Worse than expected...

Wuthering Heights

BBC Radio 3

Sunday 27 March,2011

8.00pm

Ellen Dean                 Janine Duvitski

David Birrell              Mr Lockwood/Linton Heathcliff

Russell Boulter         Hindley Earnshaw/Hareton Earnshaw

Samuel Barnett         Edgar Linton

Carl Prekopp             Heathcliff

Natalie Press             Catherine Earnshaw/Catherine Linton

Produced in Bristol by Tim Dean

Review by Chris Went:

Lovers of Emily Brontë’s novel  have endured much over the years, from William Wyler’s abbreviated Hollywood rendition through Juliette Binoche’s French accented Cathy, the BBC’s radio serial which made the house the narrator, to Tom Hardy sniffing his way through the last TV version.  “Oh, damn my soul! but [it’s] worse than I expected – and the devil knows I was not sanguine!”  So said Heathcliff on first meeting his son.  As a comment on this latest offering, it seems appropriate.

Jonathan Holloway’s new radio adaptation promised a ‘modernised and hard-hitting’ version, and listeners were warned that it contained strong language and racist terms.  According to Holloway this  was ‘.....part of my attempt to capture the shock the book caused when it was published.’  The Daily Express told its readers that the play would ’.....portray Cathy and Heathcliff as listeners have never heard them before.’  This proved to be true, but not entirely in the way the Express reporter meant.

 Andrew McCarthy of the Brontë Parsonage Museum has been widely quoted as saying that ‘It doesn’t take much imagination to fill in the blanks’ referring to the part of the novel where the child Hareton horrifies Ellen Dean with his ‘string of curses’ and his admission that it is Heathcliff who taught him to swear.  There are many points in the story where a modern adaptation might insert the words which Brontë undoubtedly knew but could never write - at least not for public consumption:  Heathcliff’s first encounter with the Lintons when his swearing shocks old Mrs Linton; Hindley who ‘entered, vociferating oaths dreadful to hear’ and any number of lesser occasions.  In a dramatisation the inclusion of the F-word for such scenes makes some sense: Brontë meant us to imagine stronger terms than ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ so there is no point in being mimsy about it.  The problem was not the word itself, but how and where it was used.  Its insertion it into dialogue for which Brontë allowed no such implication was irritating but to have it interjected into a massacred version of Cathy’s great ‘I am Heathcliff’ speech was unforgivable.  Several  terms of abuse used of, and by, Heathcliff jarred horribly less because they were offensive but because they were wildly anachronistic.  In a thoroughly modernised version they would have been appropriate but, inserted into the fractured remnants of the original text, they sounded ridiculous.

However,  the use of offensive language was not the problem.  That aspect was a mere curiosity, artistically defensible if properly executed within a high quality production.  In this case it was little more than a gimmick, and the whole best forgotten.  Whilst there are many difficulties in the way of a satisfactory visual rendition of Wuthering Heights, it would seem perfectly possible to produce a creditable – even a great – radio version of the book.  What we had was a disjointed script which gave the impression of being written by someone who had relied on a précis based on a skim-reading of the book.  A listener new to the work would have been hard put to follow the plot, while those who know it well could only be infuriated.

Jonathan Holloway’s script did manage to keep the main characters more or less to their correct ages – something virtually every film adaptation has failed to do – though Ellen Dean was played by Janine Duvitski as a middle-aged woman throughout.    It was Ellen who opened the play with a fanciful speech about the moor,  and who was given dialogue and opinions which come straight from Holloway’s mind.  According to his Ellen: Hindley Earnshaw’s wife, Frances, was ‘an impoverished, doll-like idiot’; Isabella broke into the Grange after her escape from Wuthering Heights, and the mingling of Cathy Linton’s and Hareton’s light and dark hair were reminiscent of the light and dark curls which went with Catherine to her grave.  But the worst is not yet!

Holloway’s script used several scenes from the book which are invariably omitted from dramatisations but in virtually every case there was distortion.  Ellen’s vision of Hindley as a child at the stone pillar is a notable example.  In the book this incident is so sharply evocative that one wonders whether Bronte had her brother in mind when she wrote it.  Holloway reduced it to the banal by making the vision a real child – Hareton.  Again and again there were changes, additions and contradictions.   Mr Earnshaw was away to Liverpool for six days;  Isabella went to live in Surrey;  Heathcliff had been in the army; Catherine’s final illness was brought on by her being out all night on the moors; Cathy Linton was pleased to discover that Hareton is her cousin; Hareton turned against Heathcliff and threatened him; Ellen told of the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff peeping through Joseph’s bedroom window.  Joseph, incidentally, was referred to but never heard, while Zillah was made to give Ellen an account of the wedding of Cathy and Linton Heathcliff.   We also heard that Edgar Linton gave his nephew up to Heathcliff before the latter made a single demand.  To be fair to Holloway, his portrayal of Linton Heathcliff as a self-obsessed, whining, unpleasant wretch was true to the book, but not the deception by which Cathy and Ellen were imprisoned at The Heights.  The mangling of the plot at this point was particularly exasperating.

The disjointed nature of the plot as portrayed by Holloway has already been noted as bewildering to anyone unfamiliar with the novel.  Based on this portrayal, anyone who has heard of ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a story of a passionate love affair, of Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s obsession with eachother, would struggle to understand just why Heathcliff cared twopence for Catherine.  Her part was reduced to a few words here and there other than what might be called her great speeches.  ‘Great’, however, is not an appropriate word in this context.  The scene in which Catherine confides in Ellen about her intention to marry Edgar even though she does not love him as she loves Heathcliff was edited and ’modernised’ into trivial, contradictory nonsense.  The interchange in the kitchen of Thrushcross Grange which culminates in Edgar’s attack on Heathcliff and Catherine’s hysteria was similarly reduced.  Worse still, Natalie Press’s Catherine delivered her lines in an early BBC accent strongly reminiscent of Joyce Grenfell.  As for passion, Violet Beauregard exhibited far more in her desire for a Wonka golden ticket!  Doubling up as Cathy II, Press’s voice and flat delivery were exactly the same. 

This doubling up – David Birrell as Lockwood and Linton Heathcliff and Russell Boulter as Hindley and Hareton Earnshaw – was occasionally confusing and, with the omission of the character of Joseph, implied underfunding.   A few seconds, here and there, of incidental music failed to inject any desperately needed atmosphere.  Heathcliff, played by Carl Prekopp, did manage to sound devastated at Catherine’s death but, particularly in the second half of the story, his voice lacked the necessary harshness so that his Heathcliff came across as a nice man with a sense of humour trying hard not to be.

A Lockwood soliloquy closed the play, but what the character had to say – thankfully not much - simply carried the awfulness to the bitter end.  The dereliction of Gimmerton chapel was applied to The Heights, Bronte’s lyrical ending was ignored, and Lockwood, echoing the opening words of Ellen Dean, cursed and blessed the moor.  The listener would be heartily forgiven for cursing the BBC for this infliction and blessing it for having the charity to limit it to ninety minutes.  

John Martin: Heaven and Hell

The Laing Art Gallery, New Bridge Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 8A

Until 5 June 2011.  Monday - Saturday 10 am – 5pm; Sunday 2pm – 5pm.  Closed 29 April 2011.  Entry is free.

Review by Chris Went:

In 1829, describing the founding of Glass Town, Charlotte Brontë wrote: ‘How long has it taken to rear the Grand Hall where we now are?  Have not those marble pillars and that solemn dome been built by supernatural power?  If you view the city from this Gothic window and see the beams of the morn gilding the battlements of the mighty towers, and the pillars of the splendid palaces which have been reared in a few months, can you doubt that magic has been used in their construction?’  If the 13-year-old Charlotte could have seen the original painting of ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’, a mezzotint of which surely influenced her first vision of Glass Town, she might have imagined that the artist too had worked under the influence of magic.

There is something distinctly strange, surreal, about Martin’s work, something – one is tempted to believe -  precognitive and uncannily knowing.  The scale of his representations of Belshazzar’s palace, of Nineveh and Pandemonium reminds one of the vastness of the computer generated cities of “Star Wars”, or the similarly devised landscapes of “The Lord of the Rings”.  To look at the depiction of the destruction of the earth in his ‘Last Judgement’ is to be reminded painfully of the recent disaster which struck Japan.  Not for nothing was that event described over and over as being of biblical proportions, and biblical proportions are what John Martin produced so successfully.

 The exhibition occupies the five galleries which make up the whole of the first floor of the gallery and as such, is the largest the Laing has ever mounted.  Each room’s display is themed to tell a part of  Martin’s story from his birth in 1789 at East Landends near Haydon Bridge in Northumberland, to his death on the Isle of Man in 1854 using clear wall-mounted text boards which, cleverly sited, are accessible without being intrusive.  Indeed, both the staging and the lighting of the exhibition are superb: nothing is allowed to detract from the works.  The atmosphere is comfortable, the staff friendly and helpful, and there are plenty of places to sit down.

It is obvious that Martin always intended his art to be commercial. Whilst working as a painter on ceramics he produced small landscapes, watercolours of classical subjects and illustrations for prints, all of which were designed to sell.  Some of his earliest oils seem somewhat flat and almost amateurish: two small paintings of Kensington Gardens, both done in 1815, do not prepare one for the awesome scale and drama of the Welsh mountain landscape of ‘The Bard’ (1817).  Again and again he painted cities which appear almost organic: growing out of crags and peaks apparently intended not merely to impress but to overawe, and when Martin illustrates destruction, be it Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh or the earth itself, he does so with all the visual tropes of a modern disaster movie.

Although Martin was never beloved of the art Establishment, he enjoyed a long period of commercial success largely through the production of mezzotint prints of his most popular works.  As well as ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ the Brontës owned ‘Joshua Commands the Sun to Stand Still’ and ‘The Deluge’.  They may also have had a copy of ‘St Paul Preaching at Athens’ all of which feature in the exhibition, as does ‘The Last Man’ which Charlotte saw on her visit to London in 1850, describing it in a letter to her father as “a grand, wonderful picture”.  She might have added that it provokes a strong sense of desolate misery.  Many of Martin’s prints were used in popular annuals of the time, some of which the Brontës owned, and it was common for publications such as Blackwood’s Magazine to analyse popular works in great detail.  In July, 1828 Blackwood’s published a detailed description and critique of Martin’s ‘The Fall of Nineveh’ which is believed to have influenced Charlotte’s poem ‘The Trumpet Hath Sounded’  (December, 1831).

It is easy to imagine, whilst viewing the main part of the exhibition, that the young Brontës must have wished for coloured reproductions of Martin’s works.  However, the display of mezzotints in the Barbour Gallery allows a completely different view of Martin’s best-known pictures.  While the prints lack the drama of colour, this is more than compensated for in sharpness of line and detail.  The monumental scale of the buildings, the ominous quality, the turbulence of celestial phenomena are depicted with a startling clarity. There is a sinister eeriness about the prints which is not present in the paintings.  In short, the mezzotints are far more frightening than the coloured works.

The final section of the exhibition, The End of All Things, shows Martin’s last great work: the three enormous paintings entitled ‘The Great Day of His Wrath’; ‘The Last Judgement’ and ‘The Plains of Heaven’, all painted between 1851 and 1853. Each one is disturbing, either obviously or subtly.  One expects to be disturbed by scenes of cataclysmic annihilation; one does not expect to find a representation of heavenly bliss unsettling.  It may have been entirely unintended, but in the waterside rocks of paradise one seemed to see the ghosts of those monumental, monstrous palaces and colonnades which one had just seen swept away at the last judgement.

  

The Laing Art Gallery is staging John Martin: Heaven and Hell as part of ‘The Great British Art Debate’, a partnership project between Tate Britain, Tyne and Wear Archives & Museums, Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service and Museums Sheffield.  The Great British Art Debate is a series of events and exhibitions bringing art from national collections to the regions.  It aims to encourage the public to join in a debate about what British art has to say about identity and Britishness today. The exhibition will also be staged at the Millennium Galleries, Sheffield from 22 June to 4 September, and at Tate Britain, London from 21 September to 15 January, 2012.

The Laing has a pleasant cafe offering a good range of snacks and meals at reasonable prices.  There is also a shop selling postcards, prints, gifts and books.  In stock is “John Martin Apocalypse Now” by Barbara C. Morden which tells Martin’s story, exploring the nature of his art with lavish illustrations.  It is published by Northumbria Press at £30.00.

Below, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:

  

Buy Ponden Hall?

Ponden Hall is up for sale. All the details are here.

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Branwell wrote a short story about the house - Thurston's at Darkwall - and used the well-stocked library there along with Emily. She knew the well-off Heaton family which lived there very well. Heaton sounds rather like Hareton, and there is a date plaque above the main entrance which informs us that the rebuilt version of the house dates from 1801, which happens to be the date when Wuthering Heights begins, and this leads some to believe that Emily imagined Heathcliff living there. I like this idea, for the simple unscholarly reason that a few years ago I walked by it in heavy snow...

There is a tiny single-paned window on the east gable. Emily, some believe, had that in mind when she wrote about the ghost of Cathy scratching at it, trying to get in. I like that idea as well, but there is no evidence...

The main tradition, however, is that it is identifiable with Thrushcross Grange, home of the Lintons: it would probably have seemed grand to the Brontës, with few other large houses in the area, but again there is no evidence at all. The Grange was in a large park, too.

The library has been dispersed to who knows where since the late nineteenth century when many of the books were sold off in a Keighley market-place. Perhaps someone there still has a Shakespeare First Folio in an attic.

You would still have to be well-off to buy the place: the interior has been refurbished brilliantly.

John Martin in Newcastle

Chris Went writes:
 A major exhibition of John Martin's paintings opened on 5 March at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  The exhibition, which will run until  June, features eighty of Martin's oil paintings including Belshazzar's Feast, which is on loan from America.  


This is a rare opportunity to see the originals of the prints which inspired the young Brontës when they created their imaginary worlds.  Entry to the exhibition is free.

‘Saucy Pat’ exhibition opens at the Parsonage

News release from the Parsonage:

He was father to three of the most famous authors in the world yet most of us know very little about Patrick Brontë. This year marks the 150^th anniversary of his death in 1861 and the Brontë Parsonage Museum will be opening a new exhibition to celebrate the life and work of this ‘somewhat eccentrik’ Irish curate. The exhibition, Patrick Brontë: In His Own Right will open on 17 March, St Patrick’s Day.

Patrick was born in Ireland in a small cabin and was the eldest son of a poor farmer. From a very young age he was highly ambitious, enthusiastic and intelligent; by the time he was just sixteen he had already opened his first school. A few years later Patrick had secured himself a place at Cambridge University to pursue a career in the Church. He left Ireland for England where he was to spend the rest of his long life, eventually settling in Haworth at the Parsonage.

This new exhibition features some of Patrick’s own publications, as well as many letters and personal possessions …

This exhibition is a first for the museum. Understandably, there’s been a tendency to focus on Patrick’s famous daughters and their great literary achievements, but Patrick was an extraordinary figure in his own right; as an author, scholar, clergyman, and social campaigner, as well as the father and educator of his remarkable children. This exhibition is long overdue and will give visitors an insight not only into Patrick as the ‘father of genius’, but also into his own fascinating background and his prominent role within nineteenth century Haworth

(Andrew McCarthy, Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum)

The exhibition will also feature a number of important loan items from the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester and the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. After the death of his last daughter, Charlotte, Patrick asked Elizabeth Gaskell to write “an account of her life”. The letters on loan from the John Ryland’s Library document Patrick’s involvement in the first biography of Charlotte Bronte by providing Gaskell with background information on his early life and memories of his daughter.

Also included in the exhibition will be a very special letter on loan from the Brotherton Library in Leeds. Written by Maria Branwell before she married Patrick, it is addressed to ‘My Dear Saucy Pat’ and is one of the few surviving letters that exist by Mrs Brontë, giving a wonderful insight into their courtship. After the sudden death of his wife, Patrick was left to raise their six young children on his own; of which his three youngest girls made them the most famous literary family in the world. He outlived all of them, eventually dying at the age of 84.

Contacts & Further Information:   

               

Sarah Laycock (Collections & Library Officer) 01535 640199 sarah.laycock@bronte.org.uk/  

Ann Dinsdale (Collections Manager) 01535 640198 –a.dinsdale@bronte.org.uk

Companion piece to Deaths and Entrances

Paul Daniggelis in Texas sends this link - following on from the piece about the New York-based Martha Graham Dance Company's companion piece to Deaths and Entrances for the troupe’s eighty-fifth anniversary celebrations.

Review of The Brontës and their Poetry by Anne Crow

Heidi Büchner writes:

This book is the work of an accomplished teacher, to be sure, someone who gets to the point quickly and who knows when not to go on for too long. Drawing heavily on sources such as the monolithic The Brontës by Juliet Barker and also the Selected Poems that Barker edited for Everyman, Anne Crow presents us with a concise and readily accessible survey, with extensive quotations to illustrate the frequent salient points which she makes. She includes an excellent four-page chronology near to where her text commences, which begins in 1776 (American Declaration of Independence, in the year before the birth of Patrick Brontë) and ends with that patriarch’s death in 1861. Included are most events and publications which could be construed as relevant: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, for example, is placed next to the rejection of the Third Chartist petition in 1848, along with the deaths of both Branwell and Emily.

Crow is careful in particular to include plenty of background and information on Patrick to begin her survey, with interesting extracts and commentaries  on Cottage Poems which are frequently skimmed over by those who want to home in, perhaps too speedily, on the lives and works of his talented son and daughters. Some of Patrick's poems have plenty of charm, while others seem bland, in spite of clever crafting. All are hard to obtain.

There is concise information on both Thornton and Haworth – all going over well-trodden earth – and evidence of some personal research, with some poignant photographs taken (by Crow herself) in Haworth cemetery.

Crow’s selections are a little scanty, and not entirely ‘predictable’. She gives almost equal space to the poems of Patrick and Branwell as to those of each of the sisters, which seems like an invitation to scrutinise, say, Branwell’s The desolate earth (written during his time at the Luddenden Foot railway station) with the same critical eye as Anne’s Lines Written at Thorp Green. This could be a very useful exercise for a group of sixth formers studying for A level!

The Brontës and their Poetry was self-published (by ‘Crowscapes’ no less) using the facilities at www.lulu.com 

It can be bought from the Parsonage shop. 

ISBN: 978-0-9562328-2-3

Bulareyaung Pagarlava

Thanks to Paul Daniggelis in Texas for the following info:

Taiwanese choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava has been invited by the New York-based Martha Graham Dance Company to do a companion piece to Deaths and Entrances for the troupe’s 85th anniversary celebrations.

This is the second collaboration between Pagarlava and the company,  following his 2009 contribution to Lamentation Variations, in which young choreographers respond to Graham’s Lamentation (1930).

“Bula is one of the talented, important, new voices in the international dance scene,” Janet Eilber, artistic director of the group, said. “When we decided we wanted a contemporary companion piece to Graham’s masterpiece Deaths and Entrances, we turned to Bula.”

Deaths and Entrances, which premiered in 1943, is based on the lives of the Bronte sisters. Here is the link.

See also Deaths and Entrances. Brontë Studies: Vol.32, Part 2, 138-144, July 2007.

Jane Eyre 1943

The Parsonage will be screening the 1943 Hollywood film version of Jane Eyre as part of their contemporary arts programme next week.

The event takes place on Friday 18 February, 7.30pm at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth. The film is being screened to celebrate the museum’s acquisition of the original film screenplay, which is now on display at the Parsonage, complete with handwritten notes by its author, Aldous Huxley.

The 20^th Century Fox production was directed by Robert Stephenson and stars Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. It also briefly features a very young Elizabeth Taylor in one of her first screen roles, as Jane Eyre’s school friend Helen Burns. The film will be screened after a short introduction by Charmian Knight, and there will be an interval with refreshments served.

The screenplay, produced in the war years, is stamped, ‘’Less shooting over here means more shooting over there! Save our film!” It was acquired by the museum last year, with assistance from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, and will be on display throughout 2011.

Tickets are £6/ £3 (under 16s) and can be booked in advance from

jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk/ 01535 640188.

Now read about the latest version on film at http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=20896212#editor/target=post;postID=6730907215260031952

Welcome, Bonnie Greer!

Ms Bonnie Greer OBE has accepted the post of President of the Brontë Society and will preside over the Society's Annual General Meeting in June.

Ms Greer, pictured here at the Parsonage, said, “The work of the Brontës encompasses some of the most exquisite examples of the beauty, strength, wonder, and depth of the human spirit. This is their gift to us, and the answer that I give the little girl I was long ago, when I asked myself what relevance they had for me, growing up African American on the South Side of Chicago. 

Their universality is unquestioned. Their power to speak to all people down through the ages is a legacy and a flame I want to help perpetuate and cherish. It is a great honour to accept this position. That little girl still inside of me who loved the Brontës so is twirling around filled with joy. ”

Chairman of the Brontë Society, Sally McDonald, announced the appointment saying, “The Brontë Society is thrilled that Bonnie Greer has accepted the Society’s invitation to be our President. 

Everyone is very excited that we will be working with Bonnie and we are very much looking forward to her return to Haworth later this year when members will meet and welcome her as our President. Bonnie has been a true friend to the Society over the past year.” 

In 2010 Bonnie Greer spoke in Haworth as part of the Brontë Society’s Contemporary Arts Programme, returning soon after to open a newly refurbished exhibition space at the Parsonage museum.  She joined members of the Society and spoke eloquently at a fundraising event at Watermen’s Hall, in London, in November, having earlier that day received an OBE from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace.  

Bonnie Greer is also the judge of the short story section of the 2010-2011 Brontë Society Literary Competition. 

Born in Chicago, Bonnie Greer is well known in Britain as an award-winning playwright, novelist, and broadcaster. Her latest play, Marilyn and Ella ran at The Apollo Theatre in London in November 2009, and her new book, a biography for young people of the poet and novelist, Langston Hughes, entitled Rebel with a Cause, will be published by Arcadia in the spring. Her libretto for the new opera Yes, composed by Errollyn Wallen, will premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden’s Lindbury Theatre in autumn, 2011

Parsonage reopens next month

News release:

The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth will be re-opening on Tuesday 1 February following a hectic month of activity including maintenance work, cleaning, conservation, revaluation of the museum’s collections, decorative archaeology and development of new displays.

The museum closes every January so that essential work can be carried out without disturbing visitors. As well as all of the usual tasks undertaken, this year included a team of experts visiting the museum to carry out decorative analysis which it is hoped will provide new evidence of the scheme of decoration in the Parsonage during the Brontës’ residence. 

The work involves taking samples from walls, mouldings and woodwork and analyzing these using polarizing microscopy. It is the first time that such analysis has taken place at the Parsonage and, it is hoped, could lead to exciting new discoveries about the Brontës’ décor and the history of their Parsonage home. Information relating to the project will be made available to visitors and the museum will be formulating a plan to completely redecorate the Parsonage in 2012.

Visitors to the museum will also be able to see a variety of new displays, with more of the museum’s collection on display than ever. Items on display for the first time will include the original screenplay for the 1943 Hollywood film of Jane Eyre starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. The screenplay is annotated by its author, the British writer Aldous Huxley. Huxley is famous for books such as Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, in which he wrote of his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. The screenplay, produced in the war years, is stamped, ‘’Less shooting over here means more shooting over there! Save our film!”. It was acquired by the museum last year, with assistance from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, and the museum will be screening the film at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth on the evening of Friday 18 February. The Brontës will be continuing to feature in the world of the movies with new film versions of both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights expected to be released in 2011.

A great deal of work goes on at the museum in January and we’re very much looking forward to re-opening our doors in February. There have been lots of changes to our displays and we hope that visitors from near and far will come along and see what’s new.

Andrew McCarthy

Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum

For further information on museum opening and events contact bronte@bronte.org.uk/ 01535 642323 – www.bronte.info

Joan Quarm dies at 90

Thanks to Texas Brontë Society member Paul Daniggelis for sending us this information.


Click on the clipping to make it larger.

Get in touch

Would the man who commented very recently on our May 2007 post Haworth Clampers as 'Anonymous' please get in touch by email. You may have a legal case, especially if damage was done to your vehicle.

A visitor from Greece

Elena Spanou from Greece has posted on her blog a very interesting account of her visit to Haworth and the Parsonage, together with some superb photographs. Here is the link:  http://ksotikoula.blogspot.com/

Are you one of the enthusiasts?

Fatima Shafiq writes:

Fresh One Productions are currently producing a new documentary and campaign series exploring the secret to lasting love and are looking for couples with a love story to share. Adventurous British couple Mike and Alanna Clear are on a quest to uncover the secrets of lasting relationships in the UK.

On a motorbike and sidecar they have already travelled from Alaska to Argentina, meeting and interviewing couples who all had something inspiring, thought-provoking or humorous to share about the secret to a lasting relationship. Armed with the insights from their previous trip, Mike and Alanna are now embarking on a fascinating journey on home soil, fuelled by a desire to find out how British couples make their relationships work. We are hoping to speak to confident, happy, loving couples from all over the UK who might be able to let us in on their secrets to a great relationship. You can view some of Mike and Alanna’s exploits so far on their Facebook page http://apps.facebook.com/goingthedistanceuk/

As a part of the documentary we would love to talk to couples who are Wuthering Heights enthusiasts. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, or if you know of someone who might be then please email me on fatima.shafiq@freshone.tv or call me on 0203 375 5116.

Look forward to hearing from you!

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: