We reach day six in our twelve days of Brontë Christmas countdown, but before we find a Brontë related replacement for six geese a laying, we have to mark one of the saddest Brontë anniversaries on the calendar. Today marks the 177th anniversary of Emily Brontë’s death.
Emily Brontë died on 19th December 1848, dying just three months after brother Branwell in what was a real annus horribilis in Haworth Parsonage. Emily was a great and unique genius, an intensely shy woman yet one who excelled at everything she turned her hand to: from painting and poetry, to shooting guns, baking bread and learning languages.
Emily wrote just one novel, but in my opinion it’s the greatest novel ever written: Wuthering Heights. Having written this masterpiece she laid down her pen, and it’s my opinion that even if Emily had lived longer she would not have produced another novel. Her early death from tuberculosis was a terrible tragedy, but what a gift she has left to the world in her writing.
Charlotte Brontë announced the death of her younger sister the following day in a letter to W. S. Williams of her publishing house Smith Elder:
“My dear sir, when I wrote in such haste to Dr. Epps, disease was making rapid strides, nor has it lingered since, the galloping consumption has merited its name – neither physician nor medicine are needed more. Tuesday night and morning saw the last hours, the last agonies, proudly ensured till the end. Yesterday Emily Jane Brontë died in the arms of those who loved her.
Thus the strange dispensation is completed – it is incomprehensible as yet to mortal intelligence. The last three months – ever since my brother’s death seem to us like a long, terrible dream. We look for support to God – and thus far he mercifully enables us to maintain our self-control in the midst of affliction whose bitterness none could have calculated on.”
As Omar Khayyam famously said, “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on.” We turn now to our 12 days of Christmas countdown: we can’t serve up six geese a laying, but the Brontës did have two geese which they named Adelaide and Victoria. See if you can spot them on this fabulous collage of Brontë pets I bought from talented artist Amanda White.
The names of the geese were a tribute to the royal family of the time: Queen Victoria, and her first child Victoria Adelaide who had been born in the year before the geese came into the Brontë household. Alas, the geese went missing whilst Emily and Charlotte Brontë were in Brussels; they had strayed. Therefore, our 12 Days of Brontë Christmas is now: “Six geese a straying, five Brontë rings, four coloured dogs, three French letters, two captive doves, and a merlin in a bare tree.”
By the way, Queen Victoria features heavily in a very atmospheric introduction to Short History Of The Brontës, a podcast available on the BBC and many other podcast providers. I also feature heavily in it, although please note that I had nothing to do with the podcast’s claim that The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall was not republished until 1992! Nevertheless, I think this is a great listen if you want the Brontë story in under an hour. Here it is on BBC Sounds:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0mj277k
I hope you can join me tomorrow for day seven of our festive Brontë countdown, and until then please join me in raising a glass or mug to the memory of Emily Jane Brontë.
I’m interested that you’re convinced that Emily wouldn’t have written another novel if she’d lived. It has been suggested (I can’t remember by whom) that Charlotte destroyed Emily’s unpublished work, both poems and the draft or beginning of another novel. I think this may well be true, possibly as a misguided attempt to ‘protect’ her sister’s reputation, and I suspect that she also destroyed work that Anne left after her death.