If you’ve been following my 12 Days Of Brontë Christmas countdown you’ll know that it’s already been a very mixed selection: we’ve had everything from portraits of dogs, to mourning rings, pet geese and Brontës dancing in old Hollywood movies. Today we take inspiration from one of the greatest Brontë novels: Anne Brontë’s The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall.
We’re following, as always, the pattern of the Christmas song we all know and love, and on this day the true love gifted ten lords a leaping. It doesn’t sound like a very practical gift, but many believe that the song as a whole is a form of Catholic symbolism. After the reformation, particularly during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I to be a Catholic in England was to be in danger. It was illegal to attend Catholic mass and compulsory to attend Anglican services, and failure to comply could result in fines, jail or worse. It was this tension that led to the gunpowder plot of 1605 (as you can find out in my book The Real Guy Fawkes).
The Catholic faith was forced underground, with hidden chapels and priest holes where priests could hide from troops sent to catch them. It’s said that each day of the twelve day song represents one element of the Catholic faith – and the ten lords are actually the ten commandments, whilst yesterday’s nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the holy spirit.
Onto today’s Brontë connection. There were no Lords at Haworth Parsonage, although the Bishop of Ripon Charles Longley, who was a guest of the Brontës there, later became a ‘Lord Spiritual’ when he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
A Lord features prominently in a Brontë novel however: Lord Lowborough in The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall. Some people believe that Branwell Brontë is at the heart of the villain of the novel Arthur Huntingdon, but Huntingdon is an irredeemable character – a drunk and an adulterer who makes the life of his wife Helen an utter misery. Branwell had his faults and weaknesses, but Anne Brontë had faith in him and would not have portrayed him in that way.
I feel that Lord Lowborough has more of Branwell in him. Lowborough is a weak and troubled man, easily led by his circle of friends into a life of debauchery, drunkenness, drug taking and gambling. Nevertheless we see in Anne’s novels his attempts to change: he weans himself off of drink, but Huntingdon’s gang hold him down and force drink down his throat.
Anne Brontë sups up Lord Lowborough’s trials and efforts towards the close of her great novel:
“Some time before Mr. Huntingdon’s death Lady Lowborough eloped with another gallant to the Continent, where, having lived a while in reckless gaiety and dissipation, they quarrelled and parted. She went dashing on for a season, but years came and money went: she sunk, at length, in difficulty and debt, disgrace and misery; and died at last, as I have heard, in penury, neglect, and utter wretchedness. But this might be only a report: she may be living yet for anything I or any of her relatives or former acquaintances can tell; for they have all lost sight of her long years ago, and would as thoroughly forget her if they could. Her husband, however, upon this second misdemeanour, immediately sought and obtained a divorce, and, not long after, married again. It was well he did, for Lord Lowborough, morose and moody as he seemed, was not the man for a bachelor’s life. No public interests, no ambitious projects, or active pursuits, – or ties of friendship even (if he had had any friends), could compensate to him for the absence of domestic comforts and endearments. He had a son and a nominal daughter, it is true, but they too painfully reminded him of their mother, and the unfortunate little Annabella was a source of perpetual bitterness to his soul. He had obliged himself to treat her with paternal kindness: he had forced himself not to hate her, and even, perhaps, to feel some degree of kindly regard for her, at last, in return for her artless and unsuspecting attachment to himself; but the bitterness of his self-condemnation for his inward feelings towards that innocent being, his constant struggles to subdue the evil promptings of his nature (for it was not a generous one), though partly guessed at by those who knew him, could be known to God and his own heart alone; – so also was the hardness of his conflicts with the temptation to return to the vice of his youth, and seek oblivion for past calamities, and deadness to the present misery of a blighted heart a joyless, friendless life, and a morbidly disconsolate mind, by yielding again to that insidious foe to health, and sense, and virtue, which had so deplorably enslaved and degraded him before.
The second object of his choice was widely different from the first. Some wondered at his taste; some even ridiculed it – but in this their folly was more apparent than his. The lady was about his own age – i.e., between thirty and forty – remarkable neither for beauty, nor wealth, nor brilliant accomplishments; nor any other thing that I ever heard of, except genuine good sense, unswerving integrity, active piety, warm-hearted benevolence, and a fund of cheerful spirits. These qualities, however, as you may readily imagine, combined to render her an excellent mother to the children, and an invaluable wife to his lordship. He, with his usual self-depreciation, thought her a world too good for him, and while he wondered at the kindness of Providence in conferring such a gift upon him, and even at her taste in preferring him to other men, he did his best to reciprocate the good she did him, and so far succeeded that she was, and I believe still is, one of the happiest and fondest wives in England; and all who question the good taste of either partner may be thankful if their respective selections afford them half the genuine satisfaction in the end, or repay their preference with affection half as lasting and sincere.”
It is a reform and redemption, of a kind, for Lord Lowborough just as Anne always believed her brother Branwell was capable of change. So now we have: “On the tenth day of Christmas the Brontës gave to me ten Lords a changing, nine sisters dancing, eight maids a loving, seven books a reading, six geese a straying, five Brontë rings, four coloured dogs, three French letters, two captive doves, and a merlin in a bare tree.”
I hope you can join me tomorrow, Christmas Eve, as we continue our countdown of the twelve days of Brontë Christmas.