A Byronic hero. That man of loneliness and mystery.

The Brontë children had a copy of Moore’s book, read it repeatedly, and offered it as reading to their friends. In a letter to Ellen Nussey, Charlotte writes, “for Biography, read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Lockhart’s Life of Burns, Moore’s Life of Sheridan, Moore’s Life of Byron [. . .]” (Barker 220). Moore’s biography was especially useful to the Brontës as they interpreted and presented their own versions of Byron.

 

There were primarily three different kinds of reactions to Byron during the middle of the nineteenth century, and each Brontë sister represents a different kind of response. Emily is considered the most Romantic of the three sisters, thus it is not too surprising to find that she consistently provides a full-scale adoption of Byron in both her poetry and her novel Wuthering Heights. 

In contrast, Anne seems the most stereotypically Victorian of the three, and therefore tends to exhibit large-scale rejection of Byron in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. And finally, while Charlotte’s poetry demonstrates imitation of Byron, Jane Eyre allows for co-option of him only after punishment and reform, making Charlotte somewhat ambivalent about Byron.

 
There are at least three significant conclusions that can be reached as a result of tracing Byron’s influence on female authors across the whole of the nineteenth-century. First, Byron is extremely relevant over the course of the hundred years. He is still interacting with the English, even after he’s been dead for two generations. This demonstrates how popular he really was, how varied and how lasting his image became.

His influence helped to shape many of the key literary characters in all of British

literature; his heroes become Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Rochester in Jane Eyre.

etd.lsu.edu

 

A Byronic hero:

• A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess "heroic virtue" in the usual sense; instead, he has many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is "larger than life," and "with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as [a traditional] hero" (Thorslev 187). 
• He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It does not matter whether this social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or is self-imposed. Byron's Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated from society, whereas Childe Harold chose to "exile" himself and wander throughout Europe. Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any means "social."
• Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself. Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself (Thorslev 197). In one form or another, he rejects the values and moral codes of society and because of this he is often unrepentant by society's standards. Often the Byronic hero is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime. Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.

Tom Winnifrith comments that a "study of the Brontes' juvenilia provides confirmatory evidence of the sisters' preoccupation with the aristocracy, their emancipation from Victorian prudery, and the attraction of the Byronic hero, beautiful but damned" .

ByronicHero

wiki/Byronic_hero

Gondal poems

A page from Emily's notebook, showing her Gondal poems

I made a collage

the Bronte parasol

Anne reacted on my lastblog":

Auntie Eleanor (b. 1899-d. 2001) had the Bronte parasol given to her by the Bronte housekeeper.

Martha died in 1882 ( in 1880, see reaction Anne)) so I gather someone else in the Brown family gave it to Eleanor, perhaps one of Martha's many nieces who got it from Martha or another one of the 5 original Brown daughters as most of them worked at the parsonage on and off and could be considered "the house keeper", Martha of course being the most constant one. 

The very delicacy of this item helped to persevere it for us today imo.. From the start it would be understood as too dainty to be used for "make do" unlike other Bronte items. I believe one of Charlotte's dresses was altered and used by a Brown niece as a little girl !

I love your comments, Anne!
 

Parasol that belonged to Charlotte Brontë has returned ‘home’

 
In August, I (Susan Calder)_wrote a blog post about Charlotte Bronte’s umbrella owned by my aunt in New Brunswick. Aunt Edith has been trying for years to get the umbrella to the Bronte museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire, UK. Her efforts have been stalled due to the umbrella handle being constructed of ivory, a banned substance.
A few days after the post, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from Julie Akhurst on behalf of the Bronte Parsonage Museum. My post had appeared in their Google Alert for anything remotely connected to the Brontes. Julie said the staff had read my account with fascination and remembered the case clearly. The person who was dealing with it at their end left shortly afterwards and the correspondence lapsed susancalder/charlotte-brontes-parasol

Aunt Edith was born in England. Her family immigrated to St. Andrews, NB, when she was ten.  She grew up and met my father’s brother, Charles (Chick). They married and settled in Fairhaven, his home fishing village on Deer Island, NB.
Edith mentioned that she came from a village near Haworth, home of the literary Bronte sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Some 100 years ago or more,  Edith’s aunt came into possession of an umbrella owned by Charlotte Bronte. She passed the umbrella down to Edith.
susancalder/charlotte-brontes-umbrella/


Here’s Aunt Edith’s explanation:

 

My parents were born in Oxenhope, a village connecting to Haworth. My grandparents and aunts lived there. Auntie Eleanor (b. 1899-d. 2001) had the Bronte parasol given to her by the Bronte housekeeper. I don’t know when that was but Eleanor was quite young. In the mid 20th century she gave it to my sister Anne who lived in R.I. U.S.A. After Anne died in 2004 I inherited it.

 

The Telegraph & Argus very belatedly (at least on the website) reports the donation of Charlotte Brontë's parasol to the Parsonage.
A silk parasol that belonged to Charlotte Brontë has returned ‘home’.
And its arrival at the Parsonage Museum has fulfilled a long-held dream for 96-year-old Edith Calder, whose family emigrated to Canada from Oxenhope – together with the parasol – in 1927.
For years she had wanted the item to head back to the one-time family home of the Brontës, but the parasol was wrongly thought to have an ivory handle and therefore couldn’t be imported.
However, a new assessment showed the material was in fact bone, and paperwork was quickly processed to transport the prized object back to the UK.
It is now on display in Charlotte’s old bedroom.
“We can’t thank Edith enough for her generosity gifting us this precious family treasure,” said Professor Ann Sumner, executive director of the Brontë Society and the Parsonage Museum.”
The parasol – in dark brown, fringed silk – passed to Mrs Calder’s family after it was given to an ancestor by Martha Brown, the Brontës’ maid, as a token of thanks.
Brontë Society chairman, Sally McDonald, said: “Thanks to Edith Calder, we can reflect on what an extraordinary journey this parasol has made across oceans and back. We are delighted visitors to the museum and society members alike can all enjoy this special story.”

Haworth Church tower

You can find some rather wonderful surprises if you're the type of person who likes scrambling around on top of church towers... We've just received this wonderful picture of a grotesque at the top of Haworth Church tower (I had to look it up, but 'gargoyles' are ugly stone faces with a water spout coming through the middle of them; 'grotesques' are the same thing minus the water spout). This is completely new to us, and we suspect it's the first time it's ever been photographed! facebook

Charlotte Bronte, a Tory

Politically a Tory, she preached tolerance rather than revolution. She held high moral principles and, despite her shyness, was prepared to argue for her beliefs.
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The Taylors were an old and respected, but unconventional, Yorkshire textiles family. The six children were encouraged by their father, a fierce radical in religion and politics, to develop independence of thought and action and freedom of expression.

Joshua Taylor was an educated, cultured and strongly cosmopolitan influence upon them. The Taylors exported cloth to Europe and America and had strong European connections. They often travelled in Europe on business and pleasure and had relatives living in Brussels. In the 1830s Charlotte Brontë sometimes stayed at Red House. She greatly enjoyed her visits, writing that:

‘… the society of the Taylors is one of the most rousing

leasures I have ever known.’ (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, 15 April 1839)
 

Mary Taylor later wrote about Charlotte’s visits:

‘We used to dispute about politics and religion. She, a Tory and clergyman’s daughter, was always in a minority of one in our house of violent Dissent and Radicalism.’ (Mary Taylor to Mrs Gaskell, 1856) RedHouse-MaryTaylor ----------------------------------

Tory refers to those holding a political philosophy (Toryism) commonly regarded as based on a traditionalist and conservative view which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom. English Tories from the time of the Glorious Revolution up until the Reform Bill of 1832 were characterized by strong monarchist tendencies, support for the Church of England, and hostility to reform, while the Tory Party was an actual organization which held power intermittently throughout the same period.^[11] Since 1832, the term "Tory" is commonly used to refer to the Conservative Party and its members. wiki/Tory  

The Conservative Party traces its origins to a faction, rooted in the 18th-century Whig Party, that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger (Prime Minister of Great Britain 1783–1801 and 1804–1806). Originally known as "Independent Whigs", "Friends of Mr Pitt", or "Pittites", after Pitt's death the term "Tory" came into use. This was an allusion to the Tories, a political grouping that had existed from 1678, but which had no organisational continuity with the Pittite party. From about 1812 on the name "Tory" was commonly used for the newer party. wiki/Conservative_Party
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Mr. Bronte himself had been living amongst these very people in 1812, as he was then clergyman at Hartshead, not three miles from Rawfolds; and, as I have mentioned, it was in these perilous times that he began his custom of carrying a loaded pistol continually about with him. For not only his Tory politics, but his love and regard for the authority of the law, made him despise the cowardice of the surrounding magistrates, who, in their dread of the Luddites, refused to interfere so as to prevent the destruction of property. The clergy of the district were the bravest men by far. There was a Mr. Roberson, of Heald's Hall, a friend of Mr. Bronte's, who has left a deep impression of himself on the public mind. He lived near Heckmondwike, a large, straggling, dirty village, not two miles from Roe Head. It was principally inhabited by blanket weavers, who worked in their own cottages; and Heald's Hall is the largest house in the village, of which Mr. Roberson was the vicar. At his own cost, he built a handsome church at Liversedge, on a hill opposite the one on which his house stood, which was the first attempt in the West Riding to meet the wants of the overgrown population, and made many personal sacrifices for his opinions, both religious and political, which were of the true old-fashioned Tory stamp. He hated everything which he fancied had a tendency towards anarchy. He was loyal in every fibre to Church and king; and would have proudly laid down his life, any day, for what he believed to be right and true. But he was a man of an imperial will, and by it he bore down opposition, till tradition represents him as having something grimly demoniac about him. egaskell/cbronte
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Disraeli is not the only early Victorian Tory novelist whose brilliance puts today's fictionally challenged Conservative MPs in the shade. This writer was intensely interested in politics from early childhood and was reactionary enough to have opposed the franchise-extending Reform Bill of 1832. Perhaps surprisingly to those who see her as a radical feminist, I'm talking about Charlotte Brontë, who made her contribution to the "condition of England" novel in 1849, a few years after Disraeli completed his trilogy.
Shirley, Charlotte Brontë's second published novel, is a story of industrial unrest and class conflict which confounds some of today's critics with its failure to address Chartism. Yet to appreciate it artistically it's important not to make anachronistic judgments. Indeed, putting it in a Disraelian context might be a new way of making sense of this novel which many readers, fresh from the exhilaration of reading the more instantly appealing Jane Eyre, have found so strange and difficult.
Though she retained her hero-worship of the Duke of Wellington, Brontë had by 1849 modified her politics to the extent that she could no longer be accused of being an intransigent "high Tory". The high Tories in Shirley are shown to be as limited in their way as the Whig manufacturer whose heart has become a machine. Instead, in the character of Shirley Keeldar, Brontë offers something that looks suspiciously like a modified Young England Toryism. As an enlightened aristocrat, Shirley is the fount of regeneration in the district: not only does she relieve the distress of the poor with her paternalistic charity, but the manufacturing interests are dependent on her too if they are to survive (in a more humane form). She is also close to the land, which she worships as mother nature in Romantic vein, and prefers feeling and imagination to reason and commerce.  In her flambuoyant disregard for social convention, Shirley has what could almost be called a female Byronism which recalls the young Disraeli. If, politically, the novel has something in common with Young England, aesthetically it harks back to Disraeli's earlier works. Despite the dazzling figure of Shirley Keeldar, though, the novel is fundamentally anti-idealistic. Its anti-Utopian stance sets it in a line of Tory pessimism going right back to Swift and Dr Johnson. guardianreview

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Besides Mary Taylor's deep friendship with Charlotte Bronte, there are many other motivations to read this fascinating novel. Mary Taylor is wonderful at descriping the working class as complex and interesting characters and her politics are more radical than Charlotte's. Taylor manages to capture the Yorkshire dialect without snobishness. Charlotte was a political Tory/conservative and could often write harsly of the poor working class struggle for equality and respect (see her novel Shirley). And for anyone who has studied Victorian feminism, this novel is a great reflecting point. It's a shame that Mary Taylor did NOT save her letters from Charlotte nor hand them over to biographer and fellow Victorian novelist aElizabeth Gaskell, because the intellectual and literary discussions the two writers would have engaged in would have been fascinating to read -- especially their positions on women's education, marriage, children, and careers. Miss-Miles-Tale-Yorkshire-Years 

The Taylors

Red House. House of the Taylors

Taylor, Joshua (known as Joshua II) (1766–1840):
Father of Mary. His family had been involved in the cloth trade for many generations. He himself was of a type new and fascinating to Charlotte when she visited the family: he was a manufacturer who could talk broad Yorkshire when it suited him, where others might be fearful of compromising their “gentry” status, but who was a traveled man, a first-rate French speaker, and one who kept abreast of artistic and intellectual trends in Britain and (especially) on the Continent. So a figure who was radical (in the early nineteenth-century sense), a republican, and a man of wide culture invaded Charlotte’s Tory, provincially limited mind, to exhilarating effect. She found the whole family much more stimulating than the Nusseys, and Joshua contributed to various families in the juvenilia, as well as eventually to Mr De Capell in “Ashworth,” York Hunsden in The Professor , and Mr Yorke in Shirley . When Charlotte knew Joshua he had been a declared bankrupt since 1826. He was determined to repay in full the losses of “my suffering creditors” ( Leeds Intelligencer , 16 Feb 1826), and they in their turn realized it was better for the cloth-manufacturing concern, with its lucrative government contracts for army uniform cloth, to continue. Initially five shillings in the pound was paid, but three years after Joshua II’s death the creditors had been paid off in full.

Taylor, Mrs Anne (1781–1856):
Mother of Mary, disliked by Charlotte and apparently by nearly everyone she came in contact with. She is depicted as Mrs Yorke in Shirley – autocratic, narrow-minded, repressing every sign of joy, originality, and vigor in those around her. After her husband’s death her children fled the Red House, except Joshua, who with his family stuck with her until 1845, when he left her in sole occupancy of the family home for the rest of her life – years in which she probably fulfilled Charlotte’s prophecy that “her unhappy disposition is preparing for her a most desolate old age” (to EN, 20 Nov 1845). The nature of her relationship with her energetic and free-thinking husband is a mystery. Charlotte speaks of her having “made her spouse give up his pre-matrimonial friends & kin” (to EN, 3 or 10 Aug 1851?), a piece of subservience on his part that seems quite out of character both with his real-life character and his depiction as Mr Yorke. In Shirley Charlotte suggested that Yorke’s “shadowy side found sympathy and affinity in . . . his wife’s uniformly overcast nature” (ch. 9). This seems an unsatisfactory explanation for the real-life situation. It seems likely that Joshua left to his wife the early upbringing of the children, hence Mary’s declaration that they never “ventured to speak at all” (MT to CB, 13 Aug 1850)

Taylor, Joshua (known as Joshua III) (1812–80):
Son of the above. He inherited leadership of the family business on his father’s death, and the Red House on his mother’s (he and his family had tried to live with his widowed mother, but the experiment had predictably failed). His wife was a Moravian, and the family was active in that church. He seems to have run the business competently, employing a large workforce, but his nature was moody, jealous, and changeable (Charlotte’s unattractive and menacing picture of him as Matthew Yorke in Shirley seems to have been generally accepted), and he is never mentioned by his sister Mary. At the end of his life he became a victim of grasping spiritualists. 

Taylor, Joseph (Joe) (?1816–57):
Brother of Mary Taylor, whom he helped and supported during her early years in New Zealand. He was the male Taylor who most fascinated Charlotte, as a human study in himself, and perhaps because she realized she had not exhausted his possibilities in the character of Martin Yorke in Shirley . He was talented, mercurial, and often generous. He was also aggressive, self-obsessed, and inconsiderate. Charlotte speaks of his “organ of combativeness and contradiction” (to EN, 1 July 1852), but could at times admire his devotion and “great kindness” to his wife and to the child to which they both showed “unbounded indulgence” (to MW, 30 Aug 1853). She spoke most admiringly of the young Joe – “worthy of being liked and admired also” (to EN, late June 1843?) – but as his puppyish self-regard and heedlessness took hold of him she lost patience with him entirely. Joe for his part managed to call at the Parsonage surprisingly often, not from any romantic interest in Charlotte, so perhaps because he valued her judgment, wanted to impress her, or eventually because she was a “celebrity” to be cultivated. She, for her part, thought well enough of him to make him a trustee of her wedding settlement. It was in the years after Brussels that Charlotte was most critical of him, particularly his heartlessness and chronic inclination to flirt with vulnerable single women.

Taylor, Mary (1817–93):

Daughter of Joshua Taylor II, a school friend of Charlotte’s at Roe Head who remained her friend for life: to her other lifelong school friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte wrote: “I have in fact two friends you & her staunch & true” (20 Jan 1842). Mary Taylor’s account of their schooldays together enlivens Gaskell’s Life (ch. 2), particularly the visual impression Charlotte made on her (“a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something”) and her reaction to Charlotte’s account of the games and compulsive writing of herself and her siblings (“I told her sometimes they were like growing potatoes in a cellar”). However, her memory that Charlotte spoke with a strong Irish accent has been questioned. The friendship between Charlotte and Mary flourished after they left Roe Head, and there were frequent references to letters passing between them – letters almost all now lost, since they were not kept. When Charlotte went to teach at Roe Head the intimacy with the whole family could be resumed. Mary and Martha stayed at the Parsonage in June 1838, and Mary alone in June 1840 and December 1844. On one of these first two occasions, if Charlotte’s observation was correct, Mary began to conceive a romantic interest in Branwell, whose attitude to her changed immediately to contempt – an interesting sidelight on both characters.

Taylor Martha (1819–42):
Tthe ebullient and charming youngest daughter of the Taylors, often described by Charlotte in adjectives connoting childish qualities, though in fact she was only her junior by three years. She knew Martha at home, and then at Roe Head, and words like “chatter,” “clatter,” and “vivacity” cling to her accounts of her, as well as references to her “constant flow of good-humour” (to EN, 9 June 1838). This was during the visit Mary and Martha made to the Parsonage, a notable milestone in the relationship between the families. Even when Charlotte complains of her, there is a good-humored toleration behind the words: “you have a peculiar fashion of your own of reporting a saying or a doing and Martha has a still more peculiar fashion of re-reporting it” (to EN, 17 Mar 1840). The close relationship continued in Brussels where she and Mary were pupils at the Château de Kockleberg (more expensive than the Pensionnat Heger). Taylors, Dixons, and Brontës enjoyed frequent meetings, marred only by Emily’s noncommunication. Martha’s end came quickly – so much so that Charlotte heard of it too late to visit the deathbed. The cause of her death was almost certainly cholera – the idea that she might have died in childbirth rests more on speculation than documentation, and the haste of her burial and lack of information on the death certificate were probably a vain attempt to protect the school from ...

Taylor, Ellen (1826–51):
Cousin of the Red House Taylors, daughter of William and Margaret (née Mossman) Taylor, both of whom died in the 1830s. A maternal uncle, G. R. Mossman, cared for her for some time, and another uncle, Abraham Dixon, took an interest. Plans to send her to the Heger school in Brussels were abortive, and in 1849 she and her brother William Henry sailed for New Zealand, where their cousins Mary and Waring Taylor had been established for some years. By then she was probably already tubercular, but Mary had great joy in the early days of their companionship and partnership. They established and ran a shop, each alternating housework and shopwork week by week. Letters, sometimes joint ones, speak of their happiness together: they sketch on Sundays, hoping to send a batch home, though they “seldom succeed in making the slightest resemblance to the thing we sit down to” (MT to CB, 5 Apr 1850); they go out more, because Ellen is a more welcome guest than Mary alone was; they talk about how much profit will secure an “independence” and enable them to return home. The shop was a modest success, aided by gifts from Mary’s brothers John and Joe. But all the time there is the undercurrent of Ellen’s ill-health. “I fear hers will not be a long life” wrote Charlotte, experienced in short female lives (to EN, 6 Jan 1852). blackwellreference

taylor-mary
MaryTaylor

MARY TAYLOR,
Birth: b. 26 Feb 1817, Gomersall; d. 01 Mar 1893, High Royd Gomersall
"Quiet but self-possessed, she was an admirable businesswoman, with a way of going straight to the point that was at times disconcerting...Miss Taylor was indeed a remarkable woman - probably in her mental endowments the strongest woman who came within the Bronte circle". Cleckheaton Guardian 24 Dec 1903. maggieblanck/Taylor

Casterton School, the former Cowan Bridge

Not unexpected but sad news anyway from Casterton School, the former Cowan Bridge. In The Westmoreland Gazettte

Nearly 200 years of education for girls has come to an end with parents, pupils and staff bidding an emotional farewell to Casterton School.
The independent boarding school, near Kirkby Lonsdale, merged with Sedbergh School in March with the amalgamation kicking in from September.
On Saturday, British yachtswoman Dee Caffari was guest speaker at a special assembly, which formed part of the annual speech day and prize-giving ceremony.
There were tears as the occasion marked not only the end of term, but the end of an era – the last full day of the 190-year-old school whose first pupils included the Brontë sisters.

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Casterton School is an independent boarding and day school for ages 3 to 18 years in the village of Casterton in rural Cumbria. Boys are admitted up until age 11 years. Boarding is for girls only from age 8 and above.

History

Casterton School was founded in 1823 by Rev Carus Wilson as the Clergy Daughters' School in Cowan Bridge to educate daughters of financially disadvantaged clergymen. It moved to its current site at Casterton in 1833. Four of the Brontë sisters (Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily) attended the former Cowan Bridge School. A stone inscription to commemorate this is present at the original site and the current Casterton School still acknowledges the literary connection by naming buildings accordingly.
In 2000 boys were admitted to the junior school.^[1]
Following a decline in pupil numbers, in March 2013 a merger was announced with Sedbergh School, effective from September 2013. Casterton's prep department will remain on its site as Sedbergh's junior school will be moved there. Senior pupils will transfer to the main campus in Sedbergh.^[2]

Wilson, Rev William Carus (1791–1859):

Wealthy clergyman, ordained in 1816 (after having earlier been refused ordination because of “Calvinist” tendencies), the founder of the Clergy Daughters’ School, situated first at Cowan Bridge, later at Casterton (and still there as Casterton School). He was, in many of his aspects, the original of Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre . The school undoubtedly answered to a great need, both educating and where possible finding posts as teachers or governesses for the daughters of clergymen. Wilson was clearly sharp-eyed and intelligent in identifying spheres for action, as in his later concern for British and foreign soldiers, and for the education of servants. His wealth, and the tenacity of his character, meant that he was generally to be found when evangelical causes were being promoted in the North of England. The outlines of a case for him can be found in Wroot’s Persons and Places (1935), where an obituary of him by the then Bishop of Rochester speaks of him as “the father of the cheap religious literature of the day” and its “blessed results,” and sums up his character as “remarkable for energy and a moral courage that was sometimes sublime, a most singular forgetfulness of self, and the deepest humility.” The reason we are surprised by this is attributable to Charlotte’s Brontë’s great novel. blackwellreference 

Nice knowlidge:
Bronte House was formed in 1933 and named in honour of Charlotte Bronte. Bronte was originally called 'Charlotte Bronte House' hence the CB on the badge. Charlotte Bronte based her novel Jane Eyre on Cowan Bridge School, the predecessor of Casterton School
Houses-at-St-Catherines

photo-galleries-cowan-bridge

"Where did you get this?" said he.

On this day in 1848 Charlotte and Anne Bronte visited London to meet their publisher and revealed their true identity. The Bronte sisters had been using the pseudonyms Acton Currer and Bell.

Read what happened on this day kleurrijkbrontesisters/-charlotte-and-anne
kleurrijkbrontesisters/blog-post

In George’s account of the meeting he said:

“That Saturday morning I was at work in my room, when a clerk reported that two ladies wished to see me. I was very busy and sent out to ask their names. The clerk returned to say that the ladies declined to give their names, but wished to see me on a private matter… Two rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking… one of them came forward and presented me with a letter addressed in my own handwriting to ‘Currer Bell, Esq.’ I noticed that the letter had been opened, and said, with some sharpness, ‘Where did you get this?’

‘From the post-office,’ was the reply; ‘it was addressed to me. We have both come that you might have ocular proof that there are at least two of us. This then was `Currer Bell' in person. I need hardly say that I was at once keenly interested, not to say excited. Mr. Williams was called down and introduced, and I began to plan all sorts of attentions to our visitors. I tried to persuade them to come and stay at our house.
ourcivilisation/anecdtes/bronte

paperspast

Steampunk

A two-day festival in Haworth celebrating the increasingly popular Steampunk movement could attract hundreds of aficionados from across the country. Scheduled to take place in November, the event would be the first of its kind in the district, and organisers hope it eventually becomes as successful as a similar gathering in Whitby.

The Steampunk movement is based around the idea of science fiction set in the past, specifically the Victorian era – a world that incorporates steam power and other Victorian technology, rather than electricity and computers.

She added: “The outfits are exquisite, so much time money and effort goes into them. They would look so good wandering down our main street. We’ve got the old buildings and the steam railway – Haworth is the perfect surrounding to do something like this. It’s different from what it’s seen before, something exciting and different, but it still complements the normal Victorian Christmas celebrations. Read all: thetelegraphandargus

The Nussey Family

Ellen Nussey was a friend of Charlotte Bronte. She was born in 1817. She was the daughter of John Nussey and Ellen Wade. Ellen Nussey attended Roe Head School where Margaret Wooler was headmistress, and where she met Charlotte Bronte. Ellen Nussey died in 1897.

Nussey was the twelfth child of John Nussey, a cloth merchant of Birstall Smithies, near Gomersal in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and his wife Ellen, née Wade. Nussey first attended a small local school before progressing to the Gomersal Moravian Ladies Academy. Nussey and Brontë first met in January 1831, when they were both pupils at Roe Head School, near Dewsbury in Yorkshire. They corresponded with each other regularly over the next 24 years, each writing hundreds of letters to the other.

Richard Nussey was born in 1803. He was the son of John Nussey and Ellen Wade. Richard Nussey married Elizabeth Charnock. Richard Nussey Inherited uncle Richard Nussey's interest in the family's mills at Birstall: also leased New Mill, Holbeck. Later inherited father-in-law's two mills at Meadows lane, Leeds. He was; said to have built Brookroyd House.¹ He died in 1872.

Joshua Nussey was born circa 1799. He was the son of John Nussey and Ellen Wade. Joshua Nussey died in 1871.

Sarah Walker Nussey was born in 1809. She was the daughter of John Nussey and Ellen Wade. Sarah Walker Nussey died in 1843.

George Nussey was born in 1814. He was the son of John Nussey and Ellen Wade. George Nussey died in 1885. vivientomlinson

Children of John Nussey and Ellen Wade

• John Nussey b. 26 Dec 1793, d. 14 Apr 1862
• Ann Nussey b. 10 Sep 1795, d. 1878
• Joseph Nussey b. 7 Jun 1797, d. 1846
• Joshua Nussey b. c 1799, d. 1871
• Mercy Mary Nussey b. 14 Apr 1801, d. 1886
• Richard Nussey b. 1803, d. 1872
• William Nussey b. 1807, d. 1838
• Sarah Walker Nussey b. 1809, d. 1843
• Henry Nussey b. c 1812
• George Nussey b. 1814, d. 1885
• Ellen Nussey b. 1817, d. 1897 vivientomlinson

The Rydings (Birstall)  
Ellen Nussey`s first home

Ann Nussey  Later Clapham (1795–1878), eldest sister of Ellen Nussey; a capable housekeeper for Revd Henry Nussey, and later for the family at Brookroyd. Charlotte Brontë appreciated her sympathy at times of ... oxfordreference/Nussey

When Ellen Nussey died (26 Nov 1897 aged 80) it is said that people were surprised at how liitle she had to leave. William Carr had invested her (and her sisters) money (left to them by her brother Richard) in Pennsylvanian Railway Bonds - these were left to her nephew John Thomas Hartley Nussey in Australia.
It shows Ellen Nussey (1817-1897) and two of her brothers (John 1794-1862) and William (1807-1862) who were both apothecaries archiver.rootsweb.ancestry

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Nussey, John (1793–1862):
Eldest brother of Ellen, and London general practitioner and apothecary. He was early successful under the aegis of his cousin (and eventual father-in-law) Richard Walker, and he was apothecary to George IV and his two successors, being in attendance (in the next room) during some of Queen Victoria’s numerous confinements. Ellen made two long visits to him in 1834 and 1837, probably to help with the family rather than to sample the pleasures of London. The picture that emerges of him through Charlotte’s letters (and we must remember that we have no documents in which the lesser Nusseys speak for themselves) is of a selfish, grasping man who fails to honor his family obligations and is especially neglectful of his mother and sisters. She sees him as of "the world" and "cold-blooded" (to EN, 10 and 17 Sep 1851), and she included his wife Mary in this judgment: "Madame herself thought fitting to call, very stately in her carriage" she wrote to Ellen (28 Jan 1853) during her last visit to London, indicating confidence in a shared opinion. There is much comment on John in letters of mid-1849 when he proposed a financial arrangement whereby his sisters would will their property to him or his heirs and in return he would cancel debts they owed him ("offers to relinquish a present claim in your sisters’ favour" is the phrase of Charlotte’s that suggests this arrangement, rather than a compensating

Nussey, Mary (Mercy) (1801–86):
Sister of Ellen. She was for a time a member of the Moravian Single Sisters’ House at Fairfield, where she was given the name Mercy. See Margaret Connor, "Clerical Connections" (BS, v. 28, p. 1, March 2003) for the Moravian sisterhood. Charlotte’s early references to her are more affectionate than most of her references to the Nusseys, and at one point she seems to have aroused Ellen’s jealousy by trying to start an independent correspondence with her. Later, however, the mentions of her conform to the norm by being tinged with exasperation: she distrusts her judgment, regrets that she rather than Ellen has most to do with George in his time of mental breakdown, and concludes that the trouble she causes others springs from "the wilfulness of a weak person" (to EN, 11 May 1850). This irritation leads her to her most extreme judgment: "I suppose that is her use – to test and try others like a fiery furnace" (to EN, 10 May 1851). She was the family fowl-keeper, taught in a small school, and was frequently ill. Juliet Barker presents as fact that the "forty-one years old" Mercy (she was actually 48) was "so jealous of her elder sister’s good fortune that she threatened the happiness of the whole household" (Barker, 1994, p. 602). This is unfair, resting only on a conjecture of Charlotte that she had "some little sense of bitterness" that Ann rather than she was to be married

Nussey, Richard (1803–72):
Brother of Ellen, he helped to run the family firm, moving to Leeds when he married Elizabeth Charnock (1846) to live in her family home in Woodhouse Lane. Charlotte, who had met him on the Bolton Abbey excursion of 1833, describes him and his wife as " very vulgar in their mode of shewing their feelings" (to EN, 20 Sep 1851?). He inherited his father-in-law’s mills in Leeds and, since the marriage was childless and his wife predeceased him, his sisters Ann, Mercy and Ellen benefited from his death

Nussey, Joseph (1797–1846):
Second-eldest brother of Ellen, who for a time was engaged in the woolen industry. By the mid-1840s he was described by Charlotte (to EN, 31 July 1845) as a "burthen" on his mother – one that his brothers, particularly John, should have her relieved of. By the time of his death she talks openly of his sufferings being "taken as sufficient expiation for his errors" (to EN, soon after 3 June 1846). The deduction that he was dissolute seems correct, but whether this consisted simply of alcoholism or included other sins is unknown. Clearly Joseph was the Nusseys’ Branwell – one more bond between Ellen and Charlotte

Nussey, George (1814–85):
Brother of Ellen. He seems to have been the dearest to her of all her brothers – partly from closeness in age, partly perhaps from his willingness to engage in her interests and her friendships. He is mentioned often in Charlotte’s letters from Roe Head, and he was one of the Nussey party who explored Bolton Abbey and its environs with the Brontës. The onset of his mental illness in the early 1840s was particularly distressing to Ellen, and the fact that he had at this time a fiancée, Amelia Ringrose, cemented a friendship between these two. One element that added to the traumatic nature of this crisis was that George, in his delusions, turned against his family (as his aged mother was later to do when she was ill). This fact was often commented upon by Charlotte: "[h]is delusion is of the most painful kind for his relations – how strange that in his eye affection should be transformed into hatred – it is as if the mental vision were inverted" (to EN, 17 Nov 1846). He never regained his sanity, the engagement was abandoned, and he had to be cared for by outsiders for the rest of his life

Nussey, Joshua (1798–1871):
Third-eldest of the Nussey sons, who went into the Church and married in 1832 Anne Alexander, 10 years his senior. Though Ellen stayed with them several times, and took refuge at their Oundle vicarage after leaving the Upjohns, with whom she had contemplated going to live as a companion, she seems to have disliked both of them, and her best friends Mary Taylor and Charlotte joined her in disparaging them. "Is she a frog or a fish –?" asked Charlotte (to EN, 19 Jan 1847?), "She is certainly a specimen of some kind of cold-blooded animal." She returns to her (and Ellen’s) distaste for the pair a week later, for it seems to be them she is talking about when she describes "the coldness, dreariness, and barrenness of these respected individuals’ minds and hearts" (to EN, 28 Jan 1847?). Joshua’s attainments and judgment were similarly disparaged by Mary Taylor
 

Brookroyd (Birstall)  

After the death of Ellen`s father, the family had to give up The Rydings. They relocated to Brookroyd.

The Black Bull

 

Not looking markedly different from nowadays, this was the Black Bull Inn as photographed very shortly after the Brontes’ time in Haworth, with W Sugden dispensing his “wines &c”.
The Sugden family – first John, then William and then Mrs Rebecca – ran the Black Bull for more than 30 years, with William as publican during the 1860s.
The photograph has been supplied by Mrs Muriel Crook, of Ryecroft, Harden, who as Muriel Waller spent her younger days at the Black Bull till her family left it in 1954. As she puts it, she “was raised, grew up and married here”.

She regrets its subsequent modernisation: “Gone forever is the ‘Bronte Room’, with Branwell’s chair (a replica, I admit) and the bell pull above it.”

She still has a visitors’ book from her family’s tenure, “though this began in 1909 at the Old Hall in Leeds, the first of many of my family’s hotels until we sold the last one in 1954 and I broke the chain”.  keighleynews/The_Black_Bull

Jane Eyre - The Book Club - July 2013

Jane Eyre