June Weekend - Excursion to Haddon Hall

IMS writes:

‘It was a fine Autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields: I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. Battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look.’

'Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so craggy, but yet quiet and lonely hills enough.’

The Monday excursion for Brontë Society members was to Haddon Hall, a building built of gritstone and limestone, on the banks of the River Wye in Derbyshire - one of the seats of the Duke of Rutland. The hall has been the setting for many films - one of the earliest based there was the 1924 film starring Mary Pickford - Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall. This film tells the romantic story of how Dorothy eloped with John Manners in 1563. The Manners family still hold the seat today. Haddon has played cameo roles in Pride and Prejudice and The Other Boleyn Girl  but it was the fact that the hall has been used for three Jane Eyre productions that occasioned a coach from Haworth to travel from motorway to motorway, pass the leaning steeple in Chesterfield and to pull into the car park just outside the town of Bakewell - famous for its puddings and tarts.

We were met by one of the guides who welcomed us to the Hall and who then led us through the narrow gate house and, after warning us of the very uneven ground all around, directed us towards the chapel.

‘We entered the quiet and humble temple’. All was still: The strangers had slipped in before us, they viewed the old time-stained marble tomb.’

Our very knowledgeable guide explained that film directors Fukunaga and Zefferelli and the BBC production which starred the suave Toby Stephens and the pulchritudinous Ruth Wilson had all used the inside of the chapel which, with a Norman pillar and font and Norman lancet windows, has some of the earliest masonry of the Hall. A marble copy effigy of the eighth Duke who died at the age of nine lies in the chapel and all around the walls are fresco-seccos from the early fifteenth century. Similarly, we were told, they had all used the fourteenth century kitchen which houses the only Tudor dresser in the world. Scorch marks on the timber partition walls show where candles and rushes were used for lighting.

‘The steps and banisters were of oak; the staircase window was high and latticed; both it and the long gallery looked as if they belonged to a church rather than a house.’

‘Traversing the long and matted gallery I descended the slippery steps of oak.’

We were taken into the Long Gallery which would have been used for exercise when the weather outside was inclement and the guide explained that the diamond shaped panes in the windows are set at different angles to maximise the use of the daylight. It was interesting to hear that when filming was taking place it was very cold in the Long Gallery- it being more or less impossible to heat- and the actors had to suck ice cubes so that their breath would not be seen on film.

‘It was burnt down just about harvest time. A dreadful calamity. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle.’

Our guide recalled that when the BBC decided to use pyrotechnics, smoke machines, and lighted pokers in the windows to make the fire at Thornfield really realistic the local fire brigade - who had happily been warned in advance- received over one hundred calls.

‘And then they called to him that she was on the roof; where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting.’

‘We saw him approach her; and then she yelled and gave a spring and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.’ 

We were taken outside and the part of the roof from where the stunt person playing Bertha jumped was pointed out to us. Apparently scaffolding had had to be erected and the person jumped the thirty feet on to an airbag. It looked as if it would have been quite an ordeal to jump from those battlements but at ten pounds a foot maybe it was worth it - however not for me!

‘No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers:’

We wandered in the beautiful gardens and looked down on the footbridge - seen in all the films- where Sir John Manners was waiting to whisk Dorothy away from the Hall all those years ago and we saw the meadow at the side of the river where in the BBC production Mr Rochester and Jane picnic.

It was a most enjoyable day spent at Haddon - I am sure I will not be the only one watching the DVD of the latest film version of  Jane Eyre once again and saying “I’ve been there!”

June Weekend - Excursion to Guiseley

On Sunday afternoon a minibus transported Brontë Society members to Guiseley Parish Church where nearly two hundred years ago Patrick Brontë married Maria Branwell.

The building has changed considerably since the first church was founded in the twelfth century and the oak box pews Patrick and Maria would have sat in are no longer there. However it was good to see the communion rails the couple would have seen and the plaque commemorating their marriage, which names the famous writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne as their daughters.

June weekend - Sunday Walks

A Walk to Oxenhope and Marshlands

Margaret Berry writes:

Three weeks ago, sunshine and blue skies (!!!) greeted Brontë Society members for the AGM weekend Sunday walk  to Oxenhope.  I have walked the route many times, and it has the happiest connections to the courtship and wedding of Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Bell Nicholls.  We walked up a narrow walled path to Sowdens, the home for twenty years of  the Rev W Grimshaw, and saw the  ancient barn used by John and Charles Wesley to preach.  We had to search for the commemorative plaque, which was covered in rambling roses.

Our group followed the path across the medieval  field systems, to Old Oxenhope Farm,  the route Rev Joseph Grant and Arthur Bell Nicholls walked on his June wedding morning.  There was much discussion and conjecture about their arriving at church with boots and cassocks  covered in wet mud.  

The long views across the valley are quite spectacular on a sunny day,  and compensate for the nettles and boggy ground. 

                                                    

We paused to look at Marshlands, the home of Rev Grant, and its neighbour, the Old Grammar School, attended  briefly by Branwell  Brontë to study Greek. The buildings are substantially the same as they were one hundred and fifty years ago.

A steep field led down from Bent’s house,  to the Oxenhope railway line - the  whole area was used in the iconic film The Railway Children.   Our group followed the valley path to the medieval pack horse bridge, pausing to watch two trains on the Worth Valley line. Then it was back to Haworth.

The AGM weekend entertained many more new visitors from Brussels, and we all had the opportunity to talk to them on the walk, and hope to see them  again next year.

A Walk with Ian Dewhirst


IMS writes:

 It was with the anticipation of a very interesting afternoon that members met with local historian and retired librarian Ian Dewhirst for a ‘walking/talking’ tour of the local graveyards. With his inimitable style Ian took the group to various graves in the old churchyard where they were regaled with fascinating stories. One memorial stone showed that Elizabeth Hartley had hoped to escape the harsh realities of life in nineteenth century Haworth for a new life in Australia - only to perish with two hundred and seventy other souls on the ship ‘London’. Isaac Constantin emigrated to Canada and became an ordained minister but not before he had established himself as a local poet in Haworth – one of his published poems stretched to one hundred and ninety seven pages!

The Haworth of the past was not exempt from scandal and intrigue for Ian related - round their grave - the story of the Sagar family. Mr Sagar was master of the local workhouse and his wife, who was said to procure girls to visit the couple’s bedroom, was his assistant. Mr Sagar went on trial in York for his wife’s murder by poisoning but he was perhaps saved from the gallows by the local physician, Dr Milligan, who gave evidence three times at the trial - each time his story was different - and Mr Sagar was acquitted.

Haworth’s church graveyard is certainly interesting and certainly very crowded so it is not surprising that Benjamin Herschel Babbage - the inspector who conducted an enquiry and later published a comprehensive and damning report on Haworth’s water supply and sanitation arrangements -  recommended the closure of that graveyard. It was an informative afternoon poking about amidst those ancient graves which showed that life in byegone Haworth was very hard, with whole families dying within months of one another and parents having to cope with the loss of one child after another.

In the Methodist graveyard and the new cemetery the group were brought more up to date as they were shown graves of people who could be called celebrities of a more modern day Haworth - ‘Harry the Hat’ and the balloonist Lily Cove.

Why does Heathcliff have only one name?

Richard Wilcocks writes:
A really impressive panel was lined up for us on the Saturday evening (9 June) of the AGM weekend – from left to right in the photograph, Terry Eagleton (Distinguished Professor of English Literature, Lancaster University), novelist and essayist Caryl Phillips (Professor at Yale University),  chair John McLeod (Professor at Leeds University) and our President Bonnie Greer. They were there to pass comment on a thirty-minute documentary with the title A Regular Black – The Hidden Wuthering Heights, which was shown after an introduction by its director, Adam Low.

Filmed on location in Yorkshire, Lancaster and Liverpool, it ‘examines the ambiguities of Emily Brontë’s classic novel and uncovers a shameful chapter in the hidden history of Black Britain.’ The story is located in Dentdale, home to the slave-trading Sill family, whose own history bears a strange resemblance to that of the fictional Earnshaws. The Sills were mentioned on this blog in a review of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights in November last year. The documentary features commentary by Caryl Phillips, historians Iain McCalman and Cassandra Pybus, and local historians Melinda Elder and Kim Lyon. Kim Lyon was in at the beginning of the research process back in the 1970s, and is responsible for much of the work on the adoption of an orphan boy called Richard Sutton, who was described as a ‘foundling’ when brought to Dentdale by Edmund Sill. Rather than bringing him up with the Sills’ three sons and one daughter, however, he was kept with the slaves used by the Sills instead of regular servants. Many questions are raised , many speculations sent flying by the thirty minutes of video, not least amongst  them the one about the naming of Heathcliff. Why is he given just one name, like a slave? Why is he not Heathcliff Earnshaw?

Terry Eagleton reminded us that Heathcliff is a fictional character, a ‘collection of black marks on a page’. Heathcliff is ‘nowhere’ before the beginning of the story, just as Hamlet is nowhere before the play starts.  That’s the nature of literature.  “Literature gives us the green light to speculate,” said Caryl Phillips, and Bonnie Greer agreed, describing Emily Brontë as “the greatest novelist in the English language” who provides us with “a poetic dimension we are still trying to unravel.” She told us that she was writing a screenplay based on the speculation that Emily Brontë actually met Frederick Douglass in Leeds in 1847.

“One isn’t bound to appreciate Wuthering Heights through the prism of slavery,” said Caryl Phillips. “These speculations lead us to some kind of a meditation on this great British enterprise, the Slave Trade, a meditation which began in 2007  when we marked the bicentenary of its abolition.” Liverpool, we should remember, was the biggest and busiest slaving port in Europe. Bonnie Greer said that her perception of Liverpool had changed drastically since the time she first visited, when it had been the city of the Beatles, and mentioned the William Wyler movie version of Wuthering Heights, in which the irony was in the fact that it was Cathy - Merle Oberon - who was of mixed race, a secret she kept until the day she died.

Terry Eagleton explained his case that Heathcliff is of Irish origin, a waif speaking Gaelic, one of the huge numbers passing through, or stranded in, Liverpool at the time of the Famine on their way to America: “He is an insider-outsider, a crucial figure in the English novel from Tom Jones to Harry Potter, a character brought into a domestic situation who becomes a joker in the pack, a disrupting influence… let’s examine Patrick Brontë, the foreigner who became more English than the English… and let’s not forget that Heathcliff is also a shit of the first water, relentless and pitiless.”

Caryl Phillips found Eagleton’s proposal on Heathcliff’s Irish origins to be persuasive. We should not forget Liverpool’s strong Irish connections, and the contemporary prejudice against Irish people. “Well, if we knew these things for sure, the novel would lose its attraction. We can pour into it what we need and what we want,” said Bonnie Greer.

Questions from the audience showed that most of the audience was open to the proposals made in the documentary. One member contrasted Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley to Wuthering Heights, pointing out that it was “very much more factually-based”, and another member revealed herself to be a descendant of Richard Sutton: “He was not like that at all,” she said. “Kim Lyon got it all wrong!”

Living in a Power Station

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Thanks to the member (didn't catch your name, sorry) who handed me the address of this video on YouTube. It is about the noise and shadow-flicker caused by a row of wind turbines, includes real scientific observations and is entitled Living in a Power Station.

Newsflash from the AGM

At the AGM, it was revealed that the Parsonage Director, Andrew McCarthy, will be leaving to take up a new post - with the Bradford-based Artworks - in July.

The report he made to this AGM was therefore his last. Vastly popular amongst staff and members, innovative and effective, his will be a hard act to follow.

A full appreciation of what he has done will be online soon.

Charles Dickens and the Brontës

The annual June Weekend began on Friday with a well-attended lecture in the Baptist Centre given by eminent Dickens biographer Professor Michael Slater. The subject was Charles Dickens and the Brontës. The event was part of the 2012 Dickens bicentenary celebrations and took place on the eve of the anniversary of Dickens' death.


Equipped with an edition of Bleak House and little else, Professor Slater began by pointing out that there is a complete lack of evidence that any of the Brontës ever met Dickens, and not much to say about their opinions of him, even though just about everybody in their time read his works. We can speculate, of course, and we do know that Charlotte Brontë was averse to the caricaturing style and was wary of showiness and too much self promotion: reports of all those lavish London dinner parties at the Dickens household, with pineapples studding the table, would have aroused her disapproval.


Nevertheless, significant connections have been made: few important novelists of the nineteenth century were particularly interested in children, or the way they were treated. Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë stand out as different here. Lowood and Dotheboys Hall spring to mind, and Wackford Squeers and Brocklehurst have often been put together (misleadingly) in the same club. The young Jane Eyre could be compared and contrasted with Esther Summerson quite profitably, and it has been argued that Bleak House was an influence on Villette. Professor Slater read a few paragraphs from Chapter 3 in which Esther remembers her childhood doll, the only 'person' she felt able to talk to. Miss Barbary, Esther's strict godmother, later revealed as her aunt, could be lined up alongside Jane's aunt...


Theatre audiences in 1848 watching a Jane Eyre adaptation which had been rushed on to a stage not long after the book's publication were addressed by a servant at Lowood who spoke about the terrible Yorkshire schools which were full of unwanted children from the South - showing that Lowood was perceived by the playwright(s) as equivalent to Dotheboys Hall, revealed Dr Patsy Stoneman in question time. The Yorkshire Schools were closed down because of the outrage provoked by Dickens, but Cowan Bridge survived Jane Eyre.

Has a precedent been set?

Plans to build a set of four enormous wind turbines in Norfolk have been rejected in a recent High Court ruling. A legal precedent could have been set, according to the CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England).

The turbines were going to be erected in an area of outstanding natural beauty near the Norfolk Broads and the coast...

Read the BBC report :  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-18263811

Landscape threatened by turbines wins gold at Chelsea

Photo from Welcome to Yorkshire

My first Chelsea and I get gold, it doesn't get much better than this! I'm so proud of what we have achieved. I hope the high profile medal inspires more people to come to Yorkshire to see for themselves the landscape that brought gold to the garden.

These are the words (as quoted by Martin Wainwright in the Guardian’s Northerner Blog) of Tracy Foster, the Leeds garden designer , who worked closely with the Parsonage while she was creating her gold-winning entry for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. It also collected the People's Garden award.

The materials for the Brontë Garden, which has had a non-stop stream of admirers since the Show opened, were sourced as far as possible from the area around Haworth, including boulders from Dove Stones Moor. Those Chelsea admirers who have actually visited Yorkshire and walked up to Top Withens will surely have recognized the little bridge of slabs across the beck near the Brontë Falls.

And how many of those admirers know that the wonderful Yorkshire landscape which inspired the garden is now under threat from giant turbines, which will be visible for miles across the moors? Turbines can be beautiful, I hear some of their defenders claim, a monster-sized equivalent of windmills in the Netherlands.

In which case, we can no doubt look forward to next year’s Yorkshire entries for Chelsea which incorporate them looming in the background...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/may/22/welcome-to-yorkshire-garden-chelsea-flower-show-charlotte-emily-anne-bronte-haworth/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-18156360

http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/update/2012-05-27/hat-trick-of-wins-for-yorkshire-gardens/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcrMQNylbiQ/

New Spring/Summer Contemporary Arts Programme

Parsonage Press Release:

Costumes from the recent film adaptation of Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska (in the photo), Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell and Dame Judi Dench will be on show at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in a new exhibition which opens on Thursday 3 May. Visitors to the museum will be able to see some of the original costumes worn by the cast, displayed in the period rooms of the Parsonage. The exhibition is one of the highlights of the Bronte Parsonage Museum’s new season of contemporary arts events which is announced today. 


Artist Rebecca Chesney will be exhibiting new visual art work created during her year-long residency investigating the Brontes and the weather, in her exhibition Hope’s whisper which will open on 22^nd June. Landscape photographer Simon Warner is artist in residence 2012 for the Watershed Landscape project, a three year programme to enhance, promote and care for the moorland areas of the South Pennines. His exhibition, Ways to the stone house, will open on 28 September and feature a series of tiny landscape films, shot on the moors above Haworth, for display in the period rooms of the Bronte Parsonage Museum. The exhibition will also document the progressive ruination of Top Withens (believed to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights), using photographs from the Parsonage archives as well as iconic images by Bill Brandt, Fay Godwin and Alexander Keighley, and will include an original sketch of Top Withens by Sylvia Plath, made on her first visit with Ted Hughes in 1956. Watershed Landscape is managed by Pennine Prospects supported by Bradford Museums and Galleries. As part of his exhibition, Simon Warner will also be curating a one-day symposium on Landscape and Literature in Haworth on Saturday 6 October. The full programme will be released shortly, and the day’s key note speaker will beSimon Armitage. 


Also visiting Haworth as part of the new season of events will be novelist Victoria Hislop on 5 July, and Dickens scholar Michael Slater will be discussing the Brontes and Dickens on the afternoon of 8 June. On the evening of 9 June, panellists Bonnie Greer, Terry Eagleton and Caryl Phillipswill be discussing the themes of race and slavery in Wuthering Heights, following a screening of the documentary A Regular Black, which explores the connections between the fictional Earnshaws in Wuthering Heights and the slave-owning families of Yorkshire. The museum will also be hosting the third Bronte Festival of Women’s Writing this summer. The weekend of readings, talks, workshops and family events will take place 31 August- 2 September and the festival will open with an event with novelist Sadie Jones on 31 August. The full festival programme will be announced in June. 


The Bronte Parsonage Museum’s contemporary arts programme is funded by Arts Council England and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. A full list of events is detailed below: 


Thursday 3 May until Thursday 20 September Costumes from Jane Eyre 2011  Brontë Parsonage Museum
An exhibition of the Oscar-nominated costumes from the 2011 film adaptation of Jane Eyre, displayed in the period rooms of the museum. The designer, Michael O’Connor, previously won an Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Costume Design for the 2009 film The Duchess.Exhibition free with admission to the museum 


Friday 8 June, 2pm Dickens and the Brontës: Heritage Authors  West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth


To mark the 2012 Dickens bicentenary, and on the eve of the anniversary of Dickens’ death in 1870, Michael Slater compares and contrasts the connections between Charles Dickens and the Brontës as ‘heritage authors’; their impact on national culture, the creation of societies of dedicated enthusiasts, and the myths that have been built around their lives and works. Michael Slater is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London, past President of the International Dickens Fellowship and of the Dickens Society of America, and former editor of the journal 'The Dickensian'. His biography Charles Dickens was published in 2009. Tickets £6 and should be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188. 


Saturday 9 June, 8pm Origin and slavery in Wuthering Heights  West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth


The casting of a mixed race Heathcliff in Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights put issues of race into the spotlight. Who is Heathcliff? Where does his destructive anger come from? Could Emily Brontë have been hinting at a darker secret than previously imagined? The documentary A Regular Black: The Hidden Wuthering Heights examines themes of slavery and race coded into the text, and uncovers parallels between the fictional Earnshaws and the slave-owning families of Yorkshire. Following a screening of the documentary, panellists Terry Eagleton, Bonnie Greer and Caryl Phillips will tease out some of the themes. The evening will offer a fascinating new reading of the novel, and the audience will be invited to join in the debate. Professor Terry Eagleton is one of Britain’s most influential literary critics. He is Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, and has written many books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (1995) and Why Marx was Right (2011). Bonnie Greer OBE is a playwright, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She is the author of Entropy (2009), Obama Song (2009) and the biography Langston Hughes: the Value Of Contradiction (2011). Bonnie Greer is Deputy Chairman of the British Museum and President of the Brontë Society. Caryl Phillips is a novelist, playwright and critic. His novel A Distant Shore won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and Crossing The River was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Caryl Phillips is Professor of English at Yale University.
 Tickets £12 and should be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.


Friday 22 June – Wednesday 5 September  Hope’s whisper: Rebecca Chesney
Bronte Parsonage Museum


The Brontës use descriptions of weather at key emotional points in their novels, and their own daily lives were strongly influenced by the elements. In 2011 artist Rebecca Chesney installed a weather station at the Bronte Parsonage Museum, and working with a group of local weather collectors and Haworth primary school, recorded weather patterns for 12 months. Rebecca has cross referenced this meteorological data with descriptions of weather in the Brontes’ letters and novels to create new visual artwork for exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The exhibition continues at South Square Gallery in Thornton (the Bronte birthplace), from 6 to 29 July. www.southsquarecentre.co.ukYou can read more about the weather project on Rebecca’s blog: www.bronteweather.blogspot.com Rebecca Chesney is an artist based in Preston. Her work looks at rural and urban landscapes, changing environments and human activity. Previous projects include Diligent Observationat Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2011), Five Rivers at Morecambe Bay (2008) and Death Equals All Things, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery (2007). Exhibition free with admission to the museum. 


Thursday 26 July, 7pm  Literary Weather  Brontë Parsonage Museum


To accompany her exhibition, Rebecca Chesney will be in conversation with writer and critic Alexandra Harris on the cultural significance of weather. Alexandra Harris is the author ofRomantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, which won the Guardian First Book Award in 2010. Alexandra Harris is currently writing a cultural history of weather. The evening will explore how the Brontës’ use of literary weather compares with other writers, and will be accompanied with readings of ‘weathery’ passages from literature. The evening takes place at the museum after closing, and tea and cake will be served. Places are limited to 14. Tickets £16 and must be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188. 


Thursday 5 July, 7.30pm Victoria Hislop  West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth


Victoria Hislop visits Haworth to discuss her work and latest novel, The Thread.Victoria Hislop read English at Oxford, and worked in publishing and as a journalist before becoming a novelist. Her first two novels, The Island and The Return, were Sunday Times number one bestsellers and have been translated into more than twenty languages. Victoria won the Newcomer of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2007 and the Richard & Judy Summer Read competition. Her third novel, The Thread was published in November 2011. Victoria Hislop has written the introduction to the White’s edition of Wuthering Heights and describes the novel as “the book that changed me…it woke me up”. Tickets £6 and should be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188 


Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing  Friday 31 – Sunday 2 September  Brontë Parsonage Museum and other venues in Haworth


The festival of women’s writing will be back for its third year, with an increased focus on creative writing and participation. The full programme will be announced in June and will include creative writing workshops, practical activities and talks by prominent and emerging women writers. We’re delighted to announce that the 2012 festival will be opened by novelist Sadie Jones. If you wish to receive festival details as soon as they are released, please contact jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk to join the mailing list. 


Friday 31 August, 7.30pm  Sadie JonesWest Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth


Sadie Jones’s first novel, The Outcast (2008) was the winner of the Costa First Novel Award. It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Small Wars (2009) was longlisted for the Orange Prize. The Uninvited Guests (2012) is her third novel. 


Friday 28 September – Monday 3 December  Ways to the stone house: Simon Warner  Brontë Parsonage Museum


Landscape photographer and filmmaker Simon Warner is artist in residence 2012 for the Watershed Landscape project, a three year programme to enhance, promote and care for the moorland areas of the South Pennines. Simon Warner will create a series of tiny landscape films, shot on the moors above Haworth, for display in the period rooms of the Bronte Parsonage Museum. The exhibition will also document the progressive ruination of Top Withens, using photographs from the Parsonage archives as well as iconic images by Bill Brandt, Fay Godwin and Alexander Keighley, and will include an original sketch of Top Withens by Sylvia Plath, made on her first visit with Ted Hughes in 1956. Watershed Landscape is managed by Pennine Prospects supported by Bradford Museums and Galleries. Simon Warner is a landscape filmmaker and photographer with research interests in early photography and optical history. Recent work includes Overworlds and Underworlds for the Cultural Olympiad, and The Arts of Place in Bradford (2010). His solo exhibitions include A Guide to Yorkshire Rivers at Impressions Gallery and Leaving Home at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Transported (2009) was a residency on the 36 bus route between Leeds and Harewood. Simon Warner was long-listed for the Northern Art Prize 2011. Exhibition free with admission to the museum Unbounded Moor: A Symposium on Landscape and Literature

Saturday 6 October, 10.30am – 4pm  West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth


As part of his Watershed Landscape residency Simon Warner will curate a one day symposium exploring the theme of ‘Landscape and Literature’. The day will feature a keynote address from poet Simon Armitage, as well as contributions from artists, experts and academics. Full details will follow in our October programme but for further information contactjenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188. For further information please contact the Arts Officer:01535 640188jenna.holmes@bronte.org.ukwww.bronte.info  

Thornton Moor Test Mast - Brontë Society Press Release

The Brontë Society is very disappointed with the decision to grant planning permission to Banks Renewables for a 60m wind mast on Thornton Moor. 

We feel that this decision demonstrates a regrettable lack of consideration for a heritage landscape which is unique, as well as a complete disregard for the negative impact which this will have upon the environment and the local economy.   Although the wind mast itself will be in place for a limited period, after which the mast will be removed, the structure will, for that period of time, be visible from the Haworth moorlands, and is likely to be followed up with four enormous turbines.  

The Brontë Society feels there should be no further pollution of the skyline and regrets the erection of this structure which, even if of a temporary nature, has implications for the future permanent defacement of the views from the Haworth moorlands. Haworth and its moorlands have international cultural and historical significance and any proposals which have an adverse impact on this significance are to be disapproved of.  

Chairman of The Brontë Society Council, Sally McDonald, said, "These moorlands inspired and are reflected in the writings of the Brontës especially Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.  The wild and beautiful moorland is a significant part of the Brontë story.  

Interest in the lives and works of the Brontës brings thousands of visitors to Haworth and Yorkshire year in year out.  Erecting a substantial wind mast and still more so four huge turbines three years from now will change the character of this moorland forever."

In recent weeks The Brontë Society has received an overwhelming level of interest and support from all over the world and we would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude and to reaffirm our commitment to Haworth’s cultural and historical significance. 

Contacts & Further Information:                             

Sally McDonald (Chairman, Brontë Society c/o Brontë Parsonage Museum 01535 642323)

Andrew McCarthy (Director, Brontë Parsonage Museum  01535 640194 - andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk

Giant turbines on Thornton Moor?

Interest in the Bronte Society's opposition to the proposed Thornton Moor wind mast escalated last week with extensive coverage in three national newspapers on Friday (The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail) and coverage in many local papers both nationwide and overseas. 

Today has seen a consolidation of this interest with the BBC recording at the Parsonage ready to broadcast from there tomorrow morning (BBC Breakfast). Parsonage Director Andrew McCarthy was interviewed by Radio Leeds today. 

ITV's Calendar News asked for an update and have said they will be monitoring the decision and the Society's response to that decision. A large number of Society members and non members have emailed offers of support.

The decision about the mast will be made by Bradford councillors on Wednesday 11th.  There have been over one hundred public objections and the community of Denholme Gate has submitted a petition.


Thornton Moor, an inspiration for all three Brontë Sisters and a huge influence on their writing, could be home to four turbines, each more than one hundred metres in height, within a year, if the "first stage' data-gathering mast is allowed to be installed. This is the plan of Banks Renewables, the company behind the scheme.

Attack on Rawfolds Mill - commemoration

There's a photo shoot at 11 am today at Roe Head School (in the photo, now renamed Holly Bank) in Mirfield organised by the Reporter newspaper. A number of people will be there in role, in costume, for example Major David Pinder will appear as William Cartwright, the owner of Rawfolds Mill, which was attacked by Luddites in 1812 following similar attacks on other mills in the West Riding. Major Pinder will give an account of what happened two centuries ago on Saturday.

The two hundredth anniversary is on the 11 and 12 April.

In aid of Holly Bank School, Imelda Marsden will present Two Speakers with A Difference, in commemoration of the attacks, at the school on Saturday 14 April at 2.15pm, in the room where Charlotte Brontë once taught. Tickets are six pounds. The first talk is about the attack, and the second about Shirley.

One of the raffle prizes is half a gallon of 'Luddite beer' which will be drunk at the Shears pub in Liversedge, once a meeting place for the followers of General Ned Ludd.

The Garden of Oblivion - exhibition

Ian M. Emberson writes:

I have been to many art exhibitions, but this one is unique in having magnifying glasses dangling beside the drawings !  Seen from a distance Franklin's ten pictures appear as nothing but areas of vague grey mistiness.  Only as one gets closer do various dream-like concepts emerge – people, houses, skies and vast distances of  moorland.  There is no attempt at literal illustrations of  the Brontë life-stories, novels or poems.  The artist has taken all these elements into himself, and reinvented them through the power of  his imagination.  Nine year old Amy Jessett said it all when she wrote on the visitor's sheet : “As exciting as opening a book you've never read”.

'The Garden of  Oblivion' - exhibition of ink drawings by Franklin Santos Silva at the Brontë  Parsonage – 2 March to 5 April 2012

The Brontës' piano on Radio 4

On BBC Radio 4 next Tuesday 13 March at 11.30am, there will be a half hour programme about the cabinet piano and music at the Parsonage, produced by Simon Hollis, with Catherine Bott (soprano)  and Jonathan Cohen (piano).


Listen to the programme here (limited period) 


Repeat broadcast: Saturday 17 March at at 15.30 on BBC Radio 4

Restoration expert Ken Forrest

In 2010, for the first time in over 160 years the Brontë family’s cabinet piano was heard again at their former home in Haworth. This historic occasion took place at the Parsonage in June of that year following months of complex conservation work, made possible through the generosity of Florida member Virginia Esson. The piano was originally made by John Green of Soho Square.

It is not known for certain when the Brontës acquired their piano. Branwell Brontë developed a talent for both piano and church organ and it was possibly at his instigation that the instrument was acquired. Emily was described as playing ‘with precision and brilliancy’, and during her time as a student in Brussels, her ability warranted the services of the best available professor of music. Anne preferred to sing, though she was able to accompany herself on the piano. The family exception was Charlotte, whose poor eyesight proved an impediment to sight reading.

The piano has an interesting history: it was lent to Mr Grant, the curate of Oxenhope by Patrick Brontë after his children’s deaths, and then sold at an auction of Brontë items in 1861. It then passed through numerous hands before being put up for sale at Sothebys in 1916 as part of the collection of J.H. Dixon. Dixon’s wife was not satisfied with the price offered and withdrew the piano from the sale, presenting it instead to the Parsonage in memory of her husband.

The piano was valued by many of these former owners as a relic of the remarkable Brontë family. Over the years little interest has been taken in it as a musical instrument and it was no longer in playable condition. The piano has undergone a lengthy and complex restoration process carried out by Ken Forrest, a specialist conservator.  Many of the internal workings were either damaged or missing and the restoration was further complicated by the piano’s rarity and the lack of similar instruments available for comparison.

Cabinet pianos were popular in the 1830s and 1840s but today are rather unusual when compared to the more valuable pianos such as the Grand.

Charlotte Brontë's The Secret in Italian

Maddalena De Leo send us news of the recent publication in Italian of her translation of The Secret. She also mentions how happy she is to know that the Red House has been saved. She made a point of visiting it in 2009, and was one of those who emailed her opinion during the campaign to keep it from enforced closure.

News release:

The juvenile work The Secret by Charlotte Brontë has been published in Italian for the first time on 2^nd March. The translator and editor of the little book published by Albus is Prof. Maddalena De Leo who already translated and edited Brontë’s Henry Hastings in 2009 also for Albusedizioni and other Juvenilia as Mina Laury and Stancliffe Hotel etc. (Ripostes).

The Secret focuses on Charlotte’s heroine, Marian Hume, the child bride of the dark, brooding and temperamental Marquis of Douro (also known as Arthur Wellesley II and the Duke of Zamorna, the oldest son of Charlotte’s hero, the fictionalized Duke of Wellington). The story is narrated by the Marquis’ younger brother, Charles Wellesley.

The manuscript of The Secret was first documented by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte’s biographer, who probably saw it just after her death. The first page of The Secret was reproduced in Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, which was published in 1857. The manuscript was also included in Shorter’s The Brontës: Life and Letters, which was published in 1908.

No information is available on the manuscript’s whereabouts between 1915 and 1973, and it was presumed lost. However, the manuscript was rediscovered among the personal papers of Evelyn Wadsworth Symington, wife of United States Senator Stuart Symington, after her death in 1973.

The Italian book can boast a colourful cover and an exhaustive introduction by the editor herself.

Charlotte Brontë, Il segreto, translated into Italian and edited by Maddalena De Leo, Albusedizioni, 2012, pp. 78, euros 7,5

The book is available on Albusedizioni site

Charlotte Brontë's French

Sue Lonoff writes:
How good was Charlotte Brontë’s French in 'L’Ingratitude'?  As we know, it is a very early devoir, written a month and a day after Charlotte and Emily arrived at the Pensionnat Heger. 


In this text of fifty-eight lines, Brian Bracken has identified fourteen errors. However, eight of the fourteen are the same error: Charlotte used the imperfect tense rather than the passé simple. For example, she wrote ‘mangeait’, ‘he was eating’ rather than ‘mangea’, ‘he ate’. She made one mistake in gender (‘un’ rather than ‘une’ odeur) and one in pronoun case (‘le faisait’ rather than ‘lui faisait). She hyphenated a word incorrectly; she forgot to make ‘grand’ plural before ‘seigneurs’; she put an adjective before instead of after its noun; and she used one plural verb rather than a singular. 


Errors of this kind are commonly made by English people writing in French. Still, ‘L’Ingratitude’ shows that Charlotte came to Brussels with a fairly solid grammar base and an extensive vocabulary. Her French was not yet supple. ‘L’Ingratitude’ is stiffer than the essays she would write subsequently. Its punctuation is also erratic, but that is an issue in all of her writing, English or French. Nevertheless, she shows her teacher that she can write with imagination and charm
 

L'Ingratitude - translated by Sue Lonoff (Harvard)

This is the link to the full text of Charlotte Brontë's homework in The London Review of Books. Perhaps it should be published in the future as a little booklet with illustrations...

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n05/charlotte-bronte/lingratitude?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3405&hq_e=el&hq_m=1549840&hq_l=4&hq_v=a538576075

Hartshead fundraiser

Christa Ackroyd, Brontë Society member and presenter on BBC TV Look North, is to give a talk about the Brontës at Hartshead Church on Saturday 31 March starting at 7.30pm. For tickets  £7.50 with refreshments contact John Ferret  - Ecrb@Live.co.uk   & 01924 403602. This is raise  funds for the church. (from Imelda Marsden)

(Patrick Brontë was parson at St Peter's, Hartshead (near Cleckheaton, now part of Kirklees) between 1811 and 1815. He met his future wife Maria Branwell in Rawdon, now part of Leeds, about twelve miles from Hartshead, in 1811. They married in Guiseley, also now in Leeds.)