The Gaskell Daughters On The Brontes

We meet the Brontë sisters through their writing, and we are all the better for it, as well as through biographies that many writers have contributed throughout the decades (and I’m lucky enough to count myself as one of them). Some people, however, were lucky enough to meet the Brontës face to face, and I always enjoy bringing you those special first person encounters that can be so illuminating. In today’s post we look at recollections of Charlotte and Patrick Brontë by two people who were very used to being around literary genii: they were the daughters of Elizabeth Gaskell.

If you visit Plymouth Grove, Manchester today you will find the wonderful Elizabeth Gaskell House Museum, including a room dedicated to its former visitor Charlotte Brontë (that’s it at the head of this post) . After the deaths of Elizabeth and her husband William it continued to be lived in by her two unmarried daughters Margaret Gaskell, always known as Meta to those who knew her and Miss Gaskell to those who didn’t, and Julia Gaskell.

In 1897 an American reporter visited Plymouth Grove and spoke to Meta and Julia; the interview was syndicated across the United States, including in The Age-Herald of Birmingham, Alabama on September 14th 1897. It’s from that paper that this extract is taken:

“The house which Mrs. Gaskell’s name has rendered famous stands in Plymouth Grove, a broad thoroughfare, pleasantly planted with trees, which leads from the suburbs into the city of Manchester. The house is of gray stone, commodious, double fronted, with a gravel carriage drive sweeping around to the front door, tall trees forming a screen from the road, with a pleasant garden at the back. When Mrs. Gaskeil first made it her home, in 1849, it stood in semi-rural isolation; new houses abound on every hand, and the tramcars pass along the road. There still live Mrs. Gaskell’s two unmarried daughters, Miss Gaskeil and Miss Julia Gaskell, ladies who are keeping up the traditions of their celebrated house in a delightful manner, and to whose kindly courtesy I am indebted for the privilege of becoming acquainted with its contents and literary associations. 

Never surely were biographer and biographied more closely connected in the public mind than are Mrs. Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë. To mention the one suggests the other. It was during a visit to Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth, at Briery Close, near Windermere, in the autumn of 1850, that Mrs. Gaskell first saw the author of “Jane Eyre,” “a little lady in a black silk gown,” who sat and “worked away and hardly spoke.” Before the visit ended the two became fast friends, and the following year Charlotte Brontë paid the first of her memorable visits to Plymouth Grove, and henceforth the house and its inmates have many a kindly mention in her letters. in 1853 she came again, and this time passed a week under Mrs. Gaskell’s hospitable roof. It was pleasant to sit in the drawing-room, where she had sat, and listen to Miss Gaskell as she called up her childhood memories of the visit. 

Miss Gaskeil told me that the impression which she retained of Charlotte Brontë was of a dainty, bird-like creature, very delicate in appearance, slight in figure, with tiny hands and feet; very large gray eyes, silky brown hair, and a shy, timid manner. At times, when strangers were not present, and she was at her ease, she would become quite impassioned in conversation, using her hands to accentuate her remarks. Miss Gaskell recalls hearing Miss Brontë describe the acting of Mme. Rachel, whom she had recently seen in London, and in order to illustrate some attitude of the actress, Miss Brontë clinched her fists. The aroused passion which thrilled through her fragile body, and the action of clinching the fists, made a lasting impression on Miss Gaskell, then a tiny child. She has also a vivid recollection of Mr. Brontë in his last years, as she accompanied her mother to Haworth. When, after Charlotte’s death, Mrs. Gaskell visited the moorland parsonage to gather materials for the Life. Mr. Brontë was confined to his room at the time, and Miss Gaskeil recalls the vivacious manner with which he received them and what a picturesque figure he made sitting propped up in bed, his snowy white shirt showing up his handsome face and the fine head. He talked incessantly, telling story after story and spinning yarns like a Napier, full of point and vivid colouring. “It was easy to understand,” said Miss Gaskell, “where the Brontë sisters got their genius from.”

Miss Julia Gaskell had also a story to add regarding Mr. Brontë. “When my sister and i were visiting in the neighborhood of Haworth parsonage,” she said, “we had occasion to go into a little jeweler’s and clockmaker’s shop there, and the owner of it told us that Mr. Brontë, who was then in a dying condition, had sent his pistol to him to have a new spring put to the trigger, which would enable him to fire it off more easily. Mr. Brontë, I should explain, had a very violent temper, and was in the habit of firing off a pistol to relieve his feelings: and even in his dying state he could not. abandon the habit, and had sent to have the trigger made sufficiently easy for his weak hand to press it. He died three days after this incident was related to us. and I believe fired his pistol to the last.”

Madame Rachel certainly made a big impression on Charlotte Brontë, she sang her praises in two letters of 1851 and used her as the inspiration for Vashti in Villette:

I hope you’re having a great Sunday, and if you’re watching the World Cup I wish your team all the very best. I hope you can join me next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.