London in the time of the Brontes

Yesterday during looking to the Tour de France in Yorkshire, I saw all those beautiful pictures from the modern London.

It brought me to the question:

What did Charlotte Bronte see of  London?

Which buildings and streets (and so on) did exists in the time of Charlotte Bronte?

 

The Victorian city of London was a city of startling contrasts. New building and affluent development went hand in hand with horribly overcrowded slums where people lived in the worst conditions imaginable.

 

 

  benjaminluanson

 

The population surged during the 19th century, from about 1 million in 1800 to over 6 million a century later. A combination of coal-fired stoves and poor sanitation made the air heavy and foul-smelling. Immense amounts of raw sewage was dumped straight into the Thames River.

 

 

 In 1829 Sir Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police to handle law and order in areas outside the City proper. These police became known as "Bobbies" after their founder. uk-england-In Pictures: Police reform from watchmen to bobbies

Just behind Buckingham Palace the Grosvenor family developed the aristocratic Belgrave Square. In 1830 land just east of the palace was cleared of the royal stables to create Trafalgar Square, and the new National Gallery sprang up there just two years later.

When was the Square built?
Between 1825 and 1847. It was transformed from a large undeveloped area sometimes described as a swamp, a waste or a cess pit into one of the most fashionable districts of London. The marshy ground was partly filled with rubble from excavations in Dockland but the whole area is still not far above the level of the Thames.

What was here before it was built?
It was part of an uncultivated and marshy area between London and Knightsbridge, called the Five Fields which was thought to be very dangerous because of highwaymen.
 

 

 

The early part of the 19th century was the golden age of steam. The first railway in London was built from London Bridge to Greenwich in 1836, and a great railway boom followed. Major stations were built at Euston (1837), Paddington (1838), Fenchurch Street (1841), Waterloo (1848), and King's Cross (1850).

In 1834 the Houses of Parliament at Westminster Palace burned down. They were gradually replaced by the triumphant mock-Gothic Houses of Parliament designed by Charles Barry and A.W. Pugin.

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For all the economic expansion of the Industrial Revolution, living conditions among London's poor were appalling. Children as young as 5 were often set to work begging or sweeping chimneys. Campaigners like Charles Dickens did much to make the plight of the poor in London known to the literate classes with his novels, notably Oliver Twist.

 

London-underground-photos

Upon this scene entered an unlikely hero, an engineer named Joseph Bazalgette. Bazalgette was responsible for the building of over 2100 km of tunnels and pipes to divert sewage outside the city. This made a drastic impact on the death rate, and outbreaks of cholera dropped dramatically after Bazlgette's work was finished. For an encore, Bazalgette also was responsible for the design of the Embankment, and the Battersea, Hammersmith, and Albert Bridges.

 

Regent Street rond 1850

 

 

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Before the engineering triumphs of Bazalgette came the architectural triumphs of George IV's

favorite designer, John Nash. Nash designed the broad avenues of Regent Street&lt, Piccadilly Circus, Carlton House Terrace, and Oxford Circus, as well as the ongoing creation of Buckingham transformation of Buckingham House into a palace worthy of a monarch. victorian-london

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Brontë Parsonage director Ann Sumner is leaving her post

Museums Association reports that Brontë Parsonage director Ann Sumner is leaving her post:
Ann Sumner has stepped down as executive director of the Brontë Society, which runs the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Howarth [sic], after 16 months in the role.  Her departure was announced at the society’s AGM last month. In a statement, the society said: “We regret to announce that Ann Sumner has decided to move on from the Brontë Society as she will be seeking a new part-time post. We thank Ann for her enthusiastic contribution to the society and wish her all the best for the future.”
A colleague described Sumner as a “breath of fresh air” who had done much to take the museum forward during her time in the role. Plans to recruit a replacement for the position are not yet clear. A spokeswoman from the institution said no further information was available. Museums Journal understands that Sumner’s departure comes at a time of upheaval in the Brontë Society. According to a source, some of the society’s members expressed concern about its direction and governance at last month's AGM, with a majority voting against two proposed motions to give the governing council greater power to expel members and extend the chairman of trustees’ term of office. (Geraldine Kendall)
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Tour de France 2014 Haworth

 

 

bbc/uk-england

 

The peloton rides up Main Street as stage two of the Tour de France passes through Haworth, Yorkshire. Pic: Martin Rickett/PA Wire

edinburghnews
 

Tour de France is expected to attract more than a million people in Yorkshire

Even Bronte country has developed a taste for baguettes as Yorkshire gears up for the start of the 101st Tour de France in its backyard this weekend.
In Haworth, the village made famous by the Bronte sisters, the world-famous museum in their honour will close on Sunday because of the huge crowds expected along Main Street to see Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish climb up the cobbles.
‘The sisters would have found it exciting — not a lot happened in Haworth in their day,’ says museum director Ann Insdale.  Charlotte in particular loved anything to do with France. She studied in Brussels and spoke fluent French. She’d have enjoyed having such an iconic event here.’ It seems Yorkshire’s current generation feel the same. Everywhere you look, the white rose county is turning yellow to mark the greatest endurance test in sport. Police anticipate at least a million people will turn up to watch Saturday’s opening 118-mile stage between Leeds and Harrogate — known as Le Grand Depart — and Sunday’s York-Sheffield leg, which measures 124 miles. A statue of Edward the Black Prince in Leeds’ City Square has had a yellow jersey planted on it. Read more: dailymail

Ponden Hall

Helen Akhurst

 

Ponden Hall  beautiful photographes.

 

 

Helen MacEwan’s new Brontë book

Helen MacEwan’s new book is, indeed, a journey back in time to the Brussels the Brontë sisters would have known in the early 1840s. No one can dip into these sumptuous pages without escaping contemporary Brussels . Along with a wealth of colour illustrations from the period. The Brontës in Brussels presents a fascinating look at how this city influenced the two sisters’ hearts and imaginations. Cogent details transport the time-traveller immediately: we follow Charlotte on a ramble along the Rue de Louvain, where she refreshed herself with a coffee and currant bun; we slip into an illustration of a wide, leafy boulevard with views over the surrounding countryside, and find ourselves at once elated and heartsick to touch this Brussels we will never know. Thanks to Helen’s book, however, this vanished city still has a pulse. She guides us to those corners where, if we close our eyes, we might still detect a horse’s hoof or rustle of silk in the endless drone of traffic. Such moments bring a familiar frisson to those of us who have spent many years in Brussels and fallen in love with her enigmas.
Most moving of all is Helen’s inclusion of Charlotte’s letters to Constantin Heger. The stark intimacy of these confessions draws the reader far from Brussels, all the way to the moorland chill of Yorkshire and the grey-clad little woman who anguished there, in physical and emotional exile from her “promised land”. It is with a strange sort of clairvoyance that we read those letters, knowing as we do how Charlotte’s genius would eventually transform her despair into great art. brusselsbronte

CHARLOTTE BRONTË made only £500 from her novel, Jane Eyre.

But now a rare a first edition copy of the book is set to fetch between £15,000 and £20,000 at an auction. Auctioneer Sotheby’s says the book, first published in three volumes in 1847 under Bronte’s pseudonym ‘Currer Bell’, is “an unusually clean first edition copy”. The auction takes place on July 15. Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, said: “Charlotte was offered £100 for the copyright. With further editions and foreign rights her actual payments were in the region of £500. “There is a well-known account by the head of the firm, George Smith,describing how he started reading the manuscript of Jane Eyre and was so gripped by it that he cancelled all engagements for the day so that he could finish reading it. “ Last year a poem by Charlotte Brontë, I’ve been Wandering in the Greenwoods, sold for £92,450 more than double the £45,000 it had been expected to fetch . It meant that each word of the 16-line poem was worth more than £1,000. yorkshirepost

The Brontë Birthplace

Emily's by De Luca Boutique - The Brontë Birthplace

 

Unitarian theology of the 19th century

North and South is a novel defined by the resolution of binary conflicts: heroine Margaret Hale is presented with a number of divisions of sympathy, between industrialists and the working class, between conflicting views of Mr. Thornton, and even between her conflicting views of her own intelligence.

Mr. Hale’s decision to leave the church due to “painful, miserable doubts” A key insight into Mr. Hale’s reasoning is found during his discussion with Margaret and Higgins, when he states that “your Union in itself would be beautiful, glorious, —it would be Christianity in itself—if it were but for an end which affected the good of all, instead of that of merely one class as opposed to another”. This statement directly mirrors the sentiment of Unitarian theology of the 19^th century as primarily defined by 18^th century scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley, who famously described the Trinity as foremost of the corruptions of Christianity.

Elizabeth Gaskell, whose husband and father were Unitarian Ministers, would no doubt have been familiar with Priestley’s writing and was known to hold strong Unitarian opinions,  so the statement of the protagonist’s father in this key scene of the novel holds special weight.

Read more"the-concept-of-unity-in-elizabeth-gaskells-north-and-south

Emily's by De Luca Boutique - The Brontë Birthplace (BBC Look North 12.0...

Branwell, was born in the early hours of the morning on this day in 1817.

Bronte Parsonage Museum

Patrick Branwell Brontë, more commonly known as Branwell, was born in the early hours of the morning on this day in 1817.

On 26 June, 1817, the fourth child of Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell Bronte was born during the early hours of the morning in Thornton. This newborn boy was given the honour of two names because for Patrick and Maria having a son was a particularly welcome moment. He was named Patrick, after his father, and Branwell, after his mother’s maiden name. Though, there always seemed to be some confusion over which name came first. The day after his birth, his three sisters: Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte, were invited down to Penzance to the Kipping House so they could join a large party of ladies who fussed over the little girls. In no time the parents sorted out the confusion over their son’s name and on 23 July,1817, at a ceremony at the Old Bell Chapel Patrick Branwell Bronte was baptized. His godparents were Elizabeth Firth’s father and stepmother, close friends of The Bronte’s. 

He was small for his age but good looking, with his father’s nose and a high forehead. He had poor eyesight, he wore glasses and he wore his hair, the reddest in the family, long in an artistic fashion.

Read more about Branwell: kimberlyevemusings

Keeper

Haworth’s stationer, John Greenwood, recorded in his diary a violently protective scene in which Emily broke up Keeper’s encounter with another dog:

She never spoke a word, nor appeared the least at a loss what to do, but rushed at once into the kitchen, took the pepper box, and away into the lane where she found the two savage brutes each holding the other by the throat. In deadly grip, while several other animals, who thought themselves men, were standing looking on like cowards as they were, afraid to touch them—there they stood gaping, watching this fragile creature spring upon the beasts—seizing Keeper ’round the neck with one arm, while with the other hand she dredges their noses with pepper, and separating them by force of her great will, driving Keeper, that great powerful dog, before her into the house, never once noticing the men, so called, standing there thunderstruck at the deed. From: the-animalistic-emily-/

Charlotte completed this pencil drawing, entitled "The Cross of Rivaulx"

Bronte Parsonage Museum

Charlotte completed this pencil drawing, entitled "The Cross of Rivaulx", on this day in 1836. It is a copy of an illustration of the grounds of Rievaulx Abbey, by John Gilpin.

 

The Brontës' early writings: Combining fantasy and fact

Ponden Hall turned into a B & B

 

From facebook.ponden hall:

 

 

Hi, everyone! It's official, and we are now accepting bookings for our newly opened elegant and comfortable bedrooms at Ponden Hall, the Brontes' inspiration.

Come and stay the night in the room where Cathy's ghost beat at the window, struggling to get in - in the beautiful replica box bed, just like the one in 'Wuthering Heights'.

Contact us at stay@ponden.force9.co.uk, or on 01535 648608 for more details. We still have spaces left for the Tour de France weekend on July 5-6, and we're only just off the route!

 

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