Great-great Grandad knew the Brontes

Read the article: here
Giggleswick historian WR Mitchell ponders on the strange but compelling story of Dr. William Cartman, his great-great grandfather on his mother’s side. He was headmaster of Ermysted’s Grammar School, Skipton, for over three decades and included the Bronte family among his friends. Cartman often took services at Haworth Church and dined with the Brontes at the Parsonage. He officiated at the funeral services for both Charlotte Bronte and her father.
William Cartman, the former head-master at Ermysted's Grammar School, Skipton, who was a friend of the Brontes
The friendship between Patrick Bronte and William Cartman dated from the time when Patrick was curate at Haworth and William had become curate at Bingley. A Lambeth Doctor of Divinity was awarded to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury in recognition of his powers as a preacher.
Cartman cherished his continuing Haworth connection. He often preached from the three-decker pulpit of Haworth Old Church after which he would join Patrick, a widower, and daughter Charlotte for a meal at the Parsonage.
A generous man, in January 1854 Cartman presented Bronte with “an ice apparatus” (a pair of heel spikes). In thanking Cartman for his gift, the pastor wrote that he valued the gift “as much for the sake of the donor as its own intrinsic worth. It will serve as another prop to Old Age”. Charlotte, in a missive to “Dear Papa”, expressed pleasure that “you continue in pretty good health” and that “Mr Cartman came to help you on Sunday.”
Tales about Cartman were relayed to me by Grannie Cartman, a dumpy, black-clad figure, by appearance not unlike Queen Victoria. My paternal grandfather, a devout Methodist who lived at Bradley, wrote sentimental articles about the Brontes, interspersing his observations with verses from hymns.
As a lad, I visited Haworth with my father at least once a year, usually in winter when the graveyard twixt church and parsonage was damp and mossy, the silence broken only by husky-voiced rooks.
Old Haworth had a sense of mystery that vanished with the clearance, from the bottom of the street, of what someone called “a hotch-potch of snickets and allotments”. It was part of a scheme to improve the traffic flow. A descendant of Jack Toothill, the village barber, told me he charged three farthings for a shave. Patrick Bronte was among his customers.

Photo: William Cartman, the former head-master at Ermysted's Grammar School, Skipton, who was a friend of the Bronte

Biography of Charlotte Brontë

Read: Poetry foundation Charlotte BronteBrontë's poems after her return to Roe Head reflect her longing for home and for Angria as well as her anxious need to reconcile her desire to write with the necessity of continuing to teach to earn a living. The most famous of these poems, sometimes anthologized as "Retrospection," begins poignantly:      We wove a web in childhood

A web of sunny air

We dug a spring in infancy

Of water pure and fair

We sowed in youth a mustard seed

We cut an almond rod

We are now grown up to riper age

Are they withered in the sod. . . .
The poem continues for 177 more lines, developing into vividly realized scenes featuring the Duke of Zamorna. The poem then breaks into a retrospective prose narrative that is rudely interrupted by "a voice that dissipated all the charm" as a student "thrust her little rough black head into [her teacher's] face" to demand, "Miss Brontë what are you thinking about?"--a striking example of the incompatibility of Brontë's inner, imaginative life with her actual experience while at Roe Head. 

More ideas for reading:
BIBLIOGRAPHIES:

• Thomas J. Wise, A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of the Members of the Brontë Family(London: Clay, 1917).
• Jami Parkison, "Charlotte Brontë: A Bibliography of 19th Century Criticism," Bulletin of Bibliography, 35 (1978): 73-83.
• G. Anthony Yablon and John R. Turner, A Brontë Bibliography(London: Hodgkins, 1978; Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1978).
• Anne Passel, Charlotte and Emily Brontë: An Annotated Bibliography(New York: Garland, 1979).
• Christine Alexander, A Bibliography of the Manuscripts of Charlotte Brontë(Westport, Conn.: Meckler, for The Brontë Society, 1982).
• Rebecca W. Crump, Charlotte and Emily Brontë: A Reference Guide, (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982-1986).

BIOGRAPHIES:

• Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, third edition, revised, 2 volumes (London: Smith, Elder, 1857).
• Clement Shorter, The Brontës: Life and Letters, 2 volumes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908).
• Thomas James Wise and John Alexander Symington, eds., The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships, and Correspondence, The Shakespeare Head Brontë, 4 volumes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1932).
• Winifred Gérin, Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
• Margot Peters, Unquiet Soul: A Biography of Charlotte Brontë(New York: Doubleday, 1975).
• Rebecca Fraser, Charlotte Brontë(London: Methuen, 1988).
• Lyndall Gordon, Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life(London: Chatto & Windus, 1994; New York: Norton, 1995).
• Juliet Barker, The Brontës (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994).

REFERENCES:

• Christine Alexander, The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë(Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
• Miriam Allott, The Brontës: The Critical Heritage(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974).
• Carol Bock, "Gender and Poetic Tradition: The Shaping of Charlotte Brontë's Literary Career," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 7 (1988): 49-67.
• Sue Lonoff, "Charlotte Brontë's Belgian Essays: The Discourse of Empowerment," Victorian Studies, 32 (1989): 387-409.
• Virginia Woolf, "'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights,'" in her The Common Reader, first series (London: Hogarth Press, 1925), pp. 196-204.

2-12- 1906 Death of Arthur Bell Nicholls.

 

Arthur made his way to Hill House where he joined his aunt and cousin, Mary Anna. He became a small farmer, giving up the Church altogether. Martha Brown, one of the faithful Brontë servants came over from time to time and took over the housekeeping. She had nursed Charlotte and was one of Arthur's last links with the old days. When he was forty three and Mary Anna thirty two they decided to get married. She had always loved her cousin and he was fond of her. They married in 1864 and the ceremony was performed by Rev. Joseph Bell, Mary Anna's brother, and Arthur's cousin. It seemed to be more of a marriage of convenience, a friendship than anything else. There were no children of the marriage. Arthur died in 1906 at the age of eighty eight and Mary Ann in 1915 aged eighty five. They are both buried across the road from Hill House in the Churchyard of St. Paul's. Arthur's aunt, Mary Anna's mother, lived to the great age of 101, dying in 1902, a wonderful old lady. Arthur never recovered from Charlotte's death. He loved her to the end of his long life. He and Patrick Brontë were very different personalities, but it is curious to see how much they had in common, and of course Charlotte will always link them together.

From: lisburn.com/books/historical_society 

A lot of Photographs of Banagher, including the grave of Arthur Bell Nicolls:  http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/banagher

Hand Loom Weaving in Yorkshire

From:  Bancrofts from Yorkshire

There are many examples of 18th and 19th Century Bancroft families earning a living from hand loom weaving in their homes, before the invention of machinery, which made production on a large scale possible in the mills, and spelt the demise of this cottage industry.

My G/G/G Grandfather Joseph Bancroft [1755-1838] was a hand loom weaver all his life. He had 4 children with his first wife, Judith Smith, who died at the early age of only 34 years, and then went on to have a further 11 children with his second wife Ellen [Nelly] Bradley. Even at the time of his death at the grand old age of 82 years was still listed as a weaver. [An interesting fact on his burial record at Haworth, is the signature of Patrick Bronte, the famous vicar at Haworth at the time.] You will notice his cause of death on the death certificate was given as 'Old Age' which I guess is understandable, bearing in mind that there cannot have been many people who reached the age of eighty-two and three-quarters in 1838 !
Many Bancroft families, who were involved with farming, also had a hand loom in the house to supplement their income, particularly in the winter months, when there was a large family to feed and cloth. I wrote an article some time ago called ‘Auction at Fairplace Farm’ which  describes the contents of an Isaac Bancroft’s farm, called Fairplace near Cowling. When the contents of his farm was auctioned off in 1841, as well as all the usual farming implements he also had three looms!....which shows how the family all helped out to bring a bit more money into the household.
Read more:bancroftsfromyorkshire

Haworth Local Board of Health 1851 - 1860

The first recorded meeting of The Haworth Local Board of Health was on 1st December 1851.

Local Boards of Health were set up in England and Wales from 1848 to 1894. There were many diseases prevalent at the time caused by epidemics such as cholera. Boards of Health were given power to supply clean water, improving sewers and streets, and regulating premises such as slaughterhouses.

It is due to the hard work by Patrick Bronte who petitioned for a Local Board of Health in the area that was granted in 1851. Haworth Local Board of Health held its last meeting on 28th December 1894.
haworth-village/history/urban-council

Christmas Events in Yorkshire

http://www.yorkshire.com/

The clocks have gone back and it's starting to feel more festive in Yorkshire. So we thought we'd share a selection of Christmas themed Yorkshire activities and events to get you in the spirit!

Make sure you check out our Yorkshire Christmas Advent Calendar for loads of great prizes!

English Heritage This Christmas

English Heritage have 14 historic properties in Yorkshire, here's a selection of what's happening this Christmas.

• An Audience with Victorian Father Christmas at Clifford's Tower, York 26th - 27th November.
• Find all about a Victorian Christmas at Helmsley Castle, North Yorkshire, 3rd - 4th December.
• Enjoy Christmas Choirs at Brodsworth Hall & Gardens, South Yorkshire, 4th, 11th and 18th December.
• Learn new skills and try your hand at Christmas cake decorating at Brodsworth Hall & Gardens, South Yorkshire on 9th December.
• What would it of been like at a Victorian Christmas with a Butler find out at Mount Grace Priory, Northallerton, 10th - 11th December.
• Listen to Christmas Carols at Rievaulx Abbey, Helmsley on 18th December.

State of The Heart - I Believe In Father Christmas (Haworth - Bronte Country)

White Christmas Haworth Main Street

Its Christmas all the way

From: Abigails ateliers/hello-christmas

Tomorrow is the last of my historical talks from now on its Christmas all the way, Christmas talks, carols in church, time to hunt for our Christmas tree. Last year we went to buy one the second week in Dec and couldnt find one anywhere, we ended up having to use our old fake one. New Christmas hats for the talks but also time to say hi to an old friend as its back to wearing my lovely deep red tartan Christmas dress. 

Bronte Bears

Ferndean Manor is home of the Bronte  Bears, 

A delightful family of highly collectable teddy bears based on the Bronte family and their books. Made in-house in our own workshops and with individually hand crafted clothing. Buying a Bronte Bear is a wonderful occasion in itself. Join our designer over a  coffee by our roaring fire to discuss our range of designs and costumes. A Beary, beary special  experience.
Ferndean manor

London

London, St Paul's Cathedral, West Front in the 1890' soldukphotoslondon

Again

 I am searching

 for weblogs

 with information 

about the Brontes.

From the Sleepless reader: 

I think I mentioned before that I’m a member of the Brussels Brontë Group. (Brussels bronte) Charlotte and Emily lived here for a while and their experiences inspired Charlotte to write The Professor and Villette. The Group has about 50 members of 20 nationalities. We organize talks, Brontë city walks, visits to museums and last weekend 25 of us went on a Literary Weekend to London.

We lunched at the Stand Hotel with the London Brontë Society. According to them the Hotel is exactly on the spot where Charlotte and her editor George Smith came to visit aphrenologist. The “report” is still available at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

The group next to St. Paul’s cathedral. Charlotte visited it during a trip to London in 1842: Above my head, above the house-tops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a solemn, orbed mass, dark-blue and dim – THE DOME. While I looked, my inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fetted wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who had never truly lived, were at last about to taste life. (Villete) 

The group admiring the wooden door of 32 Cornhill. The bottom right-hand panel was carved to commemorate the first visit of Charlotte and Anne to their publisher in 1848 

the Sleepless reader/the-Brussels-Bronte-group-literary-weekend-in-london/, 

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

Phrenology was popular in the 1800s and the early 1900s. Phrenologists claimed that by feeling the lumps and bumps of the skull (and thus the underlying brain) they could determine someone’s character and personality. Although phrenology became popular with large numbers of people in the 1800s, it soon became controversial within medical circles, and was eventually dismissed by the medical profession as quackery. The subject was always controversial in medical circles.sciencemuseum

Branwell Brontë and his friends. Enoch Thomas, the Innkeeper of the King's Arms

It sits squarely at the entrance to Church Street, which winds up to the Brontë Parsonage, past the church, graveyard and schoolrooms, where Charlotte taught.

In 1841 the Innkeeper of the King's Arms, Enoch Thomas, also ran The Black Bull and was a good friend and confident of Branwell Brontë. He suffered terrible bouts of depression, which Patrick Brontë referred to as "a very severe and great affliction". Branwell nicknamed him 'Devil's Thumb'.

A later Landlord, Joseph Fox, was a confectioner by profession and provided the fare for Emily Brontë's funeral feast.

jacksons.familytreeguide.com/

The Talbot Hotel, Kirkgate.

The Talbot Hotel, Kirkgate.The hotel stood on the corner of Kirkgate and Darley Street; the site is occupied in 2006 by Superdrug and Orange. It dated back to 1677 and was once a famous coaching inn. The dimensions were considerable - the building stretched down to the beck and contained the old Piece Hall within its gardens. It was rebuilt in 1879 with the creation of Bank Street. The New Talbot closed in March 1974. The talbot is a type of bloodhound and stone replicas of the dog went missing from the pub upon its sale in 1974. These were later put on sale at Sotheby's in Chester. The original hound above the entrance was made of wood and bought by Mr Edward Hailstone of Wakefield who died in 1891. Branwell Bronte is said to have frequented the hotel whist lodging in Fountain Street.

bradlibs.com/localstudies/vtc/lostbradford/talbothotel

Luddenden Foot and Branwell Bronte

Is situated on the Calder river, it is protected from the northerly winds by Midgley Moor Luddenden Foot was developed faster than Luddenden with the arrival of the Rochdale canal (1794-1802) from Sowerby Bridge to Manchester and later  extended in 1828 to Halifax. The earliest church register of  Midgley names given for the township of Midgley were Anthony, Richard and William ¹⁰. The earliest marriage given here is between John and Isabella Midgley  4th February 1541. Common first names for males were John, Thomas, William, Robert and Richard and for females, Agnes, Isabella, Elizabeth, Anne, Marion, Margaret and Alicia.
At Luddenden Foot, a canal runs from Littleborough to Todmorden which passes through Sowerby, Luddenden Foot and Hebden Bridge. This canal was used to help construct the railway at Hebden Bridge and Todmorden. The canal had a "basin" at Luddenden Foot where the bargees ("boaties") tied up.They would stay overnight at one of the three taverns here, The Woodman, The Weavers Arms and The Anchor and Shuttle.
There was also a corn mill by the canal in the 1800's owned by George and William Thompson with mills on the hilltop at Midgley which were owned by Ely Titherington who was a wealthy worsted spinner. Ely and his son James also owned a house called Old Ridings overlooking the Luddenden Valley. Luddenden Foot is probably best known for its association with Branwell Bronte the unfortunate brother and artist of the Bronte sisters of Haworth.

In the 1800's Branwell Bronte who was working as a station master at Luddenden Foot railway station,  frequented the Lord Nelson Inn with the Luddenden Reading Society.

Some of the members were⁹:
Timothy Wormald,  the landlord of the Lord Nelson and clerk to the church across the way. John Whitworth a mill  owner at Longbottom on the canal, who owned a fine residence called Peel House beyond Luddenden.
John Garnett, a manufacturer of Holm House.
Francis Grundy, a railway engineer (Richard Grundy drove the first train from Manchester to the Calder Valley.)
William Heaton a handloom weaver of Luddenden.
Francis Leyland a printer.
William Wolven, a ticket collector
G. Thompson, a corn merchant.
John Murgatroyd, a wealthy woollen manufacturer of Oats Royd, Luddenden. He employed the Liverpool Irish in his mills. Many Irish worked the mills and canals (Cols, Colls, Killiners and McColls).
George Richardson the wharfinger of Sowerby Bridge (controlled the warehouses and Wharfs)

Branwell Bronte lodged at  Turn Lea cottages ("up t' hill"). His bedroom window overlooked the Ewood Estates at Midgley, once owned by John Grimshaw who inherited Ewood when he was twelve from his grandfather.  Later it was inherited by John Crossley of Caitcliffe Hall. Branwell also lodged at Brearley Hall. By the end of March 1842 Branwell Bronte had been dismissed from his post as station master at Luddenden Foot. (The railway had arrived in 1840) 

midgleywebpages.com/midgleywest

Lord Nelson

Branwell Bronte (Frequented by)

Branwell Bronte frequented this pub when he was working as a clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railway in charge of Luddenden Foot Station. Having abandoned art as a career Branwell turned to something more practical. Charlotte sarcastically announced: 'A distant relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, has set off to seek his fortune in the wild, wandering, adventurous, romantic, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railroad.

Unfortunately he was soon dismissed. The notebook in which he was supposed to keep the station records became his personal journal and comprises a miscellany of rough sketches, draughts of poems and the occasional note on railway affairs. He also missed the fact that his under-clerk was stealing railway funds. During this period he was writing some of his best poetry and mixing with an important circle of Halifax writers, artists and poets who encouraged him to publish some of his poems in The Halifax Guardian.

The 1634 datestone over the door of the pub recalls its origin as a private house. It did not become an alehouse until the middle of the 18th century when it was called the White Swan. In 1776 one of the district's first libraries was set up in the pub which was an added attraction to local literary regulars including poet William Dearden and the knight-errant Branwell.

The Lord Nelson today is an excellent, comfortable village local. With lots of small individual rooms. The front bar has exposed stone walls and stone mullioned windows. Hanging in the bar is a floodlit photograph of the pub with a caption which reads: "I would rather give my right hand than undergo again the malignant yet cold debauchery which too often marked my conduct there". Branwell Bronte. A stylised statue of Branwell stands nearby in Old Station Road.




 

homesteadbb.free-online.co.uk/Yorks

alanrayneroutdoors.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html

a lot of pictures on: history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdale

Branwell and his friends/ Francis Leyland

"WHY NOT LET THE POOR ERRING BROTHER REST IN PEACE?": THE LEGACY OF BRANWELL BRONTË.


Francis Leyland was a former bookseller and friend of Branwell Brontë's, having been introduced to him by his brother, the Halifax sculptor J.B. Leyland (probably Branwell's closest friend), at Sowerby Bridge Station in 1840 (see his letter to Woollven below). After his brother's death in 1851 he inherited his considerable collection of letters, sketches and poems by Branwell which he was keen on publishing. In 1886 he brought out The Brontë Family with Special Reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. In it, he "took up the idea that Emily had been particularly close to her brother but turned it into a means of bolstering and elaborating on William Dearden's and Francis Grundy's earlier claims aboutWuthering Heights, arguing that the novel was a work of joint authorship. Without Charlotte's knowledge, Branwell had, Leyland claimed, handed over the unfinished manuscript for his favourite sister, the sympathetic Emily, to complete" (Lucasta Miller The Brontë Myth, Anchor edition, 2005, p.242).

The present collection was largely assembled during the course of Leyland's research for the book. His speculations about Wuthering Heights notwithstanding, the book contains a good deal of information about his friend Branwell which is not available elsewhere and which has been analysed in depth by Juliet Barker in The Brontës (1994). The present collection, which was unknown to Juliet Barker when preparing her biography, is particularly valuable in that it allows us direct access to that evidence, without Leyland's intervention.

Leyland's advocacy of Branwell in the face of what he saw as Mrs Gaskell's vilification did not make him popular with either Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, or her friend Ellen Nussey. The collection contains a pair of autograph letters by each, written between 1884 and 1885. The two by Ellen Nussey are written at a high emotional pitch: "Your letter respecting Branwell Brontë & your intended publication of his letters &c is simply a grief for me - Why not let the poor erring brother rest in peace? What good can possibly arise from reviving the memory of him? It was unwise, it was unjust to his patient & enduring sisters to say what has been said of him.../...In your eagerness to defend the Brontës' Brother you are in danger of injuring his sisters. How can you know the exact truth?... How can any one dare to judge in such a case where blame begins & ends? Who has fathomed the depths of suffering he inflicted on his devoted sisters? If you gather that Charlotte was 'injudicious' it must certainly have been her brother's morbidmind to represent her as such... You did not know them - You only saw them once, I have been informed...". While the two by A.B. Nicholls are blunt to the point of rudeness. In both he refuses to have the portrait medallion of Branwell, which Leyland's brother had executed, photographed. When told by Leyland that he, Leyland, had given it to the family, Nicholls replies: "I was not aware that you had given the portrait to Mr Brontë - I always understood that it had been found in a Broker's shop in Halifax - I know that my late wife gave £5 for it". From the draft of Leyland's reply, it transpires that the rascally sexton John Brown, who had been entrusted with its carriage, sold it instead. For good measure, Nicholls twice refuses Leyland permission to publish "Mr Branwell Brontë's Manuscripts"; this partly on the advice of Richard Monckton Milnes (see Barker, p.817).

Equally evocative are letters by two of Branwell's fellow employees at Luddenden Foot railway station, the minor poet William Heaton and H. Woollven (as he signs himself here, rather than 'Woolven', the form more usually given). Heaton, writing in 1863, tells Leyland: "I knew Mr Bronte well he was the station Master at Luddenden foot but how long it is since I cannot tell at that time I frequented the Anchor and Shuttle Inn and so did he sometimes he was blyth and gay and at others he looked down cast and sad...tis true he loved his cup as he frequently called his glass of Brandy but I shall never forget his love for the sublime..." (for the text of this letter as printed by Leyland, see Barker, pp.370-1). The testimony of Woollven is especially important for its bearing on the question as to whether Branwell ever did in fact go to London, rather than merely acquire seeming familiarity with the capital through his reading, as Barker argues (pp.227-9). What had seemed a stumbling-block to Barker's case is that "Leyland's account... cites one 'Mr Woolven', who, while later working on the construction of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, met and remembered Branwell from the Castle tavern at Holborn" (p.229). However Woollven's original letter (which is on Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway headed paper) does not in point of fact describe such an encounter. What Woollven actually tells Leyland is that Branwell "was a very extraordinary character. I remember previous to my being engaged in the Railway Service, I one night visited the Castle Tavern in Holborne London then Kept by the once Champion Prize fighter Tom Spring. The parlour was full of sporting characters, Pugilists &c. One of the company, I believe was Mr Bronte, to whom was referred to decide many disputes about great battles that had been fought". Woollven is not claiming to have seen him. Merely that he was led to believe (no doubt by Branwell himself, long afterwards) that he was there. Woollven goes on to relate the story of Branwell's passion for Mrs Robinson, eliciting the shocked response from Leyland that "Branwell was indeed a very strange character... No man in his sound senses, entrusted with the heart, honour, and fair name of a married woman, would make a public talk of it everywhere...". (It is pleasing, also, to note that this correspondence confirms the corporeal reality of the enigmatic Woollven, of whose existence Juliet Barker can find no trace outside the pages of Leyland, see footnote 12, pp.881-2).

The collection also includes a letter by Patrick Brontë's friend the Halifax poet William Dearden written in August 1857, in which he discusses their joint visit to Patrick that year and the publication of Mrs Gaskell's biography five months earlier: "He [Patrick] said he did not know that he had an enemy in the world before Mrs Gaskell's publication of the life of his daughter, and he really could not tell from what source she had derived her information about himself except it might be from some discarded servant..." (see Barker, p.803). There is also Leyland's own account of his visit to Haworth on 28 January 1874 to interview John Brown's brother ("...Visited Haworth twenty-six years after the death of Branwell Bronte, and found, still living, William, the brother of John Brown late grave digger and sexton... The ardent, imaginative, and impulsive youth fell a victim to this man of coffins, graves, pickaxes, and spades...") with an autograph letter to him by William Brown, Haworth, 18 February 1874, and an autograph journal of his further visit to the Browns at Haworth in May 1874 ("...William Brown had been expecting me by the train and overtook me in the street. We passed the memorable 'Bull' in our way to his house where he introduced me to his niece Martha, late servant to the Brontës and now with Mr Nicholls the husband of the late Charlotte... Mrs Brown said that when Branwell was forbidden to approach Mrs R. he was in a state of frenzy walking round their table, clenching a knife in his hand, and wildly raving at the irrevocable decrees of damned fate!...").

As well as Leyland's retained copies or drafts of his outgoing letters (as for example to the editor of the Athenaeum, submitting "My brother's lyrics and ballads, of which I have found some in his old metallic books, where they were scribbled, are weird and beautiful"), the collection also comprises Leyland's transcripts of letters to William Dearden by Martha Brown ("...Mother says you asked her on Saturday whether Mrs Gaskell had any talk with me before she began to write the memoir of my late Mistress...") and Patrick Brontë ("...As Mr Nicholls has stated, I have given to him, all Branwell's writings and wish, earnestly that no one should write his life - enough, I think, has been said on that head. He was a young man of varied, and brilliant talents; but alas! his appetite, was stronger than his reason, and thus all his fair prospects were blighted, his life shortened, and great sorrow brought upon his sisters, and me...")
bonhams.com/eur/auction