This week saw one of my very favourite celebrations – National Love Your Pet Day. I’m lucky enough to have a tortoise called Ovid and a terrier called Matisse in my life, and they brighten up every day. The Brontës loved their pets too, so in today’s post we’re going to look at the plethora of pets who called Haworth Parsonage home, and at paintings of them.
The Brontë Cats
Cats have long been the UK’s most owned pet, so it’s little surprise that the Brontës had a number of cats during their childhood. We know that they had a ginger cat called Tiger and a black cat called Tom which was commented on by Ellen Nussey (although I’m still not sure how it could be both black and a tabby?):
‘‘Black ‘Tom’, the tabby, was everybody’s favourite. It received such gentle treatment it seemed to have lost cat’s nature, and subsided into luxurious amiability and contentment. The Brontës’ love of dumb creatures made them very sensitive of the treatment bestowed upon them. For any one to offend in this respect was with them an infallible bad sign, and a blot on the disposition.’
There may well have been other cats in and out of the parsonage throughout the years, as we have this early drawing by Branwell Brontë of an unknown cat:
The Brontë Birds
Birds are often called ‘dicky birds’ when we talk to children, and perhaps that influenced the name of the Brontë pet canary, Little Dicky? On a rather different scale there was also Emily Brontë’s merlin hawk which she called Nero. Emily found the bird on the moors with an injured wing. She nursed it back to health, and painted this magnificent portrait of it:
The Brontë Dogs
Perhaps best known of their pets are the Brontë dogs. Emily Brontë first had a dog called Grasper, seen in her portrait here. In 1868 a newspaper reporter who visited Haworth to gather Brontë recollections found a man with a vivid memory of Emily and her pets: “Emily never came down into the village, or at least very rarely; but here, through the window, I might see the path by which she used always to go from the parsonage from to the moors. Hundreds of times, when he was a boy, he had watched her go through the stile yonder, followed by her dogs.”
Next came Emily’s huge mastiff Keeper. It was said that only Emily could tame Keeper, and that the dog was absolutely devoted to her. We know from Ellen Nussey’s account that Keeper was a ‘solemn mourner’ at Emily’s funeral and that he never regained his cheerfulness. Here is Emily’s majestic portrait of the dog who loved her:
Anne Brontë was gifted her spaniel Flossy by the Robinson girls, her charges when she was a governess at Thorp Green Hall. Anne painted two images of Flossy but both are incomplete – perhaps it didn’t stay still long enough? Alas, like Keeper, the dog outlived its mistress and it then fell to Charlotte Brontë to walk them. It was presumably Flossy that Charlotte is walking in the 1941 recollection by 96 year old Anne Tempest of Stanhope near Haworth: “She remembers seeing Charlotte Brontë walking on the moors accompanied by a little brown curly-haired dog.”
A charming sketch made by Emily Brontë accompanying a diary paper is at the head of this post, showing Flossy and Keeper curled up in sleep, one on the floor the other on the bed, whilst Emily works at her writing desk. You can get a good indication of the size difference of these Brontë pets by looking at their collars, one of the treasures in the Brontë Parsonage Museum collection.
We know the Brontës also had rabbits, and other birds – it’s fair to say they were animal crazy, which was an enlightened attitude at the time. Pets also appear frequently throughout their work of course, with one of the most charming being when Agnes Grey kisses a fond farewell to her cat in Anne Brontë’s part-autobiographical novel: “I rose, washed, dressed, swallowed a hasty breakfast, received the fond embraces of my father, mother, and sister, kissed the cat – to the great scandal of Sally, the maid – shook hands with her, mounted the gig, drew the veil over my face, and then, but not til then, burst into a flood of tears.”
Whether you have pets now, or have had them in the past, I’m sure they still hold a special place in your heart. Talking of special, I want to give a special thanks to all who have supported this website by taking out a supporter subscription! For just £5 a month supporters will get an exclusive midweek Brontë newsletter (starting on March 5th), a PDF of a Brontë book, and invites to online and in-person Brontë events, as well as an acknowledgement in my next Brontë biography. Don’t worry, I won’t keep plugging this every week but you can, if you wish, subscribe securely by clicking the button to the left of the page (if you’re on the website) or via the link below:
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