Month: March 2025

As so often when we look at the Brontë story during the year’s progress, tragedy follows hard fast after triumph and joy. Yesterday we marked Mother’s Day, but today we mark the 170th anniversary of the death of Charlotte Brontë.

Charlotte was pregnant at the time of her death, making her passing even more tragic as it ended the Brontë line. She had suffered from excessive morning sickness, hyperemesis gravidarum, at a time when the condition was not understood and there was no available cure. 

For Brontë fans and lovers of literature it was, and ever will be, a great loss. For those closest to Charlotte, it was a devastating personal tragedy, as two letters sent 170 years ago show.

On 30th March, Charlotte’s father Patrick Brontë wrote to her best friend Ellen Nussey:

“My Dear Madam, we are all in great trouble, and Mr. Nicholls so much so, that he is not sufficiently strong, and composed as to be able to write.

I therefore devote a few moments, to tell you, that my Dear Daughter is very ill, and apparently on the verge of the grave.

If she could speak, she would no doubt dictate to us whilst answering your kind letter, but we are left to ourselves, to give what answer we can. The Doctors have no hope of her case, and fondly as we a long time cherished, that hope is now gone, and we have only to look forward to that solemn event, with prayers to God, that he will give us grace and Strength sufficient unto our day.

Will you be so kind as to write to Miss Wooler, and Mrs. Joe Taylor, and inform them that we requested you do so – telling them of our present condition.

Ever truly and respectfully yours, P. Brontë”

A day later another letter followed for Ellen. Charlotte’s suffering was over:

Charlotte was gone from this world, but her work will never be gone from this world. As long as our Earth endures so will her great novels. She was a kind woman, fiercely loyal and devoted to her friends, a deeply loving woman, a fiery woman who did not suffer fools or hold back her words. She was a genius of the highest order. There will never be another Charlotte Brontë.

Let us raise a glass to the memory of Charlotte and her sisters. All were taken at the height of their powers, but in their short lifetimes they created an eternal legacy. I hope to see you on Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.

Here in the UK we are celebrating Mother’s Day, so in today’s Brontë blog post we are going to pay tribute to Maria Branwell, the mother of the Brontë siblings, as well as looking ahead to a rather more sombre anniversary tomorrow.

Maria Branwell was born in Penzance in April 1783, making her six years younger than the man she would later marry: Patrick Brontë. Her background was very different to that of Patrick Brontë; whereas he came from a relatively poor farming family in County Down, in what is now Northern Ireland, Maria came from a relatively wealthy family in Cornwall.

The Branwells were one of Penzance’s leading families, owning property, warehouses and even a brewery. Their position at the head of Penzance society was cemented when Thomas Branwell married Anne Carne. The Carnes were another successful family from this south west corner of England, and they had their own bank. Thomas and Anne were the maternal grandparents of the Brontë children, and they had a large family of their own: including Maria Branwell.

Maria grew up free from worries of poverty, in a beautiful part of the country with a pleasant climate, but after her parents died within a year of each other she was faced with a stark choice: she was nearing thirty, would she remain in Penzance and live off the annuity she had been left by Thomas and Anne, or would she try to make her own way in life?

It is a tribute to Maria’s character and determination that she chose the latter path. Her uncle and aunt, John and Jane Fennell, had opened a school in far away Yorkshire, and knowing Maria’s intelligence and work ethic they offered her a job. She travelled to Yorkshire in the summer of 1812, and would never see Cornwall again. 

Yorkshire must have seemed a very strange place to her. It was colder than she was used to, wetter than she was used to, and the northern accents must have seemed almost unintelligible to Maria. Nevertheless she persevered, and of course we all know that at the school, Woodhouse Grove, she met and fell in love with Patrick Brontë. After a triple wedding in 1812 they had six children together and the rest is literary history.

What was Maria like as a mother? It must have been difficult juggling the work of a mother of six with her role as wife of the parish priest, but clearly she loved her children very much. Alas, Maria was taken far too soon and she died in 1821 when her youngest child, Anne Brontë, was just a year old. Maria’s final thoughts were with those she was leaving behind, as she cried out: “Oh, my poor children.”

We get an insight into Maria’s mind with an essay she wrote entitled “The Advantages Of Poverty In Religious Concerns.” In this essay Maria comes across as a woman of great faith, but we also get a glimpse of her view of motherhood as she writes:”‘Is it not an evil to be deprived of the necessaries of life? Can there be any anguish equal to that occasioned by objects, dear as your own soul, famishing with cold and hunger? Is it not an evil to hear the heart-rending cries of your children craving for that which you have it not in your power to give them? And, as an aggravation of this distress, to know that some are surfeited by abundance at the same time that you and yours are perishing for want?”

We also know that decades after her death, Patrick presented Charlotte Brontë with a selection of Maria’s letters. It must have been a deeply touching moment for Charlotte, who wrote mounrfully: “It was strange now to peruse for the first time the records of a mind whence my own sprang – and most strange – and at once sad and sweet to find that mind of a truly fine, pure and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married – there is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wished she had lived and that I had known her.”

Charlotte herself nearly became a mother, but it was not to be and tragedy struck yet again in the Brontë story. Tomorrow marks the 170th anniversary of the death of Charlotte Brontë, and I will be marking the day with a new Brontë blog post. I hope you can join me for that tomorrow, but in the meantime I would like to wish all mothers, step-mothers and grandmothers a very happy mother’s day!

As we know, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë published their work anonymously by using the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Emily and Anne took their anonymity, at least as far as the reading public was concerned, to the grave, but Charlotte Brontë achieved fame in her own right during her lifetime. It allowed her to forge friendships with some of the greatest writers and thinkers of the time, but one notable friend drifted in and out of her favour. In today’s post we will look at a letter sent on this day 1851 in which Charlotte Brontë opined that one such person had received a “death-blow” to her reputation: Harriet Martineau.

Harriet Martineau (a portrait of her by George Richmond sits at the head of this post) may not be as celebrated today as some of Charlotte’s other literary friends such as Elizabeth Gaskell or William Makepeace Thackeray, but she is still rightly regarded as an important nineteenth-century figure, and was both a celebrated and controversial writer at the time Charlotte penned the following letter to her friend James Taylor:

Taylor was one of the chief clerks of Smith, Elder & Co, Charlotte’s publisher, and a friendship had grown between them by the time of this letter. A month later their friendship would be irretrievably strained; en route to India on behalf of Smith, Elder, Taylor called at Haworth Parsonage and proposed to Charlotte Brontë. She refused his proposal and their friendship was never the same again.

A similar strain happened in the friendship between Charlotte and Martineau. At the start of 1851 Charlotte (who had originally met Martineau in London two years earlier) accepted an invitation to visit Harriet Martineau in Ambleside. This meeting went well, and Charlotte wrote to her publisher George Smith, exclaiming: “I did enjoy my visit to Miss Martineau very much.” She then tried to cajole Smith into publishing Harriet’s novel Oliver Weld, going as far as to tell him that Harriet Martineau was “a greater writer” than Elizabeth Gaskell.

Just two months later, Charlotte’s attitude to Harriet seems to have changed greatly. The reason was the publication in that month of a book entitled Letters On the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development. The book consists of a series of letters between Henry George Atkinson and Harriet Martineau (who edited the book), in which they examine the nature of man, humanity and religion. It was a book in which Martineau declared to the world her atheism, a declaration which shook Charlotte’s views on her friend to the core.

Charlotte had long known of Martineau’s atheism, and had enjoyed theological debates with her, but she feared that this new book would shock the reading public and damage Martineau’s standing forever. It is possible Charlotte also feared that being associated with so radical and unapologetic an atheist as Martineau would damage her own reputation. 

Charlotte was the daughter of a Church of England curate, and a devout Christian. Her moral response to Atkinson and Martineau’s book is summed up in the following line to Taylor: “Who can trust the word or rely on the judgment of an avowed Atheist?”

Nonetheless, Charlotte did later place her faith once more in the judgment of her once close friend. Two years later, in 1853, she urged Harriet Martineau to review her new novel Villette. It was the subsequent scathing review, not any profession of atheism, that put an end to their friendship forever.

I hope you can join me on Sunday for another new Brontë blog post, as we mark a day of celebration and look ahead to a day of mourning in the Brontë story.

St. Patrick’s Day is just a few hours away; it’s a great day to celebrate all things Irish, wherever in the world we are, but in the Brontë household within Haworth Parsonage it was a day for a more personal celebration – for in Drumballyroney, County Down, on 17th March 1777 a boy was born who would begin the story of the most famous literary family of them all: Patrick Brontë.

In today’s we’re going to wish an early birthday to Patrick Brontë by looking at some reports of first person encounters with those who met him, published in newspapers and periodicals at the time he still lived:

Bradford Observer, 19th November 1857, ‘A Day At Haworth’, J.W.F. 

It was on a beautiful morning in August that my friend Puzzlecraft and myself set off to visit Haworth… Haworth is five miles from Keighley, the road is uphill most of the way and decidedly uninteresting, as your view is confined to the turnpike, the walls on either side acting as blinders. For two miles, however, before you enter the village you have it in full view, and the thoughts which it suggests are quite sufficient to employ your mind until you reach the bottom of the eminence whereon it stands. Haworth is most peculiarly situated. It is built in a circumspect fashion, up a steep hill, with a brook at the base, the church and parsonage at the top, and beyond that illimitable heather. It is a genuine Yorkshire village, macademized after a fashion, with no particular distinction drawn between the footpath and the road. The houses are of all sizes and shapes, like a wilderness of monkeys; some low-browed and flat-topped, poking themselves prominently forward, like a dowager at a dinner party; others small and spare, crushed out of all form into a corner, like a little man in a crowd or an unprotected female. Queer, quaint and quiet is the old village, reposing lazily against the hill side – yet not unvisited by the progressive principles of the age; for we found two or three shops at the west end garnished with plate-glass windows, and we even discovered the preliminary paraphernalia of a gas company. As we walked slowly up the street, we lighted upon a chemist’s shop, with a frame of photographic portraits hung outside. In the centre was the likeness of an elderly gentleman, with white hair, strongly marked but expressive features, and a peculiarly large neckcloth. “Mr Brontë!” we both exclaimed in a breath, although we had neither of us ever seen the gentleman or his portrait. There was such a striking individuality upon the countenance, that we recognised at once the original so plainly painted by Mrs Gaskell. We put up at the ‘White Lion’ and ordered dinner. Mine host, whose outer man, attired in a cap and a white shooting jacket, was eminently suggestive of terrier-dogs, went off forthwith to the parsonage to summon his maid servant, who had gone to wait upon the rector during the temporary absence of the regular domestic. Presently she came down, and in an unsophisticated Yorkshire fashion, as if anything she had to say was not of the slightest importance, she gave us her few particulars respecting the Brontë family. “Her family had lived at the parsonage for long – she had often been there herself – had seen Mrs Nicholls writing a great deal; it was when she was writing ‘Jane Eyre’ – had oft carried large parcels to the post and wondered what was in them – Mrs Nicholls was very small, Miss Emily was bigger a good deal – they were all great walkers, used to go up on to the moor for hours together – had seen Mrs Gaskell but didn’t know much about her – Mrs Nicholls had never got the better of a cold  she caught going one winter’s day onto the moor to the waterfall, cascade Mrs Gaskell called it.” We asked her if she thought Mr Brontë would be annoyed if we called upon him:- “She didn’t know – there had been lots of people there, but he didn’t often see any of them.” We requested of her to take our cards up to the parsonage, and to say that if Mr Brontë was disengaged there were two gentlemen who would be happy to wait upon him; and, while she delivered the message, we went up to view the house and churchyard, round which cluster now so many mournful and hallowed associations… 

Returning to our inn, we received Mr Brontë’s invitation to visit him, with which we immediately complied. We were ushered into a small front parlour, and very cordially saluted by the original of the photograph we had seen in the chemist’s shop. Truly a most noticeable man is Mr Brontë, and worthy to be the father of such a family. Though now well up in years (he told us his age, but it has escaped our memory), he appears quite hale and fresh, and preaches regularly every Sunday morning. He has a grand face, indicative of a power and energy which are merely mellowed by time, and shaded somewhat mournfully by suffering. One glance at that physiognomy assures you that its possessor has been shaped by nature after a model of his own – a man of strong passions, but stronger self-control; of warm emotions, but adamantine will – a man possibly eccentric, but whose eccentricities merely prove the positive tendency of his being, and the strength and struggles of his soul. This we must say, that we never saw a finer physique, more courteous and gentlemanly bearing, and more sincere and correct feeling than we met in Mr Brontë. Mournful was it to see the venerable man, and to know that of all his children – the gifted, the admired, the affectionate – not one was left. And most mournful was the thought that in this house – in this very room where we now are – those three sisters wrote their books and read their manuscripts to one another; the chair we sat upon they had handled; they have perused those volumes; watched the stars and snow-storms from those windows; their very presence seems still to linger here; and though they rest in yonder gray church, cold and still, we feel their spirits solemnizing and subduing us, and bidding us, beneath the shadow of the dead but deathless daughters, forbear to trench upon the feelings of the father, or to speak, save reverently and low. 

After sitting about a quarter of an hour with Mr Brontë, we took a five minutes run on to the moor; then, with one last glance at the vicarage, the church, the graveyard, and the school, we turned homeward. We purchased a couple of photographic portraits of Mr Brontë as we passed the chemist’s; and we were just leaving the village when we encountered a comical fellow, with a merry mouth and an eye like a weazel’s. He had been a boon companion of poor Branwell, and many strange and characteristic stories did he tell us of their exploits in former days, the which, however, we shall not here record. Let those who have passed away repose in peace:- delicacy forbids the blazoning abroad of the failings of the dead, especially when those still live upon whose feelings the repetition of such tales must strangely jar.

The Scotsman, 18th September 1858, ‘A Visit To Haworth – The Brontë Family’, T. H.

Near Haworth I got many little traits of the family, all indicating the kindly and respectful feelings with which its various members are still regarded in the district. One young man belonging to Haworth, whom I overtook, a worker now at one of the Keighley factories, informed me that when a boy he frequently had occasion to be in the parsonage, and was often regaled with a tune on the piano, a pocketful of fruit, etc. Charlotte seemed generally to be considered the most affable, having a smile and a kind word for everybody; Emily and Anne were more reserved, and for that reason not quite so great favourites. Mr Brontë was spoken of by everyone in terms of the highest respect, even by those whom on many occasions he had opposed on ecclesiastical matters, dissent being strong in the vicinity. I had neither the intention nor expectation of seeing him; but the sexton, who acts as guide to the church, etc., having told me that Mr Brontë, when well, was always glad to see strangers, I was vain enough to send up my card, and had the pleasure of a little conversation with the venerable patriarch, now more than eighty years of age, and the sole survivor of his family. He was very kind, and spoke of Scotland, and Burns, more particularly, cordially, and with discrimination. Although frail he enjoys tolerable health, and in general preaches once every Sunday; Mr Nicholls, Charlotte’s husband (who is still curate, and whom I saw about the village), doing the principal part of the duty.

Fraser’s Magazine, October 1859, ‘About The West Riding’, Devonia

The attendance was small in the morning, but better in the afternoon, when Mr Brontë preached; owing to his advanced years, he is not able to attend the whole of the service, but comes into church when the afternoon prayers are half over. A most affecting sight, in truth, it is to see him walking down the aisle with feeble steps, and entering his solitary pew, once filled with wife and children, now utterly desolate, while close beside it rises the tombstone inscribed with their names. Full of sorrow and trouble though his life has been, the energy of the last survivor of the race seems not a whit abated; his voice is still loud and clear, his words full of fire, his manner of earnestness. Lucid, nervous, and logical, the style of his preaching belongs to a  bye-gone day, when sermons were made more of a study than they are now, and when it was considered quite as necessary to think much and deeply, as to give expression to those thoughts in language not only impressive and eloquent, but vigorous and concise. It would not be easy to give a faithful impression of the impression which Mr Brontë evidently produces upon his hearers, or of his own venerable and striking appearance in the pulpit. He used no notes whatever, and preached for half an hour without ever being at a loss for a word, or betraying the smallest sign of any decay of his intellectual faculties. Very handsome he must have been in his younger days, for traces of beauty most refined and noble in expression, even yet show themselves in his features and in his striking profile. His brow is still unwrinkled; his hair and whiskers snowy white: lines very decided in their character are impressed about the mouth; the eyes are large and penetrating. In manner he is, as may have been gathered from what has been already said, quiet and dignified.

Bradford Observer, 27th June 1861, William Dearden

It is a duty I owe to the memory of my late venerable friend, and in fulfilment of a sacred promise, to place his character in a true light before the world; and this is the more imperatively necessary, because – though Mrs Gaskell has, in her later editions of Charlotte Brontë’s life, toned down some of its harsher features in obedience to conviction of their distortion and untruthfulness – it still stands prominently forth in repulsive stoical sternness and misanthropical gloom. My acquaintance with Mr Brontë extends over a long series of years. In the early portion of that acquaintanceship, I had frequent opportunities of seeing him surrounded by his young family at the fireside of his solitary abode, in his wanderings on the hills, and in his visits to Keighley friends. On these occasions, he invariably displayed the greatest kindness and affability, and a most anxious desire to promote the happiness and improvement of his children. This testimony, it is presumed, will have some weight, especially with whose who wish to form a correct estimate of human character.  

It will be remembered that Mr Brontë’s children were deprived of their mother when they were at a very tender age. We are led to infer from Mrs Gaskell’s narrative, that their father – if he felt – at least did not manifest much anxiety about their physical and mental welfare; and we are told that the eldest of the motherless group, then at home, by a sort of premature inspiration, under the feeble wing of a maiden aunt, undertook their almost entire supervision. Branwell – with whom I was on terms of literary intimacy long before his fatal lapse – told me, when accidentally alluding to this painful period of in the history of his family, that his father watched over his little bereaved flock with truly paternal solicitude and affection – that he was their constant guardian and instructor – and that he took a lively interest in all their innocent amusements. Such – before the blight of disgrace fell upon him – is the testimony of Branwell to the domestic conduct of his father. “Alas!” said he to me, many years after that sad event, “had I been what my father earnestly wished and strove to make me, I should not have been the wreck you see me now!” Poor Branwell! May his sad example  prove a warning to others to shun the gulf of misery into which he was prematurely plunged! If Mr Brontë had been the cold indifferent stoic he has been represented, the perpetual outflow of love and tenderness in regard to him from the hearts of his children, could not have been naturally expected. An unfeeling father ought not to complain, if he reaps but a scanty harvest of filial duty and affection in return for what he has sown. Love begets love – a saying not the less true, because it is trite. 

As Mr Brontë’s children grew up, he afforded them every opportunity his limited means would allow of gratifying their tastes either in literature or the fine arts; and many times do I remember meeting him, little Charlotte, and Branwell, in the studio of the late John Bradley, at Keighley, where they hung with close-gazing inspection and silent admiration over some fresh production of the artist’s genius. Branwell was a pupil of Bradley’s, and, though some of his drawings were creditable and displayed good taste, he would never, I think, on account of his defective vision, have become a first-rate artist. In some departments of literature, and especially in poetry of a highly imaginative kind, he would have excelled… 

The cold stoicism attributed to Mr Brontë was apparent only to those who knew him least; beneath this “seeming cloud” beat a heart of the deepest emotions, the effects of whose outflowings, like the waters of a placid hidden brook, were more perceptible in the verdure that marked their course than in the voice they uttered. God, and the objects to whom that good heart swelled forth in loving kindness – and the latter only, perhaps, very imperfectly – know the depth and intensity of its emotions. He was not a prater of good words, but a doer of them, for God’s inspection, not man’s approbation. Every honest appeal to his sympathy met a ready response. The needy never went empty away from his presence, nor the broken in spirit without consolation.

Dearden was a close friend of Patrick Brontë’s, but the other correspondents only met him on fleeting visits to Haworth but together they give a compelling vision of a remarkable man. Patrick Brontë was curate at Haworth for over 40 years, but his impact on literature, thanks to his daughters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, is even more enduring.

Happy (nearly) 248th birthday Patrick Brontë, happy St. Patrick’s Day eve to you all, and I hope you can join me next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.

This week saw the celebration of International Women’s Day, a day as important today as it has ever been. Women’s voices are all too often struggling to be heard across the globe, which is why it’s so important to celebrate women’s successes in business, in politics and in the arts. Successes, of course, like the Brontë sisters, who are surely the most remarkable literary siblings of them all.

There have been other cases of families producing more than one celebrated writer, I think of the likes of the Dumas and Amis families, or the brothers Grimm. I think the achievement of the Brontës, however, remains unmatched. It’s incredible to think that three sisters from a relatively inauspicious background, with little formal schooling and in an area of England which was extremely under-privileged at the time, should all produced such amazing and enduring works of literary genius. It’s a story almost as good as the ones Charlotte, Emily and Anne set down on paper, which is why we should remember and celebrate them not just on International Women’s Day but every day.

The Brontës, or at least one of them, were also being celebrated amidst exalted company on 17th June 1911, as this picture of The Historical Pageant Of Great Women shows.

This date was chosen as a gathering for suffragettes and suffragists from across the nation. Organised by the Women’s Social and Political Unions, a huge crowd of women gathered and then marched through the capital’s streets. The date had been carefully chosen as it was a week before the coronation procession of new King George V. Here then was a large group of women saying that their voice needed to be heard too at this time of change for the nation, and at some points it was estimated that the women’s procession stretched for several miles.

Many marchers carried the names of prominent women from recent British history, which is why one marcher proudly holds aloft the banner bearing the name of Charlotte Brontë. Another nearby marcher holds the name of Harriet Martineau aloft: Martineau was at one time a close friend of Charlotte’s, but political and religious differences eventually led to a severing of their friendship. Other banners in this photo celebrate Florence Nightingale, Grace Darling and Mrs Charles Kean – a reference to Ellen Kean, who had been a popular Victorian actress working alongside her husband.

What would Charlotte Brontë have made of it all? It’s hard to say, as Charlotte often held strident political views of a rather conservative nature, but there can be no doubt that Charlotte, along with her sisters Anne and Emily, did much to set on paper what it was like to be a woman in the nineteenth century – characters and novels which still resonate today. 

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

 

As regular readers of this Brontë blog will know, it’s been a very busy few weeks for me. I was married two weeks ago, and earlier this week I returned from the beautiful, sunny island of Fuerteventura. It was a perfect honeymoon after a perfect wedding, so thank you to all who sent their congratulations. There has also been another event, and this time it’s Brontë related – at the start of this week The History Press released a new paperback edition of my book Emily Brontë: A Life In 20 Poems.

The original hardback version was published in 2018 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Emily Brontë’s birth, and it was the second of my Brontë biographies after In Search Of Anne Brontë (also published by The History Press). It received a glowing review in The Times Literary Supplement, so I’m thrilled that this new paperback version will allow the book, and Emily’s life story, to reach even more people.

Emily Brontë was far from an ordinary writer; a genius of the highest order, she was also a unique woman. For that reason I didn’t want to write a simple, straightforward account of her life. That’s why I chose to look at Emily’s life through her poetry. Each of the twenty chapters begins with one of Emily’s powerful poems, and I use that to illuminate one of twenty areas of her life. By doing so, I hoped to present a comprehensive unveiling of Emily’s life and beliefs.

In the book I look at Emily’s work, her brilliant poetry and her sole novel Wuthering Heights, which I think is the greatest book ever written. I look at how such a shy woman could have written such powerful and enduring work, and investigate the ‘world within’ which came to dominate her life and thoughts. My book also looks at Emily’s relationships with key figures in her life such as Charlotte, Anne and Branwell Brontë, and at her love of nature and the moors which stretched around her.

This new paperback edition allowed me to utilise some of the additional Emily Brontë research I’ve been carrying out since the book’s initial publication. As well as an all new introduction, there are also two brand new appendices. In the first of these, I solve the mystery of Emily Brontë’s name (as Emily is the only Brontë child not named after a relative); in the second, I provide translations of Emily’s Belgian devoirs, or homeworks. These French language essays are now available in English, so we can all enjoy Emily’s brilliant takes on a range of subjects. When asked to present a simple essay about the cat, for example, Emily begins by stating: “I can sincerely say that I love cats, and so I will give very good reasons why those who hate them are wrong.”

The book is available right now from The History Press, Amazon and all good booksellers. If you’d like a signed copy please do get in touch and I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime I hope you can join me next Sunday for another new Brontë blog post.