Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  26. PBB, ‘How fast that Courser fleeted by’, 18 Dec 1835: MS BS 118, pp.2–10, BPM [VN PBB, 380–8]. This poem is an early draft of ‘Misery. Scene 1st’ which Branwell sent on 8 April 1836 for publication in Blackwood’s Magazine: see below, p.285–6. Branwell produced Angrian prose and poetry virtually every month throughout 1836 and 1837: VN Bib, 9–21, 155.

  27. PBB to the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, pm 8Dec 1835: MS 4040 p.3, NLS [L&L, i, 133–4]. Branwell left a space to insert the day of the month but the letter is post-marked 8December. On the first page he says ‘I have addressed you twice before, and now I do it again’.

  28. Ibid., pp.2–3.

  29. See, for example, the letter of ‘Solomon Timms’ to the editor asking him to publish a piece by his nephew and offering ‘to stand any loss under a five-pound note; for, as I said before, money’s no object’: BM, xl (June 1840), 795.

  30. CB to EN, 2July 1835: MS HM 24408 pp.2–3, Huntington [LCB, i, 140]. The quote is from Psalms, 16 v.6.

  31. Jane Eyre, for example, becomes a school-mistress under the aegis of her cousin, St John Rivers, after her marriage to Rochester is prevented: CB, Jane Eyre, 359ff. Similarly, Paul Emanuel gives Lucy Snowe her own school before he leaves for the West Indies and is lost at sea: CB, Villette, 604ff.

  32. On 9 July 1835 Marianne Wooler had married Thomas Allbutt after his promotion from curate to vicar of Dewsbury after John Buckworth’s death in April.

  33. PB to Mrs Franks, 6July 1835: MS BS 184 p.1, BPM [LCB, i, 141].

  34. WG EB, 53 says that Charlotte and Emily shared a bed but does not state her source. The incidents of ‘late talking’ during Charlotte’s own school-days suggest that teachers slept apart from the pupils but it is possible that Charlotte had a bed in the same dormitory as she refers to being disturbed by the young ladies coming in for their curl papers: CB, ‘All this day I have been in a dream’ [RHJ], 11 Aug–14 Oct 1836: MS Bon 98(8) p.4, BPM [Glen, 455].

  35. ECG, Life, 177 quoting M. Heger.

  36. The Gondals were already discovering the interior of Gaaldine in EJB/AB, Diary Paper, 24 Nov 1834: see above, p.257. At much the same time the Verdopolitans were moving into Angria, implying that the Gondal stories had reached a similar level of sophistication.

  37. CB, ‘All this day I have been in a dream’ [RHJ], 11 Aug–14 Oct 1836: MS Bon 98(8) p.2, BPM [Glen, 453]. Albeit purporting to relate to a single day, this ms is dated ‘Friday August 11th’ in minuscule at the top (11th was actually a Thursday) and ‘October 14th 1836’ in longhand at the end.

  38. Chitham, A Life of Emily Brontë, 87 suggests that the view was ‘a soft and leafy prospect, but it was not moorland’. This is not entirely true. The valleys, where they were not industrialized, were certainly heavily wooded but the hill tops, especially in the distance, were open moorland. These wild, uncultivated and sparsely populated moors around Huddersfield and Mirfield were the meeting place for several generations of malcontents from Luddites to Plug Rioters and Chartists.

  39. CB, Prefatory Note to A Selection of Poems by Ellis Bell, 1850: EJB, Wuthering Heights, 370.

  40. CB, ‘My Compliments to the weather’ [RHJ], [c. Mar 1837]: MS Bon 98(6) pp.1–2, BPM [Glen, 459].

  41. On 23 October Emily drew some rough sketches of cattle which are totally unlike anything in the Roe Head copy-book style, suggesting that she was now at home: HAOBP:P.Br. E4 and E4v, BPM [A&S nos.314 and 315]. Anne was probably at Roe Head by 27 October when she drew the first of several studies of trees; the second was kept by Miss Wooler: AB, pencil drawings, ‘Oak Tree’, 27 Oct 1835, and ‘An Elm Tree’, 13 Nov 1835: HAOBP:P.Br. Bon 15 and A4, BPM [A&S nos.337 and 338]. Alone of her family Anne seems to have tired of the imaginary worlds, writing in 1845 ‘We have not yet finished our Gondal Chronicles that we began three years and a half ago. When will they be done? … The Gondals in general are not in first-rate playing condition’: AB, Diary Paper, 31 July 1845: MS in private hands [JB BLL, 133]. I am grateful to William Self for sending me a photocopy of this ms and allowing me to quote from it.

  42. CB to EN, 5–6Dec 1836: MS Bon 162 p.1 postscript at top of page, BPM [LCB, i, 156]; CB, ‘My Compliments to the weather’ [RHJ], [c. Mar 1837]: MS Bon 98(6) p.7, BPM [Glen, 462]. ECG, Life, ed. C.K. Shorter (London, 1905), 147 n.1describes the prize book, which I have been unable to locate, as Isaac Watts, On the Improvement of the Mind (Dove’s English Classics, 1826) inscribed ‘Prize for good conduct. Presented to Miss A Brontë with Miss Wooler’s kind love. Roe Head, December 14 1836.’

  43. PB to Mrs Franks, 6July 1835: MS BS 184 p.1, BPM [LCB, i, 141].For indications of family affection for her see the 3 pictures of ruined towers drawn by her siblings and the lock of her hair preserved by her father: PBB, pencil drawings, ‘For Anne Bront¯e’, 17 Nov 1828, and ‘Copy – For Anne Bront¯e’, 23 Feb 1829: HAOBP:P.Br. B3 and B4, BPM [A&S nos.184, 188]; CB, pencil drawing, ‘for Anne x A Copy’: HAOBP:P.Br. C2, BPM [A&S no.9]; PB, note accompanying plait of AB hair, 22 May 1833: MS BS 171, BPM.

  44. MT to ECG, 18 Jan 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 160].

  45. For Ann Cook see CB, ‘I’m just going to write because I cannot help it’ [RHJ], [Oct 1836]: MS Bon 98(7) p.1, BPM [Glen, 456]; For Elizabeth and Harriet Upton see CB to EN, 26 Sept 1836: MS Bon 161 p.3, BPM [LCB, i, 152]; Miss Caris, whom Charlotte ‘always found … an intelligent though never an agreeable pupil’ CB to EN, 28 Mar 1848: MS Bon 199 p.1, BPM [LCB, ii, 43]. Ellen Cook, Miss Lister and Miss Marriott are mentioned in CB, ‘All this day I have been in a dream’ [RHJ], 11 Aug 1836: MS Bon 98(8) p.2, BPM [Glen, 452]. Ann and Ellen Cook, daughters of Thomas Cook, a merchant and banker of Dewsbury, were baptized in June 1825 and on 5 Dec 1827 respectively: Pigot & Co, National Commercial Directory (1828–9), 921–2; Yorkshire IGI. There were still only 7 pupils in 1841 when the school had relocated to Dewsbury Moor and was run by Catherine and Eliza Wooler who are respectively described as having independent financial means and being a governess: Census Returns for Dewsbury, 1841.

  46. CB, ‘About a week since’ [RHJ], n.d., MS Bon 92 p.1, BPM [Glen, 465]. Christine Alexander, A Bibliography of the Manuscripts of Charlotte Brontë ([Haworth], 1982), 21 dates this fragment to October 1837 but Northangerland’s daughter was dead by September 1836; Charlotte revived her, however, so the fact that she is still Zamorna’s wife and living at Zamorna Palace when she received her father’s letter from his exile may be irrelevant.

  47. CB, prose continuation of ‘We wove a web in childhood’, 19 Dec 1835: MS HM 2578 pp.5–6, Huntington [VN CB, 170]. Though the content of both poem and prose continuation imply this ms was written at Roe Head it is clearly signed and dated at the end ‘C Brontë Haworth 1835’.

  48. Ibid., pp.2–3 [VN CB, 166–7].

  49. BO, 24 Sept 1835 p.269. Haworth had occasionally disputed the imposition of church rates by Bradford since the seven-teenth century but, exacerbated by national politics, it became a regular annual confrontation in 1835–42: for a detailed analysis see Michael Baumber, ‘The Haworth Church Rate Controversy’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 75 (2003), 115–28.

  50. The family quarrel is discussed in Sarah Fermi, ‘A “Religious” Family Disgraced’: BST:20:5:289–95. Joseph Greenwood was the only Anglican member of his family (the others were all Baptists), purchasing a single seat in pew 25 in the north gallery of Haworth Church: Joseph Whitehead, Pew Receipt for Joseph Greenwood, 13 May 1840: MS note in Baptisms (to 1813), Haworth. I am grateful to Sarah Fermi for this reference. Joseph was also the only Tory. The Lord Lieutenant’s agent reported that he had voted for Mr Wortley when the rest of his family voted for the victorious Whig candidate, Lord Morpeth: ‘This may be taken as an indication of his politics – and I should think his recommendation by Mr Heap and Mr Bronte a good security for his general respectability’: Mr Atkinson to Earl of Harewood, 4 Jan 1836: MS in Harewood Papers, Lieutenancy Papers, Box 1, WYAS, Leeds.

  51. BO, 24 Sept 1835 p.269. The church rates paid for the bellringers, singers and
salaries of the two clerks as well as the purchase of such necessities as coal and candles to heat and light the church, communion wine and robes for the minister and his clerks. They were also supposed to pay for repairs and maintenance of the church building and graveyard. Much dissension was caused at the meeting by the disclosure that expenses under ‘sundries’ included ‘a bottle of wine here and another there, when the church-wardens had their meetings’.

  52. Earl of Harewood to PB, 1Oct 1835, and PB to Earl of Harewood, 6 Oct 1835: MSS in Harewood Papers, Lieutenancy Papers, Box 1, WYAS, Leeds [LRPB, 103 n.3, 103]. I have been unable to locate Patrick’s letter of 23 September referred to in the Earl’s letter of 1October.

  53. PB to Henry Heap, 26 Dec 1835: MS in Harewood Papers, Lieutenancy Papers, Box 1, WYAS, Leeds [LRPB, 105].

  54. Henry Heap to Earl of Harewood, 28 Dec 1835: MS in Harewood Papers, Lieutenancy Papers, Box 1, WYAS, Leeds [LRPB, 106 n.2].

  55. Justices’ Qualification Oaths, 1819–37: MS in WYAS, Wakefield. I am grateful to Sarah Fermi for this reference.

  56. The population of Haworth chapelry, which included Stanbury and Oxenhope rose from 5835 in 1831 to 6303 in 1841: Page, Victoria History of the County of York, iii, 533; Burials, Haworth. Patrick personally baptized 23 children on 21 July 1834, 20 on 19 July 1835, 20 the next day and 16 on each of 18, 19 and 20 October 1835: Baptisms, Haworth. In response to a tract advocating adult baptism by Moses Saunders, Baptist minister of Hall Green, Haworth, Patrick published A Brief Treatise on the Best Time and Mode of Baptism (Keighley, R. Aked, 1836), strongly defending infant baptism. The rising rate of Anglican baptisms in Haworth show that he practised what he preached.

  57. Revd Thomas Brooksbank Charnock (1800–47), son of the previous incumbent of Haworth, matriculated (22 June 1819) and graduated BA (1823) and MA (1826) from University College, Oxford: J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses (1715–1886) (Oxford, 1887), i, 241. He committed suicide in 1847: see below, p.643–4. The registers reveal he assisted Patrick occasionally from 1834 onwards; he also preached the Sunday School sermons in the afternoon and evening services on 19 July 1835: Haworth Church Hymnsheets, 19 July 1835: MS BS, x, H, BPM.

  58. Hodgson admitted being born into a ‘humble station of life’: LM, 31 Dec 1836 p.7. Irish origins are suggested by his being called ‘potato eater’ by BO, 9 Mar 1837 p.45 but Winterbotham’s sneers in LM, 17 Dec 1836 p.8 may indicate that he was a local boy ‘made good’. He would appear to have left Haworth for Colne after 11 May 1837: Burials, Haworth.

  59. He first signed the registers as ‘W Hodgson Curate’ rather than simply ‘W Hodgson’ on 3April 1836: Baptisms, Haworth. According to White, ii, 436 in 1837 Patrick was ‘assisted by the Rev. Wm Hodgson to whom the Pastoral Aid Society has allowed an annuity of £50 granted in 1836’. As this sum did not cover his salary, it was augmented by a voluntary subscription in Haworth: Requisition to the Reverend William Hodgson, 30 Apr 1837: MS n.l. [C.K. Shorter, ‘New Light on the Brontës’, BST:1:8:18]. This method may have been used to pay his salary when he first came to Haworth in December 1835.

  60. Ibid., 16.

  61. Hodgson is mentioned only once in Brontë correspondence: see below, p.366.

  62. According to Olridge-de-la-Hey, Hodgson lodged with ‘three coeval generations of women – mother, daughter, and grand-daughter’, which exactly describes the census description of the family with whom a later curate, Weightman, lodged at Cook Gate: Shorter, ‘New Light on the Brontës’, BST:1:8:16, and see below, p.1053 n.21.

  63. PB, The Cottage in the Wood, 3–4 [Brontëana, 102].

  64. CB to Robert Southey, 16 Mar 1837: MS BS 40.25, BPM [LCB, i, 169].

  65. CB, ‘Long since as I remember well’, [Jan 1836]: MS in William Carlos Williams Colln pp.2, 5, 8, SUNY [VN CB, 172, 175, 179]. In the right-hand margin someone, apparently Branwell judging by the hand, has written ‘This hope’s divine’ and ‘this’ 4times alongside pious sentiments.

  66. PBB, [Angria and the Angrians I and II] MSS p.14, Princeton and p.1, Ashley 187 p.1, BL [Neufeldt, ii, 443, 454].

  67. CB, ‘But once again, but once again’, 19 Jan 1836: MS in William Carlos Williams Colln pp.2, 5, 8, SUNY [VN CB, 187–8, 191].

  68. Feather, History of the Three Graces Lodge, 43 citing the Lodge Minute Books; John Brown and Joseph Redman to Richard Hird, General Secretary to the Provincial Lodge of Free Masons, Wakefield, 8 Feb 1836: MS BS ix, B p.1, BPM [JB BLL, 35].

  69. John Brown and Joseph Redman to Robert Carr, Deputy General Secretary to the Provincial Lodge of Free Masons, Wakefield, 11 Feb 1836: MS BS ix, B p.1, BPM [JB BLL, 35].

  70. Robert Carr to John Brown, 13 Feb 1836: MS BS ix, B p.1, BPM; Feather, History of the Three Graces Lodge, 43.

  71. PBB to the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, 8Apr 1836: MS 4042, NLS [VN PBB, 379–80].

  72. PBB, ‘Misery. Scene 1st [&] Scene 2d’, [8Apr 1836]: MS 4042, NLS [VN PBB, 99–114]; PBB to the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, 8Apr 1836: MS 4042 p.2, NLS [VN PBB, 380].

  73. PBB, ‘How fast that Courser fleeted by’, 18 Dec 1835: MS BS 118 pp.2–10, BPM and ‘Wide I hear the wild winds sighing’, 2 Mar 1836: MS MA 2696, PM [VN PBB, 380–8, 388–96]. For undated trial lines for these 2scenes see VN PBB, 388, 396–7. Branwell substantially revised both scenes before sending the poem.

  74. PBB to the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, 8Apr 1836: MS 4042 pp.1–2, NLS [VN PBB, 379–80].

  75. Ibid., p.2.

  76. Feather, History of the Three Graces Lodge, 44. Branwell missed only one Lodge meeting in 1836 and 2(February and November) in 1837. Thereafter he never attended more than 2meetings a year: MS Masonic Records, in private hands.

  77. In addition to the 15 portraits in A&S nos.232, 243, 250–62 there are portraits in oils of John Ogden Wood and Robert Taylor (HAOPB:P.Br. B46 and B50, BPM) and two unauthenticated portraits of John and Mary Titterington of Sowerby, painted in the 1840s, (in private hands) which I am grateful to Alan Titterington for drawing to my attention.

  78. The unsigned, undated portraits in oils of Thomas, Foster and Fletcher are HAOBP:P.Br. B22, B44 and B26, BPM [A&S nos.260, 262, 253]. They may well date from 1838 when Branwell set up his studio in Bradford but, equally, one would have expected him to paint local figures before attempting to go further afield professionally. The portraits in oils of John Brown, William Brown and Maria Ingham are undated; that of Parker is dated 22 Dec 1838: HAOBP: P.Br. B20, B19, B52 and B21, BPM [A&S nos.243, 251, 256 and 250]; ECG, Life, 106.

  79. These events are described in widely dispersed and dismembered mss often only a couple of pages long and bound out of order with unrelated fragments: they are reconstructed as PBB, [Angria and the Angrians II], [Jan 1836–Dec 1837] in Neufeldt, ii, 454ff.

  80. PBB, [Angria and the Angrians I], [19 Dec 1835–7 Jan 1836]: MS p.7, Princeton [Neufeldt, ii, 429ff.]

  81. CB, ‘Well here I am at Roe Head’ [RHJ], [Jan 1836]: MS MA 2696 R-V pp.1–2, PM [Glen, 447–50].

  82. Ibid. [Glen, 450].

  83. ’My Angria and the Angrians’ (14 Oct 1834) was the last complete story Charlotte had written: CB, ‘The Scrap Book’ (15 Sept 1834–17 Mar 1835) was simply a collection of fragments.

  84. CB, Passing Events, 21–9 Apr 1836: MS MA 30 p.4, PM [WG FN, 38–9].

  85. Ibid., p.13 [WG FN, 52].

  86. PBB, [Angria and the Angrians II(f)], [Apr 1836]: MSS p.24, Princeton and pp.1–2, Brotherton [Neufeldt, ii, 518–23]. Though usually dated to May, this fragment must predate ‘Passing Events’ as Charlotte refers there to Northangerland’s ‘wandering & wild & terrible’ sermon: CB, Passing Events, 21–9Apr 1836: MS MA 30 p.14, PM [WG FN, 53]. For Percy’s first ‘Methodist’ speech see above, p.239–40.

  87. PBB, [Angria and the Angrians II(f)], [Apr 1836]: MS p.24, Princeton [Neufeldt, ii, 519].

  88. This attitude is still evident in the Brontës’ published novels: the leader of the Luddite rioters is a drunken, hypocritical Methodist lay preacher in CB, Shirley, 128ff and Emily give
s a piquant caricature of Methodism in her description of Jabes Branderham and the ‘Seventy times Seven’ sermon in EJB, Wuthering Heights, 20–2.

  89. CB to EN, [28 May 1836]: MS n.l. [LCB, i, 145].

  90. MT to ECG, 18 Feb 1856: MS n.l. [Stevens, 160]; CB to EN, 10 May 1836: MS HM 24411 p.2, Huntington [LCB, i, 143] where Charlotte says ‘You seemed kindly apprehensive about my health. I am perfectly well now and I never was very ill.’

  91. CB to Mrs Franks, 2 June 1836: MS 58 Cii p.3, Firth Papers, University of Sheffield [LCB, i, 146].

  92. PB to Mrs Franks, 13 June 1836: MS BS 186 p.1, BPM [LCB, i, 147].

  93. John Firth Franks to George Moore Smith, n.d.: MS 58 Cvi, Firth Papers, University of Sheffield. This anecdote may actually relate to Charlotte’s days as a pupil at Roe Head. Franks recollected ‘being seated on the floor in my mother’s dining room with my box of bricks, when the 3 misses Bronte walked in’ and mentions that the visit was during the Easter vacation. Although an 1831 date seems more likely, as playing with bricks is an activity better suited to a 5–year-old, rather than a 10-year-old, Charlotte would then have been unaccompanied whereas in 1836 she had Anne with her. Franks specifically states ‘Charlotte was then assistant mistress at the school in Mirfield parish’, so I have reluctantly accepted his dating.

  94. CB to EN, [July 1836]: MS HM 24412 p.2, Huntington [LCB, i, 148].

  95. Ibid., p.3[LCB, i, 148].

  96. EJB, ‘Cold clear and blue the morning heaven’, [Spring 1836]: MS Bon 127 p.16, BPM [Roper, 206].

  97. CB, unrelated fragment appended to Passing Events, 24–8 June 1836: MS MA 30 pp.28–33, PM. Though transcribed as part of ‘Passing Events’ in WG FN, 160–8and M&U, ii, 160–8it is in fact a separate piece: see Jos Bemelmans, ‘Passing Events and Another Manuscript’, BST:20:3:121–5.

  98. PBB, [Angria and the Angrians III(a)], 24 June 1836: MS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, ii, 564–7].

  99. CB, ‘And when you left me what thoughts had I then’, 19 July 1836: MS Bon 93, BPM [VN CB, 194–209].