Month: October 2021

It’s that time of year again. Whether you call it Halloween, Samhain, All Saint’s Eve or just an excuse to carve out a pumpkin and eat lots of sweets, today is a unique day within the calendar and one to be celebrated. In previous years on this blog we’ve looked at some spooky Brontë-related stories, from Mrs Baines the ghost of Penzance to the gytrash of Ponden Hall and reports of Anne Brontë haunting a staircase on Long Island.

We see ghostly apparitions throughout the works of Charlotte and Emily Brontë; only Anne seems to shun the supernatural in her works, possibly because she was more motivated by the pursuit and telling of the truth: she was more interested in the physical than the metaphysical.

From Charlotte we have the haunted red room to which a young Jane Eyre is consigned, the spooky fragments of an unfinished novel Willie Ellin, and of course the phantom nun of Villette:

Emily gives us one of the most famous ghost scenes in all literature as Catherine’s ghostly hands scratch at Lockwood’s window. We also get Emily’s statement delivered from Heathcliff’s mouth: ‘I pray one prayer – I repeat it till my tongue stiffens – Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth.’

In today’s new Halloween post we’re going to look at reports that a very famous ghost still wanders the earth of Haworth: that of Emily Brontë herself!

In the early nineteenth century, weaving was the main employment of the Haworth workforce. Eventually large factories and machine driven looms dominated the area and the West Riding of Yorkshire as a whole, but hand loom weavers could still be found who followed the old traditions of warp and weft. A line of old weaver’s cottages can still be seen in Haworth today on West Lane not far from the parsonage itself; dating from the mid-eighteenth century they would have been well known to the Brontë siblings, and on occasion may have been visited by them if they were accompanying their father on parochial visits.

One such cottage, beautiful and evocative, is now Weaver’s Guesthouse, although it has formerly been Weaver’s Restaurant and a Toby Jug restaurant. What stories it could tell. What stories it possibly continues to tell?

For much of the twentieth century there were reports of a ghostly lady making a regular appearance. This grey lady was always dressed in a long grey dress with a bonnet and shawl, and carrying a basket on her arm as if she was making a visit.

In 1974 Keith Akeroyd, owner of the Toby Jug restaurant in the old weaver’s cottage, described one of the visitations, and made an appeal for an exorcism:

Here we see the name that has long been associated with the grey lady: Emily Brontë! It is said that the ghost appears annually on 19^th December, the anniversary of Emily’s tragic passing. Could this really be Emily Brontë’s ghost? Further descriptions always describe the grey lady as laughing and giggling; this is not how we usually think of Emily Brontë today, but in fact a letter from Ellen Nussey to Elizabeth Gaskell describes how Emily loved to play practical jokes and then laugh uproariously.

On the other hand, the grey lady is also invariably described as small and frail in stature. Emily would undoubtedly have been very frail by her end, but she was also the tallest in her family. Her sisters, on the other hand, were small in stature. Could these annual appearances be Emily’s final practical joke, or is it another spirit? If so, why does it choose the day of Emily’s death to appear? Another thing to consider is that the death rate in Haworth was so high at this time that there could well have been another woman from the area who passed away on that date, perhaps someone small and frail who carried a basket?

Weaver’s Guesthouse is a magnificent place to stay in that I recommend to anyone, so don’t let tales of ghosts put you off! Ghosts can be found, they say, in just about every building of age in Haworth. It’s a liminal village where spirits seem to wander easily, particularly at Halloween when the veil between this world and others is said to be at its slightest.

Oh, by the way, as the Birmingham Daily Post of October 2^nd 1974 points out, the exorcism didn’t take place. If you hear a giggling, see a grey haze, or hear a rustling noise the next time you’re in Haworth you could have encountered a very special person indeed. I hope to see you all next week for a new Brontë blog post; have a Happy Halloween, and try not to be too scared as you turn out the lights!

Charlotte Brontë has become known, quite rightly, as one of the greatest prose writers the English language has ever seen. Along with the works of her sisters Emily and Anne Brontë her works continue to be read across the globe, and Jane Eyre alone has been translated into at least 57 languages (it could be 58 by now if a Klingon version has appeared). There was one language Charlotte loved more than any other, however, so today we’re going to look at Charlotte Brontë’s love of French (and don’t worry, you won’t need to understand a word of it to read this post).

One reason for the timing of today’s post is that this week marks the anniversaries of two very different letters that Charlotte Brontë wrote in the French language, the first of which is one of the earliest letters from Charlotte which remains extant.

On 18^th October 1832 16 year old Charlotte was writing to Ellen Nussey, the great friend she had made upon her entrance to Roe Head school near Mirfield a year earlier. Charlotte has by this time left the school (although she will soon return as a teacher there) but she is still keeping up with her lessons, and insisting that Ellen does too:

A sweet, loving letter in the aftermath of a visit to Ellen’s home, and although Charlotte begs Ellen to at least try to use the ‘universal language’ in her reply I’m placing the English translation below:

We see then that the love of French was ingrained in Charlotte from her youth onwards, and it never really left her. It was this that made Charlotte long to enter school in a French speaking country in 1842, so that she could hone her skills in this language and then pass them on to pupils in the school she was then planning on setting up with her sisters. Eventually Charlotte and Emily Brontë ended up at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels, but at one point they were destined to attend a school in Lille in northern France. On 20^th January 1842 she wrote to Ellen:

‘We expect to leave England in less than three weeks – but we are not yet certain as to the day as it will depend upon the convenience of a French lady now in London Madame Marzials under whose escort we are to sail. Our place of destination is changed. Papa received an unfavourable account from Mr or rather Mrs Jenkins of the French schools in Bruxelles – representing them as of an inferior caste in many respects. On further inquiry an institution in Lille in the north of France was highly recommended by Baptist Noel & other clergymen – and it is to that place it is decided that we are to go.’

Despite the advice of Mrs Jenkins and Baptist Noel (an Anglican priest of aristocratic stock who was seen as one of the leaders of the evangelical movement) Charlotte and Emily left for Brussels, not Lille, three weeks later. It was in Brussels, of course, that Charlotte encountered her great unrequited love Constantin Heger, a man who did little to dampen her admiration of the French language.

Thus we find French used in all her novels, and extensively so in The Professor and Villette. Her publisher George Smith begged her to allow the use of translated passages after her French ones, but Charlotte stood firm and insisted on French only in the passages she had so written. Like Ellen Nussey in 1832, her readers must learn to be more proficient in the ‘universal language’. Fortunately for readers such as myself whose French is more ‘sacre bleu!’ than ‘ooh la la!’ we can now buy versions that do contain English translations, such as in my 1973 copy of Villette below. Even so, most editions still adhere to Charlotte’s instruction, which can lead to readers wishing that Charlotte was rather less enamoured of the French language:

We come now to Charlotte’s second letter with an anniversary this week – in fact it was on this day 1844 that Charlotte Brontë wrote the following letter to Constantin Heger:

And in English (courtesy of brilliant Brontë editor and expert Margaret Smith): ‘Sir, I am full of joy this morning – something which has rarely happened to me these last two years – it is because a gentleman of my acquaintance will be passing through Brussels and has offered to take charge of a letter to you – which either he or else his sister will deliver to you, so that I shall be certain you have received it.

I am not going to write a long letter – first of all I haven’t the time, it has to go immediately – and then I am afraid of boring you. I would just like to ask you whether you have heard of me at the beginning of May and then in the month of August? For all those six months I have been expecting a letter from you, Monsieur – six months of waiting. That is a very long time indeed! Nevertheless I am not complaining and I shall be richly recompensed for a little sadness if you are now willing to write a letter and give it to this gentleman – or to his sister – who would deliver it to me without fail.

However short the letter may be I shall be satisfied with it – only do not forget to tell me how you are, Monsieur, and how Madame and the children are and the teachers and pupils.

My father and sister send you their regards – my father’s affliction is gradually increasing, however he is still not completely blind; my sisters are keeping well but my poor brother is always ill.

Goodbye Monsieur, I am counting on soon having news of you – this thought delights me for the remembrance of your kindness will never fade from my memory and so long as this remembrance endures, the respect it has inspired in me will endure also.

Your very devoted pupil, C. Brontë

I have just had bound all the books that you gave me when I was still in Brussels. I take pleasure in looking at them – they make quite a little library. First there are the completed works of Bernardin de St. Pierre, the Pensees of Pascal, a book of verse, two German books, and (something worth all the rest) two speeches, by Professor Heger – given at the Prize Distribution of the Athénée Royal.’

A letter full of hope and joy, but in retrospect full of sadness as not only did this letter receive no reply it was one of the missives which were ripped up, presumably by Monsieur Heger, and then stitched back together by his wife. Without Charlotte’s love of the French language she may never have been inspired to go to Brussels, never have met Constantin Heger and never have written the characters he inspired such as Paul Emanuel and Edward Rochester.

Whatever language you read your Brontë books in I hope you enjoy them, and I hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

This weekend saw the anniversary of a very special day in the Brontë story, and in the story of English literature as a whole. On 16^th October 1847 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë was published by Smith, Elder & Co. Its success was instant and yet has proven enduring, so in today’s post we’re going to look at Charlotte’s comments in the aftermath of the book’s publication, accompanied by some beautiful illustrations from my two volume edition illustrated by Edmund Dulac.

19^th October 1847, to Smith, Elder and Co.

‘Gentlemen, the six copies of “Jane Eyre reached me this morning. You have given the work every advantage which good paper, clear type and a seemly outside can supply. If it fails, the fault will lie with the author – you are exempt. I now await the judgement of the press and the public.’

28^th October 1847, to W. S. Williams

‘Dear Sir, your last letter was very pleasant to me to read, and is very cheering to reflect on. I feel honoured in being approved by Mr. Thackeray because I approve Mr. Thackeray. This may sound presumptuous perhaps, but I mean that I have long recognized in his writings genuine talent such as I admired, such as I wondered at and delighted in… One good word from such a man is worth pages of praise from ordinary judges.

You are right in having faith in the reality of Helen Burns’s character: she was real enough: I have exaggerated nothing there: I restrained from recording much that I remember respecting her, lest the narrative should sound incredible. Knowing this, I could not but smile at the quiet, self-complacent dogmatism with which one of the journals lays it down that “such creations as Helen Burns are very beautiful but very untrue.”

The plot of “Jane Eyre” may be a hackneyed one; Mr. Thackeray remarks that it is familiar to him; but having read comparatively few novels, I never chanced to meet with it, and I thought it original…

I would still endeavour to keep my expectations low regarding the ultimate success of “Jane Eyre”; but the desire that it should succeed augments – for you have taken much trouble about the work, and it would grieve me seriously if your active efforts should be baffled and your sanguine hopes disappointed.’

6^th November 1847, to W. S. Williams

‘Dear Sir, I shall be obliged if you shall direct the enclosed to be posted in London, as at present I wish to avoid giving any clue to my place of residence, publicity not being my ambition.

It is an answer to the letter I received yesterday, favoured by you; this letter bore the signature of G. H. Lewes, and the writer informs me that it is his intention to write a critique on “Jane Eyre” for the Decbr. number of Frazer’s Magazine – and possibly also, he intimates, a brief no for the Westminster Review. Upon the whole he seems favourably inclined to the work though he hints disapprobation of the melo-dramatic portions.

Can you give me any information respecting Mr. Lewes? What station he occupies in the literary world and what works he has written? He styles himself “a fellow-novelist”. There is something in the candid tone of his letter which inclines me to think well of him.’

6^th November 1847, to G. H. Lewes

‘Dear Sir, your letter reached me yesterday; I beg to assure you that I appreciate fully the intention with which it was written, and I thank you sincerely both for its cheering commendation and valuable advice.

You warn me to beware of Melodrame and you exhort me to adhere to the real. When I first began to write, so impressed was I with the truth of the principles you advocate that I determined to take Nature and Truth as my sole guides and to follow in their very footprints; I restrained imagination, eschewed romance, repressed excitement; over-bright colouring too I avoided, and sought to produce something which should be soft, grave and true. My work (a tale in 1 vol) being completed, I offered it to a publisher. He said it was original, faithful to Nature, but he did not feel warranted in accepting it, such a work would not sell.’

10^th November 1847, to W. S. Williams

‘Dear Sir, I have received the Britannia and the Sun, but not the Spectator, which I rather regret, as censure, though not pleasant, is often wholesome. Thank you for your information regarding Mr. Lewes. I am glad to hear that he is a clever and sincere man; such being the case, I can await his critical sentence with fortitude: even if it goes against me, I shall not murmur; ability and honesty have a right to condemn where they think condemnation is deserved. From what you say, however, I trust rather to obtain at least a modified approval.

Your account of the various surmises respecting the identity of the brothers Bell, amused me much: were the enigma solved, it would probably be found not worth the trouble of solution; but I will let it alone; it suits ourselves to remain quiet and certainly injures no one else.’

17^th November 1847, to W. S. Williams

‘Dear Sir, the perusal of the Era gave me much pleasure, as did that of the People’s Journal. An author feels particularly gratified by the recognition of a right tendency in his works; for if what he writes does no good to the reader, he feels he has missed his chief aim, wasted, in a great measure, his time and labour. The Spectator seemed to have found more harm than good in “Jane Eyre”, and I acknowledge that distressed me a little.

I am glad to be told that your are not habitually over-sanguine: I shall now permit myself to encourage a little more freely the hopeful sentiment which your letters usually impart, and which hitherto I have always tried to distrust. Still I am persuaded every nameless writer should “rejoice with trembling” over the first doubtful dawn of popular good-will; and that he should hold himself prepared for change and disappointment: Critics are capricious, and the Public is fickle; besides one work gives so slight a claim to favour.’

1^st December 1847, to Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co.

‘Gentlemen, the Examiner reached me to-day; it had been missent on account of the direction which was to Currer Bell, Care of Miss Brontë. Allow me to intimate that it would be better in future not to put the name of Currer Bell on the outside of communications; if directed simply to Miss Brontë they will be more likely to reach their destination safely. Currer Bell is ‘not’ known in this district and I have no wish that he should become known.

The notice in the Examiner gratified me very much; it appears to be from the pen of an able man who has understood what he undertakes to criticise; of course approbation from such a quarter is encouraging to an Author and I trust it will prove beneficial to the work. I am Gentlemen, yours respectfully, C Bell.’

We can see, as always, what a wonderful letter writer Charlotte Brontë was, but we can see much more as well. There are practical matters, such as the fact that Charlotte didn’t know who G. H. Lewes was and had to enquire as to his character and writing prowess. Lewes is much better known today not for his own literary output, or his work as a critic, but as the common law husband of Mary Ann Evans – the writer George Eliot. When Charlotte finally met Lewes, after the death of her siblings, she wrote that she was moved to tears because of his facial resemblance to Emily Brontë.

We also get a glimpse into Charlotte’s emotions after the publication of Jane Eyre; it seems incredible to us today, but Charlotte was worried about whether it would be a success, and whether it was good enough to justify the time and money her publishers had invested in it. She was beset by doubts even at the height of her success, the ‘imposter syndrome’ that so many writers and artists have to struggle with.

Winter draws near, so there’s never been a better time to re-read Jane Eyre or re-watch one of its brilliant adaptations. Nevertheless I hope you can find time to join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.

Yesterday, by which I mean Saturday October the 9^th as I write this, was World Post Day. Some people think that in this world of WhatsApp and emails the days of posted letters are numbered, but there’s still nothing like receiving a handwritten letter in the post – it always makes a pleasant change to the bills. The postal service changed a lot in the first half of the nineteenth century, and it made a huge difference to how much we know about the Brontës, so in today’s post we take a look at the Brontës and post.

The first post revolution had taken place in 1784. In this year fledgling post offices were set up in towns which then fed into their own local infrastructures. Mail coaches could carry letters from one post office to another, meaning that for the first time postal communication as we know it was possible. It was this system which allowed Maria Branwell to send her courtship letters to her ‘Saucy Pat’ in 1812, and it was this system that the Brontë siblings grew up with as they made their first tentative contacts with the outside world.

One thing radically different about this 1784 mail solution was that the cost of postage was borne by the recipient – if it was in place today it would make receiving junk mail even more intolerable. There was no such thing as a stamp and the cost to the recipient was based upon both number of sheets sent and the distance they were sent.

A single sheet of paper cost fourpence if sent 15 miles or less, with each subsequent sheet of paper multiplying that cost. This could soon add up to a significant cost at a time when a pound could be a month’s salary to some, which is why cross letters came into being. Cross letters are a style of letter which has writing both vertically and horizontally, meaning that you’d have to rotate the letter 90 degrees to read the remainder once you’d read half of it. It seems incredibly confusing to our modern minds and eyes, but writing and reading them must have seemed second nature at the time. The Brontës were certainly familiar with the cross letter art, and must have become so used to it that they sometimes continued to use it even when postal reforms had made it unnecessary. For example, Anne Brontë’s final, incredibly moving, letter to Ellen Nussey in 1849 was crossed.

Distance was also a factor to be considered, as the cost rose sharply from four pence up to a shilling for mail sent up to 300 miles away, and even more for distances greater than that (such as the 400 miles or so between Penzance and the West Riding of Yorkshire, which saw letters going back and forth between the Branwell sisters in the run up to Maria’s December 1812 wedding.

The distance between Haworth and Birstall, home of Charlotte’s great friend and regular correspondent Ellen Nussey was 16 miles. Ellen’s family was considerably more comfortable financially than Charlotte’s, but even so we can see that they were concerned about the cost of the letters flying regularly between them. On 4^th July 1834, for example, Charlotte begins:

‘Dear Ellen, you will be tired of paying the postage of my letters but necessity must plead my excuse for their frequent recurrence.’

In 1840 things changed thanks to a man named Rowland Hill. His name is largely forgotten today and yet he brought about a communications revolution whose influence was as great as the invention of the internet, and whose influence is still being felt today. Born in Worcestershire in 1795 Hill was a teacher and social reformer, and his particular area of interest was the postal service. Hill knew that the 1784 system prohibited working class people, and poorer members of the middle class from being able to send letters, and he put forward plans for a new system whereby the sender would pay for the carriage of their letter, but at a much lower rate.

The government adopted his plans in 1840 and the cost of sending a simple letter became just one penny. To show the cost had been paid for another of Hill’s ideas was applied to the envelope: a postage stamp which became known as the penny black. Within a decade, Hill’s system of stamps, envelopes and a universally available post service had been adopted in nearly a hundred countries.

Charlotte Brontë had been a prolific letter writer before the change came into place on May 6^th 1840, but she became an even more frequent letter writer after this date. Thank goodness for that, as it’s thanks to the near thousand letters from Charlotte which are still in existence (many more are sadly lost or destroyed, such as her letters to Mary Taylor) that we know so much about the Brontës of Haworth.

Charlotte Brontës letters are a genius work of art in their own right, as anyone who has read a book of them will agree. The postal system itself is the conduit which allowed that art to take form and exist, and which will continue to permit a ready flow of genius, love, hope, yearning, loss and comfort – if we let it.

Haworth Main Street Post Office has been a central part of its community since the nineteenth century, used by the Brontës and countless others, and yet for many years now it has been under threat from people who only see value in balance sheets.

Thankfully the cause has been taken up by local MP Robbie Moore, and initial plans to close the post office this year have been postponed. Nevertheless, it could be a temporary reprieve. This historic post office has been told to prove it is commercially viable, and it will have to outperform the sterile post office counter at the Co-Op at the foot of Haworth’s hill. If it doesn’t win this battle it faces closure next year, and its historic associations, not to mention its convenience for all the people who don’t want to trudge down the hill and back up again, will be gone forever. If you visit Haworth please take time out to use the Main Street Post Office – every transaction counts, because it’s now in a critical ‘use it or lose it’ scenario.

We should all write more letters – if anyone wants to write a Brontë related letter to me (no bills please, I have enough of those) then email me for my details. I hope to see you next week for another new Brontë blog post – no stamp required.

At the end of September 1853 Elizabeth Gaskell made her first visit to see her friend Charlotte Brontë at Haworth Parsonage. Much of the information she gathered at this initial visit, and the first impressions she made, impacted upon her later biography The Life Of Charlotte Brontë. It’s a brilliant book, but we get an even clearer impression of Elizabeth Gaskell’s views on Charlotte, Patrick Brontë, Haworth and more in a remarkable letter that she wrote at around this time of the year in 1853 – and it’s that letter that we’re going to look at today.

We don’t know the exact date, but we know that it was written at the very end of September or start of October, and it was addressed to a John Forster. Forster was a biographer and influential critic, and he was one of the founders of the Guild of Literature and Art. He himself had met Charlotte Brontë in December 1849, before she made the acquaintance of Gaskell. I will reproduce the letter in full below, but we’ll take a quick look at some points within it first.

The ‘ruddy kind-looking man’ whom Elizabeth met on the steps to the parsonage was Francis Bennoch. Their paths crossed fleetingly, and it seems that Elizabeth was unaware of who he was. In fact, Bennoch was one of the richest industrialists in the north of England, owner of a large silk factory in Manchester. He became renowned for his love of literature and especially for his philanthropy and charitable actions towards the poor. He imposed himself upon Charlotte, but both she and her father found him charming. In a letter to Bennoch of 29^th September 1853, Charlotte wrote:

‘Both my father and myself and enjoyed the interview much, and I only regretted that you could not add another hour or two to your stay, and thus have made the acquaintance of Mrs. Gaskell. You are right in conjecturing that she was the lady who arrived just as you were departing.’

Bennoch was a self-made man and Gaskell sums him up as a man of no refinement, but this gives us a clue to further points within the letter and her biography of Charlotte. Gaskell had a troubled start to her life, having to leaver her London home to be raised by her aunt in Knutsford, yet she certainly had a very privileged upbringing. Her novels such as North And South contain brilliant depictions of working class life, and yet Elizabeth herself had never experienced that life herself. She had no innate sympathy for people from working class backgrounds who had raised themselves up – people like Francis Bennoch; people like Patrick Brontë.

Within this letter we see that Patrick Brontë has treated her with kindness and respect, and yet she has clearly taken against him from this very first meeting because of ‘a glare of his stern eyes’ that made her ‘know my man’. In fact that glare may be related to something else she mentions – Patrick’s cataracts and near-blindness at that point. She is critical of his decisions to eat alone and to walk on the moors alone, but perhaps she could instead have seen a man who found his strength failing and his life ebbing away, but who didn’t want to be a burden on the daughter he loved?

As in her biography of Charlotte, Elizabeth is very critical of the Haworth villagers, especially those who have made money. In the biography she called them ‘sleuth-hounds after money’ and in this letter they are ‘queer people’ while the poor are ‘densely ignorant.’

Nevertheless this letter is profoundly moving in many places, such as when Patrick talks of Keeper, or when Martha talks of the deaths of Emily and Anne Brontë and the diminishing group of people walking around the dining room table: ‘now my heart aches to hear Miss Brontë walking, walking on alone.’

This is a beautiful and very informative letter, and written not from hazy recollections but just days after the events described happened. I reproduce it below, and hope you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.