Every January the wonderful Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth refreshes its displays and chooses a new theme for the year. As 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Branwell Brontë, it’s fitting that he should be this year’s prime focus – and new exhibition Mansions In The Sky certainly doesn’t disappoint. Don’t worry though, there’s still room for Anne Brontë in the displays!
The opening months of this year have seen me so busy on writing projects (Brontë related of course) that this week marked the first opportunity I had to visit the Parsonage in 2017. As always, it was a complete pleasure akin to returning home or to meeting old friends again.
The dresses of Anne and Emily Bronte from To Walk Invisible
Alongside the Branwell items and features, costumes and props from the 2016 BBC drama To Walk Invisible feature strongly. I absolutely loved the drama (although I could have done with another episode or it being a little longer, as the ending seemed rushed) so it was fascinating to see the costumes up close. I was especially interested, of course, in the green dress that Charlie Murphy wore when playing Anne, and it was on display in the dining room next to Emily’s dress from the show. I felt this juxtaposition of the old and new worked well.
Simon Armitage is the man behind Mansions In The Sky, and he’s the new artistic partner for the museum. A good choice, as he is not only an excellent poet and a Brontë lover, he is also a Yorkshire man from the Colne Valley near Huddersfield (where I myself used to live, so I have to give him my seal of approval!)
One of this year’s highlights is a recreation of Branwell’s studio. The room is in semi darkness with fading painted walls and scuffed floors (don’t worry, that’s intentional). Newspapers such as the Halifax Guardian and Leeds Intelligencer are scattered around along with books, Branwell’s sketches, and bottles and paraphernalia that give a hint of Branwell’s opium addiction. In the corner is a bed with blankets strewn haphazardly across it. It’s very atmospheric, and gives you a glimpse into the mind of the tormented, overshadowed and ultimately tragic man.
Branwell’s studio, Bronte Parsonage Museum
So, there is a lot of Branwell on display and a lot of To Walk Invisible memorabilia, but what recognition does dear Anne get this year? I was pleased to see Anne Brontë’s sampler on display (a needlework exercise she completed in November 1848. I always find the final lines of the sampler very poignant:
‘Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his. Anne Bronte: Finished this sampler Nov 28, 1828.’
A picture of her beloved spaniel Flossy is also on display, but it’s not the one you may be familiar with. Anne made two unfinished pictures of Flossy, one is almost finished and is often on display, but this year they show Anne’s rarely seen and less finished portrait of the dog she adored.
Unfinished Flossy by Anne Bronte
In a display case we also find one of the tiny book’s of Anne’s poetry – opened to a page showing one of the hymns Anne Brontë wrote – beginning:
‘My God oh let me call thee thine,
Weak wretched sinner though I be,
My trembling soul would fain be thine,
My feeble faith still turns to thee.’
Anne never needed this faith more than when she faced her own end, and one reminded of this is back for another year in the form of Anne’s blood splattered handkerchief. We also see a beautiful locket owned by Charlotte Brontë, contained within is a strand of Anne’s hair.
Well done to Simon and the Brontë Parsonage Museum, who work so hard, for curating such an excellent exhibition. Whichever Brontë you like best you’ll find something to satisfy, and as it runs throughout 2017 there’s plenty of time to catch it.
As 2016 changes into 2017, we bid goodbye to the year which marked the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth – it was a great year for Brontë lovers, and for me particularly as the way my Anne Brontë biography was beyond my wildest dreams.
Just because 2016 is over, however, doesn’t mean that the Brontë celebrations are over. In fact we’re just over a fifth of the way into a period that will mark the two hundredth birthdays of all the writing Brontë sisters (Emily’s celebration is in 2018, whilst Anne Brontë’s will be in 2020). So what about 2017 then? 2017 is the year of Branwell.
Patrick Branwell Brontë was born on June 26th 1817, the fourth Brontë child after Maria, Elizabeth and Charlotte Brontë. He was always known as Branwell by his family – it had been his mother’s maiden name, and presumably to distinguish him from his father who was also called Patrick.
Branwell Bronte, self portrait
Branwell is a very complex character – was he evil, wicked? I don’t think so, although he certainly did terrible things (begging money from his family to save him from being thrown into jail, threatening that he would kill his father overnight, setting his bedroom on fire), but he was a man sinned against as well as sinning.
He lost his two eldest sisters and his mother at an early age, and I think this contributed to mental problems that would throw a black cloud of his whole life, and that would send him into the horrific depths of drink and drug addiction.
We have to see both sides of Branwell: and that’s certainly something his youngest sister Anne did. Whilst dismaying of some of his actions, his affair with Mrs Robinson is believed to be the event that led to Anne leaving her governess position at Thorp Green Hall after more than five years, she remembered his kindnesses to her as a child, and believed that he was capable of redemption. If he was, it didn’t come in this life, as he descended into a personal hell that would also impact upon his family. The books created by Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë seem even more incredible when you consider how awful Branwell was making life at the Parsonage at the time he was writing them.
Nevertheless, Branwell Brontë was a boy and man who had great potential. If he had applied himself, perhaps he could have been a painter, writer or musician of some note – his painting ‘Jacob’s Dream’ adorns this post. We can’t however pretend that Branwell had the genius of his sisters, but we do well to remember the impact he had upon them and their work.
2017 will see Branwell brought to the fore and examined in greater detail, and I know that Branwell related events are planned throughout the year in both Haworth and Thornton, his Bradford birthplace. In this Anne Brontë blog, we’ll also look at key events in Branwell’s life throughout the year, and at his paintings and sketches – some of which hold keys to what he was and how he felt.
Branwell was also prominent in the new BBC drama To Walk Invisible, which I watched with joy earlier in the week. I think overall it was very well done, although I think the recurring use of the ‘f-word’ seemed anachronistic, and I found it very odd that no mention of Charlotte’s marriage or death was made at the end.
Adam Nagaitis as Branwell Bronte, To Walk Invisible
Yes, some sections were highly dramatised and the production may have employed some artistic license – but this was a drama after all, so I have no problem with that. I thought the three actresses playing the sisters were all excellent, especially Chloe Pirrie as Emily, and I especially liked the way they depicted the close bond between Emily and Anne Brontë. I look forward to watching it again and again, and I really liked the ending as well (although I know that some found it odd).
In my opinion it needed another hour, or maybe two episodes rather than one, but it was certainly a drama that lit up the Christmas week. Happy New Year and may 2017 make your Brontë dreams come true!
Branwell Brontë died on 29th September 1849, the first in a tragic sequence that would also see his sisters Emily and Anne die within a nine month period. In the months and years leading up to his death he had become a pathetic figure, addicted to drink and to opium, begging for money to obtain his next ‘hit’ and frequently in demand from debt collectors. In a later blog we shall look into why this happened, and see how he became a real danger to himself and his family. If this image of Branwell as being mad, bad and dangerous to know was certainly true by 1849, we should also remember that to the young Anne Brontë he was often a kind and loving brother.
Patrick Brontë, as he was christened, was born in the Bradford village of Thornton on June 26th 1817, a year after his sister Charlotte. He would forever be known as Branwell, his middle name and the maiden name of his mother Maria, to avoid confusion with his father Patrick. A year after Branwell’s birth, Emily was born, and then a year and a half later came the last of the six Brontë children, Anne.
Tragedy was soon to strike Branwell and his siblings. His mother died when he was three, and Anne just one. Shortly before his eight birthday, his two eldest sisters Maria and Elizabeth both died in quick succession of tuberculosis, the disease which was to be the scourge of the Brontës. When considering his later addictions and problems, we should always remember what he had to bear in his formative years. The death of his sister Maria affected him deeply, she had become a de facto mother to him and was full of promise and genius beyond her years. Later, in his poem ‘Caroline’ he would remember seeing his beloved sister laid out for burial:
“There lay she then, as now she lies –
For not a limb has moved since then –
In dreamless slumber closed, those eyes
That never more may wake again.
She lay, as I had seen her lie
On many a happy night before,
When I was humbly kneeling by –
Whom she was teaching to adore;
Oh, just as when by her I prayed,
And she to heaven sent up her prayer,
She lay with flowers about her head –
Though formal grave-clothes hid her hair!”
From an early age Branwell felt a pressure on his shoulders. He was the only boy in the family, he would be expected to become a practical man, a breadwinner. His adult life was to show it was a role to which he was singularly unsuited.
In his childhood he formed a close bond with his three surviving sisters. It was his toy soldiers that started the tales of the ‘twelve men’. They would all four gather and invent stories that are incredibly complex for young children. He and Charlotte would eventually start to write them down in incredibly tiny books that they would stitch together, the famous and priceless books that have writing so small it can only be read with a magnifying glass.
The young Anne, always the doted upon baby of the family, would look up to her brother with a kind of awe. It was he would lead his sisters on their early excursions across the moors, proudly taking the lead as the ‘man’ of the family. He would sit Anne on his knee and tell her stories, and as they both grew a little older he would draw pictures for her. Always a talented artist, he would draw fairytale castles, and gentle countryside scenes and he would inscribe them ‘for Anne’.
One of Branwell’s drawings made for Anne
Anne Brontë never forgot kindnesses done for her, she would never judge somebody harshly. Even when she saw her brother’s talents being squandered and his life wasting away, she believed that there was still hope for him, if only in Heaven. The prevailing Christian doctrine at the time was that sinners like Branwell were doomed to Hell for ever. Anne couldn’t accept this, she had her own doctrine of love and forgiveness, and she expressed this in her poem about Branwell entitled ‘The Penitent’:
“I mourn with thee, and yet rejoice
That thou shouldst sorrow so;
With angel choirs I join my voice
To bless the sinner’s woe.
Though friends and kindred turn away,
And laugh thy grief to scorn;
I hear the great Redeemer say,
“Blessed are ye that mourn.”
Hold on thy course, nor deem it strange
That earthly cords are riven:
Man may lament the wondrous change,
But “there is joy in heaven!”
Anne, remembering the kind brother who drew her pictures to brighten up the days, would also secure him employment with the Robinson family for whom she worked as a governess. It was this that would lead to Branwell’s tragic end, as we shall see in a later blog, and Anne would carry a feeling of guilt around with her because of it. It was she, she would tell herself, who had brought about the demise of the brother who had once loved her so, and who she always loved.
Whilst I am a biographer of Anne Brontë, and my enthusiasm for the youngest Brontë is plain to see, I’m a huge fan of all the Brontë sisters. As we look back to 2016, it’s only right that we should remember Charlotte Brontë, as the year has marked the 200th anniversary of her birth. That’s why in today’s blog I’ve chosen to present ten fascinating facts about Charlotte Brontë. You may know some or all of them, or none, but they all shed light on Charlotte as a person, the struggles she had to face, and how that influenced her writing.
1. Charlotte could see well in the dark, but not in the light
Charlotte was very short sighted, taking after her father who in later life had to have his cataracts cut away without an anaesthetic. She was so short sighted that she had to give up playing the piano, as she couldn’t read the sheet music in front of her. Nevertheless when she was a teacher, her pupils were amazed to find that she could seemingly read perfectly well in darkness, an ability that they thought was some kind of magic.
2. Charlotte spoke with an Irish accent
If you believe that the Brontës spoke in Yorkshire tones, you would be wrong. After the Cowan Bridge tragedy, where the eldest Brontë sisters Maria and Elizabeth contracted tuberculosis and died (the school was later recreated by Charlotte as Jane Eyre’s ‘Lowood’), the Brontë children were largely taught by their Aunt Elizabeth and their father. Unlike today, when children mix much more widely and hear other voices on television, their father’s was the predominant adult voice they heard for many years, and this affected the way they talked as well. When Charlotte was 15 she was sent to another school of a much better character, Roe Head. She made lifelong friends there in the shape of Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor, and Mary recalled how when she first met Charlotte, ‘she was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent.’
3. Charlotte hated being a teacher – with a vengeance
After spending one year there as a pupil, Charlotte returned to Roe Head School near Mirfield in the capacity of a teacher. She soon found life as a teacher very different to life as a pupil. Her ‘Roe Head Journal’ of this time is a vicious, angry diary speaking of loathing for her pupils and for herself. She writes of ‘stupidity the atmosphere, school-books the employment, asses the society’ and ‘a dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited.’ Emily, very briefly, and Anne were pupils at the school, but after their exits her loathing of teaching grew even further until her mental health collapsed and she imagined she had illnesses that no-one else could see. Eventually a doctor was called for, who said that she must return to Haworth or die.
4. Charlotte was advised to give up writing – because she was a woman
From an early age, Charlotte and her sisters loved writing, and as she grew older so her literary ambitions grew. As a teenager she went to the very top to get an opinion on her work. Aged 16 she sent some of her work to the then poet laureate Robert Southey. He replied that whilst she had ‘the faculty of verse’, she should give up her dreams, because ‘literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life: & it ought not to be.’ Strangely enough, the young Charlotte seemed elated at this reply, writing ‘I must thank you for the kind, and wise advice you have condescended to give me… I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in print.’
Robert Southey, whose advice to Charlotte went unheeded
5. Charlotte’s first novel was rejected by every publisher in England
Most people today assume that Jane Eyre was Charlotte’s first novel but in fact that honour falls upon The Professor. The sisters planned to have three novels published together, but whilst Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights were published together by Thomas Cautley Newby, not one company would touch Charlotte’s novel. She had a list of publishers in England, and exhausted it completely in her efforts, but it would only finally be published posthumously – when published it became clear that she had recycled much of its contents and themes in her final novel ‘Villette’. She more than made amends, however, with her second novel about a certain governess.
6 Charlotte was little more than four and a half feet tall
Charlotte Brontë is without doubt a giant of literature but she was very diminutive in stature. Estimations of her height range from four foot seven to four foot eleven, whereas Emily was almost a foot taller, and the tallest of all the Brontës. Her clothes held by the Brontë Parsonage Museum, including shoes, corsets, gloves and dresses, would fit a child today. She was incredibly self conscious of her height and of her looks in general, leading her publisher and close friend George Smith to remark that ‘she would have given all her genius and fame to be beautiful.’
7. Charlotte fell in love with her married teacher
Charlotte’s experience at Roe Head hadn’t completely deterred her from becoming a teacher – after all what else was there that she could do? Aged 21 Charlotte, with Emily alongside her, left Yorkshire and travelled to Brussels, with the intention of learning languages that would help them set up their own school upon their return. She made good progress at the Pensionnat Héger school, but rapidly fell in love with the stern master Constantin Héger. He would be an inspiration for Rochester, but he had the same problem in that he was married. After returning to England, Charlotte wrote him a series of passionate letters. One such reads: ‘I know that you will lose patience with me when you read this letter. You will say that I am over-excited, that I have black thoughts etc. So be it Monsieur – I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to all kinds of reproaches – all I know is that I cannot – that I will not resign myself to the total loss of my master’s friendship. I would rather undergo the greatest bodily pains than have my heart constantly lacerated by searing regrets.’ He never replied, and in fact cut up the letters, but his wife for some reason pieced them together again, which is how they are now at the British Library.
8. Charlotte rejected her best friend’s brother, with terrible consequences
Despite her concerns about her appearance, Charlotte Brontë rejected at least three proposals of marriage that we know of. The first was from Ellen’s brother Henry Nussey. He later married Emily Prescott and became vicar of Hathersage in Derbyshire. He remained there for only two years however, before ill health made him give up his career as a priest. He was later committed to Arden House Lunatic Asylum, where he hanged himself in 1860.
9. Charlotte really did know a family called Eyre
Charlotte often visited Ellen at Hathersage, where she frequently stayed with her brother. In the middle of the Peak District it was later depicted as Morton in Jane Eyre. Inside the Hathersage church that Henry Nussey presided over is the large tomb of Robert Eyre, and a stained glass window to William Eyre, who was a leading light of Hathersage society at the time of Charlotte’s visits. She would have visited the Eyre family at North Lees Hall near Hathersage, and this is likely to have been the inspiration for Thornfield Hall in ‘Jane Eyre’. Inside it was the grand and imposing cabinet with twelve panels each depicting an apostle. The cabinet is recreated in the book, and now resides in the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
An Eyre family grave, Hathersage
10. Charlotte’s dedication in ‘Jane Eyre’ almost caused a scandal
One of Charlotte’s greatest literary heroes was William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair among other works, so she dedicated the first edition of Jane Eyre to him. Unfortunately, Charlotte didn’t know that Thackeray actually did have a mad wife that he kept confined within his home. Whilst a public secret it was well known to London society, who assumed that this new author ‘Currer Bell’ must know Thackeray, and have modelled Rochester on him. When they later met Thackeray characteristically laughed it off, although Charlotte was mortified when she discovered the truth.
There are many other fascinating facts about Charlotte: how she owned a piece of Napoleon’s coffin, how she may have made a non-marriage pact with her best friends, how she kept her writing a secret from her own father, how the death of her sisters changed the course of one of her novels, and how she left her future husband ‘sobbing as no woman ever sobbed’ when she rejected his proposal.
Of course, the most fascinating tales of all are inside Charlotte’s books, and those of her sisters Emily and Anne Brontë.
