Charlotte Brontë

by Claire Harman

  ins.34 Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810–65), chalk drawing by George Richmond, 1851 (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

  ins.35 Ellen Nussey (1817–97), anonymous photograph, c. 1875 (reproduced by permission of Bradford Libraries)

  ins.36 Carte-de-visite photograph, probably of Ellen Nussey, c. 1855–6 (© Brontë Society)

  ins.37 Margaret Wooler (1792–1885), photograph, c. 1870 (© Brontë Society)

  ins.38 Mary Taylor (1817–93), photograph, c. 1870 (© Brontë Society)

  ins.39 Carte-de-visite photograph of Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls (1819–1906), c. 1864 (© Brontë Society)

  ins.40 Patrick Brontë in old age (© Brontë Society)

  ins.41 Opening of Brontë Parsonage Museum, 1928 (© Brontë Society)

  ins.42 Charlotte Brontë, fair copy of Jane Eyre, 1847 (© The British Library Board, Add. 43474 f. 1)

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CLAIRE HARMAN is the author of Sylvia Townsend Warner, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; Fanny Burney; Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson; and Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has taught at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester in England and Columbia University in New York.

  ALSO BY CLAIRE HARMAN

  Collected Poems of Sylvia Townsend Warner (ed.)

  Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography

  The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner (ed.)

  Fanny Burney: A Biography

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays and Poems (ed.)

  Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson

  Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

  Maria Branwell in 1799, age sixteen. (Credit ins.1)

  Patrick Brontë as a young man. (Credit ins.2)

  The house in Market Street, Thornton, where Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë were born. (Credit ins.3)

  The oldest known picture of Haworth Parsonage, an ambrotype taken from the church tower in the 1850s. It shows the building as the Brontës knew it, before the extension and alterations made by Reverend Brontë’s successor, John Wade. (Credit ins.4)

  Plan of Haworth, 1853, drawn up by the Board of Health, showing the top of the town and (from left to right) the parsonage, the church school, the church, the post office and the Black Bull pub. (Credit ins.5)

  A view of Haworth in the early nineteenth century, showing Bridgehouse Beck and Ivy Bank Mill in the foreground and St. Michael’s Church and the Parsonage on the hill in the distance. A corner of the weaving shed at Bridgehouse Mill is visible at the bottom right. (Credit ins.6)

  The interior of Haworth old church in the 1860s, much as the Brontës would have known it, showing the old gallery in the south-east corner, the organ loft suspended above the centre of the church and Reverend Brontë’s pulpit along the south wall. The family’s marble memorial stone (reinstated in the new church) can be seen in the distance, on the east wall. (Credit ins.7)

  Cowan Bridge School in its first year, 1824. (Credit ins.8)

  Charlotte’s drawing of Roe Head School. (Credit ins.9)

  Four of Charlotte’s minuscule manuscripts: her earliest surviving story, “There was once a little girl and her name was Ane” (top left), and three issues of “The Young Men’s Magazine,” from 1830. (Credit ins.10)

  Emily’s Diary Paper for 26 June 1837, with a sketch of Emily herself (on the right) and Anne writing at the dining table, with the tin box in which they kept the diaries at her elbow. (Credit ins.11)

  Arthur Wellesley, later Marquis of Douro, Duke of Zamorna and King of Angria, as drawn by Charlotte, c. 1834. (Credit ins.12)

  Branwell Brontë, a self-portrait. (Credit ins.13)

  Emily Jane Brontë, by Branwell Brontë—the only surviving fragment of a larger portrait known as the Gun Group. (Credit ins.14)

  Anne Brontë in 1833, age thirteen, drawn by Charlotte. (Credit ins.15)

  The Brontë Sisters: Branwell’s portrait of Anne, Emily and Charlotte, dating from about 1834, with his own image painted over in the centre. The damage to the canvas was done during decades of storage on the top of a wardrobe in Banagher, where the second Mrs. Arthur Bell Nicholls found it after her husband’s death in 1906. (Credit ins.16)

  The rue d’Isabelle, Brussels, in the 1850s, showing the cathedral in the distance and the Pensionnat Heger, with its courtyard and tree-lined garden, on the left. Most of the street was destroyed in the early years of the twentieth century in a radical restructuring of roads in the quarter. (Credit ins.17)

  The interior of the Cathedral of SS-Michel-et-Gudule in Brussels in 1840, three years before Charlotte made her confession there. (Credit ins.18)

  The Heger family, 1846, by Ange François, showing Constantin Heger in the background and Zoë Heger surrounded by her children. (Credit ins.19)

  Part of Charlotte’s letter to Constantin Heger, dated 8 January 1845, showing how the paper was torn up and then meticulously mended with thread.

  The prospectus that Charlotte and her sisters produced in 1844 for the school that never opened. (Credit ins.20)

  A young woman’s head drawn by Charlotte Brontë in the copy of Russell’s General Atlas of Modern Geography that Charlotte took with her to Brussels in 1842-3. The face has the large eyes, prominent brow, long nose and twisted mouth that Charlotte herself was said to have had: could this be a self-portrait? (Credit ins.21)

  Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond, 1850. The only professional image of Charlotte to have been done from life. (Credit ins.22)

  William Weightman, Reverend Brontë’s charming curate, in about 1840. The drawing is attributed to Charlotte. (Credit ins.23)

  A faint pencil sketch of Arthur Bell Nicholls, “when he first went to Haworth” (1845), very likely to have been made by Charlotte. (Credit ins.24)

  The dining room of Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontë sisters wrote their books, with the original table that they walked around while discussing their work together. (Credit ins.25)

  The autographs of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, provided for their first fan, Frederick Enoch of Warwick. (Credit ins.26)

  Title page of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, the sisters’ spectacularly unsuccessful first book, published in 1846. (Credit ins.27)

  A Parody: Branwell’s bleak cartoon showing himself being challenged by Death to a fight. (Credit ins.28)

  Charlotte’s charming young publisher, George Smith. (Credit ins.29)

  William Smith Williams, Charlotte’s valued editor and correspondent, c. 1860. (Credit ins.30)

  Charlotte and Anne reveal their identities to George Smith at his offices in Cornhill in July 1848, a scene imagined by Joan Hassall. (Credit ins.31)

  William Makepeace Thackeray. (Credit ins.32)

  Harriet Martineau. (Credit ins.33)

  Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. A chalk drawing by George Richmond, 1851. (Credit ins.34)

  Ellen Nussey in late middle age. (Credit ins.35)

  Carte-de-visite photograph dating from 1855–6, sometimes thought to be of Charlotte Brontë, but more likely to be Ellen Nussey. (Credit ins.36)

  Margaret Wooler in her later years. (Credit ins.37)

  Mary Taylor in late middle age. (Credit ins.38)

  Patrick Brontë in old age, showing the steely regard Mrs. Gaskell noted. (Credit ins.40)

  A carte-de-visite photograph of Arthur Bell Nicholls, c. 1864. (Credit ins.39)

  Crowds surging up Church Lane in Haworth on the day that the Parsonage opened as the Brontë Parsonage Museum in 1928. The building in the background is the church school, erected in 1832. (Credit ins.41)

  The first page of Charlotte’s fair copy of Jane Eyre, 1847. (Credit ins.42)

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