Author: insearchofannebronte@hotmail.com

I’ve just spent a blissful week in Cornwall, firstly in Newquay soaking up the sun and watching the sun setting over Fistral Bay turn the sea to a golden fire, and then in Penzance, where I followed the Brontë maternal trail and delivered a talk at the stunning Morrab Library, as well as attending an opening party of the Hypatia Trust’s new headquarters – a fantastic organisation that promotes the achievements of women throughout history.

I’ve arrived back in Yorkshire on an auspicious day, as the 1^st of August is Yorkshire Day. That, of course, makes me think of the Brontës (although in truth I never stop thinking of them) and they are to me the Queens of Yorkshire. It’s important, however, to remember the Cornish influence upon them, and it’s this in part that led me to Penzance and to write my biography of a special woman without whom we wouldn’t have the Brontë novels that we love today – ‘Aunt Branwell and the Brontë Legacy’ will be published by Pen and Sword Books at the end of September, but on this day let’s have a look at the similarities between Cornwall and Yorkshire.

Brontë Birthplaces

Everyone associates the Brontës with Haworth, but Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, Emily and Anne were actually born in Thornton near Bradford, whilst the eldest Yorkshire siblings Maria and Elizabeth were born in Hartshead near Mirfield. Penzance in Cornwall was the birthplace of two special women in the Brontë story, Maria Branwell and Elizabeth Branwell – the aunt who stepped up to the plate after the tragic death of her sister in 1821.

Majestic Moorland

The moors around Haworth were a source of endless fascination for Anne and especially Emily Brontë, and they are almost a character in their own right in ‘Wuthering Heights’. Despite a distance of well over 400 miles between Haworth and Penzance, the young Branwells looked out upon a similar landscape as the Cornish town is also surrounded by rugged moors to the north.

Spectacular Seas

Haworth is far from coastal, but Anne Brontë loved the sea, and liked nothing more than being in Scarborough – the east coast resort that she visited annually while governess to the Robinson family, and to which she returned in her final days. Cornwall is renowned worldwide for its stunning coastline, and I believe that it is likely to be Elizabeth Branwell‘s tales of growing up by the sea that made her niece Anne love it so.

A Hint Of Magic

When spending time in Haworth or Penzance it’s impossible to escape a hint of magic, a sense of something other in the air. This can clearly be felt in ‘Wuthering Heights’ too, and we hear of Ponden Kirk -an ancient craggy outcrop with a hole at its base where legend says that crawling through it with a loved one could result in childbirth within a year if you married the person you were with – if you didn’t marry them, it would result in death within a year. This is clearly the fate that befell Catherine – she crawled through it with Heathcliff but didn’t marry him, and so is doomed to die. By coincidence, or not, an ancient stone structure near Penzance called Men-an-Tol carries exactly the same legend.

Penzance has a lot to be proud of – in Maria Branwell and Elizabeth Branwell it had two intelligent, loving, courageous daughters who did so much to shape the Brontë siblings into the genii they became. Whether you’re from Kernow or Keighley, Kentucky or Kyoto, be proud on this day and join with me in saying ‘Happy Yorkshire Day!’

Today marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the most remarkable writer who has ever drawn breath: Emily Jane Brontë. On 30th July 1818, in Thornton near Bradford, she became the fifth child to be born to Patrick and Maria Brontë, and Anne’s birth a year and a half later would complete the brilliant, if precarious, family unit.

How should we celebrate this most special of days? We could re-read ‘Wuthering Heights‘, in my opinion the greatest book ever written. We could dip in and out of her poetry, the verse that she was so passionate about throughout her life. We can simply spend a reflective moment thinking of this daughter of Yorkshire, but as alluded to in last week’s post, one newspaper has decided to celebrate it in a very different way.

The Guardian’s attack upon Emily and the people who love her was as ludicrous as it was insulting, but it has been good to see people leap to her defence, such as in this post from the ever illuminating Brontë blogger Nicola Friar. On the 200th birthday of a woman who has brought to much love and happiness into my life, I must do the same.

There is a growing tendency among some people to disparage the United Kingdom’s achievements in the field of arts and culture. This little island has produced the likes of Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, Blake, Constable, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Zadie Smith, Wordsworth, Percy and Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Burns and the Brontës; these towering figures and their incredible achievements are things we as a nation can be justly proud of, yet instead some delight in traducing their towering accomplishments in garish acts of self-promotion. We live in an age where Lilliputtians are ever seeking a new Gulliver to belittle, and this reached a nadir in last week’s Guardian’s article “The strange cult of Emily Brontë and the ‘hot mess’ of Wuthering Heights.”

As today marks the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë, a woman still celebrated and loved across the world. It’s understandable, therefore, that the media is taking a fresh look at Emily and her legacy, but it is quite clear that the Guardian’s intent was not to praise Emily Brontë but to bury her. The choice of Kathryn Hughes to write the appraisal would surely seem perverse otherwise, for here is a woman who admits freely that she dislikes Emily Brontë and that she has never finished her only novel, the sublime ‘Wuthering Heights’. It is the equivalent of a restaurant critic reviewing a meal they have never tasted, or a sports correspondent reporting on the World Cup final after following it via a Twitter feed, but worse than this are the factual inaccuracies and strange conclusions that litter the article, and it’s this that has prompted me to respond in print.

I have loved Emily Brontë’s writing since I discovered ‘Wuthering Heights’ atop the reading list I’d been given in my first week at University. I was blown away by the book’s power and urgency, and a life long love affair with the Brontës and all their works had me in a vice like grip. I was happy to be held there, and in subsequent years my admiration for Emily, Charlotte and Anne has only grown, which is why my latest biography, ‘Emily Brontë – A Life In 20 Poems,’ was a sheer pleasure to research and write.

It was somewhat surprising therefore to read the Guardian’s assertion that ‘nearly all Emily Brontë’s biographers and scholars over the past century have been women.’ This is to discount seminal works by the likes of Edward Chitham, but worse than this it seems that the writer is using the championing of Emily by women writers to belittle her achievements, rather than seeing this as a cause for celebration. Visitors to Haworth are also sure to notice that women and men equally are drawn to the three literary sisters, so the Guardian’s claims seem either dispiriting or disingenuous.

Hughes then attempts to prove that Emily Brontë is not a great writer by virtue of the fact that acclaimed 20^th century literary critic F.R. Leavis failed to include Emily in his book ‘The Great Tradition’. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, than to say that Leavis did not rate Emily Brontë as a first class writer. On the contrary, he asserted that: “There is, too, Emily Brontë, who has hardly yet had full justice as a poet; I will record, without offering it as a checked and deliberate critical judgement, that her ‘Cold in the earth’ is the finest poem in the nineteenth-century part of the Oxford Book of English Verse.”

This poem, beginning ‘Cold in the earth – and the deep snow piled above thee,’ is better known by its title ‘Remembrance,’ and it is indeed a colossal feat of poetic composition. Hughes seems not only to have failed to finish ‘Wuthering Heights’ (which in itself is some achievement, as the book is not overly long and rattles along at a furious pace), but to be unaware of Emily’s outstanding verse output. Emily Brontë is without doubt one of the finest Victorian poets, and it is this poetry that led directly to the series of seven Brontë novels we love today.

Charlotte Brontë wrote of discovering a book of Emily’s poems in the autumn of 1845 and being stunned at finding them, “condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they also had a peculiar music – wild, melancholy, and elevating.”

This discovery led, after initial protestations from the reserved Emily, to the first Brontë book to reach print: ‘Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell’, and from there it was a short hop to the Brontë’s first prose works.

We can see from this recollection that Charlotte thought incredibly highly of Emily, and indeed of Anne too, and writing after their deaths she concluded that, “I may sum up all by saying, that for strangers they were nothing, for superficial observers less than nothing; but for those who had known them all their lives in the intimacy of close relationship, they were genuinely good and truly great.”

As Charlotte knew better than anybody, the genius of Emily in print was very different to the shy Emily of Haworth, but this aspect of Emily’s character is cruelly twisted by Hughes. As her experience at Roe Head school demonstrates, Emily could suffer severe anxiety when in strange company, and yet this condition (so serious that Charlotte worried it would lead to Emily’s death when at school) is openly mocked within the article. Emily is berated for staying at home, as if she had chosen this out of laziness, when as both Charlotte and Anne acknowledged she was actually working harder than either of them in overseeing domestic duties at the parsonage. This task had previously been the domain of loyal servant Tabby Aykroyd, but she was by then in her dotage and less than mobile after a leg injury. By taking on the majority of her tasks, Emily allowed Tabby to stay in the house she loved, and to retain her dignity. This was typical of the kind hearted Emily, rather than demonstrating a ‘self-interested’ streak as Hughes attests.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the Guardian also choose to attach to Emily an epithet that they deem the worst insult of all – Tory. There is no indication, however, that Emily had any political inclinations whatsoever, and she certainly never made pronouncements on them or referred to them in her prose or poems.

There is no ‘cult’ of Emily Brontë as the writer sneeringly suggests, there is simply a vast number of people on every continent who appreciate Emily Brontë for what she was: a writer of brilliance whose novel and poetry still has the power to shock, to entertain, to cheer. We should not let this article detract from Emily’s 200^th birthday celebrations. Charlotte once said of her sister that despite mixing little in Haworth society, she knew them. When we read ‘Wuthering Heights’, with its depictions of love, lust, betrayal, romance, passion and revenge, we realise too that she knows us. Kathryn Hughes does not seem to know the novel she has failed to finish, nor the writer behind it, so let us turn instead to the words of a woman who did. Ellen Nussey was the lifelong close friend of Charlotte Brontë, and a frequent visitor to Haworth Parsonage, and yet, in a letter to Elizabeth Gaskell, she had no hesitation in naming a woman who impressed her even more than Charlotte:

“I have at this time before me the history of a mighty and passionate soul, whom every adventure that makes for the sorrow or gladness of man would seem to have passed by with averted head. It is of Emily Brontë I speak, than whom the first 50 years of this century produced no woman of greater or more incontestable genius.”

Emily Brontë deserves more than clickbait headlines and tiresome, shouty articles as she celebrates her two hundredth anniversary; she deserves our thanks and praise, she deserves to be read and understood. On this day let us simply say thank you, Emily Brontë – you were a brilliant wordsmith, a brilliant mind, a brilliant woman. Happy 200th birthday!

You may be aware that a national newspaper yesterday printed a very disparaging article about Emily Brontë, ‘Wuthering Heights‘ and Brontë lovers in general. I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to getting angry in blogs, and I don’t want to give the article publicity it doesn’t deserve by putting a link to it. I will leave it there, other than to say that thankfully many Brontë fans have rallied behind Emily as we approach ever nearer to her 200^th birthday.

One thing the article looked at, although as unsuccessfully as everything else in it, was the attitude of famous writers to Emily, so today I’ll redress that somewhat by looking at four writers who visited Haworth.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell was a great writer in her own right, and novels such as ‘North And South’ are a biting indictment of the class divisions and struggles in Victorian England. She also became a firm friend of Charlotte Brontë, but is perhaps most of interest to us as the writer of the first Brontë biography: ‘The Life Of Charlotte Brontë‘, published in 1857. It’s a very interesting book, and an excellent read, but it has to be said that it’s also a fairly controversial book, particularly in its portrait of Patrick Brontë. We should remember, however, that it was Patrick who personally asked Mrs Gaskell to write the book, and she visited Haworth to discuss the scheme with him on 23^rd July 1855, just four months after Charlotte’s death. We should also remember that Elizabeth didn’t have access to much of the information we have today and that she was fed misinformation by a disgruntled ex-employee. Taking all that on board, it’s well worth a read, as it is after all the only biography by a woman who was close friends with one of the Brontë siblings. Gaskell fact: like Anne Brontë, she lost her mother when just a baby and was then raised by an aunt.

Virginia Woolf

The Brontës and Elizabeth Gaskell were, of course, towering figures of mid-nineteenth century literature, but the woman who stands like a colossus in early twentieth century literature is Virginia Woolf. Born into a wealthy family as Adeline Virginia Stephen in 1882 she wrote a series of complex, sometimes confusing, yet dazzling books such as the powerful and touching ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and the time jumping, gender swapping ‘Orlando’. Woolf loved the Brontës, and in 1904 she visited Haworth and wrote an essay about her experience. It was her first piece of journalism to be published by a newspaper, ironically by The Guardian. Woolf fact: Virginia’s sister was the artist Vanessa Bell, whose portrait of Charlotte Brontë was recently acquired by the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Sylvia Plath

Another much lauded and much loved 20^th century writer who was inspired by the Brontës was Sylvia Plath. Tragically, just like Virginia Woolf, Plath took her own life, but in her thirty years she produced incredible collections of poetry such as ‘Ariel’ as well as her brilliant and frank autobiographical novel ‘The Bell Jar’. She visited Haworth with her new husband Ted Hughes in 1956, having first met him at a Cambridge party earlier that year. It was, of course, a tempestuous relationship, but Sylvia never forgot Haworth, and wrote a poem entitled ‘Wuthering Heights’ in September 1961. Plath fact: Massachusetts born Sylvia is buried in Heptonstall churchyard, just ten miles from Haworth.

Mary Taylor

You may know Mary Taylor as the child of the Red House, Gomersal who befriended Charlotte Brontë at Roe Head School and stayed a lifelong friend (although via correspondence, after Mary emigrated to New Zealand in 1845), but there was much more to her. Mary became a successful businesswoman in Wellington, and after returning to England in 1860 she became a writer and an early advocate of women’s rights writing many magazine articles on subjects including women’s suffrage and property rights for women. Finally in 1890, aged 73, she followed Charlotte’s example by publishing a novel. Entitled ‘Miss Miles, A Tale Of Yorkshire Life Sixty Years Ago’, it’s not up to the Brontë standards (but then again, what is?) but it can still be bought today and is well worth a read. Taylor fact: Charlotte Brontë sent £10 to her friend in New Zealand so that she could buy a cow.

Haworth left its mark on these four creative, brilliant women, and the Brontës certainly left their mark on them. Thanks for bearing with me last week, there was no post as it was host renewal time and it took a little more sorting out than I expected. Normal service has now been resumed, and next week we’ll look forward to Emily Brontë’s birthday, and giving her the kind of tribute she deserves!

This weekend witnessed a special festival in Whitby to mark the 250^th anniversary of a voyage of discovery by one of North Yorkshire’s most famous sons, Captain James Cook. The voyage was aboard his ship Endeavour, and left England in 1768. During two long voyages on HMS Endeavour he became the first European to map much of the South Sea and to discover New Zealand and Australia.

Cook was doubtless an inspiration to his fellow Yorkshire natives the Brontës as it was their love of tales of exploration that had a huge influence on their childhood tales of Angria and Gondal. These tales, in tiny, intricate books led of course to the adult novels of the Brontë sisters that we love so much.

The sea features heavily in Anne Brontë’s work, mainly in the form of the Scarborough coastline that she adored and which filled her soul in the same way the Haworth moors did for Emily. It is in Charlotte’s work, however, that we get glimpses of the perilous voyages that explorers like Cook embarked upon.

Jane Eyre’s uncle dies in far off Madeira and leaves her a fortune that transforms her life, whilst Rochester has brought more than gold back from the Caribbean. In ‘Villette’, the heroine Lucy Snowe’s love Paul Emmanuel is hinted to have died in a shipwreck, although in a brilliant plot device the reader is left to determine for themselves whether this was his end or not.

James Cook moved to Whitby in his late teens, and embarked upon a naval career that would see him achieve legendary status. Whitby itself is around 20 miles north of Scarborough, but there is no record of Anne or the Robinson family she worked for as a governess, visiting it during her annual sojourns to the 19^th century’s most fashionable seaside resort.

I, however, visited it this weekend and was lucky enough to visit a replica of Cook’s Endeavour. There were other ships to see as well, including a sailing replica of HMS Pickle, a small top sail schooner that was part of the vast Battle of Trafalgar fleet that saw the death of Admiral Lord Nelson in October 1805.

The Pickle was small but speedy, and nearing the English coast it spotted a fishing boat and passed on the news of the great war heroes death. The boat turned around and headed back into its port, and soon the whole of the town knew. A solemn crowd gathered to hear the news proclaimed from the Union Hotel on Chapel Street, and they then marched to nearby Madron Church. This was the first town in England to hear of Nelson’s death, and it was the Cornish town of Penzance. The Chapel Street proclamation, still re-enacted annually, was just doors from a home in which lived, among others, Maria and Elizabeth Branwell, who would raise the Brontë children as mother and aunt. Given the prominence of the Branwells in Penzance society, it is certain that these two women would have taken part in the march of 1805.

One member of the Branwell family had an even closer connection to the sea. Thomas Branwell was cousin to Maria and Elizabeth and rose rapidly in the ranks after joining the Royal Navy. By 1811 he had reached the heights of First Lieutenant on board the HMS St. George but in December of that year tragedy struck, as recorded in the Navy Chronicle:

‘The St. George, Defence, and Cressey, kept the North Sea five days, in a dreadful gale from the W.N.W. west and south; but, at length, had to combat with a terrible tempest from the N.W. until they were lost. The following is a list of the principal officers who were on board the St. George and Defence when those vessels were wrecked – In the St. George Admiral Reynolds, Captain Guion, Lieutenants Napier, Place, Thompson, Branwell, Dance, Tristram, Riches, and Rogers.’

Thomas Branwell’s body was one of many smashed upon the rocks of Thorsminde, Norway – now known as ‘Dead Men’s Dunes.’

Could it be that one Branwell in particular was heartbroken by this? Rumour has long said that Thomas and his cousin Elizabeth had been in love, (and after all Thomas’ brother Joseph and Elizabeth’s sister Charlotte married) and this may be why she then remained unmarried all her years. Could, years later, Aunt Branwell, in a tearful recollection, have told her nieces of how her love was killed in a shipwreck, and could this have inspired Charlotte Brontë’s ending to ‘Villette’?

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë never suffered death at sea like Nelson or Lieutenant Branwell, nor suffered the privations endured by the crew of HMS Pickle, nor encountered a grisly end at the hands of angry Hawaiian islanders (Captain Cook’s fate). No, sea exploration was not for them – they took on a deeper exploration, an exploration of the very depths of the human heart, the unbreakable strength of the soul, the incredible heights of love, the anguish of pain and loss; when we open their books, we can embark on the same incredible discoveries, and with all their tragedies and triumphs it’s an endeavour greatly to be desired.

We saw earlier this week how June 29^th was a momentous day for Charlotte Brontë, as it was the date on which she was baptised and married, with a 38 year gap in between. Unfortunately many of the exact dates in the Brontë story are unknown, so that we don’t know, for example, the exact date of birth of the eldest Brontë sibling Maria Brontë, nor the joint publication date of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Agnes Grey’.

One event we do know the exact date of, however, happened on June 30^th 1845 – it was a journey to York undertaken by Emily and Anne Brontë, and the two sisters viewed it rather differently, as can be seen in references to it, and absences of references to it, within their individual diary papers of that year.

There are six diary papers in existence, the 1834 and 1837 papers are written jointly by Emily and Anne, whilst in 1841 and 1845 they each write one separately, with the intention that they are opened on Emily’s birthday three or four years later. In her 1845 diary paper, dated 30^th July (her 27^th birthday) she writes that the papers are intended to be opened in 1848, but we have no new diary papers for that year – they could now be lost, or it could be an external factor such as Branwell’s deteriorating health prevented them from ever being penned.

Emily also writes:

‘Anne and I went on our first long journey by ourselves together – leaving home on the 30^th of June – Monday sleeping at York – returning to Keighley Tuesday evening, sleeping there and walking home on Wednesday morning – though the weather was broken, we enjoyed ourselves very much except during a few hours at Bradford and during our excursion we were Ronald Macelgin, Henry Angorra, Juliet Angusteena, Roseabelle, Ella and Julian Egramont, Catherine Navarre and Cordelia Fitzaphnold escaping from the palace of instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans. The Gondals still flourish bright as ever. I am at present writing a work on the First Wars – Anne has been writing some articles on this and a book by Henry Sophona. We intend sticking firm by the rascals as long as they delight us which I am glad to say they do at present.’

This is a very upbeat recollection of a happy few days by Emily, spent in the company of the sister she loved more than anything in the world. It is also in contrast to the image many have of Emily as being relentlessly dour, and in support of a cheerful Emily we also have Ellen Nussey’s account of how she liked to play tricks on people and then laugh uproariously.

Nevertheless, questions arise from Emily’s account – what was the problem with Bradford for example, and is Anne really still obsessed with the land of Gondal, invented in their youth and which the characters named in the above diary paper all populated, as Emily so plainly is? Anne’s corresponding diary paper doesn’t mention the expedition at all, and it seems that she is still suffering after escaping an all too real ‘palace of instruction’. Here is Anne Brontë’s account of that summer:

‘This is a dismal cloudy wet evening, we have had so far a very cold wet summer… The Gondals are in general not in first rate playing condition… I for my part cannot well be flatter or older in mind than I am now. Hoping for the best I conclude, Anne Brontë.’

Why is Anne so despondent here? Simply because June, the month of the trip to York with Emily, also saw Anne resign her post as governess to the Robinson family of Thorp Green Hall, after more than five years of excellent service to them. In this same 1845 paper, Anne hints why she left:

‘I was then at Thorp Green and now I am only just escaped from it. I was wishing to leave then and if I had known that I had four years longer to stay how wretched I should have been too. I was writing my fourth volume of Sophala, but during my stay I have had some very unpleasant and undreamt of experience of human nature.’

Undoubtedly, Anne is at least partly here hinting at flirtations, if not necessarily a full blown love affair, between her mistress Lydia Robinson and Branwell, whom she had secured a job there in 1843. Anne was also doubtless ruing that she would not see Scarborough that summer, or as far as she knew ever again, the east coast resort she loved and that she usually travelled to in July with the Robinson family.

This was a time of transition for Anne Brontë, but with the ever faithful and ever loving Emily Brontë by her side to cheer her up, it would eventually become an incredibly creative one. The girls, with older sister Charlotte, were about to embark upon writing some of the greatest books the world has ever seen.

June the 29^th was a momentous day for Charlotte Brontë at both ends of her life – and for two very different reasons. In 1816 it was the day that she was baptised, whilst in 1854, sadly just a year before her untimely death, it was the day she married.

Charlotte’s baptism took place in the village of Thornton, just over two months after her birth – and there often seems to be a gap between the birth of the Brontë children and their baptisms. It was not at the grand church of St. James that can now be seen at the Thornton but directly opposite it, at what is now known as the Bell Chapel. It is now a ruin, but thanks to local activists a beautiful one.

Presiding over the baptism was Patrick Brontë’s great friend William Morgan, and acting as Charlotte’s godparents were Reverend Thomas Atkinson and his fiance Frances Walker of Lascelles Hall. These two were very instrumental in the Brontë story, as Atkinson was the former curate of Thornton who had suggested to Patrick that they swap parishes (leaving Atkinson with the smaller and less remunerative parish of Hartshead) so that he could be closer to Frances, the woman he loved.

It has been conjectured that Charlotte’s other godmother could have been her aunt Charlotte Branwell, Maria’s younger sister still living in Penzance, for after all another sister was made godmother to the second Brontë sibling who was given her name – Elizabeth. Charlotte Branwell certainly didn’t travel to the ceremony, but Elizabeth Branwell did make the long journey from Penzance to Thornton for the baptism of her niece Elizabeth, and stayed on at Thorton for a year afterwards. She would make another, final, journey north and re-enter the lives of the siblings in 1821 as Aunt Branwell.

None present on that June day in 1816, of course, could have known what the future would hold for the baby in front of them, one of tragedy but also of incredible achievement and triumph, and nor could they have known that another momentous day in Charlotte’s life would come exactly 38 years later.

By 1853, Charlotte was the last Brontë sibling left alive, and she lived at home with her ageing father and their servants Martha Brown and Tabby Aykyroyd. She was 37 that year, and although she was by now a literary success it seemed that she would remain a spinster forever. It was in that year, however, that Arthur Bell Nicholls proposed to her. Nicholls was, like Charlotte’s father, an Irish priest in the Church of England, and he’d served Patrick as assistant curate since May 1845. Over eight years he had fallen in love with the tiny, tormented Charlotte, and one of the duties he now loved to perform was to walk the dogs Keeper and Flossy that Emily and Anne had had to leave behind forever.

His proposal, however, was not well received on either side. Patrick was furious that his assistant had dared to propose marriage to his daughter who he now felt could do much better, and he was also worried about what would happen to him if the daughter he was so reliant upon left. Charlotte herself professed herself not in love with him at all, and said that she barely liked him. Arthur had been building up the courage to make the proposal for months, maybe years, and the rejection hit him hard. He announced that he had applied to become a missionary in Australia and resigned his position at Haworth. On the last but one service he conducted, Charlotte records how he started shaking at the pulpit and then became unable to speak. The congregation had to lead him outside, many of them in tears, and Charlotte herself admits that she herself wept a little. The whole village knew why he was leaving, and on the following week the spectacle happened again. Charlotte writes how she later found him near the church “sobbing as women never sob”.

At this, what they supposed, final meeting Charlotte tried to console him a little, but this seems to have reignited Arthur’s hopes. Instead of going to Australia he moved to another church in Yorkshire, and continued to write to Charlotte. Eventually, his persistence and obvious dedication began to wear Charlotte down, and a year later he returned to Haworth where his second proposal was accepted on the proviso that they would remain at the Haworth Parsonage and continue to look after Patrick.

This acceptance of an engagement now outraged Ellen Nussey, Charlotte’s lifelong friend, as it seems that they had some sort of pact to grow old as spinsters together. Ellen herself would never marry, and nor would her other great friend from her school days Mary Taylor, or her former teacher, employer and now friend Margaret Wooler. For the first time in their lives they ceased writing to each other, but somehow the rift was healed in time for Ellen to act as Charlotte’s bridesmaid.

Charlotte, typically, didn’t want any fuss or extravagance to be made regarding her nuptials, although Ellen eventually forced her to go shopping for bridal wear and made her select a white dress. The beautiful bonnet the bride wore is on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, and locals said that she looked ‘like a snowdrop’ as she, Ellen, and Margaret walked the short distance from the Parsonage to the church.

The wedding took place at eight o’clock in the morning on 29^th June 1854, and one important man was not to be there. At the last moment Patrick said that he felt too ill to attend, although we’ll never know if this was true or if he was still harbouring some resentment at the marriage itself. Margaret Wooler stepped into the breach and it was she who gave Charlotte away, with Reverend Sutcliffe Sowden, a great friend of Arthur, conducting the ceremony.

Also present at the church were Joseph Grant, a friend of Nicholls, and his wife, Sutcliffe Sowden, the vicar of Hebden Bridge, the sexton John Brown and his daughter Martha, Joseph Redman, the parish clerk, and John Robinson, a local boy and former pupil of Charlotte’s. We can also assume that the by now aged and infirm Tabby Aykroyd would also have been there if she was well enough on the day. It was a low key affair, as Charlotte wanted, and they held a reception afterwards at the Sunday school building that lay between the church and the Parsonage.

To Charlotte’s great surprise she fell in love with her new husband, and on Christmas Day 1854 wrote to Ellen of how happy they were together. It was not to last. Charlotte fell pregnant, but was struck down by extreme morning sickness, then a frequently fatal condition in those days before drips, and died on March 1st 1855.

As Charlotte Brontë married in her late thirties, we can ask whether Emily and Anne may have done the same if they had lived to see those years. I once put this question to a famous Brontë expert, who shall remain nameless although they are in my opinion today’s greatest authority on the Brontës, and they opined that Emily would never have married, as she was in their opinion a little odd and so would never have found a suitor. Anne Brontë, however, they felt may one day have found a husband, if she had ever regained health and overcome her mourning for her one love William Weightman.

Today, the 26^th of June 2018, marks the 201^st birthday of Patrick Branwell Brontë, fourth born of the six Brontë siblings and a man who would have a huge influence on the lives of his three famous writing sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.

We have looked at this complex man before, and discovered that there’s far more to him than the two dimensional drunkard often portrayed. He was hugely talented, being able to write a letter in Greek and Latin simultaneously using both hands was just one of his incredible feats. He was a promising painter and a keen poet, but fate decreed that his talents in these areas would never reach their zenith. Branwell it was who shared his soldiers and created the world of Angria, events that would lead directly to the Brontë books we love so much today, and Branwell it was who drew pictures for his little sister Anne as she sat adoringly on his knee.

His later troubles are well known, and while his thwarted love affair with Mrs Lydia Robinson is the famous catalyst, their true origins are much more earlier and much more profound: the early losses of his mother and his beloved sisters Maria and Elizabeth were events he could never forget, and from those sad days onward the outcome was inevitable.

But, it’s Branwell Brontë’s birthday, so let’s celebrate as he would have wanted – the sun is blazing down, the moors look incredible, and there are plenty of cooling draughts being served in inns across Yorkshire and beyond. On this day let’s charge a glass to Branwell, and do what perhaps he would most have wanted, remember that he was at heart a good man and a loving sibling, and remember that he was indeed a poet. Here is The Epicurean’s Song of 1842 when the deaths of his much loved Aunt Branwell and his friend William Weightman had awakened visions of earlier losses:

‘The visits of Sorrow
Say, why should we mourn?
Since the sun of to-morrow
May shine on its urn;
And all that we think such pain
Will have departed – then
Bear for a moment what cannot return.
For past time has taken
Each hour that it gave,
And they never awaken
From yesterday’s grave;
So surely we may defy
Shadows, like memory,
Feeble and fleeting as midsummer wave.
From the depths where they’re falling
Nor pleasure, nor pain,
Despite our recalling,
Can reach us again;
Though we brood over them,
Naught can recover them,
Where they are laid they must ever remain.
So seize we the present,
And gather its flowers,
For – mournful or pleasant –
‘Tis all that is ours;
While daylight we’re wasting.
The evening is hasting,
And night follows fast on vanishing hours.
Yes – and we, when night comes,
Whatever betide,
Must die as our fate dooms,
And sleep by their side;
For change is the only thing
Always continuing;
And it sweeps creation away with its tide.’

Visitors to Haworth at certain times of the year may be lucky enough to see men and women in nineteenth century clothing, but in a certain corner of Belgium this week there was an opportunity to see nineteenth century attire of a very different kind. That’s because this week marked the 203^rd anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. June 18^th 1815 saw Arthur Wellesley, more famously known today as the Duke of Wellington, and his Prussian allies under the leadership of General Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, inflicted a decisive defeat on the increasingly tyrannical Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a fascinating piece of history, but for the Brontës it was very much part of their present.

At the time of the battle, the Brontë family had four members: Patrick and Maria and their two daughters Maria and Elizabeth. Charlotte was born less than a year after the battle, followed by Branwell, Emily, and Anne. Throughout their lives the children would read stories about the heroism displayed on that Belgian battlefield, hanging on every word carried by jingoistic papers they read such as ‘John Bull’.

Their father, Patrick, was a great admirer of his fellow Irishman Arthur Wellesley, the Iron Duke, and would often talk of his exploits and his genius when it came to war. The children were enthralled by these tales, and soon began to worship Wellington themselves. On 5th June 1826 an event occurred which would change the course of literary history forever.

Patrick, realising how keen his four surviving children (Maria and Elizabeth by this time having succumbed tragically to tuberculosis contracted at Cowan Bridge’s Clergy Daughters School) were on Waterloo and the associated tales of heroism, brought a set of wooden soldiers for them. A few years later Charlotte recounted the story:

“Papa bought Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds. When Papa came home it was night, and we were in bed, so next morning Branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers. Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched up one and exclaimed: ‘This is the Duke of Wellington! This shall be the Duke!’ when I had said this Emily likewise took one up and said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part. Emily’s was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him ‘Gravey’. Anne’s was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him ‘Waiting-boy’. Branwell chose his, and called him Buonaparte.”

Branwell also remembered this day, but his recollection of how the soldiers were distributed is slightly different to that of his sister:

“I carried them 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.”

It is no surprise that Charlotte named her soldier Wellington, she worshipped him in the same way that a young girl today would worship the latest boy band. In Branwell’s choice of Napoleon, we also get an early glimpse of the rebellious streak that was later to become so painfully apparent.

The Brontë children could now re-enact the Battle of Waterloo in their own home, and did so at every opportunity. It wasn’t long, however, until they were dreaming up new adventures for their soldiers, the ‘Young Men’ as they were now called. This invented land was called The Glass Town Confederacy, which later led to Angria and Gondal. From this early play they developed what they called a ‘scribblomania’, writing stories and poems about the exploits of their soldiers. This passion for writing would never leave them, and of course resulted in the books the world so loves today.

There is one particularly fascinating object belonging to the Brontë Parsonage collection – a fragment of Napoleon’s coffin! It was presented to Charlotte by Constantin Heger, her Belgian tutor and the unrequited target of her affections.

The voyage of Charlotte and Emily to Brussels in 1842, to study at the Pensionnat Heger with a view to later setting up their own school with Anne in Haworth, brought them close to the Waterloo battlefield, and indeed Brussels at this time was home to many British ex-servicemen and their families who had fought in the battle. It is believed that Patrick, who travelled to Brussels with his two daughters, took the opportunity of visiting Waterloo before returning to England. Years later, Charlotte finally met her hero. On 12^th June 1850 she, by then a successful author but the last surviving of the six Brontë siblings, wrote to Ellen Nussey to say that she had seen the Duke of Wellington, by then in his eighties, in London’s Chapel Royal. Charlotte’s childhood adoration resurfaced, her mind went back to the soldier she had snatched up, and she wrote that he was ‘a real grand old man’.

If the Iron Duke had not defeated Napoleon on that June day more than two hundred years ago, the course of history could be very different. Wellington may not have been worshipped in that Yorkshire parsonage, the soldiers may never have been bought, and we may never have had those seven magnificent Brontë novels. That’s why lovers of Anne Brontë and her sisters should this weekend raise a glass and toast the soldiers of Waterloo, and their courage to face head on tyranny and evil, to face it and defeat it.

Firstly, my apologies for not uploading a post last Sunday! I was in Haworth enjoying a weekend that was beautiful in every way, so whilst I may not have been able to commit the Brontës to my blog as I like to do they felt close to me in every other way. It was my first chance to see the new Emily Brontë exhibition, ‘Making Thunder Roar’, and one part that I did like was a video installation featuring actress Chloe Pirie reading Emily’s poetry to a background of hawks and moorland scenery.

The idyllic Haworth days are now stored to memory to bring a smile and peaceful thoughts whenever I need them. Normal service is now resumed, and in today’s post we’re going to take a Brontë inspired look at Father’s Day. We’ve examined the role of Reverend Patrick Brontë a number of times recently, but it’s worth saying again that in my opinion his contribution to the Brontë story is huge. He was a poet and inspiration, a man who gave all he had to help his children and his community, one who encouraged his daughters in their creative endeavours and allowed them free access to whatever books they liked – something which would have been anathema to many other early 19^th century parents.

Yes, we should certainly say ‘Happy Father’s Day, Patrick Brontë’ but today we are looking at two other dads – the grandfathers of the Brontë siblings. Whilst Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne never met either of their grandparents they would have heard stories of them, and very inspirational stories they would have been too.

Hugh Prunty (or Brunty) was Patrick’s father. Hugh was born in Ireland into a Protestant family in the mid eighteenth century, and Patrick himself gave Elizabeth Gaskell this remembrance of his father:

‘He was left an orphan at an early age. It was said that he was of ancient family… He came to the north of Ireland and made an early but suitable marriage. His pecuniary means were small – but renting a few acres of land, he and my mother by dint of application and industry managed to bring up a family of ten children in a respectable manner.’

If Hugh was left an orphan at an early age, who raised him? It’s here that the story gets particularly interesting as a 19^th century biography relates a tale of a man called Welsh Brunty raising the child as his own. Welsh himself was rather a cuckoo in the nest, and the story of how he came to the Brunty family is told thus:

‘On one of his [Patrick’s great grandfather, a farmer and merchant from County Louth] return journeys from Liverpool a strange child was found in a bundle in the hold of the vessel. It was very young, very black, very dirty, and almost without clothing of any kind. No one on board knew whence it had come, and no one seemed to care what became of it. There was no doctor in the ship, and no woman except Mrs. Brontë, who had accompanied her husband to Liverpool. The child was thrown on the deck. Some one said, “Toss it overboard”; but no one would touch it, and its cries were distressing. From sheer pity Mrs. Brontë was obliged to succour the abandoned infant… When the little foundling was carried up out of the hold of the vessel, it was supposed to be a Welsh child on account of its colour. It might doubtless have laid claim to a more Oriental descent, but when it became a member of the Brontë family they called it “Welsh”.’

Later in this tale the adult Welsh takes the young Hugh from his family, and in this we can see a clear precursor of the mysterious foundling Heathcliff and his treatment of his adoptive family.

What we know for sure about Hugh is that he fell in love with a Catholic girl named Alice McClory from County Down – this crossing of religious lines was dangerous, yet Patrick and Alice eloped together and were married in Magherally church. They then settled down to married life in Drumballyroney, where in 1777 they had the first of twelve children: christened after the patron saint of his birthday, he became of course Patrick Brontë.

We have one more memory of Brontë grandfather Hugh, and it comes from his daughter, and Patrick’s sister, Alice. Reminiscing in 1891, at the grand old age of 95, she recalled:

‘My father came originally from Drogheda. He was not very tall but purty stout; he was sandy-haired and my mother fair-haired. He was very fond to his children and worked to the last for them.’

Let us now turn to the other Brontë grandfather, their maternal grandpa Thomas Branwell of Penzance. We all know how Patrick changed his name from Prunty or Brunty to Brontë, well, the same process occurred in Cornwall too, for Thomas Branwell had been born Thomas Bramwell and a couple of generations earlier they were the Bramble family.

The change of name may reflect Thomas’ changing status, for he became an extremely successful business man and a leading figure in Penzance politics. His will, dated March 26^th 1808, lists a magnificent array of property and wealth, including houses across Penzance, the largest mansion in the area Tremenheere House, shops, a quayside warehouse, a pub called The Golden Lion and his own brewery (these last two perhaps rather strange acquisitions for a committed Methodist and teetotaller).

Thomas married into another wealthy Penzance family, when he wed Anne Carne, for her family founded Penzance’s first bank ‘Batten, Carne & Carne’ in 1797. It seems likely that Anne Brontë knew of the wealth and status of her grandparents when she wrote at the beginning of ‘Agnes Grey’:

‘My mother, who married him against the wishes of her friends, was a squire’s daughter, and a woman of spirit. In vain it was represented to her, that if she became the poor parson’s wife, she must relinquish her carriage and her lady’s-maid, and all the luxuries and elegancies of affluence.’

Thomas Branwell was never a squire, he was new money after all rather than landed gentry, but his son Benjamin did rise to become Mayor of Penzance in 1809.

Thomas and Anne, like Hugh and Alice, had twelve children, although again not all survived childhood. Benjamin Branwell became mayor, but it is two more of his children that are remembered on a plaque on their former residence in Chapel Street, Penzance; Elizabeth, born in 1776, and Maria, born 1783. The plaque proudly proclaims:

‘This was the home of Maria and Elizabeth Branwell, the mother and aunt of Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë.’

Thomas and Hugh must have been good fathers, for they certainly produced two wonderful children in Patrick and Maria, who in turn were good and loving parents. To Patrick, Hugh, Thomas and fathers across the world I say ‘Happy Father’s Day’ (and God bless the women who do all the work behind the scenes as well!)

Two hundred years ago today, in the village of Thornton near Bradford, a happy event was growing ever closer. A Cornish woman in her thirties and her forty something Irish husband were looking forward to the birth of their fifth child, now less than two months away. That woman, of course, was Maria Brontë and the child to come was the enigmatic genius Emily Jane Brontë.

Back in our present day, that occasion will be marked joyously on July 30^th, but this weekend another summer occasion will be dominating Haworth: the annual summer festival of the Brontë Society.

Many of the events are open to members and non-members of the society alike, and there’s a real variety of events that should appeal to all tastes: a sibling fused smorgasbord. The Brontë Society annual lecture is being given by author and historian Carol Dyhouse who will examine ‘The Eccentricities of ‘Woman’s Fantasy’… And Heathcliff’. According to the promotional material Carol will start the lecture by asking why Heathcliff is looked upon as a romantic figure when the author herself explicitly warned against this. It’s an interesting and oft asked question, although of course in truth Emily made no comment on this whatsoever, or on her masterpiece as a whole, other than what’s contained within its pages. It should certainly be a thought provoking lecture from a foremost expert in her field.

Friday night sees ‘History Wardrobe: Gothic For Girls’ take a look at the evolution of gothic literature and fashion from the 18^th century to the present day, calling at Charlotte and Emily’s work en route. Also on Friday, Ann Dinsdale, head curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and a woman who probably knows more about the museum and the people who lived there than anyone else, looks at the Brontë Parsonage Museum at 90. It’s certainly changed a lot since then, so it should make for an informative and enlightening tale.

Saturday night is quiz night in Haworth, as celebrated journalist, presenter and self professed Anne Brontë fan Lucy Mangan hosts ‘The Great Who Wants To Be A Brontë Mastermind Challenge’. Quizzes are always lots of fun (says the man who won Thornton’s Brontë quiz and still has the beer tokens to prove it, ahem – I don’t like to boast) but the competition should be fierce at this one! Brilliant author Rowan Coleman, of ‘The Summer Of Impossible Things’ fame, is just one of the team leaders who will be pitting their wits.

Of course there will also be the perennial delights available to visitors to Haworth this weekend and beyond, not least of which are the wide stretching moors so loved by Anne and Emily, and the Parsonage itself which now has Branwell’s portrait of his three sisters on loan from the National Portrait Gallery.

I’m very much looking forward to returning to Haworth this weekend, but if you’re a little further afield there’s also an exciting event approaching in South Wales. Brontë expert Catherine Paula Han and others are part of a panel discussing Wuthering Heights on 11^th June at Cardiff University and it should be an absolutely fascinating talk.