Inspired - The Brontës' Influence

On Wednesday 7 March at 7.30pm, a panel discusssion will take place at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth which will include Stevie Davies, Patricia Duncker and Michele Roberts. In the chair will be Patsy Stoneman.

All of these authors will acknowledge a debt to the Brontës. Tickets are £6.50. They are available from andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk, phone 01535 640194.

Below - Patricia Duncker, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Visit to the Foundling Hospital

The painting is Moses Brought Before Pharaoh’s Daughter by William Hogarth, which is in the care of the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, London. This will be visited by Brontë Society members (and non-members, so consider yourself invited) on Sunday 4 February.

Meet at 12 noon outside Russell Square Tube Station - which is on the Piccadilly Line. Admission to the Museum is £5.

Ann Simmonds pointed out the reference to the Foundling Hospital in Stephen Whitehead's book The Brontës' Haworth -

James Grenwood employed sixty hands at Bridgehouse in 1833, half of them under sixteen and some as young as ten. This was an advance on conditions thirty years earlier, when james Greenwood's cousin John at Vale Mill, half a mile downstream from Bridgehouse, was employing orphaned girls from as young as five, assigned to him from the Foundling Hospital in London.

Another London event for Society members and anyone else who wants to join in - Tea and Chat at the Barbican on Sunday 11 March. Meet at 12 noon at the Waterside Café for tea and Brontë chat about Jane Eyre.

Coming soon

The Parsonage is closed to the public at the moment, as usual at this time of year, but there is plenty going on. In the picture, Librarian Ann Dinsdale and Curator Polly Salter are seen dealing with one of many seasonal tasks.


On Thursday 1 February, a new, special exhibition will open to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Mrs Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë. The exhibition, which is free on admission to the museum, has the same title.

Charles Lemon MBE 1914 - 2007

The following is from a recent news release sent to the local and national press:

The Brontë Society has sent its condolences to the family of Charles Lemon MBE, who died on the morning of 4 January. His funeral is at St Anne’s Catholic church in Keighley at 12pm on Friday 12 January.

Charles Lemon joined the Brontë Society in 1936 after having cycled to Haworth (from London) the previous year. He was a very active member, elected to the Society’s council several times and serving as chairman. He was the editor of Transactions (the Society’s academic journal) from 1964 – 1983 and served on the editorial board of Brontë Studies, the journal which replaced it, until the day he died.

As Bibliographical Secretary (a post which no longer exists) he frequently attended auctions on behalf of the Parsonage, helping in the purchasing of letters and other Brontë memorabilia.

His publications include :

A Leaf from an Unopened Volume by Charlotte Brontë (1986) (new transcription, edited by Charles Lemon)

A Centenary History of the Brontë Society

Early Visitors to Haworth (1996)

Classics of Brontë Scholarship (1999) (selected and introduced by Charles Lemon)

In the foreword to A Centenary History of the Brontë Society, the famous historian and past President of the Brontë Society Asa Briggs (born in Keighley in 1921) wrote, “The Brontë Society has a long and fascinating history and no one is better suited to write it than Charles Lemon, who has played an active part in the story.”

Current Chairman of the Brontë Society Richard Wilcocks commented, “ With the death of Charles Lemon we have lost an extraordinary member.

“Through his efforts and imagination he set an example for us all. He is one of the reasons the Brontë Society has survived and flourished since its founding in 1893, longer than most other literary societies.”

Previous Chairman Bob Barnard said, “He was a gentle, scholarly man, enormously well-read, who came over the years to represent all that is best in the Society”.

When he spoke to younger members of his family he remembered that as a young child in London he was held by his mother during bombing raids - by Zeppelins. He also recalled the return of his father from the Great War: he had been fighting in France and in Italy.

He attended Davidson Road Junior School, which a few years earlier (1908 - 1911) had boasted D H Lawrence on its staff. Later, at Selhurst Grammar, where he first discovered Jane Eyre, he particulary loved History, Latin and English, and would undoubtedly have had a distinguished university career had his parents' finances permitted - but he left to take a job at the age of sixteen.

A full obituary will appear in the next issue of Brontë Society Gazette.

Best Wishes!

Best wishes for the New Year to all who have contributed to, given advice for or passed comment on this blog during its first year of existence!

Friends

The Friends of the Brontë Society is the name of a group just formed at the Parsonage, made up of staff members. It will be concerned with raising money for the recently-finalised Forward Plan, intended to take the Society and the Parsonage into the Twenty First Century.

Fundraising will be one of the principal concerns of the Society in 2007: plans for a new centre for visitors have been in existence for a long time, needing only a massive injection of funds to make them come true. More immediate plans for an ambitious programme to further establish the Parsonage as a vibrant creative centre for the arts as well as a world centre for Brontë Studies will also need adequate financial backing, of course.

The Friends coordinator is Pat Berry. First event is a ceilidh to be held in Haworth on St Patrick's Day in March. More details nearer the date.

Ann on the radio

Parsonage Librarian Ann Dinsdale is on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow (Thursday 16 November) at 1.30pm. The following is an extract from the Open Country preview page -

Most of us know the Upper Worth Valley because of the work of a remarkable family – Charlotte, Anne and Emily – better known as the Brontës. Their novels and poetry has helped shaped people’s ideas of what this valley was like, and has drawn people to The Old Parsonage Museum where the family lived in Haworth. Richard chats with Ann Dinsdale, the museum’s librarian, who’s just published a book about the family called “The Brontës at Haworth.”

Next, Richard climbs to the top of a ridge to get an overview of the Upper Worth Valley with topographer Reg Hindley. Geology, poltics, economics and social upheaval had all had an effect on the look of the valley. According to Reg, each colour on the patchwork quilt of farms and moorland that can be seen is the result of some sort of change. And the landscape is still changing today.

You can read the rest on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/opencountry.shtml

Brontë moon crater

Thanks to Paul Daniggelis in El Paso, Texas for sending us (and many others) the following link for the Brontë Crater on the Moon.


www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LPST/43d1s2


Thanks are also due to Jennifer Blue at the United States Geological Survey in Flagstaff Arizona, who was responsible for locating the photographic file.


The crater was named for Charlotte by Harrison Schmitt, Lunar Module Pilot for the Apollo 17 Lunar excursion. Paul Daniggelis's article in Brontë Society Gazette 22 (April 2000) covers this event and quotes from Chapter 24 of Jane Eyre:


Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I'll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.

Genealogy and W S Williams

Norman E Penty writes:


The Discovery of Charlotte Brontë


by William Smith Williams (1800-1875)




Charlotte Brontë may have remained in obscurity if it had not been for the faith, foresight and fortitude of William Smith Williams, the literary editor of Smith Elder who first recognised her talent when, using the pseudonym Currer Bell, and after a number of rejections, she forlornly sent them a copy of The Professor. Even though this manuscript was initially rejected it was done in such a positive and encouraging manner that Charlotte shortly sent Williams a draft of Jane Eyre which was soon published to great acclaim.


Little has hitherto been known of Williams and the background of this unassuming and quiet man. Most of what we know about Williams' character has been gleaned from the large volume of letters written to him by Charlotte. Unfortunately, most of those written by him to her have disappeared. However, the extant correspondence shows that Charlotte not only leant on Williams for support and advice, using him as her mentor, but that it was a two-way affair inasmuch she keenly offered him advice on the care and education of his children, drawing on her own experience as governess and teacher. Their friendship was not just confined to a professional relationship, but one which spilled over into their personal lives when on several occasions Charlotte visited the Williams' home and was entertained by his family and friends.


My research into discovering more about this fascinating man concentrated on parish records, census returns, and wills, etc., all of which enabled me to trace the origins of his family back to 1690 in Oxfordshire; his birth in the parish of St Martin-in-the- Fields; his marriage at Broxbourne, Herts; the births of his eight children and what happened to them; and finally his death and burial at Kensal Green. My quest identified his apprenticeship with the Fleet Street publishers, Taylor & Hessey, where he was in the small party bidding a final farewell to John Keats as he left for Rome and immortality; his subsequent miserable existence as a bookkeeper, which he disliked and which encouraged him to supplement his income by writing literary articles in his leisure time and then his eventual employment as literary editor at Smith Elder.


At Smith Elder he was held in high esteem, not only by his employer and colleagues but by many literary luminaries such as Thackeray, the Leigh Hunts, Hazlitt and Mrs Gaskell. It was commented that he “cherished from boyhood a genuine love of literature and received much kindly notice from eminent writers” and that “he was by nature too modest to gain any wide recognition”.


Although it appears Williams was a close family man, a modest man, about whom no misdemeanour can be found, he was very tolerant of the more colourful characters with whom he associated and became his friends including George Henry Lewes and his wife Agnes, Thornton Hunt and George Eliot, all of whom scandalised Victorian society with their so-called progressive views on marriage.


Besides his greatest legacy in ensuring that the name and talents of Charlotte Bronte became universally recognised, his children and their descendants became highly regarded as singers, musicians, artists, lawyers and accountants both in the UK and overseas.


The above titled forty five-page booklet can be viewed at The Parsonage Museum or at The Society of Genealogists, London.










Photo of W S Williams

The Brontës at Haworth by Ann Dinsdale

Parsonage Librarian Ann Dinsdale spoke to Richard Wilcocks about her just-published book The Brontës at Haworth:


The book came about because Anne Fraser from the publisher Frances Lincoln saw the Parsonage Guide in the summer of 2004, which I had co-authored. She was so impressed with its general quality that she contacted me and Simon Warner and we took it from there.

The title? Simple and straightforward, I think. Lincoln wanted something a little more highfalutin, but I didn’t feel comfortable with their suggestions. It has such a strong focus on Haworth, so the name had to be in it. It’s simple but it sums it all up.

For research I didn’t have to stir beyond the library here, which of course contains the best collection of Brontë material in the world. I had access to parish records, contemporary accounts, newspapers, everything. After seventeen years I am quite familiar with what there is.

The people who have commented so far have been complimentary - for example Jane Sellars read the Art section and Steve Wood read the parts on social conditions in Haworth. My colleague Steve Whitehead told me he was impressed by the book’s range.

After all my time here dealing with visiting researchers I have got an idea of what people want to know, so I have tried to address relevant concerns. There are no footnotes because the book is not aimed merely at a university audience.

I am very happy with the wonderful photos by Simon Warner, which complement the text so well.

Some new or little-known items might stick in the reader’s mind, for example some of the contemporary views of the Brontë novels. One reviewer said that Wuthering Heights would ‘live a short and brilliant life and then die and be quickly forgotten’.

Then there’s the transcript of the account book of the local joiner William Wood, a good name for a joiner I think. He made coffins. His spelling gives an idea of how he spoke.

When ‘Miss Branwell’ died in 1842, her ‘coffen’ cost £5.12s.6d. When Branwell died in 1848 the ‘coffen & scroud making’ totalled only £3.15s. Then there is this:

Emlea Jane Bronty. Died Dec 19th 1848 in the 30 year of hir Age. Coffen 5ft 7” long 16” broad.

The Brontës at Haworth by Ann Dinsdale, with photographs by Simon Warner, is published by Frances Lincoln. ISBN 0711225729


To purchase it, contact the Parsonage shop using the link on the right.


Photo - Ann Dinsdale in the Parsonage Library

Kate Bush and 'Kateness'

Some years ago now, the excellent Kate Bush put Wuthering Heights on the map for many people. A group of her fans slogged up to Top Withins last Sunday (28 October) on the HomeGround Wuthering Hike. Thanks to Peter, Co-editor of HomeGround the Kate Bush Magazine for telling us about it!

Predictably, they were very wet and very happy when they returned: “If anyone ever feels they want to attend one of these bashes don't let anything stop you, you won't regret it. I nearly killed myself doing the hike but by the time we got to the top I was very wet and laughing like I have never laughed in years,” said one of them on the pages of the Kate Bush News and Info Forum, adding, “Being immersed in 'Kateness' is so good for the soul”.

Most of the walkers appear to have ended up supping ale in the back room of the Black Bull in Haworth, a fitting end for a great day out.


This photo is of Tracy at the Brontë Falls:

Last month's conference

Last month (22 September - 24 September) The Brontës and their Background - a weekend conference - took place in the Baptist Centre in West Lane, Haworth.

Speakers were Stephen Whitehead (The Haworth the Brontës knew), main organiser Bob Duckett (Where did the Brontës get their books?), Ian Emberson ("The likeness of a kingly crown": John Milton and his influence on Charlotte), Yukari Oda (Wuthering Heights and the Waverley novels: Scott's influence on Emily), Elizabeth Leaver (Why Anne Brontë wrote as she did), Brian Wilks (Charlotte Brontë and the two churches) and Ian Dewhirst (The Real Haworth: Myths and Anecdotes)

Ian Dewhirst was the speaker at the Conference Dinner in The White Lion in Haworth.

Tom Winnifrith was in hospital so unfortunately could not contribute. Instead, a forum took place in his time slot, chaired by Robert Barnard.

One of the delegates was Marcia Zaaijer, who is an archivist from Rotterdam in the Netherlands: she recently sent the post below. Conference papers will probably not be published as a booklet (Brontë Society Council is economising) but should be available on request from Bob Duckett as photocopies. Contact him through this blog - email hevelius@poriruacity.com

A brief impression of the Bronte Weekend Conference 2006:


Every speaker impressed me with something to do or to remember. So many details of life in the Brontës’ Haworth, that both Steven Whitbread and Ian Dewhurst were able to present! Ian Dewhurst spoke in the kind of language, that in my Dutch imagination I like to think sounds like the language the Brontës heard around them.

And all those books they read, without a library next door, while I still have not read any more Walter Scott than Ivanhoe and Kenilworth. Of The Pilgrim's Progress and Paradise Lost I have nothing more than a vague notion that there was also a Paradise to be Regained, but this has more to do with me preferring happy endings than with any knowledge of English literature.

Really, maybe I should go and attend school in South Africa: I love the way Elisabeth Leaver championed Anne and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. With a bit of luck some Afrikaners might understand my Dutch.

The nicest surprise for me as an archivist was on Sunday morning. Brian Wilks realised, or someone made him realise, that the Bishop of Ripon, who visited Mr. Brontë in the parsonage in Haworth when Charlotte was Patrick's only surviving child and already a celebrated authoress, went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury. Obviously this means that his archives are kept at Lambeth Palace, and that in his archives are notes about his visit to Mr Brontë, which reveal that Charlotte was a good hostess to him. We know about the bishop's visit, because Charlotte writes about it in a letter. Now we get the story from the visitor, someone who actually stayed at the Parsonage. Two trustworthy historical sources which tell of the same meeting: that's a bonus for an archivist.


In the first photo below, taken during the forum, from the left Stephen Whitehead, Brian Wilks, Robert Barnard, Elizabeth Leaver, Ian Emberson. In the other photo, Ian Dewhirst holds forth.

Emily Brontë's horoscope

by Maddalena De Leo


In June this year I made a wonderful discovery while surfing the net. I found an unusual web site written by a Dutch astrologist (1). In it she set forth a lengthy and detailed horoscope in Dutch for none other than Emily Brontë.

I had to share it with others. I happen to know Dutch since I studied it at the university I attended more than twenty years ago. With the help of my long-unused Dutch-Italian dictionary I was able to translate this discovery.

The author's name is Ms Iren Nooren, Dutch by birth but presently living in Curaçao. Only a few historical figures interested her enough to merit a personal horoscope.

She chose Thérese of Lisieux and Emily Brontë. As she explored Emily's personality Nooren quickly discovered that she had an exhaustive amount of character traits. Based on a very detailed astrological reading Nooren's discussion focuses especially on Emily's personality and the most meaningful parts of her novel. Her poems are never mentioned.

Very interested in everything Nooren had to say, I was curious to learn more about her actual knowledge of Brontë's work so I requested an e-mail interview. I asked her how much she knew about Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights before charting her horoscope. She replied that she had read the book a very long time ago.

In Curaçao there is only one very small library which contains nothing about the book or the author. That is why during her analysis she searched the internet for information, finding contradictory material. Eventually she found one book with a short introduction by Daphne Merkin, a Dutch writer.

I then asked her why she chose to do a horoscope for Emily and when exactly she had read Wuthering Heights. She told me that most astrologists are interested in current movie stars and famous politicians, while she prefers long-deceased people. Her wish was to really understand Emily Brontë as a person since she admires her so much for her brooding, strange style.

Like most of us she was particularly attracted by the way Emily relates a story. Every line can be read again and again at any time when you read it in the original language as the selection of words is perfect.

Nooren actually read Wuthering Heights when she was twenty-five, having found it by chance in a library. At first she did not comprehend the violence and passion in the book and considered it boring compared to Jane Eyre. It was only many years later that she changed her opinion after reading it again. Only then could she see Catherine as a real person.

My next question was about what is known about Emily Brontë in Curaçao. She told me that the novel can be found in the public library but it is not yet possible to buy it in the bookshop. Whenever she can, Nooren speaks about Emily and her life to let people know who she was and what an amazing life she lived.


The horoscope


According to Iren Nooren, Emily’s personality is strongly reflected in her great novel, known in the Netherlands by the title Woeste Hoogten.


Woeste Hoogten reveals an incredible attraction of Venus in Scorpio. The basic data, that is to say the ascendant, the Sun and the Moon reveal a mysterious personality attributed to Emily. Pluto dominant in Pisces tells us that Emily was an astute observer who was very willing to abandon both her home and family. In the novel for example the recurring images of many open doors and windows underscore a desire to get away, and strongly contrast the power of the mind. In Woeste Hoogten all characters are unable to escape from beginning to end.


The Sun is not present in any aspect but the Moon represents the main energy: it is a sowing moon, telling us that in Emily’s time society was not ready to appreciate a novel such as hers, considering it too violent and passionate.


The dominant Moon can also explain why so little was written about Emily Brontë during the 19th century. The Moon is also in opposition to Jupiter and behind Capricorn enabling her subconscious emotions to surface in the talent zone. The presence of Mercury in Leo 9 reveals an aptitude to both talk and write about death. Mercury itself in triangle with Neptune and Uranus rather than in Sagittarius draws attention to inspiration, thus enabling Emily to open up a new method of creative writing.


A further proof of Moon in Cancer are the characters without a mother in Woeste Hoogten. Brontë may have invented them as a result of her own orphaned condition. The connection between Mars and Venus points to the extremes and opposing natures within the novel. It is essentially the story of two opposite natures, a man with an active role and a woman with a passive one, each being reciprocally dependent on the other.


It is still a Mars/Venus conjunction underlining a wish for communication and an expression of personal will. This makes Emily’s dependent energy (Mars in Venus) somehow passive (Venus).


The reference scheme reveals an off-balanced distribution of crosses. The mobile cross (with seven planets) points out an easily relaxed and suitable character while the main cross (with two planets and a personal Moon) draws attention to the great effort to start and take initiatives. The division of elements is also off-balance and a lack of Air in the planets is evident. It shows Emily’s unfulfilled need for human contact.


Mars/Venus conjunction is in opposition to Saturn. This indicates a misunderstood step to carry out initiatives and get in touch with someone. Emily’s close-knit, restricted home life prevented her from looking for outside relationships to help her nourish her fantasies. Although no known relationship with a man has been documented, Nooren seems to think Emily may have met people who stirred passionate feeling within her. Maybe among these relationships there was the one with her sisters and brother (Pisces). Saturn explains why Emily wished to escape from her family although her first duty was to her home. Maybe because Emily refused to run away from her problems at home she wavered between two poles (Mars/Venus and Saturn).


There is also a third element, Uranus in Sagittarius underscoring renewal and broadmindedness, two aspects unique to Emily that indicated she was ahead of her time.


The presence of Pisces reveals an escape from the real world into one of fantasy. Pluto dominant reveals Emily’s own fantasies and inspirations which were central to her life. But it was Neptune in Sagittarius that gave her a great artistic talent which was directed toward her subconscious mind.


The Northern node in Taurus in the 6th House and Venus in Virgo in the 9th House tell us that Emily had to learn how to be concrete in real life.


In conclusion, Iren Nooren tells us that the presence of Pluto in Neptune is a recurring theme in people born between 1810 and 1826 (the Romantics). In Emily’s horoscope we see the emergence of three major themes: Transformation, Family, and a Drive to frankly express her feelings.




I would like to thank my friend Frances Gerard for her revision of the text.




1. CHTA – Astrologie – Centre for humanistic & transpersonal astrology - www.astrologie.ws and www.astrologie.ws/bronte.htm

Contemporary Arts Programme

Cornelia Parker has just given ten of her Brontëan Abstracts works to the Brontë Society. “This is a very significant donation,” Andrew McCarthy, Deputy Director of the Parsonage, told this blog. “We are all very thankful, of course.

“The opening of Cornelia Parker’s exhibition launched the first-ever Contemporary Arts Programme at the Museum, with Germaine Greer as our Honorary Patron. We could now be considered as a vibrant creative centre as well as a world centre for Brontë studies.

“It marks a historic shift in the identity of the Society and the Museum and offers the potential for exciting partnerships with prominent individuals and organisations within the arts.

“It should lead to a revitalising development of the Museum’s collection and its physical environment, and new audiences.

“The Programme will also help the Society and the Museum to more fully reflect the radical creative energies of the Brontës by adding to a traditional reputation for conservation and commemoration of the Brontës with a new role as advocates for imagination, creativity and artistic achievement.

“There is much that is already happening, and the plans for 2007 are exciting.

“The programme of special education projects aimed at disadvantaged groups will (funding permitting) continue with The Collecting Place. This will involve working with photographer Simon Warner and a group of visually-impaired youngsters. A walk-in camera obscura will be constructed and used to create large-format images of the Parsonage and other Brontë-related sites. This will form the basis of an exhibition.

“There will also be talks by Gaskell biographer Jenny Uglow (celebrating the anniversary of the publication of Life of Charlotte Brontë), Pamela Norris, author of Words of Love: Passionate Women from Heloise to Sylvia Plath, Gail Nina Anderson from the Friends of the Laing Gallery (on John Martin), biographer and novelist Victoria Glendinning (on writers and their homes) and a panel discussion focusing on Brontë biography which will feature Juliet Barker, Rebecca Fraser, Lyndall Gordon, Edward Chitham and Justine Picardie.

“The work we are doing is groundbreaking, I think.”


Below: Germaine Greer

More Haworth ghosts

Michele Carter writes:
As a child, I asked my Irish father if he believed in ghosts. He said, ‘No, I don’t believe in them, but they do exist.’ This philosophy came in handy at The Brontë Society Conference last September when Ann Dinsdale, Librarian at the Parsonage, took a few of us on a guided walk around historic Haworth. After a visit to the churchyard, we wandered over to number forty-three Sun Street where the Brontës' servant Tabby Aykroyd had died in 1855.


The owner came out and told us that he and his wife had just moved into the premises a few months ago and that, immediately, strange goings-on had begun.


Our group gathered closer.


‘I was coming back from a bit of shopping,’ he explained. ‘When I looked through the door’s window, I saw a little grey-haired lady walk across the hall through to the kitchen and just disappear. I went in and looked around for her, but she was nowhere about. She’d just vanished.’


A communal gasp.


‘And we keep hearing someone knocking, but when we open the door nobody’s there.’


A gasp and a nod. ‘Tabby.’


With ghosts fresh in our minds, we ventured over to Old Fold Hall on Fern Street. This house dates back to the seventeenth century and has recently been restored. The owner approached our group and invited us in to see the new décor.


‘This might sound odd,’ she began, ‘but there’s been some strange goings-on around here since we opened up the fireplace. Right here I saw several small, white shapes. Fluffy shapes really. But I couldn’t tell what they were. I went upstairs and at the same spot, by the fireplace, I saw them again. But never anywhere else in the house.’


We waited for her to continue, not believing in ghosts ourselves but knowing they do exist.


‘It wasn’t until I was in Clapham looking at livestock that I saw the same small, white shapes. They were sheep - miniature sheep. You see, there was sheep breeding here before the mills. Maybe they bred small sheep that could withstand the harsher conditions. And maybe they slept around the fireplace.’


We nodded in unison.


‘With these old houses,’ she continued, ‘it’s no surprise to hear things going boomp in the night. But we also smell damp sackcloth. They kept the wool in bags of sackcloth back then. The smell never lingers. More like onions cooking or coffee and then it’s gone. The gasman smelled it, and he said it’s not gas, it’s sackcloth.’


We casually sniffed.


‘But that’s not all.’ She stepped toward the door. ‘The other day, I was standing right here and just happened to look out the window and saw a little grey-haired lady coming to my door. She was coming right to it, but when I opened it, she was gone.’


‘Tabby.’


‘What?’


We explained about Tabby and the knocking over on Sun Street. ‘Lately, someone’s been wiggling our latch, but when we open the door no one’s there.’


‘Tabby.’


Grey ghosts, tiny sheep, spirit sackcloth. I silently wondered if the Brontës ever heard wee ghosties going boomp in the night.




Ann Dinsdale and some of her intrepid group can be seen below:

What did they see?

Perhaps it has something to do with the psychics who were invited into the Parsonage by Cornelia Parker so that their voices could be recorded for her current exhibition Brontëan Abstracts. It is now possible to listen to their conversations on headphones which are installed in several rooms. Quite a few visitors cross Church Street after their tour of the Museum to take a look at the Matt Lamb exhibition - Spirits of the Brontë Sisters - which fills the School Room.

The fact is that some of them may have seen a ghost, or think they have, according to the eminently down-to-earth Peter Ashton, the man in charge there. He emailed the following:

Wednesday was a quiet afternoon at the Sunday School Room until a man in his forties exited the gallery at speed. I managed to intercept him in our coffee bar area to ask what had occurred.

He told me that he had been in a room at the back of the building (my guess is the room displaying the umbrellas although he did not wait around long enough for me to confirm this) where he had seen a ghost. The only description I could get from him before he tore away was that he had seen an elderly woman dressed in very old fashioned clothes including a studded collar. With that he was off down Church Street.

Twenty minutes or so later a younger man, in his late twenties, with a baby, commented on leaving that he had had a most unusual experience in the umbrella room. Whilst in the room the atmosphere turned 'crepuscular' - his choice of word. He said that nothing of any malevolence occurred, just a damp mistiness.

As far as I am aware the men were not connected. They entered the building separately and had no contact whatsoever with each other.

At no time whilst we were open did anyone answering the description of the ghost come into the building. I checked security etc and visited the umbrella room and other rooms immediately after each report and saw/heard/felt nothing untoward.

At the time when these events occurred the vicar's husband and a friend were working in the Sexton's house next door. Whilst they didn't see the first man they had the chance to chat with the second one.

Maybe the spirits which Matt Lamb believes he lifts out from his paintings are making their presence felt !


Peter - pictured here in the place where the ghost allegedly appeared - wonders whether anybody else has experienced anything similar.

Richard Wilcocks adds:

There has always been a connection between the Brontës and the supernatural, which could perhaps be dismissed as a bit of an irrelevance, or seen as something really significant or set into a historical context.....they did live in a parsonage next to a graveyard after all. Serious papers have appeared on Rochester's voice coming into Jane's mind (influence of Swedenborg?) and then of course there's the young girl at the window in Wuthering Heights (Emily haunted by tragic Maria and Elizabeth as she wrote?) and more recently the Ouijah game which popped up in the second episode of the current television version of Jane Eyre.

My first reaction to Peter's story was to ask him what a studded collar looked like. Was the spectre some kind of Victorian punk rocker? He replied that he did not have time to ask the man for clarification (he is an ex-police officer incidentally) but he speculated that the collar was studded with jewels. That rules out Charlotte then.

On sale very soon

Parsonage shop manager Sean Killian reports that advance orders are coming in steadily for Emily's Journal by Sarah Fermi.

This will be on sale very soon, published by Pegasus at £8.99. The following is from the publisher's leaflet:

Why did Emily Brontë write Wuthering Heights? Was it purely the product of her juvenile imagination? Or did she experience a profound and tragic relationship in her adolescent years which coloured the rest of her life and was the emotional source for both her one novel and her heartfelt poetry? Written as if in her own words, Emily's Journal explores in minute detail the possibility that Wuthering Heights was not entirely 'invented'; it gives the reader a new and exhilarating glimpse into the social circumstances which kept a young woman from the man she loved.

Few biographies of Emily Brontë have reached so far into her mind - interrogating census records, parish registers and wills - and marrying the evidence with the contents of her works. The result is truly remarkable.

Sarah Fermi (pictured above) has been interested in the Brontë family for almost as long as she can remember. Perhaps being one of three sisters may have been the starting point, but her serious interest was prompted by reading a biography of Emily Brontë by Edward Chitham. Inspired by his pertinent (and unanswered) questions about Emily, Sarah has devoted nearly fifteen years to examining the many previously unexplored personal connections of the Brontë sisters.

The book's ISBN is 1903490251

Nelson and Brontë

Earlier this year, Cornelia Parker - see Sunday's posting - made a proposal to the Greater London Authority which has since been lost in bureaucratic processes. Here it is, reproduced from an appendix in the catalogue for Brontëan Abstracts:


Nelson and Brontë - A Hair’s Breadth of History

A proposal to the Greater London Authority by Cornelia Parker

I want to propose a tiny enhancement to Nelson’s Column, adding a little more body to his hair by inserting real strands of the famous Brontë sisters’ hair into the fabric of his. Doing so would link the two iconic names in a literal and physical way, infusing the monument’s structure with an authentic bodily relic. It would in effect, combine the Romantic female with the Alpha male, the modest with the heroic and DNA with sculpted stone. Nelson could share with the Brontës, more than a name*, a parsonage childhood, the loss of a mother at an early age and bravery in the face of death. Together they could share a vista.

Although they lived a sheltered life in a Yorkshire parsonage, remaining incognito behind their male pseudonyms, the Brontë sisters’ novels became famous in their day, their heroes and heroines, like Nelson, capturing the popular imagination. Nelson’s column was built 1839 - 1852, their literature was written within the same time frame. Charlotte and Anne would have witnessed the construction first hand when they visited the National Gallery on a rare trip to London to see their publishers in 1848.

Now, the column is covered in scaffolding once again, this time for restoration to take place. It seems a unique chance in its history for that history not to be set in stone, but to be tweaked, albeit in a microscopic way.

May 2006

Notes

* The Brontës were great admirers of Nelson and they owed their names to his exploits.

Bronte is a town and commune of Sicily (in the province of Catania, Italy), slightly northwest of Mount Etna, on the side of the valley of the Simeto river. In 1799, King Ferdinand III of Sicily created Bronte as a Duchy, and rewarded Horatio Nelson (who had large land holdings in the area), with the title of Duke, because of his naval victory against the French. As well as being made a Duke, Nelson was given Castello Nelson, which at the time was the remains of a Benedictine Monastery. Today it is a local tourist attraction in Bronte. This allowed Nelson to sign himself ‘Nelson and Bronte’.

Just a year after Nelson had been granted his new title, Patrick Brunty, recently arrived in England from his native Ireland, changed his name to Brontë. It is generally accepted by Brontë scholars that the name change was due to Patrick’s admiration for the Admiral and a desire to recreate himself, to rise above the class into which he was born by severing links with his Irish peasant origin. The use of the diaeresis was to make sure that the name was pronounced in a more-or-less Italian way by the people around him**. He registered as an undergraduate at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1802 in the name of Patrick Brontë. His daughters would go on to make the name even more famous in their own right.

Patrick, and later the whole Brontë family, had a fascination for military leaders of their recent past. Wellington and Napoleon both appear in various guises in the juvenilia of the Brontë family and Nelson was the subject of a poem by Branwell in 1841.

** Thanks to Pietro Vazzola from Venice for this reminder.

Myths and their generation

Pictured - Cornelia Parker with Phyllis Cheney, Friday 15 September 2006



As the evening light fades in the Parsonage garden the eyes of fifty or so people, there for the official opening of the Cornelia Parker exhibition Brontëan Abstracts, are focused on the open front door.

Backlit from within, a number of speakers stand one by one on the threshold to address the audience, beginning with the person whose idea it was to invite the artist in to do all this, deputy director of the museum Andrew McCarthy. Praise and thanks are duly distributed.

We are told that most of the people involved with the project are able to be here with us today. The two psychics - Henrietta Llewelyn Davies and Coral Temple - who led a séance here a few weeks ago to see who, or what, they could make contact with are not present. “But they are here in spirit,” adds Cornelia, smiling. The Radical Brontes Festival has now started, officially.

Before BBC Culture Show presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon declares the exhibition to be properly open, he apologises for the fact that he has not prepared anything for us(“I’ve only just had my personal preview”), then gives us what is almost a full item-by-item commentary, working from memory and a little blue notebook. Impressive! The usual rook chorus gets louder and louder.

We queue to go in, and we talk (I am with my daughter Daria) with Phyllis Cheney, who at ninety is amazing - extremely articulate and perceptive. A veteran member of the Brontë Society living in Plymouth, and a frequent visitor to Haworth, she has voiced her well-researched claims to be Branwell’s great-granddaughter before, most notably in a 1996 issue of Brontë Society Transactions. “You’ll see me on a television screen inside later on,” she promises.

In the downstairs rooms, the quiet voices of the two psychics are coming out of little speakers on the floor. We find it hard to make much conventional sense out of them: occasional words and phrases can be registered. These are fragments of sound and meaning - appropriate for the occasion. The effect would be different if the crowd in the house was smaller.

Cornelia Parker’s additions, or rather enhancements, are in neat, unobtrusive frames on walls, objects connected with the Brontës seen afresh. Anne Brontë’s needle is the fallen mast of a tall ship on a bed of tangled rigging, a darn in her stocking a barred window, her stained handkerchief a record, we imagine, of when she once coughed blood into it. It might be of doubtful provenance, but what matter? This exhibition is about myths and their generation.

Emily’s hair is an underwater plant, thin fronds waving in a tropical sea, her burnt comb a series of stalagtites, her ink-splattered blotting paper worthy of display next to a Jackson Pollock, perhaps.

We talk about the blown-up deletions from the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, semantic exercises trapped under glass. Why vex rather than annoy, why conceived rather than imagined, why no sleep rather than no rest?

A grey image of Charlotte’s pen nib is nearby, transformed by the magnification, a monumental slab of split stone, a menhir.

We browse the catalogue to dip into an interview by Andrew McCarthy. Cornelia is asked “Did you want to add to the mythology or try and strip it away?” She replies:

It’s a mythology I am very captivated by, the same as everyone else. The mythology is created by people’s imaginations and what I’d like to do is find a new space within it, a new way of looking at it, by returning to the source. By taking the objects that the Brontës owned, or actual physical traces like locks of their hair, and examining these very closely to try to see something that they might not even have witnessed themselves.

We reach the television screen to watch Phyllis reading her Transactions article and talking with husband Arthur. Her great grandmother, Mary Ann Judson (b 1839) was, she is convinced, the illegitimate child of Branwell Brontë and Martha Judson. She stands beside us to watch it again. “Some people believe it, some don’t of course,” she says. I tell her that she has convinced me. “I know that Tom Winnifrith, who made a study of Branwell, is scornful, because he told me so, but I am not so sure about what Brian Wilks thinks.”

Downstairs in the shop, where there is a wine reception, I talk with the artist, mentioning that a number of people have claimed that Branwell was an ancestor over the years. “Yes,” she says, “but not all of them have the same credibility. I sensed that Phyllis was special as soon as I knew about her. I’m like a Geiger Counter!”


Richard Wilcocks

Note the date

The new four-part Jane Eyre begins on Sunday 24 September at 9pm on BBC ONE.




















The production has its own page in Wikipedia, which will no doubt be expanded shortly:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre_%282006_TV_serial%29