Author: insearchofannebronte@hotmail.com

Thank you for all your support following my news about the passing of my wonderful mother recently. Normal service will now be resumed in this blog, and regular weekly Brontë posts will recommence. I will always remember her, just as the Brontës remembered the people they loved and lost. Today is a day of remembrance, so we will turn once again to the story of the Brontë first cousin, once removed, who came out of retirement to fight on the western front during World War One – and at one particularly poignant photograph.

Today is Remembrance Sunday, a day when we can remember the members of the armed forces, and civilians, across the world and throughout the centuries who have fought in conflicts for the country and causes they believed in. Many fought and were injured, many fought and died. Brontë relative Arthur Milton Cooper Branwell was one of the lucky ones to fight and survive.

Arthur Branwell was the son of Thomas Brontë Branwell, which makes him a first cousin once removed of the Brontë siblings. His grandmother was Charlotte Branwell, younger sister of Maria Branwell and the aunt after whom Charlotte Brontë was named. Arthur was born in 1862 and had a long military career in which he fought in the nineteenth century Boer War among other conflicts. At the start of World War One in 1914 he came out of retirement and initially served as an instructor preparing troops about to be sent to the front line. Eventually his skills were needed in the front line himself and he was sent to France – as this picture of him and his fellow officers shows:

This is surely a happy photograph amidst the conflict raging across Europe and beyond. Captain Branwell is seated at the front, with four fresh faced lieutenants around him. Did they, like Arthur, return to civilian life after the war? The caption on the Tatler photograph gives us a sad clue: ‘this group has, alas, suffered severely since the picture was taken.’
In fact today I reveal the tragic tale of this photograph – the truth is that everyone in it, except Captain Arthur Branwell, was killed. Here are their stories:

Lieutenant Herbert Stofford Maunsell
Herbert Maunsell was born in Ottawa, Canada – his father was Brigadier General G.S. Marshall. He died of his wounds on 1st September 1915 after fighting in the Pas-de-Calais, and is buried in Choques Military Cemetery.

2nd Lieutenant William Stanley Giles
William Giles was the son of J.G. Giles. Born in Cardiff he survived the battles of France and, showing the global nature of this conflict, he was sent to Palestine. He was killed in action there aged 29 on 2nd November 1917, and is buried in Gaza Military Cemetery.

2nd Lieutenant James Frederick Gamble
James Gamble was the son of Joseph Frederick Gamble of Middlesbrough. He was killed in action aged 25 at the Battle of the Somme on 25th June 1916, and is buried at Auchonvillers Military Cemetery.

Lieutenant James Harold Elliott
James Elliott was the son of Henry and Anne Elliott of Cheltenham. He too was killed at the Battle of the Somme, on 29th November 1916. He was just 18 years old. James is buried at Beaumont-Hamel Military Cemetery.

Five men posing for a photograph, ready to give their all for their country. Only one man would ever see it again – Brontë relative Arthur Branwell. Their tales are like so many, today they are just faces on a photograph but in 1916 and 1917 they were the dead sons of fathers and mothers; they were the subjects of terse telegrams that destroyed lives forever. They were men who could have had long years ahead of them, who had so much to see, so much to give, but instead they gave their lives. Let us remember them.

There are many others to remember, from the 1914-18 war, and from far too many others, and of course, as John Milton said, they also serve who only stand and wait. On this Remembrance Sunday of 2025 let us remember them all, and all who are close to our hearts. I hope to see you here next week for another new Brontë blog post.

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.

If we could jump into our time machine and head back to this day in 1848 we would enter a world of mourning and bereavement inside Haworth Parsonage – death had visited and taken the only son of Haworth’s long standing and much respected curate. Branwell Brontë had carried the weight of expectation on his shoulders from an early age, and as he grew older it was a weight he found increasingly heavy and unable to bear. He died on 24th September 1848, aged 31, and was buried on 28th September.

Branwell Brontë was a complex man who undoubtedly had serious issues that contributed to his decline and death. He was an alcoholic and frequently throughout his life he was also addicted to opium (of which heroin is the modern day equivalent) and laudanum, the tincture of opium mixed with spirits that was cheap, easily available in Haworth, and terrifyingly addictive and powerful. Like Lord Lowborough in Anne’s ‘The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall’ he managed to beat this addiction by going ‘cold turkey’ but he also returned to its embrace. Branwell’s addictions, and his recurring boutsof depression and mental anguish, were in all probability linked to issues relating to the childhood losses he suffered – the devastating early deaths of his mother and then his eldest sisters Maria and Elizabeth; we should not, however, let the form of his end cloud our impression of his life as a whole.

Branwell could be a happy, generous brother – it was he after all who shared the gift of twelve toy soldiers with Charlotte, Emily and Anne in July 1826, a gift that was to prove pivotal in unlocking the childhood creativity within the Brontës. Patrick had brought other gifts for his daughters, including a paper doll for Anne, but the soldiers he bought for his son were shared immediately among his siblings as a young Branwell himself remembered:

‘I carried them [the soldiers] to Emily, Charlotte and Anne. They each took up a soldier, gave them names, which I consented to, and I gave Charlotte Twemy, to Emily Pare, to Anne Trot to take care of them, although they were to be mine and I to have the disposal of them as I would.’

These twelve soldiers became the young men who populated their childhood world of the Great Glasstown Confederacy, which in turn became Angria. This is the land behind the incredibly tiny and intricate little books that can still be seen at Harvard University and in the Brontë Parsonage Museum today. It is Branwell that took the lead role in this early creative outburst, as evidenced by the initial name of their books being ‘Branwell’s Blackwood Magazine.’

Branwell was possibly the most enthusiastic early poet of the four remaining siblings, and he was not lacking in ambition, as the conclusion to his letter to Blackwood’s Magazine of Edinburgh in December 1837 showed:

‘Now, sir, do not act like a commonplace person, but like a man willing to examine for himself. Do   not turn from the naked truth of my letters, but prove me – and if I do not stand the proof, I will not further press myself upon you. If I do stand it, why, you have lost an able writer in James Hogg, and God grant you may gain one in Patrick Branwell Brontë’

Branwell was also not lacking in talent as a poet, and we do well to remember that Branwell was the first of the Brontë siblings to find themselves in print (Anne was the only other sibling who had her poetry published without paying for it). His verse appeared in a number of local publications under the pseudonym of ‘Northangerland’, a complex character from the Angrian saga, one readily identified with by his creator. Under this guise his work appeared in publications ranging from the Yorkshire Gazette and Leeds Intelligencer to the Halifax Guardian which on June 5th 1841 published his poem ‘Heaven an Earth’.

Branwell had twelve poems published by the Halifax Guardian alone, and this was no mean feat as they took their poetry very seriously, and the standard was very high. Reading Branwell’s poetry today reinforces the impression of a good poet with a real love of verse. It is sad, therefore, that by 1846 his addictions made him unable to be considered for inclusion within ‘Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell’.

Branwell was a talented man in many areas; a skilled musician from an early age, a fine artist, and a loving brother who drew sketches for his baby sister Anne – a kindness she never forgot. He could write with both hands at once, composing a Greek letter with his left hand and a Latin letter with his right – an incredible testimony to the talents that lay within him. If Branwell had reached creative maturity I have little doubt that the results would have been brilliant, and with modern day medicines, treatments and understanding he could have lived a longer and productive life.

What is, perhaps, strange, however, is that it was not his addictions which killed Branwell, but tuberculosis, the same consumptive condition which would wrest Emily and Anne away too. Haworth was a sickly village at this time, with rampant epidemics of the likes of cholera and typhoid, but tuberculosis was relatively rare – it was a disease of densely packed urban areas.

It seems likely that either Anne or Charlotte inadvertently brought the disease back from their voyage to London in July 1848. Branwell, his immune system seriously weakened by his addictions, succumbed first. Kind, caring Emily would no doubt have nursed Branwell, even if she was ordered not to, and so she caught the disease from her brother and in stoic silence she perished next. Anne was next to fall, like a series of dominoes whose conclusion is certain once the first one has been pushed.

At last the fatal day arrived. Sunday 24th September 1848 saw Branwell Brontë confined to his bed in Haworth Parsonage, as he had been for the majority of the preceding summer. He had been there, growing frailer and frailer for many weeks, and on this day his great friend, neighbour, and village sexton, John Brown was by his bed.

Brown was about to leave this dark, gloomy chamber to ring the bells summoning people to church, one of of his sexton roles, but Branwell called out suddenly, ‘John, I’m dying!’ Patrick, Emily, Anne and Charlotte were called to his room. Charlotte later recalled the scene. Patrick prayed fervently, and Branwell at last whispered a word that had not escaped his lips for a decade: ‘amen’.

With Patrick Brontë and his family taking the front pew in Haworth church, the funeral celebrant on the 28th September was Reverend William Morgan. Morgan had been married alongside his great friend Patrick Brontë, he it was who had baptised Branwell Brontë in Thornton, and he it was who now had to preside over his funeral rites.

Over two hundred years since his birth, the reputation of Branwell Brontë is changing. More and more people are becoming interested in his life, his art and his poetry. He was certainly an influence on the Brontë sisters’ story, for good and bad. I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

London is a city which has shaped its country, and shaped the world, for nearly two millennia. There’s so much to see and do there, but whenever I visit I particularly like to follow in the footsteps of the Brontë sisters – and I was lucky enough to do that earlier this year.

The Brontë sisters are most associated with Yorkshire, of course, but between them they travelled to locations including Belgium, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and London. Charlotte visited the capital many times, firstly in 1842 alongside her father and Emily Brontë en route to Brussels, and Anne visited in 1848, alongside Charlotte – in fact, Anne Brontë’s journey to London and back was the only time she ever left Yorkshire. In September 1848 Charlotte Brontë wrote to her friend Mary Taylor (affectionately known as Polly) to describe what happened after she and Anne arrived in London:

“We arrived at the Chapter Coffee House (our old place Polly, we did not well know where else to go) at around eight o’clock in the morning. We washed ourselves, had some breakfast, sat a few minutes and then set off in queer inward excitement to 65 Cornhill. Neither Mr Smith nor Mr Williams knew we were coming. They had never seen us – they did not know whether we were men or women, but had always written to us as men.”

It is this journey I recreated in the latest video on my House Of Brontë channel on YouTube. The weather turned rather severe at one point, and the total sum of technology I had was my mobile phone held in my hand, but I hope you enjoy the journey nonetheless:

I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

Emily Brontë was without doubt the finest poet in the Brontë family, even though her sisters Anne and Charlotte, and brother Branwell Brontë, were all capable of producing fine verse of their own. At the heart of her creative powers Emily gave up writing poetry, and it was on this day 1846 that she wrote the first draft of her final poem.

It was a first draft, however, which proved to be very different to the one which would follow. Emily Brontë very helpfully dated “Why ask to know the date – the clime” September 14th 1846, and it was an epic 264 lines long. She then put her pen down and wrote no further poetry until 13th May 1848. This poem was a mere 26 lines, but although a tenth of its length “Why ask to know what date what clime” is clearly a reworking, a completion, of Emily’s earlier poem.

These are the only poems that we know Emily Brontë wrote in the last two years of her life, and in the time after she had finished writing Wuthering Heights. Much has been written as to why Emily laid down her pen, but I think the sheer effort involved in writing the novel and in finding a publisher had completely drained Emily’s love of writing. A very shy woman, she had never harboured a desire to see her name or her work in print; writing itself was the end product for Emily, it was one she could share with her sisters but not the world. The opening up of work which had been so private to Emily was an intensely painful process for Emily, and it seems to me that she had resolved not to write again – which is why I believe that Emily Brontë had not started a second novel, and nor would she ever have done.

So, what are these poems, these two very different forms of one poem, about? They are clearly set in Gondal, the imaginary land Emily and Anne created in childhood and which continued to dominate Emily’s imagination throughout her life. They are deep, dark poems with an apocalyptic feel – poems full of destruction, full of defiance. It is for this reason that some see the shadow of Branwell Brontë, who by this time was hopelessly and finally addicted to alcohol and laudanum, looming large over Emily’s composition.

I present both poems to you now, reproduced from the very fine Penguin Classics version of The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë. The initial poem is headed ‘168’ and the shorter, reworked version, Emily’s final poem, is headed ‘169’:

These were Emily’s final poems, but they were still powerful, memorable and mystifying as much of her best work. I hope you will join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

When December arrives most people in England, today and in times gone by, find themselves thinking of Christmas and the joy, laughter and hope that it brings. In December 1842 however, Anne Anne Brontë’s thoughts turned back to a week in September – in fact, to this week in September.

Yesterday marked the 183rd anniversary of the death of William Weightman. He was the assistant curate of Haworth Parish much loved by his parishioners. He would visit the poor folk of Haworth in their own homes, reading the Bible to them, sometimes bringing gifts for them.  On one occasion, as mentioned by her in a letter to Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Anne Brontë saw Weightman returning to the Parsonage late one evening looking sad and tired. Patrick asked him what was wrong. He replies that he is in low spirits because he has just been to see a poor young girl who was dying. The girl turned out to be Susan Bland, one of Charlotte’s Sunday school pupils. She visited the house the next day, and found that Susan was indeed dying, but also that Weightman had not only visited them but that he’d taken them a bottle of wine and a jar of preserves. Mrs Bland added that ‘he was always good-natured to poor folks, and seemed to have a deal of feeling and kind-heartedness about him’. 

There was no parishioner, however, who loved Weightman more than Anne Anne Brontë. Her world was devastated when in 1842 he caught cholera after visiting a sick parishioner and died, with his friend Branwell Anne Brontë by his bedside. From this moment on Anne wrote a series of beautiful mourning poems – there is no doubt in my mind that these poems were written for William Weightman. In December 1842, she wrote one such poem, which she enigmatically titled “To -”, I reproduce it below:

“I will not mourn thee, lovely one,
Though thou art torn away.
‘Tis said that if the morning sun
Arise with dazzling ray
And shed a bright and burning beam
Athwart the glittering main,
‘Ere noon shall fade that laughing gleam
Engulfed in clouds and rain.
And if thy life as transient proved,
It hath been full as bright,
For thou wert hopeful and beloved;
Thy spirit knew no blight.
If few and short the joys of life
That thou on earth couldst know,
Little thou knew’st of sin and strife
Nor much of pain and woe.
If vain thy earthly hopes did prove,
Thou canst not mourn their flight;
Thy brightest hopes were fixed above
And they shall know no blight.
And yet I cannot check my sighs,
Thou wert so young and fair,
More bright than summer morning skies,
But stern death would not spare;
He would not pass our darling by
Nor grant one hour’s delay,
But rudely closed his shining eye
And frowned his smile away,
That angel smile that late so much
Could my fond heart rejoice;
And he has silenced by his touch
The music of thy voice.
I’ll weep no more thine early doom,
But O! I still must mourn
The pleasures buried in thy tomb,
For they will not return.”

The wheel of the year turns, and summer heat is giving way to autumn with its beautiful russet shades, a truly golden time with the promise of better days for all. I hope you can join me next week for another new Anne Brontë blog post.

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë was completed on 30th August 1849. It may be the most unheralded of all Charlotte’s novels, unfairly I would say, but it’s certainly in my opinion the most personal of novels. In Shirley, Charlotte included, masked by a change of name here and there, many of the people and places she had known: from her sisters to the Taylor family of Gomersal and her future husband Arthur Bell Nicholls. Along with the package Charlotte sent to her publishers at the end of August 1849 was also a deeply personal preface, and it’s this we will look at today.

The build up to the completion and publication of the novel had been an intensely traumatic one for Charlotte. Her debut published novel Jane Eyre had received great public acclamation and had brought her the promise of a wealthy future, but it had brought stinging rebukes from critics such as the Quarterly’s reviewer Elizabeth Rigby who called the novel “anti-Christian” and said of it: “It would be mere hackneyed courtesy to call it ‘fine writing.’ It bears no impress of being written at all, but is poured out rather in the heat and hurry of an instinct, which flows ungovernably on to its object, indifferent by what means it reaches it, and unconscious too. As regards the author’s chief object, however, it is a failure – that, namely, of making a plain, odd woman, destitute of all the conventional features of feminine attraction, interesting in our sight. We deny that he has succeeded in this.”

When Charlotte began work on Shirley her sisters Emily and Anne Brontë were in fine health, and Charlotte used them as inspiration for the novel’s heroines Shirley and Caroline. By the time the novel was completed, however, both sisters, and brother Branwell, had died. Charlotte concluded the writing of her novel with her life changed in every way, decimated in spirit and in health, and her preface to the novel was both an outpouring of grief and an outpouring of anger. It is a brilliant outpouring, and it is produced below under its title “A Word To The Quarterly”:

The public is respectfully informed that with this Preface it has no manner of concern, the same being a private and confidential letter to a friend, and – what is more – a “lady-friend.”

Currer Bell can have no hesitation as to the mode in which he ought to commence his epistle: he feels assured – his heart tells him that the individual who did him the honour of a small notice in the “Quarterly” – if not a woman, properly so called – is that yet more venerable character – an Old Woman. His ground then is clear and he falls to work upon it with much heart and comfort.

Dear Madam, I daresay I should have written you before but at the time your favour reached me I was engrossed with matters whereof I am dispensed from giving you the faintest outline of an account. It is not my intention to go through your article from beginning to end: I merely wish to have a little quiet chat with you on one or two paragraphs.

In the first place, you appear alarmed with an idea that “the tone of mind and thought which has overthrown authority and violated every code, human and divine – abroad – and fostered Chartism and Rebellion – at home – is the same which has also written ‘Jane Eyre’.”

Let us not dwell on this subject: let us pass it lightly: if we trod with audacious emphasis, or if we confidingly sat down, both of us might fly abroad on the wings of sudden explosion. Any man’s nose may here wind a Gunpowder Plot; the very savour and odour of the thing is traitorous. Permit me but to whisper – as you and I glide off, arm-in-arm and on tip-toe – Don’t be too uneasy, dear Madam; take not on to any serious extent; be persuaded to keep as calm as may be. I am not at liberty to say more: we live in strange times – muffled in Mystery. Hush!

In the second place, you breathe a suspicion that Currer Bell, “for some sufficient reason” (Ah! Madam: Skilled by a touch to deepen Scandal’s tints, with all the kind mendacity of hints.) “for some sufficient reason” has long forfeited the society of your sex. In this passage – Madam – we discover an undoubted Mare’s nest: here is the cracked shell of the equine egg: there the colt making its escape á toutes jambes and alas! yonder – Truth scouring after it, catching it and finding the empty phantom vanish in her grasp. You should see – Ma’am, the figure Currer Bell can cut at a small party: you should watch him assisting at a tea-table; you should behold him holding skeins of silk or Berlin wool for the young ladies about whom he innocuously philanders, and who, in return, knit him comforters for winter-wear, or work him slippers for his invalid-member (he considers that rather an elegant expression – a nice substitute for – gouty foot; it was manufactured expressly for your refinement) you should see these things, for seeing is believing. Currer Bell forfeit the society of the better half of the human race? Heaven avert such a calamity – ! The idiot (inspired or otherwise) Samuel Richardson, could better have borne such a doom than he.

The idea by you propagated, if not by you conceived, that my book proceeded from the pen of Mr. Thackeray’s governess caught my fancy singularly: I felt a little puzzled with it, at first, as – I make no doubt – did Mr. Thackeray – but, on the whole, it struck me as being in my line – in the line of any novel-wright – something boldly imaginative, – cunningly inventive, the reverse of trite. You say, you see no great interest in the question; I do: a very comical interest. What other “romantic rumours” have been current in Mayfair? You set my curiosity on edge. I have but a very vague notion of the occupations and manner of life of the inhabitants of Mayfair, but I rather suspect them of resembling the old Athenians who spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Who invents the new things for their consumption? Who manufactures fictions to supply their cravings? I need not ask who vends them: you, Madam, are an active saleswoman; the pages of your “Quarterly” form a notable advertising medium.

Attentive to your stricture, I have made a point of ascertaining what that garment is which ladies, “roused in the night”, assume in preference to “frock” or gown, as being at once “more convenient and more becoming”. Candid – as I am sure you are, you will cheerfully allow that I have mastered it, and mastered it triumphantly; in proof whereof I point – not without exultation, to Mrs. Yorke in her Flannel Wrapper: chaste! simple! grand! severe! At this moment I recall another species of drapery whose dignity may be considered yet more recondite and impressive – the camisole or short night-jacket. On mature reflection however – it is my own unbiased opinion that the Wrapper – the Flannel Wrapper harmonises best with the genius of the British Nation to the folds of the Wrapper therefore I cling – and from that patriotic motives – the French – the Belgian women wear camisoles – and pretty figures they cut in them!

For the rest my accuracy is no novelty. Recollect, ma’am, it was only the happy little governess whom I represented as putting on her “frock” and shawl – and as she possessed but three “frocks” (that class of persons often use the word “frock” where a lady would say “dress”, if you observe, ma’am, as does also the domestic servant; – I like to put them on a level) in the world – a personage of your sagacity will have no difficulty in inferring that she was unlikely to boast any choice of garments more convenient and becoming; it may be questioned, indeed, whether it would not have been a piece of impertinent presumption in her to aspire to any such; at the same time two dowager ladies of quality, “roused in the night,” are exhibited as “bearing down on Mr. Rochester in vast white wrappers”. Here, ma’am, is both a fitness of things and a concatenation accordingly. I discuss these points at length under the satisfactory condition that I am writing to one who feels all their profound importance.

The other day I took the train down to Ingram Park to make personal inquiry of Miss Blanch Ingram’s maid about the material of her lady’s morning-dress. I am bound to confess that she shared your righteous indignation. “Crape!” she cried “her mistress never put on crape in a morning in her life, nor gauze neither!”. I petitioned to be informed – She told me “Barége” and proceeded to give a minute description of the pattern: you will have pleasure in hearing it repeated: A light blue ground, barred across with faint stripes of a deeper colour, figured with a pattern of small leaves mixed with zigzags, finished with a narrow silk stripe, straight down. “Very neat” I pronounced it.

You will perhaps say, Ma’am, that “barége” is a fabric of more recent invention than the days of Miss Ingram’s youth; in that case I can only answer, as the young ladies of a foreign establishment where I once taught English were wont briefly to answer when but too clearly convicted of fiction: “Tant pis!”

This preface was intended for Shirley

I had some thoughts on concluding my letter by a tender reproof of that rather coarse observation of yours relative to dessert-dishes and game – but I forbear – warning you only not to indulge too freely in the latter dish when very “high” – in that state it is not wholesome.

What a nice, pleasant gossip you and I have had together, Madam. How agreeable it is to twaddle at ones ease unmolested by a too fastidious public! Hoping to meet you one day again – and offering you such platonic homage as it becomes an old bachelor to pay. I am yours very devotedly, CURRER BELL”

It is clear that Charlotte is not in the mood to hold anything back, she has said what she has said and there is no more to be done – “tant pis” indeed. Charlotte’s publishers. However, found it very regrettable, and on this day in 1849 Charlotte wrote to both George Smith and W. S. Williams defending her preface and insisting that it should be published alongside Shirley.

To Williams. Charlotte wrote: “I cannot change my preface, I can shed no tears before the public, nor utter any groan in the public ear. The deep, real tragedy of our domestic experience is yet terribly fresh in my mind and memory. It is not a time to be talked about to the indifferent; it is not a topic for allusion to in print… Let Mr Smith fearlessly print the preface I have sent – let him depend upon me this once; even if I prove a broken reed, his fall cannot be dangerous: a preface is a short distance, it is not three volumes. I have alway felt certain that it is a deplorable error in an author to assume the tragic tone in addressing the public about his own wrongs or griefs. What does the public care about him as an individual? His wrongs are its sport; his griefs would be a bore. What we deeply feel is our own – we must keep it to ourselves. Ellis and Acton were, for me, Emily and Anne; my sisters – to me intimately near, tenderly dear – to the public they were nothing – beings speculated upon, misunderstood, misrepresented. If I live, the hour may come when the spirit will move me to speak of them, but it is not come yet.”

To George Smith, Charlotte wrote: “I do not know whether you share Mr Williams’s disapprobation of the Preface I sent, but if you do, ask him to shew you the note wherein I contumaciously persist in urging it upon you. I really cannot condescend to be serious with the Quarterly: it is too silly for solemnity.”

It seems that Williams at least had urged Charlotte to remove her attack on Rigby and the Quarterly and instead write about her dead sisters Emily and Anne. In this, as in all things, Charlotte would not be swayed. Many years later a publisher used an image of Elizabeth Rigby as the cover for Charlotte’s final novel Villette: revenge had been served cold. I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

Some works of literature have worked their way into the national consciousness and beyond. It’s difficult to imagine a world without Jane Eyre; it’s loved by readers across the globe today just as much as it was loved by Queen Victoria in the nineteenth century; it’s read by students for their exams, and by many others for pleasure. Jane Eyre is one of the great successes of English literature, and yet little could its author have guessed that was what it would become on this day exactly 178 years ago today.

It was on 24th August 1847 that Charlotte Brontë, using the pen name of Currer Bell, sent her manuscript volume of Jane Eyre the publishing house Smith, Elder & Co of Cornhill, London accompanied by this short letter:

This sparked an incredible turn of events. We know that the manuscript was first read by W. S. Williams of the publishing house who was so taken with it that he immediately brought it to the attention of his employer George Smith. Smith was even more mesmerised by the tale of the governess who overcomes all the odds and finds wealth and love, and we know from his memoirs that he read the complete manuscript in a day, cancelling a dinner party he had planned and dining on sandwiches instead. Terms were quickly agreed with the author, and within weeks the book was published in three volumes that were flying off the shelves in book sellers and in circulating libraries. 

It was the epitome of an overnight success for a novel, but not for the author because, of course, Jane Eyre was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel. Her first written novel was The Professor, completed at the same time as Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, but it remained unwanted and unpublished until after Charlotte’s death.

That much is well known, but what many fail to realise is the extraordinary pace at which Charlotte completed what has become one of the world’s best loved novels.

Charlotte asked Smith, Elder & Co whether they would publish The Professor on 2nd August 1837. They replied that whilst it had some points of interest they could not publish it. On 7th August Charlotte sent them the following letter informing the publisher that she was now working on another novel which might be more to their taste:

There was just 17 days between Charlotte sending that letter, to her completing Jane Eyre and sending its manuscript to Cornhill. An incredible period of productivity had clearly gripped Charlotte, and the result was a novel which can astonish readers today just as much as it astonished W. S. Williams and George Smith in August 1847. Here was a novel they could publish, here was a novel they did publish, and for that we can all be thankful.

I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post, why not see if you can write a novel, a la Charlotte Brontë, in the space between my weekly posts?