Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

I hope you are not frozen up; the cold here is dreadful. I do not remember such a series of North-Pole days. England might really have taken a slide up into the Arctic zone; the sky looks like ice; the earth is frozen; the wind is as keen as a two-edged blade. We have all had severe colds and coughs in consequence of the weather. Poor Anne has suffered greatly from asthma, but is now, we are glad to say, rather better. She had two nights last week when her cough and difficulty of breathing were painful indeed to hear and witness, and must have been most distressing to suffer; she bore it, as she bears all affliction, without one complaint, only sighing now and then when nearly worn out. She has an extraordinary heroism of endurance. I admire, but I certainly could not imitate her. You say, I am to “tell you plenty.” What would you have me say? Nothing happens at Haworth; nothing, at least, of a pleasant kind. One little incident occurred about a week ago, to sting us to life; but if it gives no more pleasure for you to hear, than it did for us to witness, you will scarcely thank me for adverting to it. It was merely the arrival of a sheriff’s officer on a visit to Branwell, inviting him either to pay his debts or take a trip to York Prison. Of course his debts had to be paid. It is not agreeable to lose money, time after time, in this way, but where is the use of dwelling on such subjects? It will make him no better.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

Via John Bibby (Bibby 2022). The picture Gaskell’s quotations paint is quite gloomy, but Humphry Rolleston writes of Clifford Allbutt, who knew Charlotte:

In later life Allbutt often insisted that Mrs. Gaskell in her Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) had been misled by someone’s account of the West Riding as a semi-savage region in which these clever girls were marooned, and so gave an exaggerated impression of the isolation of the Brontës, who in reality were much in touch with cultivated neighbours (Rolleston 1929)

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Original

[Letter to Ellen Nussey] I hope you are not frozen up; the cold here is dreadful. I do not remember such a series of North-Pole days. England might really have taken a slide up into the Arctic Zone; the sky looks like ice; the earth is frozen; the wind is as keen as a two-edged blade. We have all had severe colds and coughs in consequence of the weather. Poor Anne has suffered greatly from asthma, but is now, we are glad to say, rather better. She had two nights last week when her cough and difficulty of breathing were painful indeed to hear and witness, and must have been most distressing to suffer; she bore it, as she bears all affliction, without one complaint, only sighing now and then when nearly worn out. She has an extraordinary heroism of endurance. I admire, but I certainly could not imitate her… You say, I am to “tell you plenty.” What would you have me say? Nothing happens at Haworth; nothing, at least, of a pleasant kind. One little incident occurred about a week ago, to sting us to life; but if it gives no more pleasure for you to hear, than it did for us to witness, you will scarcely thank me for adverting to it. It was merely the arrival of a Sheriff’s officer on a visit to B., inviting him either to pay his debts or take a trip to York. Of course his debts had to be paid. It is not agreeable to lose money, time after time, in this way; but where is the use of dwelling on such subjects? It will make him no better.

282 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Brontë, Anne (1820-49) (2), novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family ·
• Brontë, Branwell (1817-48) (2), wastrel brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne ·
• Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855) (12), novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters to survive into adulthood ·
• Debt (3) ·
• Debtors’ prison (1) ·
• Ellen Nussey (2) ·
• 📌Haworth (6), village 10 miles west of Bradford, known for the Brontës and the Keighley and Worth Valley heritage railway ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·
• 📌York Castle (36) ·
• 📌York Debtor’s Prison (1), inside the former York Castle bailey, originally built as the county gaol 1701-05 ·
• 📌York (164) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 27 May 1849: Scarborough on the last evening of Anne Brontë’s life, as told by Ellen Nussey
• 27 April 1924: In a letter to Edmund Gosse, Clifford Allbutt recalls the Brontës
• 26 July 1858: Walter White samples the nascent Brontë tourist industry at Haworth, but declines to buy photographs or visit the father
• 7 March 1615: A great thaw begins in York – heavy flooding along the Ouse and Foss, followed by four months drought
• 30 January 1846: Charlotte Brontë tells her old schoolmistress, Margaret Wooler, that Emily’s railway investment strategy may be unsustainable
• 5 August 1605: Debauched and ruined, Walter Calverley is crushed to death today at York for the murder of two sons at Calverley Hall (Bradford), but is revived by 1830s schoolboy ghost-raisers as the Rev. Samuel Redhead (age ca. 55)
• 12 June 1578: Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, cracks down on fun
• 28 March 1692: On Easter Monday Francis Pemberton, Vicar of Bradford, sits all day in a Haworth pub, collecting his Easter dues, while Oliver Heywood preaches for next to nothing
• 12 December 1641: John Sugden causes panic in Bradford and Pudsey with news of the imminent arrival of genocidal Irish Catholics
• 10 March 1665: Blizzards and Dutch attacks prolong Restoration-induced shortages of fodder and coal at Northowram (Halifax)