Month: April 2025

At church this morning, one week after Easter Sunday, the sermon recounted the well known tale of doubting Thomas. He believed because he had seen, but those of us today and in the past have not seen and yet still have to struggle with that religious hydra: belief and doubt. It was a doubt known to the Brontë siblings, as we can see from two poems in today’s new Brontë blog post.

Keen readers of this blog will have seen last week that I am shortly heading to Brussels to give a talk to the Brussels Brontë Group entitled: “Doubt, Defiance and Devotion: Faith and the Brontë Sisters.” In this talk I will argue that Charlotte was occasionally beset by doubt, Emily was defiant and Anne was devote, but of course my talk will show that the reality was far more nuanced. Anne too suffered religious doubts from time to time, although I’m not entirely sure I agree with Charlotte’s 1850 assertion that Anne Brontë: “was a very sincere and practical Christian, but the tinge of religious melancholy communicated a sad shade to her brief, blameless life.”

To find out my full views on this, and on more Brontë religious conundrums, head to Brussels on the 10th May or look out for a future blog post on this subject. Anne herself addressed the impact of religious doubt in her powerful poem ‘The Doubter’s Prayer’, which I reproduce below:

“Eternal power of earth and air,
Unseen, yet seen in all around,
Remote, but dwelling everywhere,
Though silent, heard in every sound.
If e’er thine ear in mercy bent
When wretched mortals cried to thee,
And if indeed thy Son was sent
To save lost sinners such as me.
Then hear me now, while kneeling here;
I lift to thee my heart and eye
And all my soul ascends in prayer;
O give me – give me Faith I cry.
Without some glimmering in my heart,
I could not raise this fervent prayer;
But O a stronger light impart,
And in thy mercy fix it there!
While Faith is with me I am blest;
It turns my darkest night to day;
But while I clasp it to my breast
I often feel it slide away.
Then cold and dark my spirit sinks,
To see my light of life depart,
And every fiend of Hell methinks
Enjoys the anguish of my heart.
What shall I do if all my love,
My hopes, my toil, are cast away,
And if there be no God above
To hear and bless me when I pray?
If this be vain delusion all,
If death be an eternal sleep,
And none can hear my secret call,
Or see the silent tears I weep.
O help me God! for thou alone
Canst my distracted soul relieve;
Forsake it not – it is thine own,
Though weak yet longing to believe.
O drive these cruel doubts away
And make me know that thou art God;
A Faith that shines by night and day
Will lighten every earthly load.
If I believe that Jesus died
And waking rose to reign above,
Then surely Sorrow, Sin and Pride
Must yield to peace and hope and love.
And all the blessed words he said
Will strength and holy joy impart,
A shield of safety o’er my head,
A spring of comfort in my heart.”

Anne wasn’t the only Brontë to write a poem about religious doubt, nor to include it in the poem’s title. Her brother Branwell Brontë was a complex man who battled many problems, and we can surely add religious doubts to the list of challenges he faced. In 1835 he wrote his poem “The Doubter’s Hymn”, although he attributed it to his Angrian hero Alexander Percy and gave it a composition date of 1813, four years prior to Branwell’s birth. Here is Branwell’s poem:

There is one thing you need not doubt: there will be a new Brontë blog post next Sunday, I can hope you can join me here for it.

It’s that day again when we look forward to new life, to warmer weather, to flowers blooming and sun shining. Easter Day is always special, and for the Brontës of Haworth it must have been especially so. Easter was celebrated then even more so than it is now, and throughout this post you’ll see examples of Victorian era Easter cards. As regular readers of my blog will know, Victorian cards could be a little strange – to say the least!

The Brontë siblings held an exalted position within their parish – as daughters of the priest Patrick Brontë they had their own pew at the front of the church where their father preached. In later years Branwell Brontë played the church organ, and the three writing Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, taught at the Church of England Sunday school founded by their father.

The girls were representatives of their father in a way, but all had different attitudes towards religion and faith which affected the way they lived and which would later reveal itself in their writing too. It is this fascinating subject which forms the heart of a talk I’ll be presenting to the Brussels Brontë Group on Saturday May 10th.

The talk is called “Doubt, Defiance and Devotion: Faith And The Brontë Sisters”, and I’m very excited to be addressing an international group of Brontë fans in the city where Charlotte and Emily Brontë attended the Pensionnat Heger school. I’ll be following the Brontë trail around the city too, so look out for a future post on that subject.

Today was a very special day in the Brontë story in 1820 for a non-Easter related reason; it was on this day exactly 205 years ago that Patrick Brontë, his wife Maria (whose birthday occurred on this week in 1783) and his young family moved from Thornton to his new parish of Haworth. No doubt Maria would have cradled little baby Anne Brontë, just three months old, throughout their journey across the moors.

You may have already seen the great news, but I’m delighted to share it again, that the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton is now ready to open to the public – you can make a booking for a guided tour via their website at https://Brontëbirthplace.com/guided-tours/

Let us now have an Easter extract from Anne Brontë’s brilliant debut novel Agnes Grey:

‘“Agnes, this sea air and change of scene do you no good, I think: I never saw you look so wretched. It must be that you sit too much, and allow the cares of the schoolroom to worry you. You must learn to take things easy, and to be more active and cheerful; you must take exercise whenever you can get it, and leave the most tiresome duties to me: they will only serve to exercise my patience, and, perhaps, try my temper a little.”

So said my mother, as we sat at work one morning during the Easter holidays. I assured her that my employments were not at all oppressive; that I was well; or, if there was anything amiss, it would be gone as soon as the trying months of spring were over: when summer came I should be as strong and hearty as she could wish to see me: but inwardly her observation startled me. I knew my strength was declining, my appetite had failed, and I was grown listless and desponding; – and if, indeed, he could never care for me, and I could never see him more – if I was forbidden to minister to his happiness – forbidden, for ever, to taste the joys of love, to bless, and to be blessed – then, life must be a burden, and if my heavenly Father would call me away, I should be glad to rest. But it would not do to die and leave my mother. Selfish, unworthy daughter, to forget her for a moment! Was not her happiness committed in a great measure to my charge? – and the welfare of our young pupils too? Should I shrink from the work that God had set before me, because it was not fitted to my taste? Did not He know best what I should do, and where I ought to labour? – and should I long to quit His service before I had finished my task, and expect to enter into His rest without having laboured to earn it? “No; by His help I will arise and address myself diligently to my appointed duty. If happiness in this world is not for me, I will endeavour to promote the welfare of those around me, and my reward shall be hereafter.” So said I in my heart; and from that hour I only permitted my thoughts to wander to Edward Weston – or at least to dwell upon him now and then -as a treat for rare occasions: and, whether it was really the approach of summer or the effect of these good resolutions, or the lapse of time, or all together, tranquillity of mind was soon restored; and bodily health and vigour began likewise, slowly, but surely, to return.’

Tomorrow is another day of celebration, not just because it’s a bank holiday but because it’s the 209th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë. Happy birthday Charlotte, and may I wish you all, whatever your faith, a very happy, loving and peaceful Easter. I hope to see you next week for another new Brontë blog post.

Easter approaches, a time which must have been busy, reflective and eventually joyous in the Brontë household at Haworth Parsonage. The village of Haworth has become synonymous with the Brontë sisters, drawing tourists from across the globe. Wherever you go in the village you will see the Brontë name, and long may that continue. Tourists want to visit the Parsonage, now a magnificent museum, of course, they want to visit inns like the Black Bull and conjure up images of Branwell Brontë sat on his three legged chair, and they also want to see the moors which stretch away from the village with bleak magnificence. The moors are a timeless reminder of the landscape the Brontës knew, they seem almost unchanged, but they are under threat.

In Emily Brontë’s breathtaking novel the moors seem to be as much of a character as Heathcliff or Catherine. It’s little wonder, for whilst the painfully shy Emily hated mixing with people (or at least people she didn’t know) she liked nothing more than walking on the moors. It is said she would walk up to twenty miles a day across the Pennine moors towards and then into Lancashire, an astonishing feat given the footwear she and others wore at that time. There was certainly no resemblance between the shoes of 1840 and the hiking boots of today, but Emily and others like her simply walked more in those days long before any form of transport other than four legged horse power.

Charlotte Brontë gave us fascinating glimpses of the moors, and the impact they had on the Brontë family, in her writing. In a letter of 22nd May 1850, addressed to W. S. Williams, Charlotte writes mournfully of her attempts to come to terms with the deaths of her sisters Emily and Anne:

“I am free to walk on the moors – but when I go out there alone everything reminds me of the time when others were with me and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and 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. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it – now I dare not read it – and am driven often to wish I could taste one draught of oblivion and forget much that, while mind remains, I never shall forget.”

In the same year Charlotte wrote a preface for a new edition of Emily’s Wuthering Heights and she returned to those thoughts, saying of the novel.
“It is rustic all through, It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as the root of heath. Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors… Ellis Bell did not describe as one whose eye and taste alone found pleasure in the prospect; her native hills were far more to her than a spectacle; they were what she lived in, and by, as much as the wild birds, their tenants, or as the heather, their produce. Her descriptions, then, of natural scenery, are what they should be and all they should be.”

For now, people can and do walk those same moors and hills, take in the same views and prospects, see the wild birds fly and the heather moving in a whispering wind. But the wind has become the moor’s enemy, or at least it is being harnessed by the moor’s enemy.

Plans are well underway for a huge new windfarm installation to be installed across the Calderdale moors. There are 65 proposed sites, and one of them is the Walshaw Moor area which is home to a plethora of previously protected wildlife, and home to Top Withens. It is the moorland walked by Emily Brontë, by Charlotte Brontë, by Anne Brontë. The moorland that people still walk today and look across to the glorious ruins of Top Withens, imagining Heathcliff stalking moodily by. Soon that some view will be filled with huge turbines and the relentless hum of nature being turned into commodity, of money being made at every turn of a white turbine sail.

Local poet, campaigner and Brontë enthusiast Lydia Macpherson is one of the people leading the campaign against the proposals, and she is sharing a petition aimed at protecting peat moors such as those around Haworth. You can sign the petition at this link, it only takes a moment:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/701290

On more positive news, another Brontë site of pilgrimage, the Brontë birthplace at Thornton, moves ever closer to its public opening, and it looks wonderful. It featured on the BBC’s ‘The One Show’ on Monday and if you missed it you can still catch the episode on the BBC iPlayer.

The beautiful image at the head of today’s post, by the way, was taken by talented photographer Dave Zdanowicz for use in my book In Search Of Anne Brontë. I hope, if you are marking the day or simply looking forward to eating a chocolate egg or two, you have a happy run up to Easter and I hope to see you here next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.

1846 was a year that changed literary history forever, and it certainly changed the lives of a certain family of Haworth in ways they could not possibly have imagined. It was the year which saw the publication of the very first book by the Brontë sisters, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. In today’s post we’re going to look at a letter sent on this day in 1846 which shows that their ambitions didn’t end when they became published poets.

The collection of poems had done the rounds of multiple publishers until they alighted upon Aylott & Jones of London who agreed to publish the book by the Bell brothers (as the publisher thought them to be) as long as they covered the expense of printing and publicity. The book did not sell well but it did garner good reviews, and as Charlotte Brontë stated in her biographical notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, they were inspired to turn their hands to a work of fiction: 

“Ill-success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given us a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced ‘Wuthering Heights’, Acton Bell, ‘Agnes Grey’, and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume. These MSS. [manuscripts] were perseveringly obtruded among various publishers for the space of a year and a half; usually, their fate was an ignominious and abrupt dismissal.”

The first publisher ‘obtruded’ upon in this way was the one they knew best: Aylott & Jones. It was to Aylott & Jones that Charlotte Brontë, posing as an interlocutor for Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, wrote on the 6th of April 1846:

This letter is a historically important one: it notes the moment in time when Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and The Professor were completed and ready to be submitted for publication. The choice of publishers on this occasion, however, was a mistake. Aylott & Jones published poetry along with prose works of a religious nature; secular fiction, such as the Brontës were offering, was not at all their style. Aylott & Jones wrote to Charlotte explaining their stance but they also advised her where she could find the names and addresses of publishers who could potentially accept prose novels. This list was compiled and worked down fastidiously, until eventually Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were accepted for publication by Thomas Cautley Newby. The Professor was not accepted, but undaunted as ever Charlotte soon began and completed Jane Eyre – the great novels we love today were now ready to face the world.

The Brontës evidently enjoyed writing, and being published, together, and three volume sets of the kind proposed to Aylott & Jones by Charlotte Brontë were all the rage. The proposed scheme does raise a question however: Wuthering Heights is much longer than the other novels in the planned triumvirate, and it was eventually published in two volumes alongside the one novel of Agnes Grey. Does that mean it was lengthened by Emily after Charlotte’s letter to Aylott & Jones, or that an initial shorter version was sent to the publisher? Like the rumours of a second novel by Emily Brontë, we will never know.

All we do know for sure is that we can be very thankful that the letter was sent to Aylott & Jones, and then on to other publishers. I’m also very grateful to Gary Day, a retired English teacher, Brontë fan and reader of this blog. He very kindly this week sent me a poem he had composed about Anne Brontë’s grave in Scarborough. Entitled “Anne Brontë’s Grave: St Mary’s Church, Scarborough”, it was published last year in a magazine called ‘Lunar Rainbow’ and he has given permission for me to share it with you. I do so below, and a very fine poem it is. I hope you enjoy the poem and I hope also to see you next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post:

At first glance it looks neglected,
Tufts of grass and the brittle stalks
Of some dead flower, yet this is the one
They come to see. Is it a reverence
For the written word that draws them here?
Or because it’s on the tourist trail, along with
The Spa, the Italian Gardens and the Castle,
Still defying its own demise? Odd
Little offerings adorn the base:
A feather, a bracelet, the head
Of a violet and a scattering of pebbles.
The gravestone is flecked with white;
Salt air has corroded the copperplate
Epitaph. Its looping letters have lost
Their curls; now there are spaces where
There were words. Wind and rain
Have blurred the relief of a draped urn
Resting on two novels recording, like
Those of her sisters, the tide of
History rising in provincial lives.
Emily and Charlotte are together
At Haworth but Anne lies alone,
Except for her unfathomable
Visitors and the sea singing to her bones.