23. NewTestament (publication details missing with title page): HAOBP:bb5, BPM. On the first page of the text, for example, Branwell has written ‘P B Bront¯e. Began Matthew. Nov 13 1829 in latin.’ The date may possibly read ‘1828’.
24. W.M. Thackeray to WSW, 23 Oct 1847 [L&L, ii, 149].
25. John Dryden, The Works of Virgil Translated into English Verse (London, 1824): HAOBP:bb64, BPM.
26. Three fragments of notes and translations from the Latin by Emily, one of which is dated 13 March 1838, are preserved in KSC. Anne bought R. Valpy’s textbook, Delectus Sententiarum et Historiarum (London, 1842) inscribing it ‘Anne Brontë Thorp Green – November 1843’: HAOBP:bb226, BPM.
27. See, for instance, C.K. Shorter, The Brontës and their Circle (London, 1914), 429; WG CB, 24, 44; WG EB, 12, 27, 32; John Hewish, Emily Brontë: A Critical and Biographical Study (London, 1969), 34–5. The Brontës’ use of Keighley Mechanics’ Institute library was first suggested in Clifford Whone, ‘Where the Brontës Borrowed Books’, BST:11:60:344–58, which includes the 1841 library catalogue.
28. Ian Dewhirst, ‘The Rev Patrick Brontë and the Keighley Mechanics’ Institute’, BST:14:75:35–7; Keighley Mechanics’ Institute, Annual Reports, 1833–43, 1847–61, Keighley. One of the Brontës’ chief men, Edward Baines jnr, editor of the Leeds Mercury, gave the Institute’s inaugural address on 21 March 1825: LM, 26 Mar 1825 p.3. For examples of lectures see ibid., 17 Sept 1825 p.3; 26 Nov 1825 p.3, Bradford & Wakefield Chronicle, 10 Dec 1825 p.2. Lectures by William West, a chemist from Leeds, were attended by ‘a respectable audience consisting of the principal ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood, together with members of the Mechanics’ Institute’: ibid., 17 Dec 1825 p.2.
29. Catalogue of Books Contained in the Library of Ponden Hall (Keighley, n.d.), BPM. I am indebted for most of my references to Keighley circulating libraries to the late Professor Everard Flintoff’s unpublished preface to an intended edition of Branwell’s translations of Horace’s Odes.
30. CB to EN, 26 June 1848: MS HM 24463 p.2, Huntington [LCB, ii, 81]. Tom Winnifrith, The Brontës and their Background (London, 1973), 84ff dismisses the idea that the Brontës used a circulating library but Charlotte implicitly suggested they did: she was pleased Aunt Branwell had decided to subscribe to Fraser’s Magazine because ‘there would be no possibility of borrowing, or obtaining a work of that description from a circulating library’: CB to PBB, 17 May 1832: MS Gr. A p.3, BPM [LCB, i, 112]. It is worth noting that there was a subscription library in Haworth: I have been unable to find out when it was established but its sale on Easter Monday 1844 was described as a ‘mad project’: BO, 28 Mar 1844 p.5.
31. Gordon Bottomley, Memoir of Alfred Bottomley reprinted from New Church Magazine (Jan 1932), 8, Keighley.
32. [Benjamin Binns], ‘The Brontës and the Brontë Country: A Chat with One who Knew Them’, BO, 17 Feb 1894 p.6; Keighley & Haworth Argus, 2 Jan 1855 and 1 Apr 1855: this newspaper had ceased publishing by November 1855 when the first issue of the Keighley Advertiser & Airedale Courant was published to fill the gap caused by its demise. Thomas Duckett Hudson of 32 High Street is listed as a bookseller and druggist in White, i, 685–6.
33. The Keighley Visitor, a temperance magazine, was published monthly from October 1853 by Robert Aked, ‘stationer’, of Low Street, Keighley; he also printed the Haworth Church hymnsheets and two of Patrick’s works, The Signs of the Times (1835) and A Brief Treatise on … Baptism (1836). Aked is listed as a printer and having a circulating library in Baines, i, 219.
34. CA, i, 4says Driver was the local doctor but I have been unable to trace any doctor of this name in local directories or Haworth church registers. Revd Jonas Driver A.M. died aged 35 and was buried on 22 December 1831: his death would tie in with the cessation of the loan and Aunt Branwell’s decision the following May to subscribe to Fraser’s Magazine which Charlotte considered a poor substitute: Burials, Haworth; CB to PBB, 17 May 1832: MS Gr. A p.3, BPM [LCB, i, 112].
35. CB, The History of the Year, 12 Mar 1829: MS Bon 80(11) p.1, BPM [JB CBJ, 2].
36. O’Bronte appears, for example, in ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’, BM, xxiii (1828), 779, 800; ibid., xxix (1831), 1.
37. Aesop’s Fables were the inspiration for the play ‘Our Fellows’: CB, The History of the Year, 12 Mar 1829: MS Bon 80(11) p.3, BPM [JB CBJ, 2–3]. The influence of Arabian Nights’ Entertainment and Sir Charles Morrell’s Tales of the Genii (London, 1824) is obvious throughout the early juvenilia: see, for example, CB, ‘Silence’, YMM for Nov 1830, 26 Aug 1830: MS BS 12 pp.3–10, BPM [CA, i, 241–55, wrongly dated to 16 Aug]. For a discussion of this influence see CA, EW, 18, 30, 52, 106. Revd John Winterbotham accused Patrick of quoting fables from Dyche’s Spelling Book (Chester, 1801) in his 3 recent letters to the Leeds Intelligencer and cites several examples: LM, 8 Mar 1834 p.6 (but see below, p.1034 n.54). Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather, inscribed ‘A New Year’s Gift by Miss E.B. to her dear little nephew and nieces, Patrick, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1828’, is referred to in a footnote in ECG, Life, (London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1905), 125.
38. See, for example, Brontë copies of Bewick woodcuts: HAOBP:P.Br A2, A3, B1, B2.5, C3.5, C9, E2 and Bon 33, BPM [A&S nos. 333–4, 180–1, 14, 26, 307–8]. Bewick’s Select Fables was first published in 1776 and Fables of Aesop in 1818.
39. A&S, 22–5; ‘ZZ of Keighley’, ‘Tribute to the late John Bradley of Keighley’ poem and note, York Courant, 29 Feb 1844 p.7; Anon., Keighley Past and Present (London and Keighley, 1858), 98; William Dearden, BO, 27 June 1861 p.7. Martha Brown’s brother-in-law showed Emma Cortazzo Branwell’s copy of Hogarth’s ‘Idle Apprentices’ in 1882: it was sold at the Binns’ sale of Brontë Relics, 27 Jan 1886, lot 385, BPM; Arnold, ‘The Reminiscences of Emma Huidekoper Cortazzo: A Friend of Ellen Nussey’, 226; A&S no.191.
40. Sunderland was teaching Emily and Anne by 1834 as he is mentioned in EJB/AB, Diary Paper, 24 Nov 1834: MS Bon 131 p.2, BPM [JB BLL, 29–30] but Branwell wrote a story on music paper in 1828, suggesting that they were already having music lessons then: PBB, History of the Rebellion in My Fellows, 1828: MS BS 112, BPM. [Benjamin Binns], BO, 17 Feb 1894 p.6says Branwell had drawing and painting lessons with Plummer; Binns either confused Plummer with Bradley or mistook the subject of the lessons, which are more likely to have been academic. A&S, 34 n.40 suggest it was Thomas Plummer jnr who gave the lessons: although he appears as a portrait painter in the 1851 census, he was barely 18 in 1829 and unlikely then to be in a position to give tuition.
41. The barrel and the lion are HAOBP: H163(1) and (2); a top (HAOBP: H160) and a set of bricks (HAOBP: H161) were found under the parsonage floorboards in 1949. For the ninepins see below, nn. 42 and 61. The dolls in linen and muslin frocks, one with a hat, were sold at the Hodgson Sale of Brontë Relics, 6 July 1933, lot 208, BPM. The sexton’s wife showed Charles Hale the doll’s cradle in November 1861; it was sold at Sotheby’s sale of the contents of Robinson Brown’s Museum of Brontë Relics, 2 July 1898, lot 65; [Charles Hale], ‘An American Visitor at Haworth, 1861’: BST:15:77:128. The tiny tea service, with the legend ‘Ladies all i pray make free And tell me how you like your tea’ on the saucers is HAOBP:H167(1–4); a child’s plate portraying a girl in a cart with the words ‘What pleasure fills my little heart When seated in thy wooden cart To see thee act the horse’s part My Brother’ is HAOBP:H157 and a toy iron, arbitrarily associated with Emily because she was the housekeeper in later life is HAOBP:H165, BPM.
42. PBB, The History of the Young Men, 15 Dec 1830: MS Ashley 2468 pp.1, 8 n.3, BL [Neufeldt, i, 138, 153].
43. Leyland, i, 63–4.
44. CB, The History of the Year, 12 Mar 1829: MS Bon 80(11) p.3, BPM [JB CBJ, 2].
45. CB, Tales of the Islanders, vol i, 30 June 1829: MS pp.2–3, Berg [JB CBJ, 5–6]. Charlotte dated this work correctly on the cover but ‘31 June’ at the end.
46. Ibid., vol ii, 30 June 1829; vol ii, 6Oct–2Dec 1829; vol iii, 3–8May 1830; vol iv, 14–3
0 July 1830: MSS in Berg [JB CBJ, 5–61].
47. PBB, History of the Rebellion in My Fellows, 1828: MS BS 112, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 2–6].
48. ECG, Life, 64–75 introduced this idea and gave it substance by, for example, reproducing a page from Charlotte’s ‘The Secret’, written in November 1833 by which time the juvenile writings were much more substantial in every sense of the word. Gaskell quotes Charlotte’s ‘Catalogue of my Books’ (August 1830), listing 22 volumes and states that the average volume contained ‘from sixty to a hundred pages’ and was generally larger than the page reproduced, This is simply not the case. The average size of the YMM, for example, was less than 4cm by 6cm, with about 20 written sides (10 leaves) per volume. Gaskell, like later biographers including WG CB, 17–55, conflates the juvenilia, quoting later works as if they were written before Charlotte went to Roe Head, thereby creating the impression that they were much more sophisticated than they actually were. This impression has accidentally been given added weight by the editorial policy of Christine Alexander’s otherwise invaluable edition of Charlotte’s early writings (CA EW): by standardizing and ‘correcting’ the grammar, punctuation and spelling of the original mss the works appear more carefully written and more perfect than they are in reality.
49. John Ruskin, Praeterita (Oxford, 1978), 42–8.
50. Margaret J. Shaen (ed.), Memorials of Two Sisters: Susanna and Catherine Winkworth (London, 1908), 9–10.
51. Ibid., 10.
52. See above, n.48.
53. EJB, Diary Paper, 30 July 1845: MS p.2, in private hands [facsimile in Shorter, 154; LCB, i, 407]. This occurred just months before Emily began to write Wuthering Heights and possibly while Anne was already at work on an early version of Agnes Grey: ibid., i, 461 n.2; but see below, p.1076, n.45.
54. CB, The History of the Year, 12 Mar 1829: MS Bon 80(11) p.4, BPM [JB CBJ, 2–3]. Branwell’s account gave the story a slightly different emphasis: ‘I gave Charlotte
55. Ibid., p.7[Neufeldt, i, 150]. Branwell’s description of the taking of the island and the indiscriminate slaughter of the Dutch is very similar to the account of the British expedition against Bladensburgh and Washington in ‘Campaigns of the British Army at Washington &c’, BM, x (1821), 180–7. This article had already inspired Branwell’s first extant ms: PBB, Battel Book, 12 March 1827: MS BS 110, BPM [JB ST no.35]. The kingdom of Ashantee appears on the map of West Africa in J. Goldsmith, Grammar of General Geography (London, 1823), facing 74: HAOBP:bb217, BPM. Branwell’s map of the Glasstown Confederacy (see below, n.59) is clearly based on this.
56. PBB, The History of the Young Men, 15 Dec 1830–7 May 1831: MS Ashley 2468 pp. 7, 9, BL [Neufeldt, ii, 150, 153]. Branwell was here drawing on, quoting from and expanding a much briefer account by Charlotte written in 1829: he also changed the names of all the Twelves except Arthur Wellesley and Frederick Guelph/Brunswick, duke of York; Charlotte had given them all much grander aristocratic names such as FitzGeorge and de Rothsay: CB, A Romantic Tale, of The Twelve Adventurers, 15–28 Apr 1829: MS in Law [CA, i, 7–18].
57. See, for example, ‘North-West Passage: Expedition under Captain Ross and Lieutenant Parry’, BM, iv (1818), 339–44; ‘Remarks upon Captain Parry’s Expedition’ ibid., viii (1820), 219–23; ‘Captain Parry’s Voyage’, ibid., ix (1821), 289–99.
58. Ibid., v (1819), 175–83, 302–10. This seems to have been the source of much of the Brontës’ information: it describes the kings Sai Too and Quamina and the capital of Ashantee, Coomassie, and one passage, asking why the king of England did not send one of his own sons to the king of Ashantee and why he had sent so small a force, is strongly echoed in PBB, The History of the Young Men, 15 Dec 1830–7May 1831: MS Ashley 2468 p.8, BL [Neufeldt, i, 149, 151].
59. A map and population census appear as unrelated items at the end of CB, ‘There was onc[e] a litle girl’, n.d.: MS Bon 78 p.9, BPM [CA, i, 3]. A much more complex map of the Glasstown Confederacy serves as frontispiece to: PBB, The History of the Young Men, 15 Dec 1830–7May 1831: MS Ashley 2468 frontispiece, BL, plate 10.
60. Dungeons held a peculiar fascination for all the Brontës. Under the school on Vision Island, for example, there were dungeons for naughty schoolchildren: ‘These cells are
61. PBB, The History of the Young Men, 15 Dec 1830–7May 1831: MS Ashley 2468 pp.1, 8, BL [Neufeldt, i, 138, 153]. Only one of the ninepins was still extant by January 1831.
62. A sample, by Parry, goes ‘“Hellow! Dear! Oi tee troy bowt’s cawming oup tow us” (i.e. – Hello there! I see 3 boats coming up to us)’: ibid., p.5[Neufeldt, i, 144]. Charlotte uses the ‘old young men tongue’ when describing Parry’s land in a way which suggests she saw it as baby talk rather than simply an attempt to reproduce broad Yorkshire dialect: see below, p.189.
63. PBB, The History of the Young Men, 15 Dec 1830–7May 1831: MS Ashley 2468 pp.10, 16, BL [Neufeldt, i, 158, 168–9]. See also below p.1028, n.76.
64. CB, Tales of the Islanders, vol i, 30 June 1829: MS pp.9, 10, Berg [JB CBJ, 8–9].
65. EJB/AB, Diary Paper, 24 Nov 1834: MS Bon 131 p.1, BPM [JB BLL, 29].
66. CB, Tales of the Islanders, vol ii, 6 Oct–2 Dec 1829: MS pp.1–2, Berg [JB CBJ, 17].
67. PB, LI, 15 Jan 1829 p.4, 29 Jan 1829 p.4 and 5Feb 1829 p.4[LRPB, 64–6, 66–8; the third letter is omitted]. Opposing letters from Morgan and Roberson were published with Patrick’s second letter: ibid., 29 Jan 1829 p.4.
68. Ibid., 15 Jan 1829 p.3The phrase was quoted and supported by Morgan in his letter the following week, despite his virulent attack on Patrick’s attribution of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Catholics.
69. Ibid., p.4[LRPB, 65].
70. Ibid., 29 Jan 1829 p.4[LRPB, 68].
71. Ibid., 5Feb 1829 p.4.
72. PB, LM 10 Jan 1829 p.4[LRPB, 63].
73. PBB, History of the Rebellion in My Fellows, 1828: MS BS 112, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 2–6]; PBB, Battel Book, 12 March 1827: MS BS 110, BPM [JB ST no.35]; CB, ‘There was onc[e] a litle girl’, n.d.: MS Bon 78, BPM [CA, i, 3]. The last was probably written for Anne and, like Branwell’s Battel Book, is illustrated with tiny watercolours.
74. PBB, [Branwell’s Blackwood’s] Magazine, Jan 1829: MS Lowell 1(8), Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 7–9]. Charlotte described the origin of the ‘O Dears’ plays in CB, The History of the Year, 12 Mar 1829: MS Bon 80(11) p.4, BPM [JB CBJ, 3]. Neufeldt, i, 7 n.2 and CA, i, 6transcribe the name as O Dean, WG CB, 25 as O’Deay but it appears to me to be O Dear.
75. PBB, [Branwell’s Blackwood’s] Magazine, Jan 1829: MS Lowell 1(8), Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 8]. American politics featured in later issues of the magazine: CB, ‘An American Tale’, YMM for Nov 1829, 9 Sept 1829: MS Lowell 1(4), Harvard [JB CBJ, 68–70].
76. PBB, [Branwell’s Blackwood’s] Magazine, Jan 1829: MS Lowell 1(8) p.4, Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 8–9]. CA EW, 35 suggests that Charlotte was ‘unimpressed’ by the old tongue and did not use it but this letter appears to be by her, like her letter as Goodman ‘in his Handwritin’ in PBB, History of the Rebellion in My Fellows, 1828: MS BS 112 p.3, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 8].
77. PBB, Branwell’s Blackwood’s Magazine, June 1829: MS Lowell 1(7) pp.4–6, Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 13]. This contains the second part of the story so the first must have appeared in an earlier issue now lost. Charlotte’s own version of the story, set in Paris, was written on 2 leaves of what appears to be a dismantled little book: CB, The Enfant, 13 July 1829: MS Bon 80(9), BPM [CA, i, 34–6].
78. PBB, Branwell’s Blackwood’s Magaz
ine, July 1829: MS Lowell 1(9) p.21, Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 30]. Branwell, imitating contributors to Blackwood’s Magazine, used the same 3 Greek characters as a pseudonym in PBB, The Travels of Rolando Segur, MS n.l. [Neufeldt, ii, 10]; they seem to have no meaning.
79. CB, Fragment, 8 Aug 1829: MS Bon 80(10), BPM [CA, i. 4].
80. CB, Anecdotes of the duke of Wellington, 8July–2Oct 1829 and 4 Nov 1829–4Jan 1831: MSS Bon 81 and E2009.11/2, BPM [CA, ii, 88–9]. The latter unpublished ms is untitled and unfinished: it begins with anecdote vi and ends with the heading for viii.
81. CB, ‘Silence’, YMM for Nov 1830, 26 Aug 1830: MS BS 12 pp.3–10 [CA, i, 241–55, where it is wrongly dated to 16 Aug].
82. For spectral visions see CB, ‘Military Conversations’, YMM for Oct 1829, 2Sept 1829: MS Lowell 1(5), Harvard; CB, The Keep of the Bridge, 13 July 1829: MS Berg; CB, ‘Liffey Castle’, YMM for Aug 1830, 12 Aug 1830: MS Bon 84 pp.3–9, BPM [CA, i, 74–6, 36–8, 216–20]. For premonitory dreams see CB, ‘Strange Events’, YMM for Dec 1830 no.1, 29 Aug 1830 and fairy transformations CB, ‘Fairy Gift’, Visits in Verreopolis, 18 Dec 1830: MSS in Law [CA, i, 257–60, 319–27]. Blackwood’s Magazine ran many series on the supernatural such as ‘On Some Popular Superstitions in Wales’, iii (1818), 170–96; ‘Legends and Traditions of Southern Ireland’, xviii (1825), 55–61; ‘An Autumnal Night’s Dream in Ireland’, xxii (1827), 68–91; ‘Fairies, Brownies and Witches’, xxiii (1828), 214–17, 509–19.
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