Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  83. CB, ‘An Extraordinary Dream’, YMM for Dec 1830, no.2, 2Sept 1830: MS Bon 86 p.7, BPM [CA, i, 271–2]; ‘The Buried Alive’, BM, x (1821), 262–4in which the ‘corpse’ revives as it is about to be dissected by Resurrectionists. Branwell was also writing about Resurrectionists at the same time as Charlotte, describing how James Bellingham falls into the hands of Dr Hume and is only just saved from being dissected alive by the timely intervention of the duke of Wellington: PBB, Letters from an Englishman, vol i, 6 Sept 1830: MS pp.14–17, Brotherton [Neufeldt, ii, 122–4]. The Resurrectionists crop up again in CB, An Interesting Passage in the Lives of Some Eminent Men of the Present Time, 17–18 June 1830: MS Lowell 1(1), Harvard [CA, i, 170–7].

  84. See, for example, Arthur Wellesley’s revival in CB, Tales of the Islanders, vol ii, 6Oct 1829: MS p.5, Berg [JB CBJ, 20–1] and Captain Tree’s in CB, The Poetaster, vol ii, 12 July 1830: MS MA 2696 R-V, PM [CA, i, 196].

  85. CB, Description of the Duke of Wellington’s Small Palace situated on the Banks of the Indiva, 16 Jan 1830: MS MA 2538, PM [CA, i, 130–3].

  86. CB, ‘Review of “The Chief Geni in Council” by Edward De Lisle’, YMM, Dec 1829 no.2: MS Ashley 157 p.2, BL [CA, i, 114]. As CA EW, 241 points out, passages such as these owe as much to biblical visions of the New Jerusalem as to the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.

  87. CB, ‘Liffey Castle’, YMM for Aug 1830, 12 Aug 1830: MS Bon 84 p.3, BPM [CA, i, 216].

  88. CB, ‘Conversations’, YMM, Dec 1829 no.2: MS Ashley 157 p.10, BL [CA, i, 118].

  89. CB, ‘Review of Causes of the Late War by the Duke of Wellington’, YMM for Aug 1829, 24 July 1829: MS Lowell 1(6), Harvard [CA, i, 56].

  90. CB, ‘A Day at Parry’s Palace’, YMM for Oct 1830, 22 Aug 1830: MS Bon 85 pp.3–4, BPM [CA, i, 230].

  91. Ibid., p.5 [CA, i, 229–33].

  92. CB, An Interesting Passage in the Lives of Some Eminent Men of the Present Time, 17–18 June 1830: MS Lowell 1(1), Harvard [CA, i, 170–7]; PBB, The Liar Detected, 19 June 1830: MS Bon 139 p.1, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 92].

  93. Ibid., p.6[Neufeldt, i, 94–5].

  94. CB, The Poetaster, vol i, 3–6July 1830: MS Lowell 1(2), Harvard [CA, i, 181].

  95. Ibid., vol ii, 12 July 1830: MS MA 2692 R-V, PM [CA, i, 194–7]. The literary allusions are discussed in Melodie Monahan (ed.), ‘Charlotte Brontë’s The Poetaster: Text and Notes’, Studies in Romanticism, xx (1981), 475–8.

  96. PBB, The Monthly Intelligncer, 27 Mar–6Apr 1833: MS BS 117, BPM [Neufeld, i, 250–65]. The paper was modelled on the Leeds Intelligencer.

  97. PBB, ‘The Nights’, Branwell’s Blackwood’s Magazine, June 1829: MS Lowell 1(7) p.10, Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 16].

  98. PBB, A Collection of Poems by Young Soult the Ryhmer, 30 Sept 1829: MS BS 114 p.17, BPM [VN PBB, 25]. The second volume of this work is MS BS 115, BPM [VN PBB, 14–30]. For Chateaubriand see BM, ix (1821), 187–91.

  99. PBB, ‘REVEIW OF BUDS commentary on Ossian’, Branwell’s Blackwood’s Magazine, July 1829: MS Lowell 1(9) pp.14–15, Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 27–9]. The Brontës owned a copy of James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian (London, 1819) upon which one of them, probably Branwell, wrote various derogatory comments such as ‘poopooh nonsense Branwell poopoo’ and ‘Bombast’: HAOBP:bb203 pp.220, 270, BPM.

  100. PBB, Laussane: A Dramatic Poem by Young Soult, 18–23 Dec 1829: MS Bon 138, BPM [VN PBB, 37–46]. The ms is described as ‘a dramatic poem’ on the title page but as ‘A Trajedy’ on the front cover. The Horae Germanicae series ran for several years from 1819 in Blackwood’s Magazine: it included translations from Goethe, Schiller and Müllner.

  101. PBB, Caractacus: a dramatic poem, 26 June 1830: MS in Brotherton, and PBB, The Revenge: a Tradgedy in 3 Acts, 23 Nov–18 Dec 1830: MS BS 116, BPM [VN PBB, 48–62, 62–71]. The count’s son in ‘The Revenge’ is called Werner, after Byron’s tragic hero of that name: ‘Werner’ was reviewed by Timothy Tickler and Morgan O’Doherty in BM, xii (1822), 10–19, 782–5. Another character, Lodbrog, was based on the king of Denmark of that name who was a contemporary of Charlemagne: see ibid., xxxiii (1833), 910–23.

  102. PBB, The Revenge: a Tradgedy in 3Acts, 23 Nov–18 Dec 1830: MS BS 116 p.1, BPM [VN PBB, 371]. The quotation in Caractacus is slightly different: ‘In Dramatic poetry the passions are the cheif thing and in Proportion as exelence in the depicting of these is obtained so the writer of the poem takes his class among Dramatic authors C BUD’S Synopis of the Dramatic writing Vol I. p.130’: PBB, Caractacus: a dramatic poem, 26 June 1830: MS p. 1, Brotherton [VN PBB, 369–70].

  103. PBB, Letters from an Englishman, in 6 vols, 6Sept 1830–2 Aug 1832: MSS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, ii, 118–24, 170–203, 210–21, 230–9].

  104. See, for example, Margaret Lane, The Brontë Story (Otley, 1990), 115.

  105. The motto is introduced in part 6of the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’, BM, xii (1822), 693.

  106. ‘Maxims of Morgan O’Doherty’, ibid., xv (1824), 597–605, 632–42. See also, for example, ‘The Bishop of Bristol’, ibid., v (1819), 668.

  107. CB, ‘A Frenchman’s Journal’, YMM for Dec 1830 no.2, 4Sept 1830: MS Bon 86 p.14, BPM [VN CB, 59–60]. For further examples see VN CB, 7, 11.

  108. From an early age Branwell’s work was full of classical allusions: for example, the cast of characters from ‘Nights’ included Epimanondas [sic] Johnson (for the Theban general Epaminondas) and Cicero Stephenson (for the Roman orator): PBB, Branwell’s Blackwood’s Magazine, June 1829: MS Lowell 1(7) p.7, Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 15]. All his learned characters are classicists from his alter ego Alexander Percy to the revolutionary H.M.M. Montmorency, whose library is full of appropriate books on ancient history; Percy’s blue-stocking wife Zenobia reads Seneca’s letters ‘in the original’ in her leisure hours: PBB, Life of feild Marshal the Right Honourable ALEXAN[D]ER PERCY, vol i, [spring, 1834]: MS pp.7, 12–13, Brotherton [Neufeldt, ii, 114, 133, 136]; PBB, Real Life in Verdopolis, vol i, May 1833: MS p.2, Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 269]; Ibid, vol ii, 17 Aug 1833: MS pp.1, 2, Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 298–9]. Branwell later wrote and rewrote a long poem on the battle of Thermopylae and translated the first book of Horace’s Odes: see below, p.380–90.

  109. See, for example, CB, ‘An American Tale’, YMM for Nov 1829, 9 Sept 1829: MS Lowell 1(4), Harvard and CB, ‘Visits in Verreopolis’, 11 Dec 1829: MS in Law [CA, i, 83–4, 299, 301].

  110. The ms is divided between the Taylor Colln, Princeton and MS BS 13(1), BPM [VN CB, 64–9]. ‘The Violet’ contains allusions to Aeolian music, ‘Cim[m]erian shade’, the river Eurotas and Mount Parnassus as well as to Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus and Virgil. The violet, perhaps significantly, was the personal emblem of Napoleon: BM, xiii (1823), 695–8.

  111. PB, [French Phrasebook], 1842: MS BS 178, BPM [partial L&D, 302–3].

  112. Charlotte’s copy of La Henriade inscribed ‘Charlotte Bronte’s Book price 3s purchased May: 1830 Anno Domini La Henriad, un Epique Poeme par Voltaire’ is in Harvard. Her English translation of the first book, written in a little book, is MS Eng 35.5, Harvard.

  113. CB, ‘Journal of a Frenchman’, YMM for Aug 1830, 13 Aug 1830: MS Bon 84 pp.11–15, BPM [CA, ii, 221–3]; the series is continued as ‘A Frenchmans Journal’ in YMM for Sept, Nov and Dec 1830 nos.1 and 2.

  114. LM, 25 July 1829 p.3.

  115. CB to PB, 23 Sept 1829: MS Bon 159, BPM [LCB, i, 105]. Jane Branwell Fennell, their mother’s aunt, had died on 26 May 1829. Her tombstone, from Cross Stone churchyard, is inscribed with the following moving lines: Farewell blest saint thou dear and faithfull friend/ Beloved in life lamented in thine end/ Instructed long in sharp afflictions school/ To make submission to the Lord thy rule/ To find when every hope of life was past/ Thy best thy choicest comforts were thy last/ Thou now with HIM eternally shall dwell/ Blest saint thou dear and faithful friend/ FAREWELL’. For her burial by Charles Musgrave, vicar of Halifax, see Register of Burials, 1813–32, Cross Stone Church, 170 no.1353, [29 May 1829]: Microfilm, WYAS, Calderdal
e.

  116. CB to PB, 23 Sept 1829: MS Bon 159, BPM [LCB, i, 105].

  117. CB, untitled note, 25 Sept 1829: MS Bon 108, BPM.

  118. PB, LM, 14 Nov 1829 p.4 [LRPB, 70]. The Brontës may have been among the 600–700 people who attended a lecture in Keighley in March 1830 ‘On the moral influence of unrestricted commerce’ by the editor of the Leeds Mercury, Edward Baines jnr, who had been one of the chief characters in the Young Men plays: LM, 6 Mar 1830 p.3.

  119. Ibid., 1May 1830 p.3; LI, 29 Apr 1830 p.3.

  120. Ibid., 6May 1830 p.4[LRPB, 72]. The government introduced a measure of reform in 1832, removing house-breaking, sheep-stealing and forgery but leaving over 200 crimes still on the list of capital offences; it was not until 1838 that the position for which Patrick had campaigned so long was adopted, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes except murder or attempted murder, treason and piracy on the high seas.

  121. LM, 17 Apr 1830 p.3. There had been an epidemic of smallpox in Haworth and its neighbourhood in the winter and early spring: one Haworth man, Jesse Murgatroyd, lost all his 5 children to the disease: ibid., 23 Jan 1830 p.3.

  122. PB to Mrs Franks, 28 Apr 1831: MS BS 182 pp.2–3, BPM [LCB, i, 107]. Patrick’s last duty before he was forced to take to his bed was a funeral on 18 June. Thomas Plummer took all the duties between 20 June and 10 July: Baptisms, Burials and Marriages, Haworth.

  123. CB, ‘The following strange occurrence’, 22 June 1830: MS Eng 35.5, Harvard [JB CBJ, 74–5]. Mr Midgley, a Haworth contemporary of the Brontës, identified the mysterious caller as ‘an eccentric rather well to do gentleman farmer’ who eventually died in a lunatic asylum: Edward Harrison to Revd A. Wilkes, 26 Nov 1879: MS BS ix, H, p.3, BPM [BST:12:63:204].

  124. PB to Mrs Franks, 28 Apr 1831: MS BS 182 pp.2–3, BPM [LCB, i, 107].

  CHAPTER SEVEN: EMULATION REWARDED

  Title: inscription on the silver medal awarded to Charlotte at Roe Head: HAOBP:J25, BPM.

  1. H.N. Pobjoy, A History of Mirfield (Driffield, 1969), 103. Roe Head is now part of a large residential school for children and young people with severe and multiple disabilities run by a charity, The Hollybank Trust.

  2. Leah and Maria Brooke were daughters of John Brooke, son-in-law of John Halliley snr and a partner in Halliley, Brooke and Co., carpet manufacturers of Dewsbury; Hannah Haigh was probably a member of the family at Longlands where Patrick stayed overnight with Mr Firth in 1817: see above, p.1002 n.52.

  3. Charlotte’s fellow-pupils at Roe Head in 1831–2 included Ellen Nussey, Mary and Martha Taylor, Susan Ledgard, Hannah Haigh and Maria Brooke, whose names Charlotte recorded in a list inside the front cover of her copy of Mangnall’s Historical and Miscellaneous Questions: HAOBP:bb215, BPM. These names correlate with those mentioned in Martha Taylor to EN, 17 May 1832: MS in Texas [L&L, i, 102], to which she adds Miss Hall and Miss Allison. Another pupil is identified by CB, pencil drawing ‘Amelia Walker’, 17 Mar 1831 [A&S no.51]; she was Mrs Atkinson’s niece. There were only 7 pupils in the school in 1841 by which time it had removed to Dewsbury Moor: Census Returns for Dewsbury Moor, 1841: Microfilm, WYAS, Kirklees. Ellen said that, during one half-holiday the girls held a ‘ball’ but had only sufficient numbers for a quadrille and two Scotch reels, implying 4couples: EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 592]. The Brookes were from Dewsbury, Ellen from Birstall, the Taylors from Gomersal and Hannah Haigh from Batley, all of which were within a 3–mile radius of Roe Head.

  4. PB to ECG, 20 June 1855: MS EL B121 p.4, Rylands [LRPB, 234]; L&L, i, 84 n.1 quoting ‘a pupil’; CB to EN, May 1842: MS in Law [LCB, i, 284].

  5. There were 2 ladies’ boarding schools in Keighley, one in High Street and one in Skipton Road: Pigot, National & Commercial Directory (1828–9), 989. For schools in Bradford and Halifax see ibid., 908–9, 937.

  6. Elizabeth Franks and Frances Atkinson had taken tea with the ‘Miss Woolers’ at Purlwell: Firth, 15 May 1829.

  7. WG CB, 54, 67, probably following Yates, 100 and Chadwick, 91–2. There is no evidence to support this claim. The shortness of Charlotte’s time at Roe Head suggests that 18 months was all that Patrick could afford; she worked hard at school out of a sense of moral obligation to her family because she regarded herself as ‘an object of expense to those at home’, again suggesting that her father (or possibly her aunt) paid the fees: EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 591]. PB to Mrs Franks, 28 Apr 1831: MS BS 182, BPM [LCB, i, 106–7] implies that there had been no recent contact between him and Mrs Franks, suggesting that she cannot have played a role in the decision to send Charlotte to Roe Head.

  8. MT to ECG, 18 Jan 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 157–8]. This is the only source ever to suggest that Charlotte had an Irish accent. If Mary was right, then the accent must have been lost during Charlotte’s schooldays. Though Branwell was sometimes labelled by his Irish ancestry (see below, pp. 314, 1060 n.71) no one ever claimed he had an Irish accent. Nor was one ever ascribed to Emily or Anne, though they had least contact with the world outside their home and might therefore have been expected to pick up any brogue Patrick retained after 30 years in England.

  9. EN, Reminiscenses [LCB, i, 589]. Ellen was taken to Roe Head on 25 Jan 1831 by her brother: Henry Nussey, Journal, 1830–2: MS Egerton 3268A p.16, BL.

  10. MT to ECG, 18 Jan 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 158–9]; EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 590].

  11. MT to ECG, 18 Jan 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 158].

  12. Ibid.; EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 590].

  13. MT to ECG, 18 Jan 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 158–9].

  14. Charlotte’s copies of Richmall Mangnall, Historical and Miscellaneous Questions (London, 1813) and Mr Tocquot’s New and Easy Guide to the … French Language (London, 1806), both inscribed ‘C Bront¯e Jany 17 1831’ are HAOBP:Bb215 and bb62, BPM. Her copies of W. Pinnock, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (London, 1830) inscribed ‘C Bronte’, and her annotated Lindley Murray, English Grammar (York, 1818) are HAOBP:bb46 and bb216, BPM. The last is variously inscribed ‘Jany 17 1832’, ‘July 29th 1832 and ‘Augt 29th 1832’, the first possibly not being genuine. It may be, therefore, that Charlotte acquired the book to use when teaching her sisters after she left school.

  15. CB, silver medal for achievement, HAOBP:J25, BPM. The inscription on Le Nouveau Testament (Edimbourg, 1829): HAOBPbb6, BPM has faded to the point of illegibility but is quoted from its entry in the Stock Book, BPM.

  16. CB, watercolours of wild roses ‘from nature’, 13 July 1830, copy of a portrait of her mother, Oct 1830, and ‘Lycidas’, Mar 1830: HAOBP:P.Br. C9.5, C10.5 and C13, BPM [A&S nos.28, 36, 129]. Charlotte’s portrait of her mother is typically ‘prettified’ by the addition of a frilly cap, puffed sleeves, curls and a less square chin than the original: the result, which Charlotte presented to her ‘her dear Aunt’ Branwell, is that she looks like a young girl, instead of the more matronly figure of the original. ‘Lycidas’ was copied from Fuseli’s painting ‘Solitude at Dawn’ (inspired by Milton’s poem ‘Lycidas’), which was exhibited at Somerset House and reviewed by BM, xiv (1823), 10. Another of Charlotte’s water-colours of this period, Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, 15 Dec 1830: HAOBP:P.Br C11, BPM [A&S no.39] was an illustration to a poem by Delta in BM, ii (1817), 165–6.

  17. CB, pencil drawing ‘Amelia Walker’, 17 Mar 1831: HAOBP:P.Br C62, BPM [A&S no.51] was sold as lot 375 with lot 380, ‘Portrait of Susan Ledgerd’, at the Binns’ sale of Brontë Relics, 27 Jan 1886. Charlotte and Anne drew identical portraits in this same style, indicating they were from copy-books rather than from life: HAOBP:P.Br. C59 and Bon 7, BPM [A&S nos.52, 340]. For further examples of Charlotte’s Roe Head drawings see A&S nos.42–77. Her drawing of Roe Head, unsigned and undated but authenticated by her father is virtually identical to those drawn by Anne Brontë and Susan Carter: HAOBP:P.Br. A9 and P136, BPM [A&S nos.62 and 339, p.42].

  18. EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 590].

  19. Ibid., 591.

  20. MT to ECG, [1857]: MS n.l. [Stevens, 163].

  21. MT to EC
G, 18 Jan 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 158].

  22. EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 592].

  23. Ibid., 591. The half-holiday and ‘coronation performance’ were probably to celebrate the coronation of William IV and his Queen on 8 Sept 1831: LM, 10 Sept 1831 p.3.

  24. EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 595]; C.W. Hatfield and C.M. Edgerley, ‘The Relatives of Miss Ellen Nussey’, BST: 9:49:53–6. For the fullest account of Ellen and her family see Barbara Whitehead, Charlotte Brontë and her ‘dearest Nell’ (Otley, 1993). The Rydings now stands incongruously in the midst of a paint factory: its beautiful land-scaped gardens have been destroyed.

  25. LM, 4 Feb 1826 p.3; 18 Feb 1826 p.3. For a slightly different version see Whitehead, Charlotte Brontë and her ‘dearest Nell’, 20–1.

  26. MT to ECG, 18 Jan 1856 and [1857]: MSS n.l. [Stevens, 159, 162]. The Red House, Gomersal, refurbished as it was when Charlotte visited, is now a museum.

  27. Mrs Abraham Hirst of Roberttown was always sent to escort Charlotte to and from Green House: Yates, 100–1.

  28. EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 594].

  29. CB to Mrs Franks, May 1831: MS BS 38, BPM [LCB, i, 108]. The presents may have been for Charlotte’s 15th birthday on 21 April 1831. The letter is signed ‘C Brontë’, Charlotte apparently using the diaeresis on her surname for the first time.

  30. The memorial, together with one from the gentlemen, merchants, yeomen and tradesmen of what is now the Kirklees area, was signed on 6 December 1830: LM, 5 Feb 1831 p.3. Stocks had been acquitted by 24 March 1831 but as late as July letters were still flooding in to the Lord Lieutenant, most of them urging that he should not be readmitted to the magistracy: ibid, 24 Mar 1831 p.3; MSS in Harewood Archives, Lieutenancy Papers, Box 1, WYAS, Leeds. Stocks was readmitted at the end of June, incurring a condemnatory editorial in the Tory Leeds Intelligencer which disapproved of him and the support given him by the Whig Leeds Mercury: LI, 23 June 1831 p.3 and 14 July 1831 pp.2–3.

  31. PB to Mrs Franks, 28 Apr 1831: MS BS 182 pp.1–2, BPM [LCB, i, 106]. Patrick was in what his Tory friends would consider unsavoury company on this issue: Moses Saunders, the Baptist Minister of Haworth, and Abraham Wildman of Keighley, a notorious Radical and later Chartist, were among those agitating for the passing of the Bill: LI, 17 Mar 1831 p.3.