Bronte restoration cash boost

 

Bronte Spirit chairman Averil Kenyon, centre with councillors Glen Miller and Rebecca Poulsen 

 

An initiative to restore a historic Haworth building has received a £2,500 boost.
Worth Valley ward councillors have allocated the money from the ward investment fund to support Bronte Spirit, which is campaigning to ensure the long-term future of the Old School Room. The Church Street building, which requires major repairs and renovations, was built by the Reverend Patrick Bronte. 
The money was made available by councillors Glen Miller, Rebecca Poulsen and Russell Brown. Coun Miller said: “We were keen to support this project as it still has a long way to go. We’ve given it some start-up costs.” Averil Kenyon, chairman of Bronte Spirit, said she and her colleagues were delighted with this financial backing. We are overwhelmed, it was just so timely,” she said. She added that the money would help with the costs of drawing up a business plan, needed as part of an application for further funding. Her group has staged a pair of open days to give local business people and community leaders a chance to see what potential the property has as a venue. Keighley News

Visit to Haworth

 

 

The house itself still has the bare, slightly scrubbed look that led Charlotte’s biographer Elizabeth Gaskell to comment, “I don’t know that I ever saw a spot more exquisitely clean.” The present director, Andrew McCarthy, shows me around and points out that he is at pains to keep it from becoming a “Brontë reliquary.” (This intention didn’t keep him from setting off for Sotheby’s right before Christmas with $610,000 to bid on a miniature book of Brontë juvenilia that came up for sale; he was outbid by the French.) The rooms have been decorated in keeping with the period of the Brontës; the original sofa Emily is thought to have died on in the dining room is here, as is Anne’s art box, a pair of Charlotte’s white stockings and several of her almost-child-size dresses. (She stood at under five feet.)

Read more about this visit to Haworth 

nytimes/bronte-country-beckons-a-writer-back

Top Withens

From: Bronte Weather

So, on Sunday I went up to Haworth and walked to Top Withins. It's a well trodden path and as it was a mild, sunny day there were lots of others walking out on the moors too. The birds are getting ready for spring. 


We could hear the eerie call of Curlew in the breeze and the crackle of Red Grouse being flushed from the heather.   

And I saw a couple of bees (a honeybee and a bumble bee). We had a butty at the Bronte Waterfalls by the Bronte Bridge and then continued up to Top Withins.


There's a plaque on the ruin that explains "This farmhouse has been associated with 'Wuthering Heights', the Earnshaw home in the Emily Bronte novel. The buildings, even when complete, bore no resemblance to the house she described, but the situation may have been in her mind when she wrote of the moorland setting of the Heights."

Brontes reunited in bronze for concert

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte will be special guests at a concert in their honour on April 1. 
Life-size sculptures of the three famous writers will greet the audience as they arrive to hear the Bronte Mass.
Diane Lawrenson’s bronze sculptures, entitled Three Sisters, will be at the Victoria Theatre, Halifax, from the previous day. The Bronte Mass, along with other classical pieces, will be performed by Halifax Choral Society, the Black Dyke Band and Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra. The Bronte Mass was commissioned by Leeds Philharmonic Chorus in memory of its chairman John Brodwell, who was passionate about the Brontes.
Composer Philip Wilby set music to the poetry of the Bronte sisters and their brother Branwell. 
Choir spokesman Tina Matthews promised a thrilling concert with astounding and “simply glorious” music. 
She added: “The sound is expected to be absolutely amazing with upwards of 200 voices on stage.”


Tickets for the concert cost from £8 to £22 by phoning
Keighley News

Old School Rooms

The latest initiative of Brontë Spirit for restoring and safeguarding the Old School Rooms in Haworth: The voluntary group leading a project to restore one of Haworth’s most historic buildings wants to develop links with the business world. Brontë Spirit is working to safeguard the future of the Old School Room, in Church Street, which was built by the Rev Patrick Brontë. The group is staging open days at the premises Friday and on Saturday. It has invited many members of the district’s business sector along with community leaders to see what potential the building offers. Averil Kenyon, chairman of Brontë Spirit, said: “While we are currently discussing with English Heritage how we can restore the building to its former glory we have to consider what kind of sustainable future the building has. “For the two open days we have invited representatives from the commercial estate agency world to come and talk to us about what kind of business or community use might most easily fit into what the building can offer. “We have also invited companies from many sectors which could easily find a use for the building and community organisations looking to expand their operations now that the Government is asking us to embrace localism, or need extra space to house their current operations. “We’re very optimistic that this building will adapt to a modern use and that will ensure this key structure within the Haworth historical footprint will be saved for future generations to appreciate.” The Old School Room currently has serious problems with its roof and needs major external refurbishments. Mrs Kenyon added: “Our discussions with English Heritage are at an advanced stage and they have been very helpful. (Miran Rahman) Keighley news

Governess gown and mourning gown

 

A few shots of my last years working wardobe and the governess gown and mourning gown which was also a suitable governess outfit 

Abigails ateliersgoverness-gowns

William Weightman

 

appleby in westmorland

 

William Weightman MA. was the son of a brewer from Appleby, Westmorland. Appleby-in-Westmorland is a town and civil parish in Cumbria, in North West England.
He went to Appleby Grammar School. He was a Theology and Classical scholar at Durham university. About 19th August 1839, he became curate to Rev Brontë. The girls gave him the nickname Miss Celia Amelia, and Charlotte described him as...bonny, pleasant, careless, fickle, unclerical. On his arrival, he said that he was engaged to Agnes Walton. She was from Crackenthorpe, near his home town of Appleby, and it was assumed he was intending to marry her, though he flirted with other women, including possibly Anne Brontë. Agnes Walton married a well-to-do farmer, John Horn. In August 1840, he applied to the Bishop of Ripon to be ordained. He lectured at Haworth Mechanics Institute. He was interested in Caroline Dury. He died in 1842 at the age of 28 in a cholera epidemic. He may have contracted the disease in his visits to the sick of the village. He was buried in Haworth Church. He had a brother, Robert, who also became a clergyman, but was ejected from his living on account of his frequent drunkenness. William may have been the model for the character Edward Weston. history.rootsweb.ancestry/calderdalecompanion
------------------------------
Patrick’s curate in Haworth 1839–42. He was born in Appleby, the son of a brewer, and at Durham University studied for a Licentiate in Theology, which he attained shortly before being made a deacon and taking the curacy in Haworth. He was ordained a year later in the summer of 1840. He burst on the Haworth scene like a ray of sunshine. He was handsome, engaging, and fun, and the lives of all those at the Parsonage were enriched by his energy and enthusiasm. One gets the impression from Charlotte’s letters of a young man giving a performance – perhaps as the archetypal inconstant lover from some eighteenth-century comedy. From the start and throughout he professed devotion to the girl he left at home, Agnes Walton, but quite soon we learn of the girl he treated badly in Swansea, then the girls he had on a string in Keighley – Caroline Dury, the vicar’s daughter, and Sarah Sugden, rich and generous with money. His relationship with the daughters of his own vicar was flirtatious, confidential, as if he aimed to entertain them with stories of perpetual lovemaking, if not with the actual thing. He sent them valentines, took them to lectures he was giving in Keighley, even saw to it that they involved themselves in such matters as the Church rates controversy. blackwellreference

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY 
September 29 th 1840. 

'I know Mrs. Ellen is burning with eagerness to hear something about William Weightman. I think I'll plague her by not telling her a  word. To speak heaven's truth, I have precious little to say, inasmuch as I seldom see him, except on a Sunday, when he looks as handsome, cheery, and good-tempered as usual. I have indeed had the advantage of one long conversation since his return from Westmorland, when he poured out his whole warm fickle soul in fondness and admiration of Agnes Walton. Whether he is in love with her or not I can't say; I can only observe that it sounds very like it. He sent us a prodigious quantity of game while he was away--a brace of wild ducks, a brace of black grouse, a brace of partridges, ditto of snipes, ditto of curlews, and a large salmon. If you were to ask Mr. Weightman's opinion of my character just now, he would say that at first he thought me a cheerful chatty kind of body, but that on farther acquaintance he found me of a capricious changeful temper, never to be reckoned on. He does not know that I have regulated my manner by his--that I was cheerful and chatty so long as he was respectful, and that when he grew almost contemptuously familiar I found it necessary to adopt a degree of reserve which was not 
natural, and therefore was very painful to me. I find this reserve very convenient, and consequently I intend to keep it up.' 
------
During the governess and Brussels episodes in Charlotte's life we lose sight of Mr. Weightman, and the next record is of his death, which took place in September 1842, while Charlotte and Emily were in Brussels. Mr. Bronte preached the funeral sermon, {287} stating by way of introduction that for the twenty years and more that he had been in Haworth he had never before read his sermon. 'This is owing to a conviction in my mind,' he says, 'that in general, for the ordinary run of hearers, extempore preaching, though accompanied with some peculiar disadvantages, is more likely to be of a colloquial nature, and better adapted, on the whole, to the majority.' His departure from the practice on this occasion, he explains, is due to the request that his sermon should be printed. 

Mr. Weightman, he told his hearers, was a native of Westmoreland, educated at the University of Durham. 'While he was there,' continued Mr. Bronte, 'I applied to the justly venerated Apostolical Bishop of this diocese, requesting his Lordship to send me a curate adequate to the wants and wishes of the parishioners. This application was not in vain. Our Diocesan, in the scriptural character of the Overlooker and Head of his clergy, made an admirable choice, which more than answered my expectations, and probably yours. The Church Pastoral Aid Society, intheir pious liberality, lent their pecuniary aid, without which all efforts must have failed.' 'He had classical attainments of the first order, and, above all, his religious principles were sound and orthodox,' concludes Mr. Bronte. Mr. Weightman was twenty-six years of age when he died. His successor was Mr. Peter Augustus Smith, whom Charlotte Bronte has made famous in ""Shirley"" as Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield. Mr. Smith was Mr. A. B. Nicholls's predecessor at Haworth. fatalsecret/charlotte_bronte_and_her_circle_by_clement_king_shorter_

ANNE BRONTË, William Weightman

At Anne's return to Haworth, she met William Weightman (1814–1842), Patrick's new curate, who began work in the parish in August 1839.^[39] Twenty-five years old, he had obtained a two-year licentiate in theology from the University of Durham. He quickly became welcome at the parsonage. Anne's acquaintance with William Weightman parallels the writing of a number of poems, which may suggest that she fell in love with him.^[40][41] There is considerable disagreement over this point.^[42] Not much outside evidence exists beyond a teasing anecdote of Charlotte's to Ellen Nussey in January 1842.

It may or may not be relevant that the source of Agnes Grey 's renewed interest in poetry is the curate to whom she is attracted. As the person to whom Anne Brontë may have been attracted, William Weightman has aroused much curiosity. It seems clear that he was a good-looking, engaging young man, whose easy humour and kindness towards the Brontë sisters made a considerable impression. It is such a character that she portrays in Edward Weston, and that her heroine Agnes Grey finds deeply appealing.^[43]

If Anne did form an attachment to Weightman, that does not imply that he, in turn, was attracted to her. Indeed, it is entirely possible that Weightman was no more aware of her than of her sisters or their friend Ellen Nussey. Nor does it follow that Anne believed him to be interested in her. If anything, her poems suggest just the opposite–they speak of quietly experienced but intensely felt emotions, intentionally hidden from others, without any indication of their being requited. It is also possible that an initially mild attraction to Weightman assumed increasing importance to Anne over time, in the absence of other opportunities for love, marriage, and children.

Anne would have seen William Weightman on her holidays at home, particularly during the summer of 1842, when her sisters were away. He died of cholera in the same year.^[44] Anne expressed her grief for his death in her poem "I will not mourn thee, lovely one", in which she called him "our darling".^{[39] wiki/Anne_Bronte
dur.ac.uk/about/interactive/}

‘Charivari.’

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

‘March 17th, 1840.

‘My dear Mrs. Eleanor,—I wish to scold you with a forty-horse power for having told Mary Taylor that I had requested you not to tell her everything, which piece of information has thrown her into tremendous ill-humour, besides setting the teeth of her curiosity on edge.  Tell her forthwith every individual occurrence, including valentines, “Fair E---, Fair E---,” etc.; “Away fond love,” etc.; “Soul divine,” and all; likewise the painting of Miss Celia Amelia Weightman’s portrait, and that young lady’s frequent and agreeable visits.  By-the-bye, I inquired into the opinion of that intelligent and interesting young person respecting you.  It was a favourable one.  “She” thought you a fine-looking girl, and a very good girl into the bargain.  Have you received the newspaper which has been despatched, containing a notice of “her” lecture at Keighley?  Mr. Morgan came and stayed three days.  By Miss Weightman’s aid, we got on pretty well.  It was amazing to see with what patience and good-temper the innocent creature endured that fat Welshman’s prosing, though she confessed afterwards that she was almost done up by his long stories.  We feel very dull without you.  I wish those three weeks were to come over again.  Aunt has been at times precious cross since you went—however, she is rather better now.  I had a bad cold on Sunday and stayed at home most of the day.  Anne’s cold is better, but I don’t consider her strong yet.  What did your sister Anne say about my omitting to send a drawing for the Jew basket?  I hope she was too much occupied with the thoughts of going to Earnley to think of it.  I am obliged to cut short my letter.  Everybody in the house unites in sending their love to you.  Miss Celia Amelia Weightman also desires to be remembered.  Write soon again and—Believe me, yours unalterably,

‘Charivari.’

 Mr. Weightman would appear to have been a favourite. He many times put in an appearance at the parsonage, although I do not recognise him in any one of Charlotte's novels, and he certainly has no place among the three famous curates of _Shirley_. He would seem to have been the only man, other than her father and brother, whom Emily was known to tolerate. We know that the girls considered him effeminate, and they called him 'Celia Amelia,' under which name he frequently appears in Charlotte's letters to Ellen Nussey. That he was good-natured seems to be indisputable. There is one story of his walking to Bradford to post valentines to the incumbent's daughters, when he found they had never received any. There is another story of a trip to Keighley to hear him lecture. He was a bit of a poet, it seems, and Ellen Nussey was the heroine of some of his verses when she visited at Haworth. Here is a letter which throws some light upon Charlotte's estimate of the young man--he was twenty-three years of age at this time. 

Gawthorpe Hall

‘March 19th, 1850.

‘Dear Ellen,—I have got home again, and now that the visit is over, I am, as usual, glad I have been; not that I could have endured to prolong it: a few days at once, in an utterly strange place, amongst utterly strange faces, is quite enough for me.

‘When the train stopped at Burnley, I found Sir James waiting for me.  A drive of about three miles brought us to the gates of Gawthorpe, and after passing up a somewhat desolate avenue, there towered the hall—grey, antique, castellated, and stately—before me.  It is 250 years old, and, within as without, is a model of old English architecture.  The arms and the strange crest of the Shuttleworths are carved on the oak pannelling of each room.  They are not a parvenue family, but date from the days of Richard III.  This part of Lancashire seems rather remarkable for its houses of ancient race.  The Townleys, who live near, go back to the Conquest.

‘The people, however, were of still more interest to me than the house.  Lady Shuttleworth is a little woman, thirty-two years old, with a pretty, smooth, lively face.  Of pretension to aristocratic airs she may be entirely acquitted; of frankness, good-humour, and activity she has enough; truth obliges me to add, that, as it seems to me, grace, dignity, fine feeling were p. 449not in the inventory of her qualities.  These last are precisely what her husband possesses.  In manner he can be gracious and dignified; his tastes and feelings are capable of elevation; frank he is not, but, on the contrary, politic; he calls himself a man of the world and knows the world’s ways; courtly and affable in some points of view, he is strict and rigorous in others.  In him high mental cultivation is combined with an extended range of observation, and thoroughly practical views and habits.  His nerves are naturally acutely sensitive, and the present very critical state of his health has exaggerated sensitiveness into irritability.  His wife is of a temperament precisely suited to nurse him and wait on him; if her sensations were more delicate and acute she would not do half so well.  They get on perfectly together.  The children—there are four of them—are all fine children in their way. 

 

They have a young German lady as governess—a quiet, well-instructed, interesting girl, whom I took to at once, and, in my heart, liked better than anything else in the house.  She also instinctively took to me.  She is very well treated for a governess, but wore the usual pale, despondent look of her class.  She told me she was home-sick, and she looked so.

‘I have received the parcel containing the cushion and all the etcetera, for which I thank you very much.  I suppose I must begin with the group of flowers; I don’t know how I shall manage it, but I shall try.  I have a good number of letters to answer—from Mr. Smith, from Mr. Williams, from Thornton Hunt, Lætitia Wheelwright, Harriet Dyson—and so I must bid you good-bye for the present. 
 

p. 449

Write to me soon.  The brief absence from home, though in some respects trying and painful in itself, has, I think, given me a little better tone of spirit.  All through this month of February I have had a crushing time of it.  I could not escape from or rise above certain most mournful recollections—the last few days, the sufferings, the remembered words, most sorrowful to me, of those who, Faith assures me, are now happy.  At evening and bed-time such thoughts would haunt me, bringing a weary heartache.  Good-bye, dear Nell.—Yours faithfully, ‘C. B.’
 

gawthorpe-hall-

Charlotte Bronte at Gawthorpe Hall

In March 1850 Charlotte went to stay with Sir James and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth at Gawthorpe Hall.

 

cottontimes Dr James Phillips Kay

The magnificent hall lies near Padiham in Lancashire, just off the present A671. The visit was a surrender to a sort of war of attrition waged by Sir James in an effort to get to know ‘Currer Bell’. He was a remarkable man, a great social reformer; in his younger days, as a doctor in Manchester, he had battled against problems of hygiene among the poor and was instrumental in opening schools in workhouses. He lobbied tirelessly for free libraries and free education, and suffered a series of nervous breakdowns throughout his life due to overwork He also had an artistic streak, which drew him to the company of writers. His interest had been aroused by the radical nature of Charlotte’s novel Shirley.

 

The publicity-shy Charlotte found Sir James uncomfortably overpowering, but the romantic in her was captivated by the monumental Jacobean hall with its reminiscences of her beloved Walter Scott, ‘gray, antique, castellated and stately’. She failed to warm to his wife, whom she found graceless and without dignity. Whether or not she felt that lady Kay-Shuttleworth’s 200-year-old ancestry and her family’s stately home (Sir James had taken her name, Shuttleworth, as the price of the inheritance) should have lent her aristocratic aloofness and condescension is not clear, but Charlotte found her hostess’s kind attempts to be friendly ‘painful and trying’. Their pressing invitation to stay with them in London over the season she described as a ‘menace hanging over my head’. The truth was that, apart from her appalling nervousness in strange company, Charlotte had a deep dread of being patronized. Though never completely at ease, she was to thaw somewhat in her attitude to the Kay-Shuttleworths in later years. grimshaw origin Gawt

___________________________
The Kay-Shuttleworths also came to hear about Charlotte Brontë who was becoming a well known author by this time and lived only 12 miles away in Haworth.  They invited her to come and stay, which she eventually did in 1850 and then again in 1855.  She also stayed with the Kay-Shuttleworths at their home in Windermere where she met Mrs Gaskell who became her great friend and wrote the first biography of Charlotte after her death.  During Charlotte’s second visit to Gawthorpe in January 1855 it is said that she insisted walking out in the grounds and caught a chill from which she never managed to recover, she died two months later on 31st March the same year. 



bbc/lancashire/history gawthorpe
wiki/Gawthorpe_Hall     wiki/Sir_James_Kay-Shuttleworth

What did the Bronte Sisters see in March while walking the Moors?

March - an overview

March brings with it the anticipation of Spring; 21st March is the Vernal or Spring Equinox when there is equal periods of night and day and officially marks the start of Spring. March can have warm days, but can still be a reminder that winter still has a grip with snow, heavy rain and cold north winds.

What to see

Lambs will be out on pasture and moorland.

Lapwings which arrived late February will be establishing their territory over pasture and moorland. They are so called because of their undulating flight, and also known as "peewit" due to its characteristic calling sound. You can see their aerobatic tumbling which is part of their courtship ritual and territory display.

Natural food for birds is easier for them to find as the insect population increases and buds appear. Birds such as the Blackbird, Blue Tit, Chaffinch and Robin will be singing more frequently, establishing territories in preparation for nest building and rearing young. Putting out food for them will still help at this time of year as the all too often sudden cold snap can make it difficult.

Frogs will continue to move to breeding ponds to spawn, replacing the frogspawn that may have died from frosts. 

The Brontës' piano

In 2010, for the first time in over 160 years the Brontë family’s cabinet piano was heard again at their former home in Haworth. This historic occasion took place at the Parsonage in June of that year following months of complex conservation work, made possible through the generosity of Florida member Virginia Esson. The piano was originally made by John Green of Soho Square.

 It is not known for certain when the Brontës acquired their piano. Branwell Brontë developed a talent for both piano and church organ and it was possibly at his instigation that the instrument was acquired. Emily was described as playing ‘with precision and brilliancy’, and during her time as a student in Brussels, her ability warranted the services of the best available professor of music. Anne preferred to sing, though she was able to accompany herself on the piano. The family exception was Charlotte, whose poor eyesight proved an impediment to sight reading.

The piano has an interesting history: it was lent to Mr Grant, the curate of Oxenhope by Patrick Brontë after his children’s deaths, and then sold at an auction of Brontë items in 1861. It then passed through numerous hands before being put up for sale at Sothebys in 1916 as part of the collection of J.H. Dixon. Dixon’s wife was not satisfied with the price offered and withdrew the piano from the sale, presenting it instead to the Parsonage in memory of her husband.

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

Cabinet pianos were popular in the 1830s and 1840s but today are rather unusual when compared to the more valuable pianos such as the Grand.

Top Withens

A professional photographer will chart the decay of a ruined farmhouse high on the Yorkshire hills, which is passed by thousands of walkers on the Pennine Way. Top Withens is also visited by countless tourists who make the walk to the ruins, almost 1,400ft (423m) up on the moors above Stanbury in West Yorkshire. Local photographer and videographer Simon Warner will showcase the progressive ruination of the building, said to be the location in which Emily Brontë set Wuthering Heights in her novel.“It’s a special place to so many people: ashes have been scattered there and I know of at least one person who has proposed to his girlfriend at Top Withens. “But why is it so important? Obviously it has the Brontës link; Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath both wrote poems about the site and many photographers have captured the scene over the years. But is there more to it than that? photographer--pennine-way-farm-building

‘L’Ingratitude’

From: charlotte-bronte

‘L’Ingratitude’ turned up in the course of my research for a biography of Constantin Heger, who taught Emily and Charlotte Brontë French during their time in Brussels and with whom Charlotte fell in love. I’d been trying to find out about his brother Vital, a sales representative for the royal carpet factory in Tournai and decided to look through the catalogue of the Musée royal de Mariemont for any mention of him – its eclectic holdings include carpets – and found a reference to a manuscript by Charlotte Brontë about a rat. It turned out to be the first piece of French homework Charlotte had written for Heger, lost since the First World War.

Early in February 1842, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, then aged 25 and 23, went to Brussels to board at the pensionnat run by Claire Zoë Parent on the long since demolished rue Isabelle. The sisters went to Belgium to complete their education, in the hope that they might one day open their own school back in Yorkshire. Parent’s husband, Constantin Heger, who taught at the nearby Athénée Royal, also taught French literature at the pensionnat. By all accounts a gifted and dedicated teacher, he gave Emily and Charlotte homework – devoirs – based on texts by the authors they had studied in class. They were to compose essays in French that echoed these models, and could choose their own subject matter: ‘I cannot tell on what subject your heart and mind have been excited. I must leave that to you,’ Heger told them, as he told Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte’s first biographer, after Charlotte’s death. Heger encouraged the Brontës’ writing, but demanded that they pay attention to their craft. ‘Poet or not … study form,’ he once admonished Charlotte. He often returned their essays drastically revised – sadly, there are no comments on this copy of ‘L’Ingratitude’.