Emily Bronte...Her Life

Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, the fifth of six

children. In 1820, the family moved to Haworth, the town where

Emily would live for all but two years of her life. In 1824, three

years after the death of her mother, Emily left Haworth to attend

school with her three elder sisters. She attended school for less

then a year before being brought home following the illness, and

eventual death, of her sisters Maria and Elizabeth.

It was at home during the following years that the family’s

literary work began to flourish. The most commonly known work

from the family at this time were their tales of Angria (written

largely by Charlotte and Branwell) and Gondal (by Emily and

Anne). While some of the Angria tales still exist, little of Emily

and Anne’s work remains. Beyond these writings on Gondal, Portrait by Branwell Brontë

Emily also composed plays with Charlotte. Charlotte later wrote

of these: “Emily’s and my bed plays were established the 1st December 1827; the others

March 1828. Bed plays mean secret plays; they are very nice ones.” While these plays

are also lost, the do show a strong connection between Emily and Charlotte at this time.

In 1831 Charlotte left to attend Roe Head School. During this time, Emily’s bond with

Anne strengthened as they wrote more together, while her connection with Charlotte

faded.

In 1835 Charlotte took a job teaching at Roe Head School. Emily accompanied

her as a student, however she did not adjust well to the school. A solitary girl by nature,

Emily became very ill and homesick, and was sent home in mere months. After returning

home, Emily again immersed herself in writing. One of her earliest surviving poems

comes from this period:

High waving heather; ‘neath stormy blasts bending

Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;

Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,

Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,

Man’s spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,

Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

-December 13, 1836

In 1838, Emily commenced work as a teacher at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law

Hill School, near Halifax. Again, Emily suffered from homesickness, and returned to

Haworth six months later. In 1842, at Charlotte’s urging, Emily and Charlotte together

traveled to Brussels to attend the Pensionnat Heger. Emily’s time there was cut short by

the death of her aunt. Charlotte and Emily returned home for the funeral, and Emily

opted to remain at home from then on, feeling that was where she belonged.

In 1846, poems by the three sisters were collected and published as Poems by

Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. This collection was followed a year later by the publication

of Emily’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, in 1847. Originally, the book was published

under the Ellis Bell pseudonym, and as two volumes of a three volume set, the last

volume being Agnes Grey, by Acton Bell (Anne). Its innovative structure somewhat

puzzled critics, and although it received mixed reviews when it first came out, the book

subsequently became an English literary classic. Three years later, in 1850, Charlotte

edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel and under Emily's real

name.

Like her sisters, Emily's health had been weakened by the harsh local climate

(Haworth had one of the worst death rates in the country). In September 1848, Emily

caught a chill during the funeral of her brother Branwell, and her health quickly

deteriorated. She refused all medical help, insisting to her sisters that nature be allowed

to take its course. On December 19, 1848, Emily died of tuberculosis. She was interred

in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family vault, Haworth, West Yorkshire.

Patrick Branwell Bronte...His Life

Branwell Brontë (1817-1848)

Patrick Branwell Brontë was the fourth of six children and

the only son of the Brontë family. He was born in Thornton and

moved with his family to Haworth in 1820. Of the four Brontë

siblings who survived into adulthood, Branwell seems to have been

regarded within the family as the most talented, at least during his

childhood and youth. While four of his five sisters were sent to

Cowan Bridge boarding school (resulting in the death of his two

oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth), Branwell was kept at home to be

privately educated by his father, who gave him a classical education

suitable for admission to Oxford or Cambridge. Branwell

collaborated as a writer with his sisters in childhood and adolescence, creating fictional

worlds. His surviving juvenilia shows that he collaborated most closely with Charlotte on

their imaginary world of Angria.

As a young man, Branwell was trained as a portrait painter in Haworth, and

worked as a portrait painter in Bradford in 1838 and

1839. His most famous portrait is of his three sisters, in

which he seems to have painted himself out. (pictured,

left) In 1840, Branwell became a tutor to a family of

young boys in Broughton-in-Furness but was dismissed

within six months. During this time he wrote a translation

of Horace. He was then employed on the Luddenden Foot

railway station in 1841 but was dismissed in 1842 due to

a deficit of eleven pounds in the accounts attributed to

incompetence rather than theft. During his period of

employment both as a tutor and on the railways he

harbored literary ambitions and published poetry under

various pseudonyms in the Yorkshire press.

In 1843 Branwell took up another tutoring

position in Thorp Green, appointed as the tutor to the

Robinson family's young son. He gained this position

through his sister Anne, who was the governess to the Robinsons' two older daughters.

During this time he corresponded with a number of old friends about his increasing

infatuation with Lydia Robinson. He was dismissed on unspecified charges in 1845. It is

thought, according to his account to his own family, the Robinson family's silence on the

reason for his dismissal, and subsequent gifts of money from Mrs. Robinson through her

servants, that he had an affair with Mrs. Robinson and that the affair had been discovered

by her husband.

Branwell returned home to his family at the Haworth parsonage. Devastated by

Mrs. Robinson's abandonment and the increasing unlikelihood of a reunion, he turned to

alcohol. He became an alcoholic and was thought to be addicted to laudanum. His

behavior became irrational and dangerous as he developed delirium tremens. Charlotte's

letters from this time demonstrate that she was angered by his behavior, but that her

father was patient with his broken son.

Although it was at this time that his sisters' first

novels were being accepted for publication, it is not known whether he was even

informed.

Branwell's severe addictions masked the onset of tuberculosis, and his family did

not realize that he was seriously ill until he collapsed outside the house and a local doctor

identified him as being in the disease's terminal stages. Not long after, in 1848, Branwell

dies, allegedly while standing up and leaning against a mantelpiece, purely in order to

prove that it could be done. His sister Emily died of the disease in December of that year,

while Anne followed the next May.

Charlotte Bronte...Her Life

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire,

the third of the six Brontë children. In April 1820, Charlotte

moved with the family to Haworth. After her mother died in 1821,

Charlotte and the children were left in the care of their father and

aunt Elizabeth Branwell. In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with

three of her sisters; Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy

Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, which she

would later describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre. Its poor

conditions, Charlotte maintained, permanently affected her health

and physical development and hastened the deaths of her two

elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who both died of tuberculosis in

1825 soon after they were removed from the school.

At home in Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other surviving children,

Branwell, Emily, and Anne, began creating imaginary kingdoms and chronicling the lives

and struggles of their inhabitants. Charlotte and Branwell wrote stories about the country

of Angria, while Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about the country of Gondal.

The sagas were elaborate and convoluted (and still exist in part manuscripts) and

provided them with an obsessive interest in childhood and early adolescence, which

prepared them for their literary vocations in adulthood.

Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head school in Mirfield from 1831 to

1832, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents, Ellen Nussey and Mary

Taylor. During this period she wrote the novella The Green Dwarf under the name of

Wellesley. Charlotte returned as a teacher in 1835. In 1839 she took up the first of many

positions as governess to various families in Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841.

In 1842 she and Emily traveled to Brussels to enroll in a pensionnat run by Constantin

Heger and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Heger. In return for board and tuition, Charlotte

taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the pensionnat was cut short when

their aunt Elizabeth Branwell died of internal obstruction in October 1842. Charlotte

returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a teaching post at the pensionnat.

Her second stay at the pensionnat was not a happy one; she became lonely, homesick,

and deeply attached to Constantin Heger. She finally returned to Haworth in January

1844 and later used her time at the pensionnat as the inspiration for some of The

Professor and Villette.

In May 1846, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne published a joint collection of poetry

under the assumed names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Although the book failed to

attract interest (only two copies were sold), the sisters decided to continue writing for

publication and began work on their first novels. Charlotte continued to use the name

'Currer Bell' when she published her first two novels. Of this, she later wrote:

Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer,

Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of

conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we

did not like to declare ourselves women, because - without at that time suspecting

that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' - we had a

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vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we

had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of

personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.

Her novels were deemed coarse by the critics. Much speculation took place as to who

Currer Bell really was, and whether Bell was a man or a woman.

Charlotte's brother, Branwell, the only son of the family, died in September 1848.

His death was attributed to tuberculosis, which also claimed sisters Emily and Anne in

December 1848 and May 1849, respectively.

Charlotte and her father were now left alone. In view of the enormous success of

Jane Eyre, she was persuaded by her publisher to visit London occasionally, where she

revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle, becoming

friends with Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray and G.

H. Lewes. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she

did not want to leave her aging father's side.

In June 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father's curate, and

became pregnant very soon thereafter. Her health declined rapidly during this time, and

according to Gaskell, her earliest biographer, she was attacked by "sensations of

perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness." Charlotte and her unborn child died

March 31, 1855. Her death certificate gives the cause of death as phthisis (tuberculosis),

but many biographers suggest she may have died from dehydration and malnourishment,

caused by excessive vomiting from severe morning sickness. There is also evidence to

suggest that Charlotte died from typhus she may have caught from Tabitha Ackroyd, the

Brontë household's oldest servant, who died shortly before her. Charlotte was interred in

the family vault in The Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Haworth, West Yorkshire,

England.

Patrick Bronte

Patrick Brontë (1777-1861)

Reverend Patrick Brontë (born Drumballyroney, County

Down, Ireland, March 17, 1777, died Haworth, Yorkshire, June 7,

1861) was an Irish Anglican curate and writer who spent most of his

adult life in England and was the patriarch of the Brontë family. Born

Patrick Brunty, he changed the spelling of his name to Brontë. It is

not known for certain why he did this, although it is speculated that he

may have wished to hide his humble origins. The name Brontë may

have been chosen for the Greek god Bronte, God of Thunder. Other

theories argue 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 a sign of respect for Lord Nelson.

Patrick was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor McCrory in

Drumballyroney (near Rathfriland), County Down. He had several apprenticeships (to a

blacksmith, a linen draper, and a weaver) until he became a teacher in 1798. In 1802 he

moved to Cambridge to study theology at St John's College. He gained his BA degree in

1806 and was appointed curate at Wethersfield, Essex, where he was ordained a deacon

of the Church of England, and ordained into the priesthood in 1807. In 1809 he became

assistant curate at Wellington in Shropshire and in 1810 he published his first poem,

“Winter Evening Thoughts”, in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by Cottage Poems, a

collection of moral verse.

The following year (1812) he was appointed school examiner at a Wesleyan

academy, Woodhouse Grove School, near Guiseley, where he met Maria Branwell (1783-

1821). The couple were married on December 29, 1812. Their first child Maria (1814-

1825) was born after their move to Hartshead, Yorkshire, and their second, Elizabeth

(1815-1825), after the family moved to Thornton. There the rest of the family was born;

Charlotte (1816-1855), Patrick Branwell (1817-1848), Emily (1818-1848), and Anne

(1820-1849). Patrick was offered the Perpetual Curacy of Haworth in June 1819, and

took the family there in April 1820.

His sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell joined the household in 1821 to help look

after the children and to care for the elder Maria, who was suffering the final stages of

terminal cancer. After Maria passed away later that year, Elizabeth moved permanently to

Haworth to act as Patrick's housekeeper. During this time, he was responsible for the

building of a Sunday School in Haworth, which opened in 1832. He remained active for

local causes into his old age and between 1849 and 1850 organised action to procure a

clean water supply for the village, which was eventually supplied in 1856.

Throughout these years, Patrick dealt with the losses of his six children. In 1825,

his two eldest daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, died within six weeks of each other from

tuberculosis. In 1848, both Branwell and Elizabeth also succumbed to tuberculosis,

closely followed by Anne in 1849. In 1855, Patrick’s last surviving child, Charlotte, died

just nine months after her marriage. Patrick worked with Elizabeth Gaskell on

Charlotte’s biography, and was responsible for the posthumous publication of her first

novel The Professor in 1857. Charlotte's husband Arthur Bell Nicholls (1819-1906), who

had been Patrick's curate, stayed with Patrick until 1861, when Patrick Brontë passed

away, having outlived his entire family.

Bronte family Timeline

Brontë Family Timeline

1777 Patrick Brontë is born “Patrick Brunty” in County Down, Ireland.

1806 Patrick earns a bachelor’s degree in theology from Cambridge.

1807 Patrick is ordained by the Church of England.

1810 Patrick publishes his first poem, “Winter Evening.”

1812 Patrick marries Maria Branwell and moves to Yorkshire.

1814 Maria Brontë is born.

1815 Elizabeth Brontë is born.

1815 Patrick Brontë is named curate at Thornton.

1816 Charlotte Brontë is born.

1817 Patrick Branwell Brontë is born.

1818 Emily Jane Brontë is born.

1820 Anne Brontë is born and family moves after Patrick is offered the Perpetual

Curacy at Haworth.

1821 Maria Brontë (wife of Patrick) dies.

1824 Maria and Elizabeth attend the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in

Lancaster; Charlotte and Emily soon follow.

1825 Maria and Elizabeth Brontë die within six weeks of each other from tuberculosis;

Charlotte and Emily return home.

1831-32 Charlotte attends Roe Head School in Mirfield.

1835 Charlotte becomes a teacher at Roe Head School. Emily enrolls as a student but

returns home shortly after. Anne takes Emily’s place at Roe Head.

1837 Charlotte and Anne return home after Anne becomes ill. Charlotte resigns her

position.

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1838 Emily is hired to teach at Law Hill School. She returns home six months later.

1838 Branwell goes to Bradford to become a portrait painter.

1839 Anne works briefly as governess to the Ingham family but is soon dismissed and

becomes governess to the Robinson family.

1840 Branwell takes a position as assistant clerk in Sowerby Bridge Railway Station.

1842 Charlotte and Emily travel to Brussels to study at the Pensionnat Heger.

1842 Aunt Elizabeth Branwell dies at the family home in Haworth. Charlotte and

Emily return home for the funeral. Charlotte returns to Brussels, while Emily

remains in Haworth.

1843 Charlotte becomes a teacher in the Pensionnat Heger. Branwell is hired as tutor

for the Robinson family.

1844 Charlotte returns to England.

1845 Anne resigns from position as governess to Robinson family and Branwell is

dismissed for having an affair with Mrs. Robinson.

1846 Publication of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

1847 Charlotte's Jane Eyre published.

1847 Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights published together.

1848 Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall published; Branwell dies of tuberculosis,

followed three months later by Emily.

1849 Anne dies of tuberculosis.

1849 Charlotte's Shirley is published.

1853 Charlotte's Villette is published.

1854 Charlotte marries Arthur Bell Nicholls.

1855 Charlotte dies of tuberculosis and complications from pregnancy.

1857 Charlotte's The Professor is published.

1861 Rev. Patrick Brontë dies, having outlived his entire family.

Ellen Nussey Remembers

ant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their own bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect Arcadia of floral culture and beauty. At first the alteration, despite its improvement, strikes one with heart-ache and regret: for it is quite impossible, even in imagination, to people those rooms with their former inhabitants. But after-thought shows one the folly of such regret,; for what the Brontes cared for and lived in most were the surroundings of nature; the free expanse of hill and mountain, the purple heather, the dells and glens, and brooks and the broad sky-view, the whistling winds, the snowy expanse, the starry heavens, and the charm of that solitude and seclusion that sees things from a distance without the disturbing atmosphere that lesser minds are apt to create. For it is not the seclusion of a solitary person, such as Charlotte endured in after days, which in time becomes awfully oppressive and injurious. It was solitude and seclusion enjoyed with intelligent companionship, and intense family affection.

The Last Sketch by Thackery

The Last Sketch.

Not many days since I went to visit a house where in former years I had received many a friendly welcome. We went into the owner’s—an artist’s—studio. Prints, pictures, and sketches hung on the walls as I had last seen and remembered them. The implements of the painter’s art were there. The light which had shone upon so many, many hours of patient and cheerful toil, poured through the northern window upon print and bust, lay figure and sketch, and upon the easel before which the good, the gentle, the beloved Leslie labored. In this room the busy brain had devised, and the skilful hand executed, I know not how many of the noble works which have delighted the world with their beauty and charming humor. Here the poet called up into pictorial presence, and informed with life, grace, beauty, infinite friendly mirth and wondrous naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him the stories,—his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le Sage. There was his last work on the easel—a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy imagined the Midsummer Night’s queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glimmers on the canvas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest Bottom’s grotesque head and form are indicated as reposing by the side of the consummate beauty. The darkling forest would have grown around them, with the stars glittering from the midsummer sky: the flowers at the queen’s feet, and the boughs and foliage about her, would have been peopled with gambolling sprites and fays. They were dwelling in the artist’s mind no doubt, and would have been developed by that patient, faithful, admirable genius: but the busy brain stopped working, the skilful hand fell lifeless, the loving, honest heart ceased to beat. What was she to have been—that fair Titania—when perfected by the patient skill of the poet, who in imagination saw the sweet innocent figure, and with tender courtesy and caresses, as it were, posed and shaped and traced the fair form? Is there record kept anywhere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn? Some day will they assume form in some yet undeveloped light? If our bad unspoken thoughts are registered against us, and are written in the awful account, will not the good thoughts unspoken, the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, which pass through the breast, and cause the heart to throb with silent good, find a remembrance too? A few weeks more, and this lovely offspring of the poet’s conception would have been complete—to charm the world with its beautiful mirth. May there not be some sphere unknown to us where it may have an existence? They say our words, once out of our lips, go travelling in omne oevum, reverberating for ever and ever. If our words, why not our thoughts? If the Has Been, why not the Might Have Been?

Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries of fancies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and delight in masterpieces which poets’ and artists’ minds have fathered and conceived only.

With a feeling much akin to that with which I looked upon the friend’s—the admirable artist’s—unfinished work, I can fancy many readers turning to the last pages which were traced by Charlotte Bronte’s hand. Of the multitude that have read her books, who has not known and deplored the tragedy of her family, her own most sad and untimely fate? Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that has known her books has not admired the artist’s noble English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman? What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors! At nine o’clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and relative had gone to bed, the three poetesses—the three maidens, Charlotte, and Emily, and Anne—Charlotte being the “motherly friend and guardian to the other two”—“began, like restless wild animals, to pace up and down their parlor, ‘making out’ their wonderful stories, talking over plans and projects, and thoughts of what was to be their future life.”

One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat with her husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the wind about the house, she suddenly said to her husband, “If you had not been with me, I must have been writing now.” She then ran up stairs, and brought down, and read aloud, the beginning of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband remarked, “The critics will accuse you of repetition.” She replied, “Oh! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times before I can please myself.” But it was not to be. The trembling little hand was to write no more. The heart newly awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, was soon to cease to beat; that intrepid outspeaker and champion of truth, that eager, impetuous redresser of wrong, was to be called out of the world’s fight and struggle, to lay down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere where even a noble indignation cor ulterius nequit lacerare, and where truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage war.

I can only say of this lady, vidi tantum. I saw her first just as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions. (I have smiled at one or two passages in the “Biography,” in which my own disposition or behavior forms the subject of talk.) She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely—of that passion for truth—of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame—of this one amongst the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth—this great earth?—this little speck in the infinite universe of God,—with what wonder do we think of today, with what awe await tomorrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! As I read this little fragmentary sketch, I think of the rest. Is it? And where is it? Will not the leaf be turned some day, and the story be told? Shall the deviser of the tale somewhere perfect the history of little EMMA’S griefs and troubles? Shall TITANIA come forth complete with her sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the forest around her, and all the stars of summer glittering overhead?

How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure with which I read “Jane Eyre,” sent to me by an author whose name and sex were then alike unknown to me; the strange fascinations of the book; and how with my own work pressing upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them down until they were read through! Hundreds of those who, like myself, recognized and admired that master-work of a great genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard and curiosity upon the last fragmentary sketch from the noble hand which wrote “Jane Eyre.”