Shirley Country Guide

Richard Wilcocks writes:
On Friday 19 May Kirklees Community History and Kirklees Tourism launched the Shirley Country Guide. To be strictly accurate, they relaunched it in a splendid new colour version, because it has appeared in a shorter form before.


Shirley Country is the name generally accepted by both the Brontë Society and Kirklees Metropolitan Council as the name for the area of West Yorkshire crossed by the River Spen and the manically busy M62 motorway which contains such havens of leafy tranquillity as the Red House in Gomersal, Oakwell Hall in Birstall and St Peter's Church in Hartshead, an area well known to Charlotte Brontë, Ellen Nussey, Mary Taylor and many of the real-life characters who appeared with fictional names in Shirley.


Published in 1849, the novel caused quite a sensation. The local literate, gossiping classes had only just discovered that the quiet parson's daughter from Haworth was secretly the famous Currer Bell, the author of Jane Eyre. Now they found themselves and their neighbours appearing in her latest work.


Charlotte knew the area well from her schooldays in Mirfield and was a frequent visitor. When Charlottë's parents were first married they lived in Hightown, and her father was minister at Hartshead at the time of the Luddite riots of 1812.


The guide features information, directions to and a map of fourteen places which Charlotte knew. Visitors are invited to create their own literary trail.


Some locations have actually disappeared - Rawfold's Mill, for example, which once held out against hundreds of armed and masked Luddites - most of them skilled workers intent on smashing up the new machinery inside which had taken away their livelihoods. It is now a corner of a modern industrial estate.


Oakwell Hall, on the other hand, is thriving in its hundred acres of idyllic parkland rolling down to the edge of the M62, an Elizabethan manor house which contains many of the features of Fieldhead, as described by Charlotte in Shirley, with a visitors' centre nearby geared to the needs of school parties.


The launch started here. Several dozen guests - including representatives of the Brontë Society - watched Charlotte (played by Tania Gillmartin) and Ellen (Bridgid Harbour) arrive by horse-drawn carriage, to be met by the Mayor of Kirklees, Councillor Margaret Fearnley. Joanne Catlow as Shirley Keeldar confronted Chris Yates as the Curate Mr Donne as part of a dramatised extract from the novel performed in the dark-panelled main hall inside.





































Charlotte and Ellen later travelled by horse-drawn carriage to Briarmains - Red House. The guests went by a more modern coach.



























At Briarmains, Mary Taylor (Julie O'Connell) did the greeting, and snifters of madeira wine were available, to be consumed during the watching of more dramatisations: the three friends conversed, Ellen regaling the other two with a shocking story of bigamy involving a gentleman who secretly kept a lunatic wife in an upstairs room.


Then Robert Moore (John Bunker) walked through the front door - based on William Cartwright, whose mill at Rawfolds received the attention of the rioters. He talked with Hiram Yorke (Phil Knight) who was based on Mary's father Joshua Taylor.



























The guests boarded the coach after this for a tour of some of the sites included in the guide - down Spen Lane to St Mary's Church where Mary Taylor is buried, on to the Gomersal Lodge Hotel (formerly High Royd, Mary Taylor's home up to her death in 1893), past the site of Rawfold's Mill, on to Healds Hall, Liversedge (now a sumptuous hotel), past Ellen Nussey's early home Rydings (now situated next to a paint factory), past St Peter's Church in Birstall and back to Oakwell Hall.


Later, at the Gomersal Park Hotel, which is a greatly extended version of Ellen Nussey's Moor Lane House, some of the costumed characters welcomed guests to a literary lunch. The speaker was the well-known Yorkshire Television presenter Ian Clayton, who talked about language change in Yorkshire, his own background as a miner's son who went to grammar school and an occasion when he was shaking hands with the Archbishop of York when his mobile phone suddenly rang with the tune of 'Popeye the Sailor Man'. He read short extracts from several books including, of course, Shirley.





































You can visit Kirklees Tourism by clicking on the link on the right. If you want a copy of the guide, contact Joanne Catlow at 01484 223803 (add +44, delete the initial 0 if you are not in the UK) or email her: joanne.catlow@kirklees.gov.uk


Say you heard about it from this blog.


Photocredits: Richard Wilcocks

Clare Boylan

This obituary is from The Times online for 18 May:

Clare Boylan
April 21, 1948 - May 16, 2006
Irish author who achieved wide acclaim with Emma Brown, the completion of a two-chapter fragment by Charlotte Brontë

Clare Boylan never saw herself as purely an “Irish� writer, although she set several of her books in Dublin past and present. A sense of place is powerfully conveyed in all of them.

In one, Home Rule (1992), she convincingly portrayed the city in the turmoil of the 1890s and beyond as it came to grips with historic national and political issues. But her last novel, Emma Brown, published in 2003, was set mainly in London, and was Boylan’s interpretation and completion of a two-chapter fragment left behind by Charlotte Brontë.

This was perhaps her best book, as well as her most successful. It involved a huge amount of research, which included walking around the streets of London with a guide, until her feet blistered and bled.

















She was no stranger to this kind of painstaking research: it was the backbone of her award-winning journalism. She had won the 1974 Journalist of the Year title in Dublin as a young feature writer on the Evening Press. Her memorable series on homeless women involved spending many nights on the streets with them.

[......]

Boylan was always going to be a writer. In her contribution to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl, a collection of childhood memories by nine Irish women writers, she recalled how her mother wrote children’s stories for herself and her two sisters, Ann and Patricia, as well as essays and short stories. It was the job of the seven-year-old Boylan to type out the articles with two fingers, as a reward for which she was taken to the cinema.Three decades later, a short film, Making Waves, based on her short story Some Ladies on a Tour, was nominated for an Oscar in 1988.

[.....]


Boylan wrote seven novels: Holy Pictures (1983); Last Resorts (1984); Black Baby (1988); Home Rule (1992); Room for a Single Lady (1997), which won the Spirit of Life award; Beloved Stranger (1999) and Emma Brown (2003). There were also three collections of short stories and two anthologies, The Agony and The Ego, The Art and Strategy of Fiction Writing Explained (1993) and The Literary Companion to Cats (1994).

She also wrote a great deal of literary criticism and a radio dramatisation of Molly Keane’s novel, Good Behaviour (2004).

Boylan was an able hostess. She never lost her interest in good food, and one of the joys of her later years was the house she kept in Brittany where the daily ritual of buying and cooking was taken as seriously by the locals as by Boylan. One of her favourite cities was Venice, which she visited many times, often out of season, glorying in the winter light and the emptiness of St Mark’s Square in January.

Boylan was a member of Aosdána, the affiliation of artists established by the Arts Council of Ireland to honour those who had made an outstanding contribution to the arts.

She was a compassionate, but not an overly sentimental, animal lover, with an interest in promoting more humane farming and husbandry techniques.

Students on her creative writing course thought her a brilliant and generous teacher. As a writer she was never content to stand still or produce work that was as only as good as her previous output. Culminating in the extraordinary Emma Brown, each of her books was arguably better than the one before it, as well as significantly different.

Boylan had battled cancer for some time. One friend, upon learning of her final illness, said: “Part of the tragedy is that there will be no more wonderful books.�

Clare Boylan is survived by her husband, Alan Wilkes.


Clare Boylan, author, was born on April 21, 1948. She died on May 16, 2006, aged 58.

Bronte Society Spring Walk

It happened on Sunday 14 May.

It started at St Peter's Church in Birstall and ended at Rydings, once the home of Ellen Nussey. Margaret Berry, the walk leader, explained just about everything that needed to be explained, and participants went home tired, happy and slightly damp.

The weather was of the Pennine variety - grey and showery. Nobody minded.

The full itinerary can be found in the blog archive for February. A longer account will appear in the next Gazette, which comes out in September.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures:






Miss Wooler's grave, St Peter's churchyard, Birstall












Outside Oakwell Hall







Front







Back
























One of the displays inside.

Vote for the little book

One of the earliest known books written by one of the Brontë sisters will feature in a BBC2 programme which has gathered together some of the most quirky and unusual museum items from across the UK to create an online 'People’s Museum' voted for by the general public.

The programme, designed to coincide with Museums and Galleries Month, will feature Charlotte Brontë’s ‘little book’ of writings which makes up part of the Museum collection at the Parsonage. The People’s Museum programme will invite viewers to vote on their favourite museum artefact featured in the twenty-part series which will go out on BBC2 at 3.30pm five days a week - commencing on 15 May 2006.

Charlotte's little book will be featured on 30 May. The object with the most votes will be proclaimed the winner on 9 June 2006, although featured objects will have a place in a virtual museum on the BBC’s history website.

Competition was fierce for inclusion in the programme as the producers, Reef TV, struggled through the enormous pile of entries from around Britain. The Parsonage is delighted to have been chosen and hopes that Brontë fans across the UK and from overseas will register their affection for the Brontës by voting on the day.

The tiny book, no bigger than the palm of a hand and measuring 42 x 64 mm, was believed to have been written by Charlotte between 1826 and 1829 when she was aged between 10 and 13, for her sister Anne. The book, bound in leather at a later date, is in immaculate condition and includes beautiful watercolour pictures and the original covers, which were made from tiny pieces of grey-flowered wallpaper.



















Filming took place at the Parsonage earlier in the year with presenter Jules Hudson interviewing Librarian Ann Dinsdale, who explained to viewers the origin of the tiny book: how it was made, what it was made of and more importantly how Charlotte’s early writings influenced her most famous works:

"This little book is the earliest surviving manuscript by Charlotte Brontë and marks the beginning of her long apprenticeship in literature. It was an apprenticeship that would culminate twenty years later with the writing of Jane Eyre - one of the most popular books ever written.�

The presenter, Jules Hudson, is an historian and archaeologist who has presented Channel 4’s Time Team and the BBC’s Horizon programmes. He was fascinated by the little book whose writing is hardly readable. It is now rather fragile and delicate. Visitors to the Museum will be able to see the book on display at the Parsonage from June 2006.

This post is by Diane Benn



Further notes about the 'little book':

The Brontë sisters are famous for their literary works, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights; however their interest in writing had begun many years before during their childhood.

The siblings conjured up plays and imaginative stories, inspired by a set of toy soldiers given to Branwell by Mr Brontë in 1826. The children each named the soldiers after famous heroes of the time such as the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon, and from these toys they created their imaginary worlds and stories about Gondal and Angria now known as Brontë Juvenilia. From this period onwards the Brontë children produced ‘little books,’ written in tiny writing and supposedly created small enough for the toy soldiers to read.

It is also believed that many years of writing these ‘little books’ could have contributed to Charlotte’s degenerative eyesight. The minuscule script can be seen as part of a secret imaginary world that was shared between the siblings and hidden from prying adult eyes.

This ‘little book’ originally belonged to Arthur Bell Nicholls, the husband of Charlotte Brontë. After his death most of his Brontë collection was sold in an auction in 1907. Unfortunately for the Brontë Society at the time the ‘little book’ was sold to a private American collector called Henry H. Bonnell. It resided with him until his death in 1926, finally ‘returning home’ in 1927 when it was kindly donated by Henry Bonnell’s family to the Parsonage, the place where it was written.


Please see the Brontë website for further details - use the link on the right.

Anna in Haworth

This is a reminder that Anna Calder-Marshall, Cathy with Timothy Dalton's Heathcliff in the much-loved 1970 version of Wuthering Heights, is to make an appearance on the Friday evening ( 2 June 2006) of the annual Brontë Society June weekend in Haworth.

She will be acting in Charlotte, Emily and Anne, a moving play by Douglas Verrall. Anna is part of an ensemble of five women who each play a family member and other parts. Other cast members are Helen Ayres, Yvonne Bonnamy, Christine King and Catherine Harvey.

The play is directed by Valerie Doulton, who launched her Live Literature Company in 2003.

Visiting Italy?

Member of the Brontë Society?

The Italian Section cordially invites you to get in touch before you go.

Email: info@bronteitalia.it

Bronte Boats

The Verdopolis leaves a lock in the picture above.


Tourists visiting the Parsonage can now sample the beauties of Yorkshire’s waterways thanks to a new initiative between the Museum and Brontë Boats based at the newly refurbished Hebden Bridge Marina.

The partnership will offer visitors the chance to take a one-hour canal trip with an all-inclusive ticket of £12.00. The price includes return canal cruise and entry to the Parsonage.

Brontë Parsonage Museum Director, Alan Bentley said, “We are delighted to announce the new initiative with Brontë Boats. The visitor experience will be greatly enhanced with the addition of the canal cruise which gives tourists the chance to relax on board whilst taking in some of the wonderful countryside that the Brontës wrote about and experienced for themselves."

Brontë Boats launched its new 53 passenger canal cruiser Verdopolis to cater for the increasing number of visitors to the area. Passengers also have the option to book private parties for their guests who can tuck into a three course carvery meal, Indian, Greek or buffet food and listen to music of their choice. The boat has a bar, conference facilities and toilets.








For further information about Brontë Boats canal cruises please telephone 01422 845557 or email Sharon.bronteboats@virgin.net. The Brontë Boats website can be found at www.bronteboats.co.uk. Address is - The Marina, New Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8AD

For further information on events and exhibitions at the Brontë Parsonage Museum please telephone 01535 642323 or visit the link on the right.

Posted by Diane Benn

Latest from the BBC

A BBC Press Release:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - a new drama adaptation for BBC ONE

Category: TV Drama; BBC ONE
Date: 18.04.2006
Printable version

Newcomer Ruth Wilson (Jane Eyre) and Toby Stephens (Edward Rochester) head up an all-star cast in a passionate new version of the much-adored classic Jane Eyre for BBC ONE.

The four-part serial also stars Francesca Annis as Lady Ingram, Christina Cole as Blanche Ingram, Lorraine Ashbourne as Mrs Fairfax, Pam Ferris as Grace Poole and Tara Fitzgerald as Mrs Reed.

Georgie Henley, who recently starred in the Christmas blockbuster The Chronicles of Narnia plays young Jane while Aidan McArdle plays the visionary John Eshton. The drama is currently filming entirely on location in Derbyshire.

Jane Tranter, BBC Controller of Drama Commissioning says: "Sandy Welch's wonderful version of Jane Eyre for BBC ONE will add that special ingredient to the mix of dramas due for transmission this autumn, which includes the new series of Robin Hood; Lizzie Mickery and Dan Percival's conspiracy thriller, State Within; Sally Wainwright's heart-warming series The Amazing Mrs Pritchard plus Russell T Davies's Torchwood for BBC THREE."

The sustainability and appeal of Jane Eyre lies in her universality and the audience's appetite for a well-told romantic tale.

Orphaned at a young age, Jane (Ruth Wilson) is placed with her wealthy aunt Mrs Reed (Tara Fitzgerald) who neglects Jane in favour of her own three spoiled children.

Mrs Reed's spitefulness leads her to withhold news that could change Jane's life for the better.

Instead she brands her a liar and sends Jane to Lowood School where she remains until the age of 19.

When she finally leaves the dark memories of Lowood behind, she embarks on a career as a governess and her first position is at Thornfield Hall, the home of the alluring and unpredictable Edward Rochester.

Jane's journey into the world and as a woman begins.

Producer Diederick Santer adds: "In her brand new adaptation of Jane Eyre, Sandy Welch has mined Bronte's novel for every ounce of passion, drama, colour, madness and horror available, bringing to life Jane's inner world with beauty, humour and at times great sadness.

"The locations we have chosen are stormy and majestic and I hope that Sandy's original take on the story will be enjoyed as much by long-term fans of the book as by those who have never read it."

Filming is underway until June at the historical medieval castle Haddon Hall, owned by Lord Edward Manners, and other locations across Derbyshire.

Jane Eyre is adapted by Sandy Welch (North and South, Magnificent Seven), directed by Susanna White (Bleak House) and the Executive Producer is Phillippa Giles.

Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark, aged 88, died on 14 April 2006 in hospital in Florence, Italy. Her funeral was held on 15th April in the church of Oliveto, a suburb of Civitella della Chiana, a delightful little place in Tuscany where she had been living for 26 years.

In September 2005 Muriel Spark had received the honorary Citizenship and the keys of the Town.

With her novel Invidia (Envy), published by Adelphi, she won the 2005 edition of the Literary Prize Isola d'Elba. In the photo we see her while receiving the prize from the Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta.

Posted by Maddalena de Leo


Dame Muriel's first novel was published in 1957 but it was the 1962 classic, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, that brought her to the public’s attention following good reviews from critics.

The book was turned into a movie starring Dame Maggie Smith, bringing her a best actress Oscar in 1969.

In the course of her career Dame Muriel wrote over 20 books, which included not only novels but also critical studies of Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë.

Talli's Secret

Brontë Society Gazette is the news magazine of the Brontë Society. It is sent to members three times a year, and is not to be confused with Brontë Studies, which is an academic journal - see the link on the right.

Below is a book review from the most recent issue, which follows on from an article in the January issue by the book’s author, Julie Noble (pictured above), entitled Was Maria dyspraxic?

Please contact the blog (email address on the right) if you wish to make a comment.


Talli's Secret

A psychotherapist’s view

Talli's Secret or Cassie's story by Julie Noble is dedicated to 'all who know what it is to struggle' It is inspired by children who have lots to contribute and express but for whom the school system, with its structures and emphasis on the written word, thwarts and disables.

Julie Noble's own son, like my own, has struggled this way. The inspiration for the book came when studying Jane Eyre and learning that Helen Burns was based on Charlotte's eldest sister Maria, and that Helen was arguably literature's first dyspraxic.

Cassie's class are studying the Brontes. Like Helen Burns at Lowood, Cassie struggles at school and is berated by her teacher. She is misunderstood as defiant and mocking. Mrs Harrison uses 'hardened' and 'slatternly', the same words that Helen's teacher uses on her.

The life-threatening physical conditions which Charlotte Bronte fictionalised in Jane Eyre are unimaginable to Cassie but we discover that the misery and frustration experienced by Cassie is uncannily similar to that of Helen.

What stood out for me over and above the struggle of children with dyspraxia or dyslexia is the magic of creativity and the therapeutic value of story telling..

Charlotte Brontë saw that children can feel but can't analyse their feelings. As a Psychotherapist I would say that children need relational experiences with those close to them to express and process their feelings and to develop a sense of themselves and their life story that matures and develops with them.

Talli's Secret is a wonderful account of how trauma and loss can rupture the coherence and meaning of individual stories. Better still it goes on to describe a process of transformation and the bringing together of those involved, their individual and overlapping stories to replace brokenness and despair with hope.

Cassie survived the road accident which killed her sister Lizzie and disabled her father. The family is stuck, barely living, futilely going through the motions of daily life. There is a heaviness and poignancy about her parents' mutual estrangement. Their communication is as tight as the matchstick house her father labours over. They have no space in themselves for Cassie and her difficulties. Cassie is in a daze, preoccupied but unable to bring into focus the impressions that fuel her silent vigil.

A school trip to the Parsonage sets her off working it all out. But not on her own. She makes two new friends, a new girl at school and Talli (Charlotte Brontë) who both become important in sharing and witnessing her experience.

I found the encounters with Talli confusing but the message is clear. Cassie's experience is recognised by Talli. They share the loss of their sisters and Cassie learns that Maria, 'the most talented of us all' had struggled at school like her.

Talli encourages Cassie to talk about her dead sister Lizzie. Cassie asks what Talli did with her grief. The secret is Scribblemania, the compulsion to write. Talli/Charlotte had put Maria into Jane Eyre. Writing works for Charlotte as a way of making something of the unbearable.

Cassie discovers the delights of reading and steams through Jane Eyre. Later, when asked to explain the mess she's in with her teacher and the bullying school girl Savannah; Cassie remembers Miss Temple's imperative to Jane, to tell her story, to add and exaggerate nothing. She tells it and everything starts to shift. The teacher understands.

Her homework that weekend is making books as the Brontes did. Cassie can't wait. She finds words 'whispering in her brain', and her fingers itching to write them. She writes her book 'Talli's Secret'. The parents are approached and awoken, unwillingly at first, out of their deadly retreat. Cassie frees herself and becomes a catalyst for change in those around her, her family, her teachers and her bully.

The book holds several paradoxes for me. We have in Cassie the learning difficulties dyspraxia and dyslexia and the emotional befuddlement associated with trauma and loss which can make learning difficult.

Did Cassie have these problems before? If so, she would be likely to need more than understanding and inspiration to take to the written word with fluency.

The book, like Cassie, has rather too much going on. There is a lot to hold on to and digest as I read it and a lot I'm puzzled about. Having said that I could also say that this is a book with a lot going on of which there is much to mull over. The readers that engage with it will find it a meaty read, others might find it confusing and a bit much.


Sally Rose.


Talli’s Secret, recently long-listed for the Whitbread Book Awards, is available from the Parsonage shop - please use the link on the top right.

The Brontës in Lahore

Wali Aslam spoke to Richard Wilcocks:
"I fell in love with the Brontës when I was still in high school back in Lahore. It was Wuthering Heights which did it.


"I was fascinated by the novels of Thomas Hardy as well, so I was well motivated to go on to take a degree in English Literature at the University of Lahore.


"Currently I am a third-year postgraduate at the University of Leeds putting the finishing touches to my PhD in the Politics department. I was very excited when I found I was coming to Leeds in Yorkshire because I knew I would be close to Haworth and the moors.


"I have done plenty of walking in the area, but I have not yet managed to get up as far as Top Withins. I intend to put that right soon. I am fascinated by the connections between human emotions and physical surroundings, by the special atmosphere around the Parsonage.


"I was photographed and interviewed by the BBC recently. There was a kind of advertisement on the university website for volunteers with a knowledge of Urdu, which of course I have. It was my suggestion that we did something on the Brontës, so now my voice will be heard on the World Service talking about them in Pakistan.


"The Brontës are popular in Pakistan, I think. They are loved there, partly because we live in a 'Victorian' society there, in which women have limited opportunities, where health care is poor and where social status matters a lot. So we relate to the world of the Brontës.


"I am now going to become more involved with the Brontë Society. I have already offered to translate the Parsonage guide into Urdu, which should be helpful because it is a language spoken by many people of Pakistani origin in Keighley and Bradford.


"I am going to speak in more depth about the Brontës in Pakistan and my opinions in the future, in Brontë Society Gazette."

Parsonage People: Ann Dinsdale

Ann Dinsdale spoke to Richard Wilcocks:


I think I have to be classed as one of the longest-serving members of staff because I started in 1989, as a part-time museum assistant. I did a few hours in the library then became a full-timer there, assistant to Kathryn White.


At the moment I am librarian. I am at work on the catalogue project, but usually my work involves sourcing and cataloguing materials, running the picture library, looking after readers, dealing with hundreds of enquiries every year and working on the exhibitions.


The collections assistant, Linda Proctor-Mackley, is dealing with the bulk of the enquiries at the moment. Email has made things much faster and easier and we are receiving more and more of them each year because of it.


Pictures from the library for publications are now sent as jpgs by email to people who always want them right now!


Although I have lived most of my life in the Haworth area, I was born just over the border in Colne, Lancashire. The Brontës first cast their spell over me when I came to the Parsonage as a child on a school visit in the late 1960s. Haworth and the Parsonage quickly became special places for me. Little did I know that one day I would be lucky enough to work there.


If I had to name one favourite author apart from the Brontës I would choose Daphne du Maurier, but I read books by many different authors. I spend a lot of my time reading.


My leisure time is often taken up with visiting other museums and stately homes because I can concentrate on the exhibits rather than looking with a professional eye all the time. I like old towns too - like Whitby.


Our leads for the missing film of Wuthering Heights which was featured on the front page of the last Brontë Society Gazette seem to have dried up. It generated so much interest: if it does turn up, a man from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra would be interested in writing a score for it. A BBC documentary team and someone from the Culture Show rang me about the search, too.


One of my ambitions is to visit Italy again, because of its association with the Fine Arts. Perhaps I will be able to learn some Italian for the occasion. I have been to Venice fairly recently. Perhaps it will be Siena next time.


Whilst working at the Parsonage I have met many interesting people, for example Sally Wainwright, who wrote the play about Emily's supposed lover which was on the radio. She's terrific, a very down-to-earth person. Then there's Simon Warner the photographer. I am working with him at the moment on a book to be called The Brontës at Haworth, to be published in September by Frances Lincoln.




The spotlight will be on other members of staff at the Parsonage in future postings.

Barker v Fermi

Check that you have RealPlayer (if you haven't, download it free from www.real.com), then go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2006_10_thu.shtml to find an interesting conflict of opinions.

Wherever you are, you should be able to listen to this, broadcast earlier today on BBC Radio 4. Sarah Fermi explains why she thinks it possible that Emily could have had a dangerous liaison with a weaver's son on the moors, with references to her research and her belief in the power of the circumstantial evidence.

Juliet Barker faces her across the studio, with her belief that Fermi has got it all wrong. For Barker, Wuthering Heights is not so much about love as about power, control and revenge : "I find it extraordinary that in this day and age we can't accept that a woman had the ability, intelligence and the imagination to write a book like Wuthering Heights without having to find a real-life lover!"

Your comments are welcome.

Saturday Play

If you can receive BBC Radio 4, stand by to record this on Saturday afternoon. If you can't, go to Listen Again on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/

This is from the BBC website:

14:30
Saturday Play
Cold in the Earth and Fifteen Wild Decembers

By Sally Wainwright, based on a theory by Sarah Fermi.

Why did Emily Jane Brontë write Wuthering Heights? And how was she able to do it? In spite of the massive amount of material published about the Brontë sisters over the last 150 years, these two questions still remain unanswered. Yet given the large amount of autobiographical material in the novels of Charlotte and Anne Brontë, it is almost unthinkable that Emily would not have also used her own experience in the creation of her great book. How could she write so vividly about love, grief and hatred without having known these emotions in her own life?

This is a compelling drama about the story of Emily Brontë's socially transgressive love affair with a weaver's son.



This is a media release from Diane Benn:

A member of the Brontë Society who researched and wrote several papers on the life of Emily Brontë will have her work broadcast on Radio 4’s Saturday Play on Saturday 11 March 2006 at 2.30 pm until 3.30 pm

Sarah Fermi, who is in the process of writing a speculative biography entitled ‘Emily’s Journal’ has been working with writer Sally Wainwright who created and wrote TV programmes such as ‘Canterbury Tales’ and ‘At Home with the Braithwaites’. Sally has taken Sarah Fermi’s research and constructed a play about Emily Brontë’s romance with a weaver’s son.

Sarah’s research focused on the theory that Emily Brontë probably had a tragic romantic relationship with a young working-class lad, Robert Clayton, who died when they were both 18 years old. Questions were asked as to how Emily Brontë was able to write such a powerful love story which turned into the classic ‘Wuthering Heights’ novel without experiencing such strong emotions herself.

Sarah Fermi says “I learned all I could about Emily, and carefully examined the chronological development of her poetry. There are quite a few aspects of her life which present interesting questions. Why did Emily change from a charming and outgoing child to a solitary and reserved young woman? Why was she sent away to Roe Head School in 1835 and what was the real reason for Emily’s near-fatal illness there?�

Parsonage Guide in Chinese

Chinese visitors to the Parsonage in Haworth can now "read all about it" quite literally with the publication of a Museum guide translated into Chinese by bilingual University of Leeds students.


The guides, already published in 9 different languages, are increasingly in demand by overseas visitors who make up around 20% of the overall visitor figures at the Museum. Plans are underway to introduce a broader range of translated guides to include Russian, Arabic and Polish versions.


Alan Bentley, the Director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum said, "We are receiving ever increasing numbers of visitors from China and Eastern Europe and we feel it is important to respond to the demand for information in visitors' native languages. The production of the guides by University of Leeds students will go a long way to ensuring our visitors receive the information that they need, in a format they can understand".


With foreign school children, tourists and intellectuals all eager to see the home of one of the most famous literary families in the world, the guides are a welcome resource to assist foreign travellers in their quest for in-depth knowledge about the Brontë family, their surroundings and conditions in Haworth in the Nineteenth Century.


A Chinese film crew recently spent days filming in and around the Parsonage to give the Chinese people a flavour of the home and surrounding countryside where the Brontës lived. The results will be included in a 100-part TV series to be broadcast in China in December 2006. The crew have spent 5 years filming the documentary which is entitled A History of the World.

Milan meeting

Here is the official notice of the meeting in Milan. Greetings to all friends and members in Italy!

Three Quartets

Richard Wilcocks writes:
"It's strange to be talking about the Mendelssohns and the Rossettis in the cellar of the Brontë Parsonage Museum," said artist and poet Ian Emberson (pictured) at the beginning of his talk Three Quartets on 3 November. "I am going to take a wider look at three gifted families, look at their lives, then compare them. Each family was close-knit and each had within it four children who were gifted in various ways."


For the next hour, we were treated to the results of Ian's extensive research, our attention was drawn to some illuminating and sometimes startling coincidences, and many interesting parallels were made.


All three of the significant ancestors of the families were exiles in some way, for example. Moses Mendelssohn, grandfather of Felix, was a partner in a silk firm and a writer on the theme of the Immortality of the Soul, who achieved the status of "protected Jew", which made an enormous difference at a time when Jews were subject to frequent restrictions and humiliations. Gabriel Rossetti was a political agitator and a museum curator who sought asylum in England, where he taught Italian at London University, and of course Patrick Brontë escaped a life of poverty in Ireland to go to Cambridge. All three brought something beautiful, fresh and new from the outside to their country of settlement.


In all three families, formal schooling played little part in the nurture of young talent. The privileged Mendelssohn children - Fanny, Felix, Rebecca and Paul - were accustomed to mingling with distinguished artists and scientists (Goethe included) in their sumptuous residence in Berlin, and private tutors (drawing, painting and languages as well as music) were no problem for their banker father. Felix became an outstanding fencer, gymnast and mathematician as well as a pianist and composer.


The bilingual Rossettis were another self-contained family, not mixing much with the locals, their house packed with Italian visitors (like Paganini), emigres and asylum-seekers. The children were constantly writing, producing their own newspaper (The Hotch Potch), printed on a press conveniently situated in their back garden. Ian picked out the fact that the Brontës were interested in all branches of the arts, that Emily's piano playing was much admired by Ellen Nussey and that Branwell played the flute, the church organ and the piano.


Ian compared the differing expectations of males and females in the three families. Fanny Mendelssohn was possibly as talented as her brother, but her father Abraham wrote to her in a letter that "only what is truly feminine is an ornament to your sex", with music being the ornament, not the career, of course. It was rather like saying that literature can not be the business of a woman's life.


The talk reminded me that it is not just the Brontës who must always be kept in our hearts and minds. After all, Christina Rossetti did write one of the most memorable Christmas Carols, and Felix Mendelssohn has for too long been wrongly associated with the odour of mildewed hymn books.

Meeting in Milan

The Brontë and the Rosetti families have been compared and contrasted before, not least by Ian Emberson, who grouped them with the Mendelssohns in a lecture in the Parsonage cellar in November 2004. This could be a good moment to acquaint readers with some of his main points, because Rafaella Pazzaia from the Brontë Society Italian Section has sent this notice of a meeting in Milan, together with the cover of the new translation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë:

Lirica e misticismo nella poesia di Anne Brontë, Christina Rosetti

relatore Silvio Raffo

Milano 25 marzo 2006
via Manzoni 38 - ore 15.30 - tel 02 77222202

Tabitha Aykroyd

Thanks for your many enquiries. If you are researching Tabitha Aykroyd, we would love to hear from you, however briefly. Leave a comment below, or email us at heveliusx1@yahoo.co.uk


Many visitors find the graveyard as fascinating as the Parsonage itself. Buried there are two of the domestic servants of the Brontës - Tabitha Aykroyd and Martha Brown.


Here is a focus on "Tabby", who died on 17th February 1855 aged 85, two and a half weeks after Charlotte Brontë was examined by Doctor McTurk and found to be pregnant, and six weeks before Charlotte's death at the age of 38.


The main Parsonage website carries the following information:


Tabitha Aykroyd


Domestic servant in the Brontë household.


Born Haworth c.1771. Died Haworth 17th February 1855.

Background Almost nothing is known of Tabitha's life before she entered the Parsonage in 1824 aged 53. She was almost certainly a native of Haworth, and we know of two sisters; Rose, who married a Bingley man called Bower, and Susannah, who married a Haworth man called Wood. Tabitha never married, and while there is no record of her life before she entered the Parsonage, it is thought that she had worked in domestic service and on farms.


Living at the Parsonage 'Tabby' was the Cook/Housekeeper and for the first 15 of her 31 years at the Parsonage, she was the only servant living in, although the Brontë sisters themselves also cooked, cleaned and washed clothes. In December 1836 Tabby slipped on ice in Haworth's main street, badly breaking her leg. Aunt Branwell suggested that she leave the Parsonage to be nursed by her sister Susannah, but the Brontë children objected, even going on hunger strike, and Tabby stayed in the Parsonage nursed by the children. The leg never fully healed however, and over the next 3 years many of Tabby's duties were taken up by Emily.


In 1839 Tabby seems to have retired temporarily, moving into a house in Newell Hill that she had bought with her now-widowed sister Susannah. Mr. Brontë engaged Martha Brown, the 11 year old daughter of his Sexton, John Brown, but the greater part of the skilled and the heavy work fell upon the Brontë girls, with Emily becoming Housekeeper. In 1842, Tabby moved back into the Parsonage where she stayed, sharing the little servants' bedroom with young Martha, for the next 13 years. Tabby died in February 1855 and she is buried with her sister Susannah, and a George Aykroyd who may be a brother, just over the wall from the Parsonage garden.

Personality; Influence According to Mrs. Gaskell, Tabby "abounded in strong practical sense and shrewdness. Her words were far from flattery; but she would spare no deeds in the cause of those whom she kindly regarded"(The Life of Charlotte Brontë 1857). Mrs. Brontë had been dead for 3 years when Tabby came to the Parsonage and the children were looked after by their mother's sister, Elizabeth Branwell. A year after Tabby's arrival, the two eldest children, Maria and Elizabeth, died of consumption. Charlotte and Emily were only nine and seven years old at the time, and as they at least had only a formal relationship with their Aunt Branwell, they found physical and emotional warmth in the kitchen. Tabby was fond of her "childers" and they were fond of her. As Charlotte later wrote, "she was like one of our own family". Tabby took the girls for their walks on the moors, and, with her old-fashioned ways and broad Haworth accent, she was sometimes the butt of their boisterous games.


Tabby was a great storyteller. She knew all the local families, all their complex inter-relationships and disputes, and, despite her belief in the Christian teachings of divine reward and retribution, she held also to the ancient anthropomorphic traditions of the countryside, claiming (according to Mrs. Gaskell) to have known people who had seen the fairies. Emily, who spent more time working in the kitchen than either of her sisters, was particularly close to Tabby, and Tabby's influence permeates the landscape of Wuthering Heights. Tabby has also been identified as the model for Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights, and for the housekeeper Martha in Charlotte's novel Shirley.




Read about a dramatic version of Tabby in Blake Morrison's play We Are Three Sisters by clicking on


 http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=20896212#editor/target=post;postID=8814422635659652113

































Tabby's Haworth dialect


Thanks to American member Randall Grimsley for sending the following. Brenda Scott did the translation and added the dialect notes.




Tabby: Aye up, childer - is yon cat deard?


Chorus of children: Nay, Tabby, 'e's just restin'


Translation: Hello! Is that cat dead, kids?
No, Tabby, he's just resting

Dialect note: 'deard' rhymes with 'beard'




Tabby: Nah sithee, me barns, tha's nur 'aving a candle, so tha mun do wi'art. If I can see ter fettle this 'ere pair o' Branwell's britches, tha can all see well enough to mek up thi daft tales. If tha wants more leet, shuv yon cat on't' fireback, 'e's fat enou' to gi' a reight gradely blaze!


Translation: Now look here, my children, you're not having a candle, so you must do without. If I can see to mend this here pair of Branwell's breeches, you can all see well enough to make up your silly tales. If you want more light, shove that cat on the back of the fire, he's fat enough to give a right good blaze!


Dialect note: 'bairns' is pronounced as written in Scotland, to rhyme with 'cairns' but in Yorkshire the pron. is usually 'barns'. Sithee is pron. 'sitha' ( singular ) or sithi  (plural )...in this case, sithi. on't' ( on the ) is usually pron. with the glottal stop for which the county is noted! The 't' is not so much enunciated as swallowed! reight is pron 'reyt', and frequently 'reet'








Remember - your comments and contributions are welcome!

The Wind on the Moor

Diane Benn writes:
Primary school children from four Bradford schools are gearing up for the performance of a lifetime when they perform their very own Brontë Opera at Haworth church on Thursday 30 March 2006 at 1.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. in front of an invited audience.

The opera, entitled The Wind on the Moor is the result of a nine month project managed by the Parsonage in partnership with Operahouse, an organisation comprising a team of established professionals who offer music based creative projects for primary schools across the country.

The opera project, which has been made possible with funding from the Arts Council, Yorkshire Museums Libraries and Archives Council and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, is based on the early lives of the Brontës, in particular their childhoods. Children have taken part in various activities focusing on the Parsonage, its collection, the village of Haworth and the surrounding landscape. They were encouraged to explore the Brontë story and respond to it, imaginatively, emotionally, and creatively through musical composition, writing and singing, dance, drama and mime.

Taking part in the project are Frizinghall Primary School in Bradford, Myrtle Park Primary School in Bingley, Lees Primary School in Haworth and Margaret McMillan Primary School in Bradford.  

Virginia Rushton, Project Director and Operahouse Artistic Director, said the process had been "...exhilarating and exhausting! The journey from blank page to performance is always exciting for a composer, but on this project we have had 120 young composer-performers and their teachers so we are off the scale in terms of excitement!"

She added, "As the journey has progressed, it has gathered pace and is now racing towards the premiere. Harnessing all the energy and ideas, keeping the creative process on track, supporting the class teachers as they came to grips with techniques for writing songs, and simply managing such a large group of children has been a challenge. But we knew what we were aiming for, and I think we have achieved something unique for each of us and for our audience"

Andrew McCarthy, Audience Development Manager at the Parsonage, said, "We have focused on the Brontë experience of childhood in Haworth and the contrast between this industrial village in which they grew up and the extraordinary imaginary worlds they created in their early writing... The children and teachers involved have enjoyed themselves immensely and have totally engaged with the project. They are looking forward to the final performance on 30 March with much anticipation!"

The team of professionals who have guided the children throughout the project with Andrew McCarthy are:

Alison Prince - renowned author who created Trumpton and The Sherwood Hero and who has won many children's literary awards for her work on over 40 books

Virginia Rushton -  Project Director and the founder of the Operahouse organisation in London

Mark Robinson - Musical Director who has worked extensively with the Northern Sinfonia, London Festival Orchestra and is a Fellow in Music at the University of Bradford

Andrew Keeling - composer who has worked with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Metropole Orchestra of Amsterdam and whose work has been performed and broadcast throughout the world.

Final rehearsals for the performance were held at West Lane Baptist Chapel in Haworth on Wednesday 1 March 2006 where pupils perfected their new found skills and put the finishing touches to their production.