Review of Brontë in Love by Sarah Freeman

 A review by IMS:

Brontë in Love is by Sarah Freeman, a Leeds-born journalist and writer. The book, as the title suggests, describes how Charlotte Brontë fell in love on more than one occasion and how those loves influenced and are reflected in her own writing. Charlotte’s character is laid bare from very early on in the book as Freeman describes the involvement she had with men before she married her father’s curate, having yearned all her life for affection and after resigning herself to growing old single and lonely.

We read of the proposal by the clergyman from Colne, Charlotte’s obsession with the married Constantin Heger and her hopes for a future with her publisher, George Smith. It is interesting to read how Charlotte questions her own decision not to accept a proposal from the shadowy figure James Taylor, employee of Smith Elder & Co. Although she feels that it would be a partnership of equals she cannot forget her feeling of repugnance concerning him and how her veins ‘ran ice’ when he came near her.

Reading Freeman’s interpretation of this very important part of Charlotte’s life - taken from letters and biographies - the feminine yet insecure side of her character is brought very much to the fore. We are told of her burning passion from a very early age, and how she brings to life the Angrian character- the ultimate embodiment of raw machismo, the Duke of Zamora. We read that because she fell in love with M. Heger she interprets what he writes to her as she wishes those words to be. We feel for her and sympathise, somewhat, with her in her anger and frustration when Branwell goes to pieces after Mrs Robinsons’s final rejection of him. She had not allowed herself the same indulgence when she realised that nothing would come of her own love for M. Heger- however much she longs for it.

The book progresses into showing Charlotte’s poor estimation of herself and her falling in love with ‘unobtainable’ men: Constantin Heger, living in another country, with the responsibilities of a wife and family, George Smith, younger than her and from a different environment - he belonging to a metropolitan world and she to Haworth and her father.

There are a number of printing errors, for example Ellen Nussey’s home is called ‘Bookroyd, instead of ‘Brookroyd’ (p.150), and a statement which could imply that Branwell may not have been the only son of the family: ‘her brothers and sisters knew that Charlotte was leading a dangerous double life.’ (p.19) When describing Charlotte’s portrayal of Lowood School, in Jane Eyre, the tyrannical Mr Blackwood (p.83) is mentioned (confusion here perhaps with Blackwood’s Magazine?) as the founder and benefactor of the school at Cowan Bridge, instead of Mr Brocklehurst!

However some of the factual errors may be more misleading. It was Anne and Emily who formed an alliance to create the Land of Gondal, not Anne and Elizabeth - Elizabeth having died earlier after her brief sojourn at Cowan Bridge (p.15). The curate from the Colne area, who proposed to Charlotte whilst on a brief visit to Haworth, was the Reverend David Pryce not Bryce. (p.35) His grave is pictured below.

Freeman states that when Charlotte and Emily were planning to go to Brussels Anne was working as a teacher at Roe Head. (p.41) Anne had been a pupil there- leaving in 1837- but had never taught at that establishment. She had become a governess to the Ingham family for about eight months in 1839 but in 1840 became governess at Thorpe Green, between Harrogate and York. Describing Charlotte facing her worst nightmare- the realisation that her beloved Emily was going to die, Freeman states that by the middle of December Emily was bedridden. (p.95) Perhaps the most intriguing question regarding the enigma which is Emily Brontë could be why, when she became so ill, did she refuse all medicine and medical aid? She certainly was not bedridden as she rose at the same time every morning, trying to do all the jobs she had done before, rebuffing any offers of help.

After Emily’s death, and as Charlotte turns with a heavy heart to nursing her last sister, Anne expresses a wish to see Scarborough for one last time. In Freeman’s  book there is a description of a sombre party - Ellen Nussey accompanying the sisters- making their way to Scarborough in June 1849. (p.96)  In actual fact- as the photograph of Anne’s headstone on Page 99 confirms- Anne died on 28 May 1849 – the party having left Haworth on Thursday 24 May. Freeman makes the point that, after Mr Nicholls moves away from Haworth when Charlotte rejected him and Mr Brontë becomes more and more dependent on Charlotte, the servants Tabby and Martha are old themselves. (p.142) Tabitha Aykroyd would certainly have been well advanced in age in 1853, having joined the Brontë household in 1824 at the age of 54. However Martha Brown, daughter of John Brown the sexton, Branwell’s great friend, arrived at the Parsonage to assist Tabby in 1841 at the age of 13. Therefore, at the age of 25, she would be younger than Charlotte herself at the time Freeman describes.

Notwithstanding the above errors the book describes this facet of Charlotte’s life in great detail and it makes interesting reading and perhaps sets in context some of the characters in her novels. It could be a good starting point for anyone wishing to learn more of this side of Charlotte’s character, providing the numerous factual errors are corrected in any subsequent edition. We are left feeling that Charlotte, during her isolation, her self doubts, in all her sadness and her loneliness, her brilliance in writing her novels - where in the main her heroines found the love of their lives - craved the love of a man she could truly call her own. We are found asking ourselves, by the end of the book, does Charlotte understand, at last, just how Branwell felt when Mrs Robinson turned from him, when she joins Mr Nicholls at the garden door, where he leans in a paroxysm of anguish? As she sees him lingering at the Parsonage gate, unable or unwilling to make a final step away from Haworth and the woman he has fallen in love with, is that the moment when she realises what true love really is?

Early on in the book there is an excerpt from a letter Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey after her rejection of Ellen’s brother Henry’s rather clinical proposal of marriage, the first she received. She wrote, ‘I could not have that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for him and if I marry it must be in the light of adoration that I will regard my husband.’ It is ironic that perhaps in the end she was willing to die for the love of Arthur, dying, just as her father had feared, during the early stages of pregnancy, its consequent violent nausea wearing her down.  Probably, the disease to which her siblings had succumbed was, in her weakened state, waiting to claim her too.

It is quite poignant that some of the last words to flow from the pen of the great writer that was Charlotte Brontë were to Ellen, telling of Arthur’s tender loving care. She described him as ‘the tenderest nurse, the kindest support, the best earthly comfort that ever woman had. His patience never fails.’

Charlotte, maybe too late, had at last found what love really meant. She had married a man for whom, she confessed, she did not have the same passionate feelings she had had for Monsieur Heger. She had married a man who did not love her for her fame, her talent, her beauty or her wealth but just for her ‘plain, obscure self’ and at the end she did not find him wanting. 

Brontë in Love
by Sarah Freeman
published by Great Northern Books, September 2010.
Hardback, full colour, 192 pages, £14.99,
ISBN 9781905080700.


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Memorial Inscription: The Reverend David Pryce at Christ Church Colne

Sum sua praemia Laudi

Sepultus hic jacet

Reverendus David Pryce    AB TCD

Ecclesiae Trawdensis Pastorprimus

Desderio omnium maximo

Prid non Januarii

AD MDCCCXL

Aetatis suae

Vigesimo nono

Mortem obiit

Virtutis pietatisque hoc monumentum

Familiarium e donis adid collatis

Hibernicus Hibernico

ponendum curavit

Merit has its own reward.

Here lies buried

Reverend David Pryce AB TCD [Bachelor of Arts Trinity College Dublin]

First Minister of Trawden Church

Much missed by all

He died on the 4^th January AD 1840 in the 29^th year of his age

This memorial to a virtuous and pious man

Was paid for from a gift from the college

And contribution from Ireland for an Irishman

[Trawden is a little village about two miles from where the grave is.]

Full Brontë Night

This Friday’s event for A Brontë-themed Christmas in Mirfield (mainly organised by Imelda and Catherine Marsden) takes place at St Paul’s Church, Eastthorpe, Mirfield. It begins at 7.30pm.

Tickets at ten pounds (includes refreshments) can be obtained from the Kirklees Brontë Group: phone 01924 519370 or send a stamped, addressed envelope to 18 Quarry Fields, Mirfield, WF14 0NT  Proceeds go to two children’s charities.

The History Wardrobe will be there with a costume presentation on Jane Eyre, the Best Dressed Governess, during the interval Christmas hymns and carols will be sung, and the second half will be given over to the terrific jazz vocalist Val Wiseman, who will sing from her Brontë album.

Below, Val Wiseman singing in Dewsbury Minster last year:

Jolien Janzing in Haworth

Dutch journalist Jolien Janzing visited Haworth earlier this year to research her forthcoming novel about the Brontës in Brussels. She writes that she is continuing with the research in Brussels, and that the novel will be published at about this time next year, by De Arbeiderspers in Amsterdam, a renowned literary publisher. Here is her article, translated and introduced by Helen MacEwan from the Brussels Brontë Group. It appeared originally on that group's blog in October. We are looking forward to the English version of the novel!

This is a translation of an article by Jolien Janzing originally published in Dutch in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard Der Letteren on 13 August 2010 about a trip to Haworth to research a novel she is writing about the Brontës in Brussels. While there, Jolien met various people in the village including the director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the parish priest and a guide who does Brontë walks.

Jolien Janzing established her reputation through widely-discussed articles published in Belgian and Dutch magazines. Her first work, Grammatica van een obsessie, received excellent reviews.

In a recent article in the Belgian magazine Feeling, Jolien identifies with Jane Eyre because she too felt like something of an outsider as a child, being Dutch but growing up in Belgium. She recognizes in herself the belief in true love that Jane Eyre had. And she says that Charlotte Brontë inspired her to become a writer herself.

MAD ABOUT THE BRONTËS

There are some classics which simply never lose their charm. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, for example, or Wuthering Heights by her sister, Emily, which are still being published in no less than 26 languages. And it’s not just the Brontë sisters’ books which continue to sell like cookbooks; the Brontë Parsonage Museum in their native town of Haworth continues to welcome a steady stream of visitors. If anyone should doubt, the Brontës are still alive and kicking!

It’s Monday morning and while the sun is shining in Flanders the barren landscape of the Pennine Hills in West Yorkshire is cold and windy with menacing clouds as wet and oppressive as a bad cough and night sweats. But why am I here actually? In fact I’m working on a novel which looks at the two years Charlotte and Emily Brontë spent in Brussels learning French, So clearly there’s more research to be done back home than here in England, but when I find myself a bit later going up the steep Main Street leading to their father’s parsonage it all becomes clear again. Main Street has hardly changed since Charlotte lived here, even the cobblestones are hundreds of years old, and I can see her walking in front of me, a delicate young woman with a narrow back and slightly hunched shoulders wearing an ill-fitting overcoat. She’s hurrying home, occasionally nodding to a regular churchgoer.

CEMETERY

I’m somewhat obsessed by the Brontës and want to see where they lived. My diary is full of appointments with people who know about every aspect of the village and every detail of the family’s history. For my part I quickly read everything Charlotte, Emily and Anne ever wrote, from the poems about their imaginary worlds of Angria and Gondal to their best-selling novels originally published under male pseudonyms. It’s not only their books which fascinate me, but also their private lives. The sisters grew up in Haworth, which at the time was an overcrowded, bustling little town, with their father being an Anglican parson at the head of the parish church. The Brontë girls’ mother had died at a young age and an aunt helped raise them. The four oldest girls, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily, were sent away to a new boarding school, the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, but this turned out to be a wretched institution. While there, Maria and Elizabeth contracted a deadly infection and Charlotte endured a number of traumatic experiences which she purged from her system by writing Jane Eyre. Mr Brontë was left with three daughters and a son, Branwell, whom he spoiled horribly and who died at a young age due to a penchant for alcohol and opium. His daughters fared better and became well-known novelists, but they all died prematurely.

At the top of Main Street is the Black Bull pub where Branwell went to drink his ale and whiskey. There is a path on the right which leads to the church and directly behind it is the parsonage. I stand in the front garden and look up at the facade, thinking that the parsonage is certainly not what you would call a humble abode. And even if I imagine away the new wing, the house exudes a certain social status. I turn around and between the low garden wall and the church I see part of the cemetery. Here and there I see a standing tombstone, but most of them have been laid flat on the ground as if the living wanted to prevent the dead from crawling out of their graves, just like Cathy. Time has stood still here and the atmosphere is hazy and somewhat ominous.

INFLUX

It takes a bit of time before I can actually go into the parsonage because there are quite a few visitors there today: Scottish teenagers, Italian students, a bunch of Japanese and a group of Americans. At the threshold I stop for a moment and think about how many times Charlotte walked over it and that this is where Emily whistled to her dog, Keeper. I had expected to feel a lump in my throat when getting so close to the Brontës, but that didn’t happen after all.

From Mr Brontë's study I walk to the dining room with the table where the sisters sat when writing their novels. Andrew McCarthy, the museum’s director, is waiting for me in the kitchen and invites me into his office. There, I ask him if there are always so many visitors.

“Oh yes!” he proudly answers. “Last year we had 73,000 people come to the museum. Our visitors come from Japan, the US and Europe, and of course also from England.” I ask him if he sees more visitors when a television network airs a series based on the Brontës or their books.

“In those cases the influx of visitors is so impressive that we are sometimes afraid that the walls of the parsonage are going to give in” he replies. “Thankfully, it hasn’t ever been as bad again as what we saw in 1973, when the series The Brontës of Haworth was shown on British television. During that year, we welcomed in excess of 250,000 visitors.” Andrew’s bookcase contains a number of recent books on the Brontës, and from this I can see that I’m clearly not the only writer inspired by the reverend’s family. “The legend is still kept alive,” says Andrew. “There’s always a good film version of Jane Eyre in the pipeline, and that invariably accounts for a good deal of publicity. On the other hand, it has to be said that Brontë films are never blockbusters, and that the book is always better than the movie.”

HEATHCLIFF’S BEDROOM

On my way out I go through the museum shop and see an Italian student buy a brand-new edition of Wuthering Heights. With the novel carefully tucked inside her jacket – this is Yorkshire and it’s raining again – she walks out of the shop. The woman at the cash register winks at me and says “That girl has caught the Wuthering Heights bug. Some fans are so enthralled by the novels that they completely forget that Heathcliff, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey never really existed. They often mix up the Brontë sisters with the characters in their novels. Just yesterday a visitor to the parsonage asked where Heathcliff’s bedroom was.”

Outside I open my umbrella and walk towards the church, but on my way there I stop for a moment at the low building where Patrick Brontë taught Sunday school. Through the dirty windows I see quite a few spider webs, but some desks for the pupils are still there. Charlotte Brontë taught catechism here when she was only 16. Emily didn’t like teaching, because she didn’t really like children. When she worked as a teacher for a few months at a girl’s boarding school when she was twenty, she told her pupils that she cared more about the dog than any one of them. She was a bit strange, that Emily, and possibly slightly autistic.

“Ms Janzing?”

Someone taps me on the shoulder and for a split second I feel like a character in a novel when something dramatic is about to take place. Unfortunately, there is no seductive Mr Rochester standing in front of me but instead a sprightly vicar.

His name is Peter Mayo-Smith and we have an appointment. He takes my arm and leads me into his church. Once upon a time, Patrick Brontë stood here at the pulpit and through his inspired sermons brought together his community.

“He was an exceptional man, Patrick Brontë!” We are sitting in a pew and Peter pulls on his fuzzy beard with a satisfied look. “He was tuned into nature long before there was any environmental movement. The cemetery was over capacity and thousands of corpses were rotting just below the surface of the ground, so Patrick had trees planted to speed up their decomposition. He was also democratically minded and spent time promoting education. The textile barons in Haworth brought orphans up from London to work in the factories next to the river, and Patrick opened a school in the evening to teach them to read and write.”

Peter’s eyes are sparkling and it’s easy to see that Brontë is his role model. He springs up and at the front of the church shows me the family grave where Maria Brontë, her children Maria, Elizabeth, Branwell, Emily and Charlotte, and also Patrick Brontë, were laid to rest. Anne is buried in the coastal town of Scarborough where she was staying while trying to recover from tuberculosis.

LETTERS

Behind me I hear a repressed sob and see a blonde woman in her forties crying. Her daughter puts her arm around her shoulders. We start talking and she tells me “Charlotte, Emily and Anne weren’t beautiful or glamorous, they weren’t models or actresses. No, no, they were ordinary women just like my daughter and I, but we also have a right to be loved.” I suddenly feel a need for fresh air and quickly say goodbye.

Johnnie Briggs, my new guide, is waiting for me at the church portal. He takes me to the cemetery in the pouring rain and tells me about the high rates of child mortality during the 19th century. He has an umbrella with him, but he doesn’t open it. There’s a drop of rain hanging from his nose and his coat is completely soaked, but this doesn’t seem to bother him.

We walk down Main Street and go into Hatchard & Daughters, a second-hand book shop. While looking around I see a book I’ve been trying to find for months: the compendium of Charlotte Brontë’s letters. Mary Hatchard wraps my book in a piece of brown paper. “It’s the personal life stories of the Brontës which continue to fascinate people”, she replies to my question about the secret of their popularity. “The novels are great, but their personal history is even better. It’s a tragedy and people just love tragedies, especially when they happen in the past because then they can watch from a safe distance. Look at Byron and Shelley! Byron, the pale hero who lived off tea and biscuits and died of malaria in Greece, and then Shelley, who was killed in a shipwreck. Their stories will stay with us for centuries. And there are also the scandals: there’s nothing quite like a good scandal to keep a literary figure in the spotlight! Byron slept with his half-sister and Branwell Brontë had an affair with a rich married woman 17 years older than him.”

VERA LYNN

I ask her what kind of people come in to her shop to buy Brontë novels. “Teenage girls all want a copy of Wuthering Heights. They think they’re Cathy and dream about passion and romance. They’re also the ones who are crazy about the dream-like poems and drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Jane Eyre is mostly popular with women over 40, who remember the book from when they were young and want to read it again.”

Nostalgia is very big in Mary’s shop. On the shelves there are books about World War II and I can also see a Vera Lynn CD. “The UK is losing itself in nostalgia,” sighs Mary. “World War II is still popular, but nobody asks for books on Vietnam or Afghanistan, because we only want to think about misery if it’s associated with victory.”

Mary is from London and lived several years in Amsterdam, but Haworth and its stories have captured her heart. She lives together with her husband and two daughters in an isolated cottage somewhere in the hills, and this makes her a bona-fide Brontaholic.

EMPTY

The following day the rainclouds have given way to a more sympathetic blue sky. Emily was in the habit of taking walks on the moor in the rain and during storms, but I’ve decided to wait for more clement weather. Johnnie recommends that I go to the waterfalls, which was a regular walk for the Brontës. I don’t bring a dog along with me, but I can imagine how Emily’s dog, Keeper, a tough bulldog, must have chased the sheep around.

The sounds of Haworth subside behind me and for the first time since I arrived I feel a certain degree of proximity. No trees grow on these hills and there is nothing except sheep, heather, sometimes in bloom, marram grass and low walls made of stones stacked up on one another so that the wind can whistle when blowing through the cracks. It is an empty landscape and my head is empty as well; there is room for a new story. When I reach the waterfall I go to sit on the rock where Emily liked to sit, with her big feet dangling above the splashing water. I open up the book with Charlotte’s letters. At the end of January, not long after she had returned from Brussels, she wrote to a friend “It seems to me that Haworth is a lonely, quiet place hidden far from the rest of the world.”

Juliet Barker at the Parsonage

 Richard Wilcocks writes:
Juliet Barker launched the new, revised version of her biography The Brontës, a work normally described, justifiably, as ‘definitive’, on Friday 12 November. She spoke in the Old Schoolroom, all steel and efficiency blended with easy charm, at ease with the tiniest details and the widest speculations. The corrections seem to have been small-scale: “I had many offers of corrections after the first publication in 1994 – and some were taken more seriously than others…

Some letters were redated, others added… and perhaps my worst confession is that I got the wrong Bishop of Ripon, the one who took the grand confirmation service…but it should be easier to read, because the font size has been increased, and there’s more space between lines…

It was originally written to be printed in two volumes but this couldn’t be done, I was told, because it would mean two expensive covers, and the publisher thought that people would buy only one volume and not the other… so it’s still rather large and hard to hold when you’re reading in bed…

I must give my thanks to Parsonage staff who have alerted me to new acquisitions…”

She revealed that she had learned much from Patsy Stoneman’s book on dramatised versions ('Jane Eyre' on Stage, 1848-1882) and that she had laughed out loud at some of the comic scenes in it. She spoke about her special interest in Charlotte’s desire to become an artist, pointing out the fact that two of her paintings – ‘Bolton Abbey’ and ‘Kirkstall Abbey’ had been submitted to the Royal Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for inclusion in its summer exhibition of 1834, which was held in Leeds. They were accepted, and for the eighteen year-old Charlotte, it was a dream come true, with the whole family making the journey to the big city to see her works hanging alongside those of JMW Turner. They had not sold, however, and are now (still) hanging in the Parsonage.

She also touched on her revelation that Branwell never went to the Royal Academy, adding briefly a few brief speculative thoughts about his putative mistresses.

ISBN 978-0-349-12242-7

Haworth clampers - yet again

Richard Wilcocks writes:
This blog regularly receives emails and comments (which appear below posts made in previous years) about the activities of Haworth's energetic wheel-clampers, based at the Changegate car park. Just in case you are new to this depressing saga, the advice is to park your vehicle elsewhere, for example in the Parsonage car park run by Bradford. You might also be interested in a website which gives excellent and comprehensive advice on penalties and any legal recourses which might be available to you: click here.

If you do take legal action, for example in a small claims court, please let us know what happens.

An evening with Juliet Barker

Biographer Juliet Barker will be launching the much-awaited revised edition of her landmark biography The Brontës at the Parsonage on Friday 12 November.  

The Brontës, first published in 1994, was a radical reassessment of the Brontë family and remains the definitive study of their lives and works. Juliet Barker is publishing a revised and updated version of the book and will be launching this new edition at a very special evening at the Parsonage. She will be speaking about her revisions, newly discovered material, and the impact of the book at The Old Schoolroom on Church St, followed by a book signing and a drinks reception.

The event will also be a special opportunity to visit the museum after hours, to see some of the museum’s current exhibitions, including the contemporary arts exhibition Remnants by artist Su Blackwell, and the Sex, Drugs and Literature exhibition which focuses on Branwell Brontë.

Tickets for the evening cost £12 can be booked from the Arts Officer:jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

Su Blackwell's Remnants

News release: 

Artist Su Blackwell will return to Yorkshire next week to talk about her current exhibition, Remnants, at the  Parsonage  on Thursday 21 October at 7.30pm at the West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth.

Sheffield-born Su Blackwell studied for her first degree at Bradford College of Art and Design before going on to complete her MA at the Royal College of Art in London in 2003. The Brontë Parsonage Museum commissioned Su Blackwell to create an exhibition of new work for the museum, inspired by the Brontë collections. The London-based artist creates intricate miniature artworks using antique books and paper. Her exhibition takes inspiration from the stories surrounding the Brontë family and features a series of site specific installations in the period rooms of the house. For the Children’s Nursery, Su has created an installation inspired by the Brontë children’s imaginary kingdoms. Miniature churches, castles and a mill on a river – complete with turning waterwheel – form the back-drop for a battle between the Brontë children’s toy soldiers. Elsewhere, linen-cut moths fly from a Brontë nightshirt on the bed. A Victorian dress hangs in a window, laser-cut with heather patterns to represent Emily Brontë’s favourite flower. In the Dining Room, the pages of a book turn as if by an invisible hand.

Su will talk about her unique paper-cutting techniques and way of working, as well as her inspiration for the Remnants exhibition, with Grant Gibson, editor of Crafts magazine. Tickets cost £5 and can be booked from Arts Officer Jenna Holmes: jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

The talk features as part of a series of activities and workshops taking place at the museum during the exhibition. On Saturday 23 October, visitors to the museum will be able to try paper and book-inspired creative activities led by artist and bookbinder Sarah Brown. This is a drop-in event that is free with admission to the museum. On Wednesday 27 October, a half-term holiday workshop for children aged 6-12 will take place with local artist Rachel Lee, making paper-art inspired by the Remnants exhibition. Places cost £5 per child and can be booked from susan.newby@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640185.

Remnants runs until Sunday 28 November 2010 and is free on admission. It has been funded by The Radcliffe Trust and Arts Council England as part of the Parsonage’s contemporary arts programme.

Wave-like hills

 The speaker at this year’s Literary Luncheon, held, appropriately enough, in the Brontë Suite of the Crown Hotel, Harrogate on Saturday, was the biographer and critic Jenny Uglow, who is currently the editorial director of Chatto and Windus. She is much in demand in the world of television when it comes to adaptations of the works of Elizabeth Gaskell for the simple reason that she is one of the world’s leading authorities on the novelist – and of course biographer of Charlotte Brontë. She was eloquently introduced by Patsy Stoneman, who emphasised her deep admiration and listed some of her works, like for example The Lunar Men (which won the James Tait Memorial Prize in 2002), A Life of Thomas Bewick and Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. 

The title of the address was ‘Wave-like hills’: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Brontë landscapes. The quote is from Chapter One of her Life of Charlotte Brontë:

All round the horizon there is this same line of sinuous wave-like hills; the scoops into which they fall only revealing other hills beyond, of similar colour and shape, crowned with wild, bleak moors--grand, from the ideas of solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from the feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monotonous and illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind in which the spectator may be.

Gaskell “sees herself as a kind of anthropologist”, depicting the people of Yorkshire (largely for the benefit of her readers in the southern counties) as a “cut-off race” descended from Scandinavians, people with a peculiar force of character. She had a strong idea of what the countryside should be, living herself in Knutsford in Cheshire, just a few miles from industrialised Manchester. She saw Knutsford as a place for solitude, grassy and romantic, a place to escape the grim poverty of the big city.

Wild countryside, for Gaskell, “releases something elemental in you”. It “got into the Brontës’ blood”. Gaskell’s experiences of wild countryside included Snowdonia as well as the moors around Haworth. She was concerned with the way that dangerous passions were addressed in Charlotte’s work, anxious to defend her from the charge of coarseness. The first description of Charlotte Brontë in the biography does not come until Chapter Six, when her plain features and tiny hands are mentioned in such a way “that she sounds like a small animal, a bit of a wild thing”. Gaskell tells us that she “seldom went down into the village, preferring the solitude of the moors” which is not entirely true, though it does apply to Emily.

Jane Eyre can be read as myth because “the characters in it are all from this Yorkshire race”. The harsh landscapes have brought out a capacity for self-sacrifice, a fact which interests Gaskell because it links with Christian myth. For her, a harsh rural life could be equivalent to a harsh industrial life in order to serve this. Charlotte is depicted as living in solitude with the sky as a companion. Gaskell saw Charlotte Brontë as a woman of solitude, who has suffered and survived in this landscape.

Below – Sally McDonald (Chair of Brontë Society Council), Jenny Uglow and Patsy Stoneman.

Comments can be made by clicking below. Longer responses can be emailed to heveliusx1@yahoo.co.uk

Wuthering Heights in Hull

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Jane Thornton's intelligently-pruned and effective dramatic version of Wuthering Heights opens tomorrow (8pm) in Ferensway at Hull Truck Theatre, directed by John Godber. Make plans to see it if you can, because it is likely to capture the essence - it's there until the twenty-third of the month. "This simple production far outclasses more lavish attempts" said the Yorkshire Post reviewer - presumably referring to the last time it was showing in Hull. Thornton's rendering seems to have caught on with other companies in the last few years - I remember the production by the Two Hats Company (directed by Blanche McIntyre) which toured in 2007.

Heathcliff is played by Rupert Hill (When Harry Met Sally, Jamie Baldwin in Coronation Street) and Cathy by Gaynor Faye (Judy Mallet in Coronation Street, star of Dancing On Ice), both of whom can be seen below:

Anne Brontë's Headstone

Apologies for not posting this statement (made on behalf of Brontë Society Council) last week - the email forwarding system was faulty, but has now been fixed. Your comments are, of course, welcome (Richard W)

The deterioration in the condition of Anne Brontë’s headstone, that many commented on in 2009, worsened through the long hard winter of 2009-10.  Concerned about the deterioration, only seven years after conservation work had been carried out on the headstone, the Brontë Society commissioned a second professional conservator to undertake a condition survey at the end of 2009.  That report agreed with the 2002 report that once the laminated surface of the stone has been penetrated, as has occurred on Anne’s stone, further erosion is inevitable and so long as the stone remains in its exposed salt-laden environment, even constant treatment will only slow the rate of physical loss.  This summer, the Brontë Society received a third professional opinion, this one from a senior church buildings officer with the Diocese of York, that confirmed that restoration in situ would be no more effective than was Canute against the tide.

Throughout this summer, the Brontë Society has been engaged in broad consultation with parties concerned about the future of Anne’s headstone.  These have included many of its own members, bloggers to the Brontë Parsonage Blog, local and tourist visitors to the grave, the Vicar of Scarborough, the St Mary’s Parochial Church Council and Diocesan officers.  Options presented included leaving the original headstone to decay where it stands, its replacement by a replica, and the removal of Anne’s body to Haworth.  The consensus that emerged from the consultations was so overwhelming that the Council of the Brontë Society voted unanimously at its meeting on 18 September to leave the original headstone to decay where it stands but to commission the cutting of an interpretive plaque to be installed at the headstone’s base.  The exact wording of the original stone would be engraved on the plaque together with some brief historical interpretation. The plaque would be of slate, slate being native, durable and as hospitable as is sandstone to the local flora such as lichens.  The Scarborough St Mary’s Parochial Church Council supports the installation of such a plaque and the necessary permission will be sough from the Diocese of York Consistory Court. If the Court consents, it is hoped that the slate plaque can be engraved and installed during 2011.

Stephen Whitehead

Brontë Society Trustee for Heritage & Conservation

28 September 2010