Emily Bronte....a painting by Rosi.....those eyes....
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Emily Bronte Coming Out
Emily Bronte comes out in oils for me with her large eyes, strong nose and chin, pout and slender neck. Blackriverrosi.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Patrick Bronte
Patrick Brontë Biography
(1777-1861)
Patrick Brontë was born at Emdale, Drumballyroney, County Down, Ireland, the eldest of 10 children. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith and then to a linen weaver, but by sixteen, he was Master of the village school. At first self-educated, he was later helped by local clergymen,
Revs. Andrew Harshaw and Thomas Tighe. In October 1802 Patrick Brontë, aged 25, registered as a student at St John's College Cambridge. He corrected the spelling of his name from Brunty to Brontë. It is not known for certain why he did this, he may have wished to hide his humble origins. Why Brontë? He would have been familiar with classical Greek and may have chosen the name after the Greek mythological god "Bronte" which translates as "thunder". Another theory is that in 1799 King Ferdinand of Naples bestowed the honour of Duke of Bronte in Sicily to Lord Nelson for fighting off the French Navy. Patrick may have taken the name as respect of Lord Nelson. His time at college, although financially difficult , was successful, and as a scholar he was always in the top group academically. He graduated in April 1806 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and then paid a visit to his family in Northern Ireland. He returned to England and never visited Ireland again.He was ordained into the Church of England in 1807 and tookup a number of curacies. On 29th December 1812 Patrick Bronte
married Maria Branwell at Guiseley Church. In 1814, their first daughter, Maria, was born and then in 1815 their second daughter Elizabeth was born. In 1815 he was appointed curate at Thornton in Bradford. His three Daughters; Charlotte (1816), Emily (1818), Anne (1820) and his only son Branwell (1817) were all born there. In 1820 Patrick was appointed perpetual curate of Haworth, shortly after in January 1821 his wife Maria died of cancer. Maria's sister Elizabeth moved from Penzance to help Patrick out.
Patrick found the strain of bringing up a family difficult and decided to send Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily to the recently opened Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. The harsh regime, cold and poor food took their toll on the children who were eventually taken away, however Maria and Elizabeth died soon after returning to Haworth.
Over the next years Mr. Brontë stayed mainly in his study reading up on the latest politics, studying for his Sunday sermons, and teaching his children.
In 1847 Patrick campaigned strongly for improved education in the district and in 1849 for improvements in the water supply. A change in education and bad sanitation for local people was seen in his lifetime.
He saw his children grow up, and all at one point in time left him to pursue work or higher education. Then in late 1848 through May of 1849 hew saw three of his children placed in the vault beneath the church. Fourtanately before his last child, Charlotte, took her final reating place, she married a faithful and kind man, Arthur Bell Nicholls, who took care of Mr Brontë until his death in 1961.
On 30 October 1859 Patrick Bronte preached his last sermon from the pulpit of Haworth Church. On the 7th June 1861 he died aged 84. On the 12th June he was laid to rest in the family vault at Haworth church. He had lived and preached in the parish of Haworth for 41 years, outliving all his children.
Maria Branwell-Bronte
Maria Brontë née (Branwell)
Maria Branwell was the daughter of Thomas and Anne Branwell of Penzance. The family was prominent in the town and there are still many reminders today in the names of places, such as Branwell Lane and Branwell House (the local social security office!).She left Cornwall in 1812 when she married the Rev Patrick Bronte. Among her children were the famous authors Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte. Her son, Branwell, took her family name. In 1820 the family moved to Haworth, on the West Yorkshire Moors, where, tragically, Maria died a year later.
The following year, Maria’s younger sister Elizabeth left her home in Penzance to travel to Yorkshire to care for the six Bronte children. The Branwell family home can still be seen on Chapel Street, Penzance.
Maria Branwell mother of the Brontes (the novelists Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë). Born Penzance, Cornwall, 15th April 1783. she left in 1812 to marry the Reverend Patrick Brontë. Died Haworth, Yorkshire, 15th September 1821.
Maria Branwell was born into a prosperous merchant family. She was the eighth of eleven children of Thomas Branwell and Anne Carne of Penzance, Cornwall. The Branwells were leading members of the Wesleyan Methodist community in Penzance.
Four family deaths between 1808 and 1811, including Maria's mother and father, meant that Maria Branwell needed to get a job. Her aunt, that is her father's sister Jane was the wife of John Fennell, a Methodist minister who, in 1812, was appointed Headmaster of the newly opened Woodhouse Grove School at Rawdon, between Leeds and Bradford in Yorkshire. Jane Fennell invited her niece to assist her in her role as Housekeeper in the school. So in he summer of 1812 Maria Branwell travelled to Yorkshire to start a new life.
Patrick Brontë, who was a friend John Fennell, was the curate at Hartshead, 12 miles from Rawdon, and John Fennell invited his former colleague to visit Woodhouse Grove School. During his visit, Patrick Brontë was introduced to the newly arrived Maria Branwell, and after a short but courtship in which Patrick Brontë had to walk the 24 mile round trip to take Maria out walking, the couple were married in Guiseley Parish Church on the 29th December 1812.
Maria Branwell was not a particularly literary person. Her only extant written work, apart from letters, is "The Advantages of Poverty, In Religious Concerns" but it was never published.
Their first home on getting married was Clough House, Hightown, near Hartshead, and their first two children, Maria and Elizabeth were born there in 1814 and 1815. In 1815 the Brontës moved to a larger living at Thornton, three miles north of Bradford, where, in a house in Market Street, the other four children were born, Charlotte (1816), Patrick Branwell (1817), Emily Jane (1818) and Anne (1820).
In 1820 the family moved to Haworth, and within a year Maria developed cancer (probably of the uterus), and after a painful seven and a half month illness, she died on the 15th September 1821.
The motherless children on the moors.
MEMORIES
Memories of People who knew the Brontes
At home with the Brontes
George Sowden was the younger brother of Sutcliffe Sowden, who officiated at the wedding of Charlotte Bronte and Arthur Bell Nicholls, and also at Charlotte's funeral at the same Haworth Church less than a year later. After the death of his brother, who drowned, George took his place as vicar of Hebden Bridge in 1861. Here are some of his recollections of the Bronte family:
On Charlotte Bronte at the time he went to stay with her and her husband
"I should describe Mrs Nicholls, as she now was, as a thoroughly lady-like woman and very self-possessed...there was not a word of high-flown conversation. As I came down stairs one morning, she was ascending the steps from the cellar which opened on the passage, with a tea-cake in her hand; and she took it in the kitchen to toast for our breakfast, perfectly unconcerned and natural, never dreaming of an apology for being caught in a domestic employment. It is this simplicity which I chiefly remember as lending a charm to our visit...I believe her short and most happy marriage was a period of intense restfulness to her."
On Charlotte's father, who outlived his wife and all his six children –
"I am glad of the opportunity of contradicting some absurd assertions about his earlier life, to which Mrs Gaskell gave publicity, having picked up stories in the village. He was, no doubt, a little eccentric; but he was credited by foolish old people with what would have been outrageous."
On Arthur Bell Nichols, Charlotte's husband, with whom George Sowden was ordained –
"He was a genuine Irishman with much Irish humour when you came to know him: tho' with strangers he was reserved.
On Charlotte's fame as Currer Bell –
"I remember the precise spot on which my brother said to me, 'Do you know who is the author of Jane Eyre?' and the unbounded astonishment with which I heard him say that 'Currer Bell' meant 'Charlotte Bronte'."
On Branwell Bronte –
"He was a good-looking fellow, and struck one as decidedly clever, and not in the least reticent as his sisters were. His remarks about the solemnizing effects of going to stay in Manchester Cathedral while, on one's way from the Station to the City, are all that remain in my memory."
George Sowden was the younger brother of Sutcliffe Sowden, who officiated at the wedding of Charlotte Bronte and Arthur Bell Nicholls, and also at Charlotte's funeral at the same Haworth Church less than a year later. After the death of his brother, who drowned, George took his place as vicar of Hebden Bridge in 1861. Here are some of his recollections of the Bronte family:
On Charlotte Bronte at the time he went to stay with her and her husband
"I should describe Mrs Nicholls, as she now was, as a thoroughly lady-like woman and very self-possessed...there was not a word of high-flown conversation. As I came down stairs one morning, she was ascending the steps from the cellar which opened on the passage, with a tea-cake in her hand; and she took it in the kitchen to toast for our breakfast, perfectly unconcerned and natural, never dreaming of an apology for being caught in a domestic employment. It is this simplicity which I chiefly remember as lending a charm to our visit...I believe her short and most happy marriage was a period of intense restfulness to her."
On Charlotte's father, who outlived his wife and all his six children –
"I am glad of the opportunity of contradicting some absurd assertions about his earlier life, to which Mrs Gaskell gave publicity, having picked up stories in the village. He was, no doubt, a little eccentric; but he was credited by foolish old people with what would have been outrageous."
On Arthur Bell Nichols, Charlotte's husband, with whom George Sowden was ordained –
"He was a genuine Irishman with much Irish humour when you came to know him: tho' with strangers he was reserved.
On Charlotte's fame as Currer Bell –
"I remember the precise spot on which my brother said to me, 'Do you know who is the author of Jane Eyre?' and the unbounded astonishment with which I heard him say that 'Currer Bell' meant 'Charlotte Bronte'."
On Branwell Bronte –
"He was a good-looking fellow, and struck one as decidedly clever, and not in the least reticent as his sisters were. His remarks about the solemnizing effects of going to stay in Manchester Cathedral while, on one's way from the Station to the City, are all that remain in my memory."
Aunt Elizabeth Branwell
Elizabeth Branwell
Born 1776 in Penzance, CornwallDied 29th October 1842, in Haworth, Yorkshire
Elizabeth
Branwell
ante1793-c.1842
| Elizabeth Branwell She left her native Cornwall after the death of her sister, to help bring up her nieces and nephew. |
| Born: ante1793 | Baptised: |
| Died: c.1842 | Buried:Haworth |
| Family: Branwell | |
| Ancestors [ Patrilineage | Matrilineage | Options ]
|
| Siblings
|
Cousins of the famous Brontes of Haworth
THE BRANWELLS
In the 1700s, the Branwells of Penzance were builders, grocers and general merchants. In 1807 they acquired the Vellanhogan Mills at Gulval and thereafter the flour business of R.M. Branwell and Sons provided the main base for their prosperity. By 1880 J. R. Branwell (the owner of Penlee House) was head of the family business, which was listed in 1883 as "wholesale and retail grocers, steam millers, and corn and flour factors". The mill at Vellanhogan was no longer the small water mill leased by Robert Branwell in 1807, but an imposing six-storey building operated by steam power.
Messrs R M Branwell and Sons, Millers and general Merchants,
The Granaries, Penzance.
Mills: The Penzance Steam Flour Mills, Gulval.
Telegraphic Address: "The Branwells, Penzance".
Messrs R M Branwell and Sons trade on a large scale as millers and general merchants, having an extensive connection of an exclusively wholesale character. The business has descended from father to son during many generations, the headquarters being the large block of three and four storey buildings near the Great Western Station, known as "The Granaries". The buildings are of granite and familiar to all residents of Penzance and to many of the occasional visitors. Behind the granaries are commodious and well appointed offices, which have been built within the last ten years. The milling operations are carried on at the Penzance Steam Flour Mills, at Gulval, about a mile to the east of Penzance. The mills have been altered and re-arranged from time to time, and are well built and well planned structures. They comprise a group of buildings of varying heights, the principle ones being of three and four storeys, while extending to a greater altitude is a square water tower, and adjoining it is a tall chimney stack and engine boiler houses. From the tower a splendid view of the sea and the surrounding countryside can be obtained. The milling plant is of modern construction, on the roller system which has for some years almost superseded the older millstones, with the best technical, practical and commercial results to the milling interest, and to consumers of flour. With a good plant of roller mills, supplemented by an adequate complement of purifying and dressing machinery, the resources and capacities of modern flour mills are far in advance of the best millstone mills of twenty years ago or less.
J.R.Branwell c.1890
The Granaries, Penzance.
Mills: The Penzance Steam Flour Mills, Gulval.
Telegraphic Address: "The Branwells, Penzance".
Messrs R M Branwell and Sons trade on a large scale as millers and general merchants, having an extensive connection of an exclusively wholesale character. The business has descended from father to son during many generations, the headquarters being the large block of three and four storey buildings near the Great Western Station, known as "The Granaries". The buildings are of granite and familiar to all residents of Penzance and to many of the occasional visitors. Behind the granaries are commodious and well appointed offices, which have been built within the last ten years. The milling operations are carried on at the Penzance Steam Flour Mills, at Gulval, about a mile to the east of Penzance. The mills have been altered and re-arranged from time to time, and are well built and well planned structures. They comprise a group of buildings of varying heights, the principle ones being of three and four storeys, while extending to a greater altitude is a square water tower, and adjoining it is a tall chimney stack and engine boiler houses. From the tower a splendid view of the sea and the surrounding countryside can be obtained. The milling plant is of modern construction, on the roller system which has for some years almost superseded the older millstones, with the best technical, practical and commercial results to the milling interest, and to consumers of flour. With a good plant of roller mills, supplemented by an adequate complement of purifying and dressing machinery, the resources and capacities of modern flour mills are far in advance of the best millstone mills of twenty years ago or less.
J.R.Branwell c.1890
Elizabeth Branwell looked after her dead sister's children. By the time she came to Haworth she was forty-five years old and presumably a confirmed spinster. Her background in Penzance had been privileged and comfortable. She had been used to polite society and balls, and, despite the break up of her family in 1811, she still had a private income of £50 a year. There were times when Aunt Branwell had wanted to leave the cold and draughts of Haworth and return to Penzance, but she never did. In her twenty one years in Haworth she had no social contact with the village, and if her staunch Methodism probably had an influence on Ann..
She liked a pinch of snuff, wore a false front of curls under her huge caps, read to Rev. Bronte and held her own in lively discussions. She supported herself from her own funds and set out money to educate the girls. She ran the house like a tight ship, regularly and on time.
On the 25th October 1842, she suffered a constriction of the bowel, and died four days later.
It is Branwell who has left us the warmest testimonial to his aunt. Writing to his friend Grundy on the day his aunt died, Branwell concludes " I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood."
Intimate details of Aunt Branwell gleaned from old accounts of those who knew her.
Miss Branwell was a very small, antiquated little lady. She wore caps large enough for half-a-dozen of the present fashion, and a front of light auburn curls over her forehead. She always dressed in silk. She had a horror of the climate so far north, and of the stone floors in the Parsonage. She talked a great deal of her younger days — the gaiety's of her dear native town Penzance, the soft, warm climate, &c. She gave one the idea that she had been a belle among her own home acquaintance. She took snuff out of a very pretty gold snuff-box, which she sometimes presented to you with a little laugh, as if she enjoyed the slight shock of astonishment visible in your countenance. She would be very lively and intelligent, and tilt arguments against Mr. Bronte without fear."
So Miss Ellen Nussey recalls the elderly, prim Miss Branwell about ten years later than her first arrival in Yorkshire. But it is always said of her that she changed very little. Miss Nussey's striking picture will pretty accurately represent the maiden lady of forty, who, from a stringent and noble sense of duty, left her southern, pleasant home to take care of the little orphans running wild at Haworth Parsonage. Henceforth their time was no longer free for their own disposal. They said lessons to their father, they did sewing with their aunt, and learned from her all housewifely duties. Patrick Branwell was the favourite with his aunt, the naughty, clever, brilliant, rebellious, affectionate Patrick. Next to him she always preferred the pretty, gentle baby Anne, with her sweet, clinging ways, her ready submission, her large blue eyes and clear pink-and-white complexion. Charlotte, impulsive, obstinate and plain, the rugged, dogged Emily, were not framed to be favourites with her. Many a fierce tussle of wills, many a grim listening to over-frivolous reminiscence, must have shown the aunt and her nieces the difference of their natures. Maria, too, the whilom head of the nursery, must have found submission hard ; but hers was a singularly sweet and modest nature. Of Elizabeth but little is remembered. Meanwhile the regular outer life went oh — the early rising, the dusting and pudding-making, the lessons said to their father, the daily portion of sewing accomplished in Miss Branwell's bedroom, because that lady grew more and more to dislike the flagged flooring of the sitting-room.
Every day, some hour snatched for a ramble on the moors ; peaceful times in summer when the little girls took their sewing under, the stunted thorns and currants in the garden, the clicking sound of Miss Branwell's pattens indistinctly heard within. Happy times when six children, all in all to each other, told wonderful stories in low voices for their own entrancement.
Miss Branwell took care that the girls should not lack more homely knowledge. Each took her share in the day's work, and learned all details of it as accurately as any German maiden at her cookery school. Emily took very kindly to even the hardest housework ; there she felt able and necessary ; and, doubtless, upstairs, grimly listening to prim Miss Branwell's stories of bygone gaiety's, this awkward growing girl was glad to remember that she too was of importance to the household, despite her tongue-tied brooding.
Miss Branwell kept her niece's love of animals in due subjection. Only one dog was allowed, who was admitted into the parlour at stated hours, but out of doors Emily made friends with all the beasts and birds. She would come home carrying in her hands some young bird or rabbit, and softly talking to it as she came. " Ee, Miss Emily," the young servant would say, "one would think the bird could understand you." "I am sure it can," Emily would answer. " Oh, I am sure it can."
Miss Branwell continually bemoaned the warm and flowery winters of Penzance, shivering over the fire in her bedroom ; Mr. Bronte was ill ; outside the air was filled with the mournful sound of the passing bell. The curate, William Weightman, was a favourite at the vicarage, a clever, bright-spirited, and handsome youth, greatly in Miss Branwell's good graces. He would tease and flatter the old lady with such graciousness as made him ever sure of a welcome ; so that his daily visits to Mr. Bronte's study were nearly always followed up by a call in the opposite parlour, when Miss Branwell would frequently leave her upstairs retreat and join in the lively chatter.
She always presided at the tea-table, at which the curate was a frequent guest, and her nieces would be kept well amused all through the tea hour by the curate's piquant sallies, baffling the old lady in her little schemes of control over the three high-spirited girls.
Miss Branwell funded the girls....
September 29, 1841. " Dear Aunt, " I have heard nothing of Miss Wooler yet since I wrote to her, intimating that I would accept her offer. I cannot conjecture the reason of this long silence, unless some unforeseen impediment has occurred in concluding the bargain. Meantime a plan has been suggested and approved by Mr. and Mrs. and others which I wish now to impart to you. My friends recommend, if I desire to secure permanent success, to delay commencing the school for six months longer, and by all means to contrive, by hook or by crook, to spend the intervening time in some school on the Continent.
They say schools in England are so numerous, competition so great, that without some such step towards attaining superiority, we shall probably have a very hard struggle and may fail in the end. They say, moreover, that the loan of £ ioo, which you have been so kind as to offer us, will perhaps not be all required now, as Miss Wooler will lend us the furniture ; and that, if the speculation is intended to be a good and successful one, half the sum, at least, ought to be laid out in the manner I have mentioned, thereby insuring a more speedy repayment both of interest and principal.
" I would not go to France or to Paris. I would go to Brussels, in Belgium. The cost of the journey there, at the dearest rate of travelling, would be £$> living is there little more than half as dear as it is in England, and the facilities for education are equal or superior to any place in Europe. In half a year I could acquire a thorough familiarity with French. I could improve greatly in Italian and even get a dash at German ; i.e. providing my health continued as good as it is now. . . .
"These are advantages which would turn to real account when we actually commenced a school ; and, if Emily could share them with me, we could take a footing in the world afterwards which we never can do now. I say Emily instead of Anne ; for Anne might take her turn at some future period, if our school answered. I feel certain, while I am writing, that you will see the propriety of what I say. You always like to use your money to the best advantage. You are not fond of making shabby purchases ; when you do confer a favour it is often done in style ; and depend upon it £50 or ;£ioo, thus laid out, would be well employed. Of course, I know no other friend in the world to whom I could apply on this subject besides yourself.
I feel an absolute conviction that if this advantage were allowed us, it would be the making of us for life. Papa will perhaps think it a wild and ambitious scheme ; but who ever rose in the world without ambition. When he left Ireland to go to Cambridge University he was as ambitious as I am now."
That was true. It must have struck a vibrant chord in the old man's breast. Absorbed in parish gossip and his ' Cottage Poems/ caring no longer for the world but only for newspaper reports of it, actively idle, living a resultless life of ascetic self-indulgence, the Vicar of Haworth was very proud of his energetic past. He had always held it up to his children as a model for them to copy. Charlotte's appeal would certainly secure her father as an ally to her cause. Miss Branwell, on the other hand, would not wish for displays of ambition in her already too irrepressible nieces. But she was getting old ; it would be a comfort to her, after all, to see them settled, and prosperously settled through her generosity.
" I look to you, Aunt, to help us. I think you will not refuse," Charlotte had said. How, indeed, could Miss Branwell, living in their home, be happy, and refuse ?
On Miss Branwell's death, Branwell writes.... I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure ; and I have now lost the pride and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood. I have suffered such sorrow since I last saw you at Haworth, that I do not now care if I were fighting in India, or since, when the mind is depressed, danger is the most effectual cure."
Miss Branwell was dead. All was over : she was buried on a Tuesday morning, before Charlotte and Emily, having travelled night and day, got home from Belgium. They found Mr. Bronte and Anne sitting together, quietly mourning the customary presence to be known no more. Branwell was not there. It was the first time he would see his sisters since his great disgrace ; he could not wait at home to welcome them. Miss Branwell's will had to be made known. The little property that she had saved out of her frugal income was all left to her three nieces. Branwell had been her darling, the only son, called by her name ; but his disgrace had wounded her too deeply. He was given the Japenese dressing case in the will..
The Japanese Dressing CaseAunt Branwell
Aunt Branwell's teapot and pattens.
Pin cushion and Smelling Salts Bottles
Aunt Branwell's shawl.
Branwell's Art
Paintings and Drawings
'THE BRONTË SISTERS' or 'THE PILLAR PORTRAIT'
1834, Oil on Canvas, Now on display in The National Portrait Gallery in London, England
EMILY BRONTË from the 'GUN GROUP' portrait
This portrait of Emily was once part of a bigger portrait of all four siblings painted by Branwell around 1833 or 34. After all the Brontës had died and Arthur Nicholls, Charlotte's husband, moved back to Ireland, he tore Emily's portrait off and destroyed the rest of the portrait, thinking hers was the only good likeness. It lay at the top of a wardrobe with the 'Pillar Portrait' for years to come. Lucky for us around 1860 a photograph was taken of the extant portrait:
The existence of this photo was not known until Dr. Juliet Barker alighted upon it amongst some papers that were donated to the Brontë Society in 1989. You can clearly see Emily's portrait on the right, and it is called the 'gun group' because Branwell is holding a rifle.
Branwell painted several portraits of local citizens.
Branwell sketched his dreams and adventures in Glasstown.
EMILY BRONTË from the 'GUN GROUP' portrait
This portrait of Emily was once part of a bigger portrait of all four siblings painted by Branwell around 1833 or 34. After all the Brontës had died and Arthur Nicholls, Charlotte's husband, moved back to Ireland, he tore Emily's portrait off and destroyed the rest of the portrait, thinking hers was the only good likeness. It lay at the top of a wardrobe with the 'Pillar Portrait' for years to come. Lucky for us around 1860 a photograph was taken of the extant portrait:
The existence of this photo was not known until Dr. Juliet Barker alighted upon it amongst some papers that were donated to the Brontë Society in 1989. You can clearly see Emily's portrait on the right, and it is called the 'gun group' because Branwell is holding a rifle.
Branwell painted several portraits of local citizens.
Branwell sketched his dreams and adventures in Glasstown.
Monks Lodge Castaway
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