Weblogs and Jane Eyre

Threads of Red

(Fritz Eichenberg, ‘A long grace was said an a hymn sung’, illustration for 1943 Random House edition, filched from Jane Eyre Illustrated which is a fascinating site)

a galli maufry

Jane Eyre and the fairy folk - "Mademoiselle is a fairy," he said, whispering mysteriously

Wuthering Expectations

Victorian Gothic

From the Royal Archives: Queen Victoria

A message from HM Queen Elizabeth II

 

In this the year of my Diamond Jubilee, I am delighted to be able to present, for the first time, the complete on-line collection of Queen Victoria's journals from the Royal Archives.

These diaries cover the period from Queen Victoria's childhood days to her Accession to the Throne, marriage to Prince Albert, and later, her Golden and Diamond Jubilees.

Thirteen volumes in Victoria's own hand survive, and the majority of the remaining volumes were transcribed after Queen Victoria's death by her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, on her mother's instructions.

It seems fitting that the subject of the first major public release of material from the Royal Archives is Queen Victoria, who was the first Monarch to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee.

It is hoped that this historic collection will make a valuable addition to the unique material already held by the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, and will be used to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the past.

Queen Victorias journals

Magic sisters realise Chelsea Flower Show golden dream

They tried ever so hard once, and got silver. Then they tried ever so hard again, and got silver again. But this year the Yorkshire garden at Chelsea has finally achieved its ambition, and been awarded a Royal Horticultural Society gold medal.

That's what the biggest and brashest of England's counties naturally expects; (actually – interesting fact - historic Yorkshire also contains England's second-biggest county: the West Riding on its own beats Devon, Lincolnshire and other such rivals). But the organisers made the mistake of not enlisting the magical powers of the Mighty Sisters until now.

In 2010, the garden was themed on rhubarb and custard, picking up the lore and legend of the 'rhubarb-growing triangle' between Wakefield, Pontefract and Leeds. Last year, a rather architectural construction of drystone walls and the like drew on Yorkshire Artists, with references toDavid Hockney, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.

Not to be outdone. Charlotte Bronte. Photograph: Hulton Getty

But at last, this year, Charlotte, Emily and Bronte appeared in a dream to Gary Verity, the chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire which organises the garden, and said: "Daft ha'porth. It's us you need."

So it has proved. The massive metropolitan cliché mill grinds out unswerving descriptions of the sisters and their moors as wuthering and howling, but we who live here know better. Charlotte herself wrote of Emily after her death and how:

There is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her

And Emily carolled in one of her perhaps less original poems:

May flowers are opening
And leaves unfolding free
There are bees in every blossom
And birds in every tree.

Anyway, Verity arose and his staff carried out the ghostly instructions, recreating the 'Bronte bridge' which crosses the Bronte beck by the Bronte waterfalls on the way to Top Withens (aka Wuthering Heights) above the sisters' home village of Haworth. They also crammed in a goodly stock of plants, making the composition more garden than artificial construction. Although the Brontes were not actually very good gardeners themselves, as the Guardian Northerner recently described, they would surely have approved.

Verity says:

The garden has had a non-stop stream of admirers since The Chelsea Flower Show opened but this was the ultimate goal, taking gold back to Yorkshire. This is the third time we've entered and we're delighted to be going home with a gold medal for the first time. We hope to convert thousands of well-wishers into tourists over the course of the week. 

Tracy Foster, the garden's designer from Leeds, worked closely with theBrontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth throughout the project, describes how the garden tried to source materials from nearby, including boulders from Dove Stones moor:

The stone is beautiful. We have deliberately not cleaned it so it has aged naturally and it is of the period when the girls would have been walking around the Yorkshire Moors and writing their novels. The stone still has its original lichens and mosses attached which look just perfect in the garden and really give a sense of the beauty and bleakness that epitomise the wonderful moorland landscape.

She is properly over the moon, deservedly:

My first Chelsea and I get gold, it doesn't get much better than this! I'm so proud of what we have achieved. I hope the high profile medal inspires more people to come to Yorkshire to see for themselves the landscape that brought gold to the garden.

Yorkshire garden wins Chelsea gold. Gary Verity and Tracy Foster get their gold from Nicky Chapman. Photograph: Welcome to Yorkshire

Always good at linking things, Welcome to Yorkshire has just unveiled a gardens campaign which highlights some of the best gardens to visit in Yorkshire. You can also seethree films here which the Guardian Northernerteam made last year of the progress of the Art of Yorkshire entry.

guardian/welcome-to-yorkshire-garden-chelsea-flower-show-charlotte-emily-anne-bronte-haworth

Yorkshire garden wins Chelsea gold. Gary Verity and Tracy Foster get 

“Being allowed to have my own choice of sights this time—I selected the real rather than the decorative side of Life—I have been over two prisons ancient & modern—Newgate and Pentonville—also the Bank, the Exchange ‘the Foundling Hospital,’—and to-day if all be well, I go with Dr. Forbes to see Bethlehem Hospital.”

Bedlam in 1828

Did Charlotte Brontë actually go to Bethlem? 

There is no further reference to Bethlem in any known Brontë letter, and the many biographers whose books I consulted wrote that the visit had come off without saying how they had confirmed this. In a footnote, Margaret Smith writes that on January 28, Brontë presented a copy of her new novel, Villette, to Dr. John Forbes, the physician who was supposed to take her to the hospital, inscribing it personally “in acknowledgment of kindness.”² This could be taken as confirming the visit, but I wondered if it was enough.

Forbes was a distinguished lung specialist, a friend of Brontë’s publisher George Smith and a former schoolmate of Smith’s father in Scotland. In 1849, at Smith’s suggestion, Brontë had consulted Forbes about the care of her sister, Anne Brontë, who was dying of tuberculosis. It seemed possible that the visit to Bethlem had not come off, but that Brontë wished to thank Forbes for agreeing to take her, and for his help with Anne. After all, she signed books on January 28 for several friends and acquaintances.

Read more: bethlemheritage/just-visiting-charlotte-bronte

----------------------------

Forbes, Dr John (1787–1861):

expert on consumptive diseases who was consulted by post on Anne’s consumption in 1849 and backed the advice of Dr Teale. He was a friend of George Smith’s, and extremely distinguished and in advance of his time. He made Charlotte’s acquaintance after one of Thackeray’s lectures on the English humorists, and on one of her later visits to London (Jan 1853) took her round the Bethlehem Hospital. No doubt it was on this occasion that he told Charlotte of the successful use of chloroform in operations, a remark that Patrick noted in his copy of Graham’s Modern Domestic Medicine . He was also a pioneer in the use of the stethoscope.  blackwellreference

Blogs and "the Tenant of Wildfell Hall"

nathanville/victoriana

Helen Huntingdon, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is a very determined, warm, passionate, brave young woman –far from the prude she is often characterized as - who refuses to be a silent victim and decides to leave her brutish, drunkard husband - thought to be based on Anne's brother, Branwell; she is not only flouting convention but even going against the laws of the land. Fleeing with her small son, she decides to lead an independent existence in a desolate, isolated countryside mansion in Yorkshire earning a living with her paintings. fly high-by-learn online

Clarissa blog

 

“I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.”

- Helen Graham/Huntingdon (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) 

Written by Anne Brontë The killing words

Booktopia 

“There was no light there but the faint red glow of the neglected fire; but I did not want a light; I only wanted to indulge my thoughts, unnoticed and undisturbed; and sitting down on a low stool before the easy-chair, I sunk my head upon its cushioned seat, and thought, and thought, until the tears gushed out again, and I wept like any child. Presently, however, the door was gently opened and someone entered the room. I trusted it was only a servant, and did not stir.”

Anne Brontë – The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
 

Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the only work by Anne Brontë to be adapted for film. In 1996 it was made into a three hour television movie. I believe it is currently out of print, which is a real shame. I have a first edition of 'Charlotte Bronte and her Circle'. The chapter on Anne is really unbelievable in the way it completely discredits her as a writer. I do not have it on hand, but the editor claims, in the introduction (it may even be the first sentence…) that it is a certainly that if it wasn't for her sisters, she and her works would be forgotten. In my humble opinion, an easy test of this claim is to imagine what we truly would have thought of her works if she had not had her sisters' works to compete with. Would they really be so uninteresting, so skilless?

Here is an interesting, although far too brief, article on the Critics of Wildfell Hall 

by Glen Downey. 

Bronteana

(Helen's view of woman's conversation) 'Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she:  'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves, or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?'

Annelle Altman

AUTHOR’S REFACE 
 

ANNE BRONTE TO THE SECOND EDITIONWhile I acknowledge the success of the present work to have been greater than I anticipated, and the praises it has elicited from a few kind critics to have been greater than it deserved, I must also admit that from some other quarters it has been censured with an asperity which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgment, as well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just.  It is scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his censors and vindicate his own productions; but I may be allowed to make here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first edition, had I foreseen the necessity of such precautions against the misapprehensions of those who would read it with a prejudiced mind or be content to judge it by a hasty glance.

 

My object in writing the following pages was not simply to amuse the Reader; neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.  But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of a well, it needs some courage to dive for it, especially as he that does so will be likely to incur more scorn and obloquy for the mud and water into which he has ventured to plunge, than thanks for the jewel he procures; as, in like manner, she who undertakes the cleansing of a careless bachelor’s apartment will be liable to more abuse for the dust she raises than commendation for the clearance she effects.  Let it not be imagined, however, that I consider myself competent to reform the errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain contribute my humble quota towards so good an aim; and if I can gain the public ear at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.

As the story of ‘Agnes Grey’ was accused of extravagant over-colouring in those very parts that were carefully copied from the life, with a most scrupulous avoidance of all exaggeration, so, in the present work, I find myself censured for depicting con amore, with ‘a morbid love of the coarse, if not of the brutal,’ those scenes which, I will venture to say, have not been more painful for the most fastidious of my critics to read than they were for me to describe.  I may have gone too far; in which case I shall be careful not to trouble myself or my readers in the same way again; but when we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear.  To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest?  Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers?  Oh, reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts—this whispering, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.

I would not be understood to suppose that the proceedings of the unhappy scapegrace, with his few profligate companions I have here introduced, are a specimen of the common practices of society—the case is an extreme one, as I trusted none would fail to perceive; but I know that such characters do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not been written in vain.  But, at the same time, if any honest reader shall have derived more pain than pleasure from its perusal, and have closed the last volume with a disagreeable impression on his mind, I humbly crave his pardon, for such was far from my intention; and I will endeavour to do better another time, for I love to give innocent pleasure.  Yet, be it understood, I shall not limit my ambition to this—or even to producing ‘a perfect work of art’: time and talents so spent, I should consider wasted and misapplied.  Such humble talents as God has given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my reader’s immediate pleasure as well as my own.

One word more, and I have done.  Respecting the author’s identity, I would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed to them.  As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him only by his works.  As little, I should think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man, or a woman, as one or two of my critics profess to have discovered.  I take the imputation in good part, as a compliment to the just delineation of my female characters; and though I am bound to attribute much of the severity of my censors to this suspicion, I make no effort to refute it, because, in my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be.  All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anyting that would be proper and becoming for a man.

July 22nd, 1848. Read the book on: Gutenberg

 

What did the Brontes see in may during their walkes??

source: Abigails ateliers

 

May is a busy month as birds get down to the task of nest building and rearing their brood. The weather is warm but danger of frost at night can cause damage to tender plants.

What to see

Resident birds and the arrival of summer migrants such as Swallows, House Martins and Swifts are occupied with the task of building nests and rearing their young. Hawthorn also known as May hedge will be flowering in early to late May dependent on how cold spring has been.

Early in May Bluebells will be flowering in woodland. The leaves on trees will be open during the month. Butterfliessuch as the Orange Tip can be seen on grassland and theGreen Hairstreak which is usually found on heath and moorland.

Key dates:

House Martins first seen 2nd May 2005 Haworth
Swifts first seen at Haworth 15th May 2005, 2nd May 2007, 4th May 2008, 9th May 2009, 1st May 2010, 6th May 2011, 11th May 2012.
22nd May 2005 Hawthorn flowering at Haworth, 7th May 2007, 24th May 2008.Bluebells flowering at Haworth May 8th 2009.
Cuckoo heard 14th May 2005 at Ponden and 23 May 2005 at Haworth Cemetery, Penistone. Heard near Bronte waterfall on 1st May 2007. Heard Long Bridge area 20th May 2011, Heard Haworth area 10th May 2012.Cuckoo Flower, flowering 9th May 2007Cinnabar moth first seen in Cross Roads on 20th May 2007Speckled Wood butterfly seen 13th May 2009

 Look on Bronte weather and see 

a painting of Branwell Bronte

In the Bronte Parsonage Museum are some of Branwells spectacularly bad paintings - one with some angel type figures in a heavenly scene.

Brontë letter detailing interest in ‘Governess-life’ to go under the hammer

A LETTER from Charlotte Brontë hinting at her motivation to write is to go under the hammer.

The three-page letter, which is expected to fetch between £10,000 and £15,000 when it is auctioned at Bonhams book, maps, manuscripts and historical photographs sale in London on June 12.

The recipient of the letter, a Miss Holmes, lived for a while with the family of William Makepeace Thackeray and greatly irritated the author of Vanity Fair with her constant attempts to convert him to Catholicism.

Writing to Miss Holmes, who had sent her an – unidentified – book to read, Charlotte said: “I own I prefer the study of the human being – to that of the human being’s requirements.”

She also comments on the life of a governess – her own former occupation and that of the heroine of her best known novel Jane Eyre – saying: “I must feel a degree of interest in the details of a Governess-life.

“That life has on me the hold of actual experience; to all who live it – I cannot but incline with a certain sympathy; and any kind feeling they express for me – comes pleasantly and meets with grateful acceptance.”

 Yorkshire post

Jeff Kelly: Imagine then my shock while in 1999 touring their home, now a museum, and seeing an actual lock of Emily’s hair!

 Jeff Kelly's Brontëiteness confession. 

Like many before me, I became obsessed with the Brontës, especially Emily, who became, truly, an infatuation.   As I read Wuthering Heights, I found myself thinking of what she may have been thinking while she wrote down the lines.  What she was wearing while she wrote them down.  I imagined her in her small room, writing her musical poems as the night wind “waved her hair.”
I learned that Charlotte later edited her manuscript poems for publication, which I found extremely annoying; how could one hope to go in and “fix” such beautiful language?  (In setting her poems, I have only ever used the original manuscript versions.)
I wondered what she looked like in real life, when she smiled or cried.  How her skin smelled, her hair felt.  I wanted to get in a time machine and go back there.  I imagined what it might have been like, walking along a dirt road and suddenly coming upon Emily and Charlotte, two anonymous girls in their little carriage, on a day trip to Leeds.
The strange thing is, I slowly started to realize that there were thousands of others just like me.  Obsessed.
Imagine then my shock while in 1999 touring their home, now a museum, and seeing an actual lock of Emily’s hair!  (It had been cut off to save, in the tradition of the time, shortly after her death.)
I kept going back to that room, that glass case and looking again and again.  She was real, not some mythical thing I had dreamed up.  I was hesitant to finally leave. bronteblog/beneath-far-gondals-foreign-sky

I wash searching on the internet to find a photograph of the hair of Emily Bronte, but I could'nt. 

I found  Emily Brontë's burnt comb, said to have been used just before she died of consumption on December 19 1848. 

And I found a sample of Mrs. Maria Brontë's hair (dated 1824). 

culture24.uk/history 

Brian Wilks has written to the Telegraph about the planned wind farm on the moors:

Patrick Bronte

 

SIR – Patrick Brontë, the father of the Brontë sisters, would not agree that Brontë country is no longer worth visiting (Letters, May 1) because of wind turbines.

Throughout his 40 years as chairman of the parish council in the first half of the 19th century he encouraged innovation, the piping of drinking water and the cleaning up of open sewers – all “modern” improvements opposed by interested local mill owners.

Haworth Moor is a large open space. There is much in Haworth to attract the tourist – not least the chance to reflect on the improvements encouraged by its parson that turned the stinking slum township into a more habitable space.

Wind turbines would have intrigued Patrick Brontë as examples of what he termed “our scientific age”. Telegraph.co.uk

The garden which was nearly all grass and posessing only a few stunted thorns and shrubs and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect arcadia of floral culture and beauty.

The garden's designer Tracy Foster notes the absence of any detailed references to gardening in Charlotte's letters to friends – the most informative part of the Bronte Society's archive. Andrew Denton of Welcome to Yorkshire says:

She did not discuss gardening or the garden with her lifelong friend Ellen Nussey – and she would have done if it was a part of her life which had strong meaning. It is fascinating, given the sisters' love of the landscape that surrounded them and which provided so much escape and inspiration. Charlotte was a very adept painter of flowers too, but it seems she took little interest in trying to grow her own.

One passage in Nussey's Reminiscences of 1871, reprinted in Early Visitors to Haworth also goes further than the negative evidence of gardening failing to feature in the sisters' papers.

The Parsonage is quite another habitation now from the Parsonage of earlier days. The garden which was nearly all grass and posessing only a few stunted thorns and shrubs and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect arcadia of floral culture and beauty.

Read on: guardian/brontes-sisters-haworth-yorkshire-chelsea-flower-show 

Interesting ideas of the rain in 1848 in combination with the TB in the Bronte Family

The handwriting at the bottom of the text is Patrick Bronte's and he comments:
"Mr S..... surgeon, Leeds, said that change of place or climate, could prove beneficial, only in the early stage of consumption - that afterwards, the excitment caused by change of scene, and beds, and strange company, did harm."
Read more on:
Bronte weather

Ages ago while i was beginning to research the Bronte's lives and the connections to the weather i noticed (from the Shacklton weather records kept from 1801 until 1857) that the year that Branwell Bronte and Emily Bronte died of TB, 1848, had very high rainfall: 40.38 inches when the average rainfall was 32 inches. And of course Anne died of TB in May 1849. So i started to wonder if there is a connection between wet weather having a bad affect on TB. I've tried to get hold of historical writings on TB and also to look at contemporary reports too. However it's not been that easy to find any research that links the two. Read on Bronte weather

The moors shaped their work. But, dear reader, their gardening skills were prosaic at best

flickr.com/photos

 

Their books and poems – even their paintings – evoke the wild beauty that surrounded them at their remote parsonage home. Yet although the Brontë sisters could conjure the elemental splendour of the Yorkshire moors with their pens and brushes, it seems they were sadly lacking when it came to cultivating nature on the small plot outside their home. Research carried out while creating a special Brontë-themed garden for this summer's Chelsea Flower Show has unearthed evidence of the sisters' surprising lack of green-fingered talent. Researchers at the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth, West Yorkshire, discovered repeated references to the women's horticultural failings. 

Flickr.com/photos
 

Among them was one from Charlotte's close friend Emily Nussey who described Haworth in 1871. "The garden, which was nearly all grass, and possessed only a few stunted thorns and shrubs, and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their own bit of fruit garden," she wrote. 

 

 

Two decades earlier James M Hoppin, an early visitor after the cult of the Brontës began to spread after the publication of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, observed "a small flower garden (though rather run to waste now)".

Meanwhile, Charlotte's celebrated chronicler Elizabeth Gaskell, describes the "great change" endured by the author when she moved to Haworth – "a place where neither flowers nor vege- tables would flourish and where a tree of even moderate dimensions might be hunted far and wide".

Tracy Foster, who is designing The Brontës' Yorkshire Garden on behalf of the regional tourism agency Welcome to Yorkshire, conceded that the windswept Pennine conditions were very challenging for both people and plants although the garden flourishes today in the hands of a skilled horticulturalist.

 "They were obviously very observant and made many comments about individual plants and flowers in their poems and novels and also painted them in exquisite detail so they were obviously very aware," she said. "But the conditions they had were very difficult and exposed. Maybe they were just too busy producing great literary works to be great gardeners."

The mid-19th century was a thriving time for gardening. The activity had become fashionable among some of the Brontës' better-heeled acquaintances with the arrival of different plant species from far-flung colonies.

Charlotte painted a number of studies of flowers and plants, including wild roses, primulas and even exotic tiger lilies. Her correspondence reveals that Emily, who wrote while sitting on a small stool in the garden, gratefully received seed from Ellen Nussey. Poems such as The Bluebell (The Bluebell is the sweetest flower) and Love and Friendship (Love is like the wild rose-briar) also reveal the women's interest.

The Chelsea garden will have as its centrepiece The Meeting of the Waters – a favourite moorland spot which the sisters would visit as children. Andrew McCarthy, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: "They were highly attached to the wilderness landscape of the moors rather than the much more cultivated idea of the domesticated garden." Independent

Bronte painting withdrawn from sale in Northamptonshire

 

The sale of a painting believed to show the Bronte sisters has been halted following information that could prove it depicts the literary trio.

The portrait of three women was due to be auctioned in Northamptonshire this week.

But it was withdrawn from sale after a collector came forward about a similar Bronte portrait by the same artist.

The auctioneer said this could prove there was a link between the sisters and the artist, Sir Edwin Landseer.

Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert said: "In light of the new information and its potential significance, we have postponed the sale and will evaluate the strength and implications of what has now come to light.

"This could help prove beyond doubt, the important link between Landseer, one of the 19th century's greatest artists, and the Bronte sisters, English literature's most perennial siblings."

He added: "We can only do our best to prove beyond doubt, and obviously the more information we have the better our conclusion can be." bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england