleasant sketch, I would amuse myself by jotting it down. Let me consider the other day. I appeared to realize a delicious, hot day in the most burning height of summer, a gorgeous afternoon of idleness and enervation descending upon the hills of our Africa, an evening enfolding a sky of profoundly deep blue & fiery gold about the earth. Dear me! I keep heaping epithets together and I cannot describe what I mean. I mean a day whose rise, progress & decline seem made of sunshine. As you are travelling you see the wide road before you, the field on each side & the hills far, far off, all smiling, glowing in the same amber light, and you feel such an intense heat, quite incapable of chilling damp or even refreshing breeze. A day when fruits visibly ripen, when orchards appear suddenly change from green to gold. Such a day I saw flaming over the distant Sydenham Hills in Hawkscliffe Forest. I saw its sublime sunset pouring beams of crimson through magnificent glades. It seemed to me that the war was over, that the trumpet had ceased but a short time since, and that its last tones had been pitched on a triumphant key. It seemed as if exciting events—tidings of battles, of victories, of treaties, of meetings of mighty powers—had diffused an enthusiasm over the land that made its pulses beat with feverish quickness. After months of bloody toil, a time of festal rest was now bestowed on Angria. The noblemen, the generals and the gentlemen were at their country seats, & the Duke, young but war-worn, was Hawkscliffe. A still influence stole out of the stupendous forest, whose calm was now more awful than the sea-like rushing that swept through its glades in time of storm. Groups of deer appeared & disappeared silently amongst the prodigious stems, & now and then a single roe glided down the savannah park, drank of the Arno & fleeted back again.

[p. 4] Two gentlemen in earnest conversation were walking along in St Mary's Grove, & their deep commingling tones, very much subdued, softly broke the silence of the evening. Secret topics seemed to be implied in what they said, for the import of their words was concealed from every chance listener by the accents of a foreign tongue. All the soft vowels of Italian articulation flowed from their lips, as fluently as if they had been natives of the European Eden. "Henrico" was the appellative by which the talker & the younger of the two addressed his companion, & the other replied by the less familiar title of "Monsignore." That young signore, or lord, often looked up at the Norman towers of Hawkscliffe, which rose even above the lofty elms of St Mary's Grove. The sun was shining on their battlements, kissing them with its last beam that rivalled in hue the fire-dyed banner hanging motionless above them. "Henrico," said he, speaking still in musical Tuscan, "this is the 29th of June." Neither you nor I ever saw a fairer day. What does it remind you of? All such sunsets have associations." Henrico knitted his stern brow in thought & at the same time fixed his very penetrating black eye on the features of his noble comrade, which, invested by habit and nature with the aspect of command & pride, were at this sweet hour relaxing to the impassioned & fervid expression of romance. "What does it remind you of, my lord," said he briefly. "Ah! Many things, Henrico! Ever since I can remember, the rays of the setting sun have acted on my heart, as they did on Memnon's wondrous statue. The strings always vibrate, sometimes the tones swell in harmony, sometimes in discord. They play a wild air just now, but, sweet & ominously plaintive Henrico, can you imagine what I feel when I look into the dim & gloomy vistas of this my forest, & at yonder turrets which the might of my own hands has raised, not the halls of my ancestors like hoary morning [illeg.]. Calm diffuses over this wide wood a power to stir & thrill the mind such as words can never express. Look at the red west—the sun is gone & it is fading. Gaze into those mighty groves supernaturally still & full of gathering darkness. Listen how the Arno moans!

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

Wuthering Heights

Reviews of the screening of Wuthering Heights 2011 at the BFI London Film Festival are appearing:

Wuthering Heights' most successful aspect is the eponymous place itself. Whereas previous versions could easily have been re-titled 'Cathy and Heathcliff', Arnold's new version is very much aboutWuthering Heights itself, rather than simply being set there. Winds blow, rains lash down and the nights are as black as the inside of a buried corpse. The film isn't just earthy - it is muddy and soiled. Arnold is fantastic at conveying a tactile world of rough edges - wood grain, bracken and rock - a gritty world inhabited by moths, beetles and watched over by hovering birds of prey.
Despite Brontë's passionate original text, the film itself almost refuses to present passion. There are no startling scenes which will really move you, and Arnold has perhaps consciously downplayed the text's melodrama. If this was her aim, then she has succeeded. Her Wuthering Heights is a film which will certainly beguile and interest, and demands at least one revisit - given the magnitude of any adaptation's task, perhaps that is enough. (John Bleasdale in CineVue)

Aand more on: Wuthering Heights, by Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre and Bewick

In the Reeds' house, notably said to be at Gateshead, the young Jane Eyre looks at British Birds, as in the novel. But it is the kingfisher that attracts her attention rather than the Arctic scenes that particularly moved her in the original.  At least British Birds reappears when Jane returns to the deathbed of Aunt Reed, indicating that the director had noticed something of the extent to which 'Jane Eyre' is structured around Bewick and bird metaphors.
Jane Eyre 1847 Chapter One.
"The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms. The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly:  it was an object of terror.So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.
Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting:  as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and  when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit  about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.
With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy:  happy at least in my way.
I feared nothing but interruption,”thebewicksociety

A DISCUSSION OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ‘READING’ IN CHARLOTTE BRONTЁ’S THE PROFESSOR

By Anne Collett 

A talk to the Australian Brontë Association 

At the outset I feel I should admit that although I am a Bronte fan, up until very recently it would be more accurate to say that I have been a fan of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre since my first encounter at the age of eleven or twelve.


Interesting: read on: maths.mq.edu.au/bronte

Sketches from Branwell Bronte

 

Branwell Brontë was a promising writer and artist with a rich imagination. Although he was the first of the Brontë siblings to appear in print, he would never gain money or success and was destined to live in the shadow of his three sisters.

In his novel Branwell, Douglas Martin describes how: As the only son, Branwell … is expected to make the fortune for the family and immortalize the Brontë name. Given no formal education, he is painstakingly tutored by his father, and writes endless stories and poems with his sisters in 

their small parsonage home. Haunted by the early deaths of his mother and sister; both named Maria, Branwell is unable to reach his heart’s desire: to be a great artist. He roams from job to job, as painter, railway man, and tutor, constantly writing and sketching, as his sisters spin and fume on the dark moor with the stories that will immortalise them. 

 

maths.mq.edu.au/bronte

branwell_bronte sketches

The life of Feild Marshal the Right Honourable Alexan[d]er Percy, autograph manuscript, 1835

 

leeds branwell

Branwell Brontë, The Monthly Intelligencer

 

Branwell Bronte The Monthly Intelligencer

Dear Nell, October 17th, 1841.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘Upperwood House, October 17th, 1841.

‘Dear Nell,—It is a cruel thing of you to be always upbraiding me when I am a trifle remiss or so in writing a letter.  I see I can’t make you comprehend that I have not quite as much time on my hands as Miss Harris or Mrs. Mills.  I never neglect you on purpose.  I could not do it, you little teazing, faithless wretch.

‘The humour I am in is worse than words can describe.  I have had a hideous dinner of some abominable spiced-up indescribable mess and it has exasperated me against the world at large.  So you are coming home, are you?  Then don’t expect me to write a long letter.  I am not going to Dewsbury Moor, as far as I can see at present.  It was a decent friendly proposal on Miss Wooler’s part, and cancels all or most of her little foibles, in my estimation; but Dewsbury Moor is a poisoned place to me; besides, I burn to go somewhere else.  I think, Nell, I see a chance of getting to Brussels.  Mary Taylor advises me to this step.  My own mind and feelings urge me.  I can’t write a word more.‘C. B.’

The inspiration and imagination of the Brontes.

In the autumn of 1825, Tabitha Aykroyd was employed as cook and housekeeper at Haworth. Her influence on the Brontë children, particularly on Emily, was monumental. Tabby, as she was known, was a native of Haworth and brought to the children the folklore of the Yorkshire moors:


 She told of fairies that danced by the bed-sides in the moonlight, and of those who had seen them. When the peat glowed red on the kitchen hearth and shadows stretched across the stone floor, Tabby made the warm air seem alive with creatures of the fern and heather. (Simpson, 27)

The imaginations of the Brontë children, fired by Tabby's fascinating folktales, encountered the door, in 1826, to further development when the Reverend Mr. Brontë presented twelve wooden soldiers to Branwell. The four siblings created characters and islands around these toys and developed an oral literature that would later be transformed into poetry, constituting the well-known "Gondal" saga that Emily and Anne continued long after Branwell and Charlotte lost interest. Of special note is Emily's choice of names for her special heroes: Sir Walter Scott and the Lockharts. The literary reference seems to indicate an acquaintance with literature, an idea reinforced by Charlotte's "History of the Year 1829": 

We take two and see three newspapers a week. We take the Leeds Intelligencer, Tory, and the Leeds Mercury, Whig, edited by Mr. Baines, and his brother, son-in-law, and his two sons, Edward and Talbot. We see the John Bull; it is a high Tory, very violent. Mr. Driver lends us it, as likewise Blackwood's Magazine, the most able periodical there is. The editor is Mr. Christopher North, an old man seventy-four years of age; the 1st of April is his birth-day; his company are Timothy Tickler, Morgan O'Doherty, Macrabin Mordecai, Mullion, Warnell, and James Hogg, a man of most extraordinary genius, a Scottish shepherd. Our plays were established; Young Men, June 1826; Our Fellows, July, 1827; Islanders, December, 1827. These are our three great plays, that are not kept secret. Emily's and my best plays were established the 1st of December, 1827; the others March, 1828. Best plays mean secret plays; they are very nice ones. Their nature I need not write on paper, for I think I shall always remember them. The Young Men's play took its rise from some wooden soldiers Branwell had; Our Fellows from Aesop's Fables; and the Islanders from several events which happened. (Qtd. in Lane, 63)

The Young Men’s play gave rise to an imaginary colony in Africa called Angria, peopled by the characters represented by the toy soldiers. Although all four of the children were involved in the play at first, Emily and Anne soon branched off into their own imaginary kingdoms, leaving Charlotte and Branwell to manage the affairs of Angria by themselves. Both brother and sister wrote stories, poems, articles, and histories about the colony, and it seems that they were often at odds with each other regarding how events should proceed. Because many of the Angrian tales do not survive, scholars of the Brontë juvenilia face difficulties in piecing together details of the characters and the overall story of the colony.


Charlotte eventually became the dominant creative force behind the play, and she developed complex, interconnected plots that drew on the often-stormy relationships between several main characters. These plots were also strongly influenced by recent events in the political world, as well as by Charlotte’s current choice of reading material. Magical elements permeate the early stories, in which the four siblings feature as all-powerful Genii who control the colony. By the later stories, Charlotte was more interested in the political machinations and romantic entanglements that she wove into her complex plots, leaving the world of fairy tales behind. Her writing shows the influence of various histories and legends, stories like the Arabian Nights, and the literature of Byron, Scott, and contemporary writers.                  

Haworth parsonage through the years

Here is the earliest known image of the Parsonage believed to date from the 1850′s. Notice just the three white steps leading to the front door and the path at the side of the house. Also note the footpath leading to the fields at the back of the Parsonage. This is the path that the girls would of taken to the moors beyond. Just visible is the top of church lane from which the footpath originates. The narrow chimney visible left of centre of the Parsonage is from Patrick’s back kitchen.

Interesting pictures, this one I never saw before. More pictures: brontes remembered 

Above is a view taken around 1900 showing Wades extension. Also visible is The Barn (to the right of the Parsonage) which was a stonemasons workshop in the Brontes day (and just out of shot of the earliest image). It was demolished in 1903. The top of church lane is visible and part of the sunday school.