Jolien Janzing in Haworth

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

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

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

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

MAD ABOUT THE BRONTËS

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

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

CEMETERY

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

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

INFLUX

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

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

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

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

HEATHCLIFF’S BEDROOM

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

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

“Ms Janzing?”

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

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

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

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

LETTERS

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

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

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

VERA LYNN

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

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

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

EMPTY

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

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

Juliet Barker at the Parsonage

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

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

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

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

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

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

ISBN 978-0-349-12242-7

Haworth clampers - yet again

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

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

An evening with Juliet Barker

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

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

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

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

Su Blackwell's Remnants

News release: 

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

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

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

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

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

Wave-like hills

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wuthering Heights in Hull

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

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

Anne Brontë's Headstone

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

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

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

Stephen Whitehead

Brontë Society Trustee for Heritage & Conservation

28 September 2010

News release from the Parsonage:

A new season of contemporary arts events at the Brontë Parsonage Museum launches in October, which will see six months of readings, workshops and activities taking place in Haworth. 

The new programme launches on Wednesday 6 October with a reading by novelist Michele Roberts. Michele is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and will be visiting Haworth to talk about her recent collection of short stories, Mud. The book takes us to nineteenth century Venice, modern-day France and beyond, exploring characters such as the bitter maid taking care of young Adele – both forced out of Rochester’s home to make way for the passions of Jane Eyre. The talk takes place at the Old Schoolroom, Haworth and tickets are £6 and can be purchased from Arts Officer Jenna Holmes on 01535 640188 / jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk

The season will continue with a range of activities to support the exhibition of paper-cut installations by artist Su Blackwell, on display in the museum until 28 November. Su will visit the museum to talk about her work on Thursday 21 October, 7.30pm. There will also be the chance to try paper-cutting techniques at a creative day at the museum on Saturday 23 October.  On Saturday 30 October, artist Tracey Bush will lead a practical workshop to create your own detailed paper-cut pieces. Local artist Rachel Lee will run a workshop for children during the half term holidays, on Wednesday 27 October, showing them how to create paper landscapes inspired by the exhibition.

Other authors taking part in the programme are Brontë biographer Juliet Barker, whose landmark book The Brontës will be revised and reissued in November, and former West Yorkshire crime-writer Sophie Hannah who will be making the trip to Haworth to discuss her upcoming new book Lasting Damage in the New Year.

There will also be the special opportunity to watch the 1944 Hollywood version of Jane Eyre on the big screen in Haworth on Friday 18 February, 2011, to celebrate the museum’s recent acquisition of the original screenplay by Aldous Huxley. The film stars Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine - pictured below.

The film's opening words are:

My name is Jane Eyre... I was born in 1820, a harsh time of change in England. Money and position seemed all that mattered. Charity was a cold and disagreeable word. Religion too often wore a mask of bigotry and cruelty. There was no proper place for the poor or the unfortunate. I had no father or mother, brother or sister. As a child I lived with my aunt, Mrs. Reed of Gateshead Hall. I do not remember that she ever spoke one kind word to me...

Saturday's reading

Richard Wilcocks writes:


Katrina Naomi, the first Writer in Residence at the Parsonage, read first on Saturday evening (18 September), mainly from The Girl with the Cactus Handshake. She was powerful, in spite of being a touch nervous I think,  performing just before the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. I was most impressed by Tunnel of Love, probably because I have my own strong childhood memories of her home town of Margate with its fascinating shell grotto and its now abandoned amusement centre for holidaying East Enders, Dreamland. Her teenage memories of the place and its hypnotic tawdriness were conveyed in a confessional and amusing style, making her an excellent lead-in for the dryly humorous Duffy.

We laughed with her: she was as confident as a stand-up, beginning with Mrs Midas and Mrs Tiresias, explaining how she had been troubled by the ancient stories when she had first read them at an early age and how productive it still was to mine Ovid's Metamorphoses, an endlessly glittering seam. At one point she sneezed, and muttered something about just missing a Bible. She can't read often from behind a lectern in a Baptist church, surely. My hope was that she would read Education for Leisure, which in 2008 was removed from a GCSE English Literature Anthology presumably because some numbskulls thought it might encourage knife crime, but she didn't. I would have preferred that to her bee poems. Unlike so many actors, she can shrug off the personas (queens, babies,  burglars, frustrated teenagers...) and speak from her own core, as she proved with her deeply moving poetry about her mother.

The bow at the end was by both performers, linked.

On display this week

Parsonage news release: 

An important and moving letter written by Charlotte Brontë has returned to Haworth and will go on display for the very first time at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

The letter is dated 18 October 1848 and was written in the brief interval between the death of her brother Branwell on 24 September, and that of her sister Emily on 19 December. This was one of the darkest periods of Charlotte Brontë’s life, and work on her second novel, Shirley, had faltered. ‘My book – alas! is laid aside’, she writes, adding, ‘…both head and hand seem to have lost their cunning; imagination is pale, stagnant, mute – this incapacity chagrins me; sometimes I have a feeling of cankering care on the subject – but I combat it as well as I can – it does no good.’

The black-bordered letter was written to William Smith Williams, the sympathetic reader at her publishers. It was part of the James L. Copley Library, based in California, and was purchased by the Brontë Society at Sotheby’s in New York earlier this year.

‘The letters written to William Smith Williams are amongst the most significant of all Charlotte’s correspondence. This particular letter has remained in a private collection in America for many years and it is wonderful to be able to make it available for the first time.’ - Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manager

The letter will go on display at the museum this week until the end of the year.

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

Poet Laureate at the Parsonage

News release:

The first Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing will take place in Haworth later this month, with a headline reading by the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The festival has been organised by the Brontë Parsonage Museumas part of its contemporary arts programme, with support from Arts Council England, and will take place at various venues in Haworth from Friday 17 –  Sunday 19 September 2010.

The festival weekend will be opened with a reading by novelist Kate Mosse, on the evening of Friday 17 September. Kate Mosse is best known for her international bestseller Labyrinth, which has been published in forty countries and won the ‘Richard and Judy’s Best Read’ award in 2006.

On the morning of Saturday 18 September, recent writer in residence at the museum Katrina Naomi will lead a poetry workshop. Participants will accompany Katrina to the museum collections where they will see some of the items not out on public display. They will then be invited to create new poems inspired by their visit.

Carol Ann Duffy, poet laureate, will visit Haworth on Saturday 18 September at 7.30pm to read from her work.

On the afternoon of Sunday 19 September, writer Daisy Hay (pictured) will speak about her book Young Romantics, which explores the lives of the Romantic poets, including Byron and Shelley, and the dazzling circle of women writers and thinkers that they moved in.

The weekend will also include a variety of drop-in events and activities for families, including a poetry trail around Haworth, storytelling and informal readings by local poets.

The Brontës were pioneering writers, at a time when very few women got published. The success of their novels changed the way that women writers were perceived and the festival will celebrate their incredible legacy, by showcasing the work of high profile and emerging contemporary women writers. When Charlotte Brontë wrote to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey for advice in 1837, she was told that ‘writing cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and ought not to be’. 

She would be delighted that Carol Ann Duffy, the first female in the role, will read at the very first Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing. We hope the festival will become an annual showcase of the quality of writing by women in the region and across the UK.

Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer.

Full times and details of all festival events can be found on the Brontë Parsonage Museum website at www.bronte.info and tickets for events can be booked from the Arts Officer:jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188

Below, Daisy Hay:

Contribute to the consultation

Stephen Whitehead writes:
As the Brontë Society Council Member with responsibility for heritage and conservation, I am aware of the concerns over Anne's grave and over the parking of cars on St Mary's graveyard that are being expressed on the Brontë Parsonage Blog. They are concerns that have been shared by Council for some time and a condition report on the gravestone, prepared by a professional conservator, was considered at the last meeting of Council in June. Throughout this summer I am consulting with all known interested parties in order to rationalise the options open to us and I am in direct e-mail contact with three of your named bloggers. Those bloggers who have not yet contacted me directly with their views, but would like to contribute to the consultation, can reach me at srwhitehead@live.co.uk
 

Nobody came to the door...

Maddalena De Leo writes:

This July 2010 I went to Penzance in South-East Cornwall looking for any information I might gather about Maria Branwell and her family. It was a journey I had longed for from a lot of time and I expected to find there people or documents related to the Branwell family and consequently to the Brontës. In the end I realized, as in Scarborough in 2001, that in Cornwall the Brontës’ existence in local people’s awareness is very limited or nonexistent.

After arriving at 25 Chapel Street I found a lonely house seemingly with no person living in it and only a plaque on the front wall to speak of the Branwells-Brontës. On the threshold I knocked and knocked at the green door but nobody came to open it. Afterwards I knew from the bookseller nearby that effectively the house is now empty and there are no other Branwell heirs after Miss Frances Branwell who died in 1993 in very old age.

At home in Italy I had often read in the 1975 issue of Brontë Society Transactions the article by the late Charles H. Lemon and looked at the photo of the unveiling ceremony of the plaque in September of that same year. In it some Branwell-connected people can be seen - like Mrs. J.E. Tripp, a niece of Miss Frances Branwell, and her two grown up children. In the article the author underlined that the interior of the house, restored by the then owner-occupants Miss Lilian Oldham and Miss Richards, distinctly reminded people of the Parsonage in Haworth, with the same archway and a grandfather clock standing where the stairs begin. On the right of the front door there was at the time the room known as the Brontë room with portraits on the wall related to the Branwell family. Where are the Tripps now? Are they living somewhere in Cornwall or in the world? It is really a pity to see this famously Brontë-related house so neglected and empty. If sold and bought by a Brontë fan couldn’t it become a sort of Brontë-Branwell museum after the main one at Haworth and a luckier site than the Thornton birthplace? The weather in Cornwall is mild, the landscape beautiful and tourists flock there from all over Europe: according to me it might be a wonderful and rewarding idea to realize and the best way to preserve this far-away Brontë-related treasure!

Below, the plaque, and Maddalena De Leo in the doorway:

 

Best wishes to Gyles

The Society's recently-departed President, Gyles Brandreth, is soon going to appear in Edinburgh as a stand-up comedian. Let's hope it's a big success! Find it in the Pleasance Courtyard 4 - 30 August. His group is Bound and Gagged Comedy.

Gyles Brandreth - The One to One Show