Month: October 2025

I’m sorry that I couldn’t bring you a Brontë blog post last week. Very sadly my beautiful mother died last Tuesday aged 88. It’s a personal tragedy that I know many of you will have experienced, and since then I’ve been in a whirlwind of organising people and the events and bureaucracies that follow a death in the family.

At times like these I have found solace in my wonderful wife Yvette and the support of family and friends. It’s a tragedy the Brontës encountered much earlier in life of course – Maria Brontë, mother of the six Brontë siblings, died far too young – when Anne Brontë was just one year old.

Charlotte Brontë was five at the time, and she only came to know the woman her mother had been through a series of letters presented to her by her father in her adulthood. She described the moment thus:

“It was strange now to peruse for the first time the records of a mind whence my own sprang – and most strange – and at once sad and sweet to find that mind of a truly fine, pure and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married – there is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wished she had lived and that I had known her.”

I was very lucky to have known my mother for over half a century, and she could not have been more loving or more supportive. She came with me on one of my first visits to Haworth when I was 18. Here we are outside what is now the Cabinet of Curiosities, but what was then the Old Apothecary.

I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post, and if any of you are going through a similar experience at the moment – keep going.

Today’s blog post will be shorter than intended. I hope you will forgive me, a family illness has taken me away from my laptop and my website, as of course it must. 

I do want, however, to pay tribute to Martha Taylor who died on this day in 1842. Martha was the younger sister of Mary Taylor of Red House, Gomersal (that’s it at the head of this post) and she too had become a friend of Charlotte Brontë after they met at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Mirfield. Charlotte became very fond of Martha who was known affectionately as “Miss Boisterous” by her classmates.

Martha was sent, with Mary, by her family to the exclusive Chateau de Koekelberg school outside Brussels, and this was one of the factors that made Charlotte decide to attend the Pensionnat Heger school in Brussels. No doubt she hoped to see much of the sisters she was so close to, but alas Martha contracted cholera aged 23 and died on 12th October 1842. It was a devastating blow for Charlotte, and she referred to it twice in her novel Shirley in which Martha Taylor is recreated as Jessy Yorke:

We get an idea of Martha’s character from this letter she sent from Roe Head school to Ellen Nussey:

Martha’s grave in Brussels was concreted over, but she has a memorial in Gomersal, West Yorkshire. Charlotte’s fine tribute to Martha lies at its foot: “Much loved was she, much loving.” I hope you are all in good health and full of harvest happiness, and I hope to see you next week for another new Brontë blog post.

The Bronte sisters were connected to nature like few other English writers, excepting perhaps the Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge who made the Lake District their home. The moors sweeping away from Haworth Parsonage fascinate tourists to this day, and they were equally loved by one Bronte sister in particular: Emily Bronte. In today’s new post we’re going to look at one nature-inspired poem by Emily that is particularly pertinent for this time of year.
It is said that Emily Bronte could walk twenty miles a day over the moors, an especially notable feat given the clothing and unsuitable boots she would have had to wear. They were Emily’s special place, and she called them soft names in many a mused rhyme (to borrow from another romantic poet, John Keats). Nevertheless, one of her finest nature poems, the one we shall look at today, is not about the moors at all – it is about an autumnal scene amidst trees and foliage.

I think that every season brings its own delights, but few seasons can bring as much joy as Autumn. This season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (there’s Keats again) delights our senses, whether it’s the golden foliage on trees, the clear dark night skies, or the crunch of leaves under our feet. It’s a sensory delight, even if we have to pull on our cardigans and knitwear to enjoy it.

It is clear that Emily Bronte loved Autumn too, and she pays fine homage to it in her beautifully evocative Autumnal poem below:

“Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.”

The days are indeed shortening, and the nights lengthening, but I hope you can join me next week for another new Bronte blog post.