Rare portrait on loan

See a BBC video about the portrait of Emily Brontë here.

Meeting in Amsterdam

Maddalena De Leo writes:

In the first days of July just before leaving for The Netherlands on holiday I proposed that Helen MacEwan, the BS representative for Belgium, should gather the Belgian members from Brussels and possibly from The Netherlands for a meeting in Amsterdam in the period I should be there. It might be interesting for our two sections to exchange opinions and to know us by person in a country different from ours. It was also something not attempted by the Brontë Society as yet and eventually a key to new collaborative plans for the future.

Helen was really enthusiastic for the idea and in a short time she emailed all the BS members she knew, receiving a positive answer from all. On my part, I got in touch with Veronica Metz, the lead singer of the Dutch Celtic band ‘Anois’ since I heard she’s working on a project based on Emily’s poems set to music at the moment. Veronica promptly agreed to be present to the meeting.

On 8 July 2008 at 3 pm sharp my hotel in Amsterdam saw the arrival of a group of people, each coming on their own and asking for me. Surprisingly there were at the door Helen MacEwan, Selina Bush, Eric Ruijssenaars, Maureen Peeck-O’Toole, Sherry Vosburgh, Jenny Hoffman's friend (she was ill and unfortunately couldn’t come that day), Veronica Metz with her band and, absolutely by surprise, my Belgian BS penfriend Luc Bormans and his girlfriend.

When we sat down in the small breakfast room of the hotel and after having bravely defied the hotel receptionist’s fury, calming him down by buying some drinks, I started by asking Veronica about her musical work on Emily’s poems and about her inspiration for it. She told us that all was due to her visit to Haworth Parsonage some years ago and to the magnificent view of the moors behind it. She kindly handed each of us a CD-demo of her Emily Brontë and the conversation so started was followed by questions and answers dealing with the organization of our two sections, on our meetings, the blogs, the web and the magazines edited by each section.

After a short break with the Anois music filling the air and a really friendly atmosphere among members - all chatting as old friends both in Dutch and English - I gave Helen an Italian ceramic plate commemorative of the event and we all drank a toast with the champagne I brought from Italy for the occasion. I then read my lecture ‘The Brontës and the Sea’, a topic I chose for our being in Amsterdam, thanking all for their presence there.

What a success and what an incredible BS meeting this was, only planned in a few days and by e-mails! By leaving as real friends we all wished to possibly meet again in Brussels or Italy in the future hoping to experience again so lucky a Brontë day.

Below, the complete group, Maddalena with Helen MacEwan, Maddalena with Anois:

The Perfect Heathcliff

Richard Wilcocks writes:


I'm starting to feel sorry for Gordon Brown, after, I admit, a few sniggers yesterday. I travelled down to London at an unearthly hour yesterday morning, so missed out on the Radio 4 Today programme and the morning papers. I have now caught up, thanks largely to exhaustive coverage of the matter on Brontë Blog.


Andrew McCarthy (Parsonage Acting Director) said all the right things, of course, as did Juliet Barker (hear her again online at the BBC)....do we really want a man who identifies with a character who hangs dogs as PM? It's an amusing parlour game, I suppose. Which character in fiction most resembles (insert name here)? It's a parlour game played by point-scoring politicians as much as by journalists who would have us believe that they have actually read Wuthering Heights rather than just seen the film or the synopsis on Wikipedia. Mind you, I'm not sure whether Gordon Brown has read the book or not.......so what did he actually say in the New Statesman?

Not very much, it seems. Thanks again to Brontë Blog for quoting this from the NS:

Heathcliff? Absolutely

Most observers agree the Prime Minister has improved at the despatch box after being mauled by David Cameron early on. But Brown remains an unsympathetic figure in the eyes of the electorate. His advisers may have tried to turn his brooding seriousness into an electoral asset, but they must secretly hope he would share more private moments with the public, which seems to have decided that he lacks warmth.

There is a human side to Gordon. He may be uncomfortable talking about himself, but on the train home our conversation is punctuated with laughter, and most of it is neither nervous nor insincere.

Is he a romantic? I ask. "Ask Sarah," he chuckles. Some women say you remind them of Heathcliff, I suggest. Brown is, after all, brooding and intense. "Absolutely correct," he jokes. "Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff." (Gloria di Piero)

So Gordon Brown chuckled. He was picturing in his mind some of the women who thought he reminded them of Heathcliff, no doubt. He was recognizing the ludicrous nature of the comparison. After all, he doesn't look at all like Sir Laurence Olivier. You don't find women like that everywhere! What else could he have said other than what he did say?

I think he has a hidden witty side, a dry sense of humour, perhaps.

The publicity people at Birmingham Rep have moved swiftly. There is now a site devoted to windswept Gordon here. You can add your comment if you want.

Wuthering Heights in Birmingham

Pictured here - April De Angellis




Here are some publicity paragraphs from Birmingham Rep:

A brand-new adaptation brings Emily Brontë's passionate and spellbinding tale of forbidden love and revenge to life on stage. Set on the wild, windswept Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights is the tempestuous story of free-spirited Catherine and dark, brooding Heathcliff. As children running wild and free on th emoors, Catherine and Heathcliff are inseparable. 

As they grow up, their affection deepens into a passionate love, but Cathy lets her head rule her heart as she chooses to marry the wealthy Edgar Linton. Heathcliff flees broken-hearted only to return seeking terrible vengeance on those he holds responsible, with epic and tragic results.

April De Angelis is one of the UK's most innovative dramatists. Her plays have included A Laughing Matter at the National Theatre, Hush at the Royal Court and The Warwickshire Testimony for the RSC.

More information from Birmingham Rep

Birmingham Repertory Theatre 20 September to 18 October 2008

Invitation to vote

Chris Routledge writes:

I am the online editor of The Reader Organisation. You may have heard of us in connection with The Reader magazine.

We are starting a campaign to get 'classic' literature on the Richard and Judy TV Book Club show and we are holding a poll to decide which of five novels to champion. One of the five is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and I wondered if your readers/members might be interested in voting. The link (to a post on our blog) is here.

The poll closes at the end of July.

Best wishes!

Richard Wilcocks adds:

I voted for it - that's one more! The Reader is now on our links list.

Emily portrait comes home to Haworth

Arts Officer Jenna Holmes writes:

A National Portrait Gallery Loan and rare poems manuscript return to Haworth for first time in nearly 150 years to crown the 2008 exhibition No Coward Soul at the Parsonage.

As part of the 2008 exhibition focusing on Emily Brontë, the museum is delighted to able to display her Gondal poems notebook and a rare portrait of Emily painted by her brother Branwell. Both of these items are currently on loan to the Parsonage for a limited time only.

In 1861, after the Brontës had died, the Gondal poems notebook left Haworth for Ireland with Charlotte’s widower Arthur Bell Nicholls. Following his death in 1907, the manuscript was auctioned in a sale at Sotheby’s and purchased by Mrs George Smith, widow of Charlotte’s publisher. It was then bequeathed to the British Library in London by the Smith family and for the first time since 1861, returns to the Parsonage where it was originally composed.

The iconic portrait of Emily by her brother Branwell was once part of a larger painting called ‘The Gun Group’ portrait. It was cut out by Arthur Bell Nicholls on the death of Patrick Brontë in 1861 and was later found on top of a wardrobe along with ‘The Brontë Sisters’ portrait (also by Branwell) by Arthur’s second wife Mary Ann Nicholls after his death.

It is now owned by the National Portrait Gallery. This is a very rare opportunity for visitors to see the portrait outside of its usual London location.


Special loans and No Coward Soul exhibition 2008 – Ann Dinsdale Collections Manager – 01535 640198 ann.dinsdale@bronte.org.uk

McCain recalls loss on 'Jeopardy'

Paul Daniggelis sends this Associated Press report:

PIPERSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Who is Heathcliff?

The name of the doomed romantic hero in Emily Brontë's novel 'Wuthering Heights' eluded John McCain more than 40 years ago, robbing him of a second straight win as a contestant on the televised quiz show 'Jeopardy',  the Republican presidential hopeful said Monday.

Riding aboard his Straight Talk Express campaign bus, McCain, well-read and a trivia buff, recalled his two-day appearance on the popular program in 1965. He won the game the first day, and lost the next day in the final round.

So, what was the Final Jeopardy question that tripped him up?

The famously competitive Arizona senator recalled it exactly. "Cathy loved him, but married Edgar Linton instead."

McCain said he knew the name of the book, but that his answer — What is Wuthering Heights? — led to his elimination.

Jane Eyre: text, context, urtext

A Call for Papers from Elise Ouvrard:


For more than 160 years, Jane Eyre has been the object of all sorts of readings, critiques and sequels. When it appeared in 1847, the novel enjoyed incredible success: Jane Eyre, an Autobiography was widely read, but its plot and heroine were also accessible through the first critical interpretations or the numerous plays that were adapted from the novel as early as 1848. Known at first or second hand ever since its publication, Jane Eyre nowadays belongs to the category of books that one can discuss without having ever read them. Yet, to Brontë scholars and enthusiasts, appreciating the plot without having a taste of Charlotte Brontë’s style seems impossible, claiming a clear understanding of the novel without resituating it in its context seems absurd, just as it feels pointless to try to appraise the talent of Charlotte Brontë’s literary descendants without having been carried away by her own genius. This special issue of LISA e-journal, to be published in the first quarter of 2009, intends to reexamine Jane Eyre, its context, its text and its scope as an urtext, in order to exploit the full richness of the novel and to allow the readers to become immersed once more in this major text of nineteenth-century British literature।

Returning to sources, with such a novel as Jane Eyre, means first of all exploring what surrounded its creation. Victorian England, Yorkshire, Haworth or the parsonage may all be apprehended as fundamental to the novel, and examining their importance may lead to a better understanding of the thematic background of the text. Other elements in the genesis of the novel equally deserve our attention: the collective reading at the parsonage, allowing each sister to use the other two as touchstones to test the quality of her writing, Charlotte Brontë’s involvement in the publication of the three sisters’ works, or the energy she spent writing Jane Eyre in only a few months, while her first novel wound its way from publisher to publisher and kept being rejected. The context sheds a precious light on the novel and also functions as a background against which the originality and timelessness of Jane Eyre may be traced.
The text itself, because of its uniqueness and also the way it merges History with its story, has been the object of many readings, from feminist to Marxist, from psychoanalytical to structuralist, and so on। It is true that the novel is very fertile ground for critical discourse and offers an invitation to react, to comment or to decipher. The fields of investigation are as wide as the text itself, wider even, if one considers the importance of intertextuality (Bunyan, fairytales…) and of all the other art forms that punctuate the text (like painting or folklore), incessantly enabling it to transcend itself.

Reexamining Jane Eyre also means reading its sequels and rewritings, considering Charlotte Brontë’s text as an urtext, an original text founding an artistic continuation. New connections may then be discovered between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. The notion of quotation in works published afterwards may be of interest in a context of dissemination of Jane Eyre, as well as a study of adaptations for stage, screen or television, or of the illustrated versions of the novel that have been released so far.

Please send your proposals (20 to 50 lines), along with a short bio-bibliographical note, to Elise Ouvrard (ouvrard_elise@hotmail.com) or Charlotte Borie (borie@univ-tlse2.fr) before 30 September 2008 (the deadline for completed articles is 30 November 2008). Please follow the norms for presentation indicated on the LISA e-journal website

June weekend - Thornton

On the Tuesday (10 June) of the annual June weekend of the Brontë Society, a reading from Charlotte Brontë's letters took place in  St James's church hall. Readers were Robert Barnard and the organiser of the day's events, Angela Crow-Woods.

There were more readings after this, from Brontë poems, with commentaries, from Catherine and Ian Emberson, whose home page can be found here.

Later, there was a walk around the village. Of course, there was a significant pause outside the birthplace, which was sold in an auction last year to a London property developer. It is empty, but has, apparently, been "damp-proofed and repainted" inside. The tiny patch of garden at the front had been hastily dug over, unearthed bulbs on the surface.

Pictured above - a page from the register in the church, the well-kept ruins of the Old Bell Chapel, the old bell itself and the birthplace.

Simon Armitage this Friday

The current Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, read from his work in Haworth not so long ago. Now the next one (a good bet) will be at the West Lane Baptist Church on Friday 20 June at 7.30 pm. Make every effort to be there!

Simon Armitage has published ten volumes of poetry, for which he has won numerous awards, including a Forward Prize, Eric Gregory Award, and a Lannan Award, in addition to being shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and Whitbread Poetry Award. 

His Selected Poems was published in 2001, and his latest collection is Tyrannosaurus versus the Corduroy Kid (2006). Simon is also the author of All Points North (1998), and two novels - Little Green Man and The White Stuff. He has recently published Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist (2008).

Tickets cost £9.50 (£5.00 16 years and under) and must be booked in advance. As part of this event the museum will be open until 7pm for those wishing to view the Elmet exhibition. For further details please contact the Brontë Parsonage Museum, 01535 640188/ jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk

New president announced

This Saturday, the current President of the Brontë Society, Rebecca Fraser, chaired the Annual General Meeting for the last time. A popular and approachable figure at the annual June Weekends for the past seven years, she has now stepped down. It was announced that Brontë Society Council has just invited the actor, entertainer, ex-MP and television presenter Gyles Brandreth to be the new president, and that he has accepted.

He can be seen in various BBC online videos, for example this one from The One Show.

Heather Glen in Haworth

The title of the annual lecture at 11am on Saturday was The Originality of Wuthering Heights. It was given by Heather Glen, a frequent visitor to the Parsonage, who is Professor of English in the University of Cambridge. This is a very brief summary which can not do full justice to a lecture which was fresh, accessible and full of new insights for most of the audience, the obvious product of meticulous research:

She began with a focus on the fact that Emily Brontë is sometimes referred to in various terms as a ‘one-off’, a lone genius who lived in a kind of “rustic ignorance”.

“Emily chose Scott as her hero at the age of nine….there is plenty of evidence in the Juvenilia,” we were told. “She was sharply aware of literary tradition."

There are many connections with Scott’s work – for example the fact that he often uses servant narratives - and Lockwood could be said to be in the Scott tradition to some extent, because of all the “polite, young civilised men” in the Waverley Novels who encounter a rude, uncivilised world, from which they eventually learn something. Lockwood, however, learns nothing: “Emily had nothing of Scott’s geniality, his sense of the ultimate triumph of civilised values….she was more racy than Scott….Wuthering Heights ends in ambiguity, not in moral richness…”

In Wuthering Heights, dialogue is used directly, without the intervention of an intervening narrator: “complex emotions and relationships are rendered through dialogue,” a product of Emily’s “precise, imaginative intelligence.”

We were asked to look at the passages printed out for us. The first was from Chapter 9:

I was rocking Hareton on my knee, and humming a song that began:

It was far in the night, and the bairnies grat,
The mither beneath the mools heard that –

When Miss Cathy, who had listened……..etc

This was followed by an extract from ‘The Ghaists Warning’, Appendix to Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake, which began:

…He’s married a may, and he’s fessen her hame
But she was a grim and laidly dame

When into the castell court drave she,
The seven bairns stood wi’ the tear in their ee.

The bairns they stood wi’ dule and dout;-
She up wi’ her foot, and she kicked them out.

Nor ale nor mead to the Bairnies she gave:
“But hunger and hate frae me ye’s have.”

…’Twas lang I’ the night, and the bairnies grat:
Their mither she under the mools heard that;

Etc

This was accompanied (as in the original which Emily would have read), by explanations and glosses, for example:

May maid, fessen fetched, dule sorrow, dout fear, grat wept, mools mould; earth

The story is about threats, revenge and the supernatural. A dead mother returns to her children from her grave because they are crying, a walking corpse which inspires terror and causes the dogs to snarl and howl. One of them is put on her lap and suckled…

“It is about a passion which transcends mortality… think of all the allusions to ballads and ballad motifs……”

With further examples, Heather Glen talked about the ‘leaping and lingering’ techniques which are common to ballads and to Wuthering Heights, where the lingering is on climactic scenes, and there are echoes……think of the first Cathy ‘captured’ until she is well at Thrushcross Grange and the second Cathy held at Wuthering Heights.

The rude, uncivilised world is perceived with the ‘protection’ of glosses, explanations……..and books. What does Lockwood pile against the window when the terrifying child ghost tries to get in?

Beryl Bainbridge in Haworth

Beryl Bainbridge started off the annual June Weekend today, talking to a large audience of Brontë Society members in the West Lane Baptist Church. 

She was asked questions by Anne-Marie Sanchez, and finished by reading from her latest, unfinished, novel, provisionally entitled The Girl in the Polka-dot dress. It is set at about the time of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, allegedly by Sirhan Sirhan, but it is not a straightforward matter in this version, as might be expected.

After talking about events in her childhood and the ways they have entered her fiction, she spoke about her admiration for the Brontës ("they wrote such jolly good stories") and explained why she was writing mainly historical novels at the moment ("because I've now written everything I can about my childhood.......but I still get into my novels....I still put in things from my past..") and revealed that four months is her normal gestation period.

"There's no need to make anything up - ever," was her parting message.

Tomorrow's events include a lecture by Heather Glen, a church service, the AGM and a panel discussion.

Below, Ann-Marie Sanchez and Beryl Bainbridge:

Parsonage director to leave

Alan Bentley (pictured) writes:

I am leaving the Bronte Society on the 31st May to work freelance and to develop my consultancy business. It is sad to be leaving after seven highly enjoyable years and I hope it will not be the end of my association with the Brontë Society and the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

I am sure that with the redevelopment of the exhibition room and the extra media interest which will follow next year's adaptations of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and the possible Brontë movie, coupled with the continuing development of the contemporary arts and education programmes, the Society will continue to go from strength to strength.

Elmet exhibition

Today, the Parsonage opens a special exhibition of photographs by Fay Godwin from her collaboration with Ted Hughes, Elmet. The evocative photographs of the local landscape will be displayed in the period rooms until 25 July 2008.

The photographs, on loan from the British Library, include images of the landscape that inspired the Brontës.

Elmet, published by Faber and Faber in 1994, is a revised and expanded version of Remains of Elmet, a celebration of places where the poet spent the first seven years of his childhood published in 1979. Hughes added several poems and left out others. The sequence is different as well. Hughes was unhappy with some of the poem-photo links in the first edition.

Below, Top Withins:

Pootering around in the churchyard

An activity day for families entitled Chaffinches and Churchyards was held today at the Parsonage Museum.

Spring was in the air this May bank holiday at the Parsonage. Families were offered a day of outdoor activities… with a difference. After children had visited the home where the Brontë family grew up, they all took special Discovery Bags and went to meet the inhabitants of Haworth Churchyard. Not the ghosts but some of the varied plants and creatures that like to call the churchyard home. The museum’s education officer Susan Newby, who ran the activities, said, “As well as being really interesting places to explore historically, churchyards can be a haven to a surprising range of species, all coming alive at this time of year. It was great to have a dig around and to see what turned up!”

In each bag was a pooter (yes, a real word!) to catch a mini beast and a ‘bug viewer’ to see it magnified. This was followed by drawing sessions - and grave rubbing when the churchyard trail was followed.

susan.newby@bronte.org.uk

Below, two enthusiasts:

Remembering Patrick Brontë

Imelda Marsden writes:


The 7th June 1861 was the date Rev Patrick Brontë died. The BrontëSociety is holding its usual June weekend church service at St Michaels and All Angels, Haworth on the 7th June 2008.

Patrick is not mentioned on the member's leaflet about the church service. However, Sir James Roberts is mentioned, for we do not decry the generous gift of the Parsonage to the Brontë Society for use as a museum in 1928 - eighty years ago. An interesting fact about the Brontë Society AGM in 1927 held at Healds Hall, Liversedge, is that it was put to members that a fundraising effort was needed to purchase Haworth's Church Parsonage as the current museum was becoming too small.

The Church trustees were looking for a price of £3000 to build a new parsonage home for the vicar. Sadly some of the founder members of the Society, who worked very hard putting a lot of time and effort in to establish the Society and the first Brontë museum, did not live to see the Brontë museum move to the Parsonage in August 1928.

Next year, it will be 200 years since Rev Patrick Brontë came to Dewsbury as a curate and it is hoped the Society will acknowledge this fact. Mr W W Yates who was a prime instigator in setting up the Brontë Society and its first museum was on the Society's Council, and at one time, its chairman: one of his daughter's, Anna, was also on the Council. Both worked for the Dewsbury Reporter newspaper and are buried at Dewsbury Minster where their gravestones are still standing.

Brussels Brontë Weekend 18-20 April

Helen MacEwan writes:

It's been a long cold winter in Brussels but the sun finally came out in time for our guided walk around Brontë places, led by Derek Blyth, during the second spring weekend of events organised by the recently-formed Brussels branch to mark Charlotte Brontë's birthday.

This year Robert Barnard joined us from Leeds in the UK to take part in a meeting with writers in Waterstone's and also in the all-day conference on Les Soeurs Brontë à Bruxelles organised by a public library, which to our surprise was inaugurated by the Mayor of Brussels, who switched effortlessly between French, Dutch and English.

Eric Ruijssenaars and Maureen Peeck O'Toole, who also spoke at the weekend's events, joined us too, together with other members from the Netherlands, France and the Czech Republic.

For some gourmets the high point of the weekend was a Victorian dinner arranged by the conference organisers to round off a long day.

Pictured below:

Place du Musée near Chapelle Royale, Protestant church where Charlotte and Emily worshipped.

The guided walk, with Derek Blyth

Writers in Waterstones – with Robert Barnard

The Mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, inaugurating the Bronte conference organised by one of the main Brussels public libraries.

Eric Ruijssenaars speaking at the conference - with photo of Belliard steps down to rue Isabelle and the Pensionnat Heger

See link to Brussels group on the right.

Behind the scenes tours

Director Alan Bentley writes:

There will soon be chances to see behind the scenes at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, by taking advantage of a new 'special tour' scheme.

The first two will take place on 3 May and 24 May, with more dates to be announced shortly.

Get a new view of the story of the Brontë Family! Your guide will try to give you a special insight into the lives of the Brontës, and an understanding of why they still inspire people today.

The tour will culminate in a visit to the Parsonage Library, with a chance to view at close quarters a selection of items from the Brontë Society’s collections

Tours are restricted to a maximum of twelve people.

9.45 - meet your guide for a short introduction to the house and the surrounding features

10.00 - tour of the house with your guide

11.15 - visit to the Library and opportunity to view selected items from the collection.

11.45 - end of tour and your opportunity to go back to view the house at your leisure or visit the exhibition in the Old School Room opposite the Museum.

All this is being offered for the special introductory price of £12.95 per head. Unfortunately we are not able to offer reductions for children or concessions. There will be a minimum number on each tour of six people.

Pre-booking is essential. Call 01535 642323 to do it!

Jane Eyre "progressing well"

Classical Comics reports that Jane Eyre is progressing well. Sample pages can be seen below. Click on an image to enlarge it.

These are described as "still rough in terms of lettering" ........judge for yourself.

There is the possibility of a display at the Parsonage at the end of the year or in early 2009.

The company welcomes your comments, of course.