Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

It was not Charlotte Brontë who was “Gey ill to live wi’” but Emily. No human being – and she was surrounded by the kindest of folk – could get on with Emily Brontë, but Charlotte Brontë was quite liveable with if you didn’t mind her being – to us boys – as dull as a “governess” ought to be. But she was not our governess… To tell me that Branwell Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights is just monstrous. There was never a breath of doubt about Emily Brontë’s whole authorship, nor of her ability to do it. I have heard the book discussed for years in its time, and should have heard any breath of hesitation. Emily Brontë being a most disagreeable woman – Charlotte Brontë the only person who could “get on with her” – people might not have been unwilling to diminish her glory – yet never a word! So far as I remember, I never saw Branwell Brontë, and he was rarely spoken of – just silence. Not merely because he was a bad egg – but because he was not credited with any of the family ability, or only some phosphorescence of it, he was just negligible, save as a thorn in other people’s flesh. As to what a woman of genius can realize in scenes of savagery or degradation – I once discussed this with George Eliot in respect of the public scene in Silas Marner – these folk have some uncanny insight, a Cuvier-like faculty of ex pede Herculem.

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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

Gosse replies immediately:

There can be no doubt that you are now the solitary survivor of those who knew the strange Bronte family personally. My dear old friend Lord Knutsford used to talk to me about Charlotte, and her visit to him. He remembered the green dress she is wearing in our National Portrait Gallery picture. But he was born eleven years earlier than you were. How curious it is that there should still be so much universal curiosity about that bleak and queer trio of young women at Haworth. I shall keep your charming letter as a historical document.

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Original

My dear Gosse— Let me congratulate not yourself only but also the world of letters on your Brontë article in today’s Sunday Times. Am I the only person living who knew Charlotte and the rest? as well as a boy ever knows a grown-up, and not a very expansive grown-up at that.
Charlotte Brontë was a frequent and quite homely visitor at Dewsbury Vicarage in my father’s time as Vicar, and my Aunt Miss Wooler was Charlotte’s closest and dearest friend. I have heard and been familiar with the whole Brontë “atmosphere” all my life—or all of so much of it as was contemporary with my Aunts and oldest cousins.
It was not Charlotte Brontë who was “Gey ill to live wi’” but Emily. No human being—and she was surrounded by the kindest of folk—could get on with Emily Brontë, but Charlotte Brontë was quite liveable with if you didn’t mind her being—to us boys—as dull as a “governess” ought to be. But she was not our governess. Miss Wooler was a woman of unusual brains and accomplishments, especially a fine Italian scholar, though Mrs. Gaskell rather sets her down as no more than a goody-goody. This is the last thing Miss Wooler was. She was a keen-witted, ironical, and very independent Yorkshire woman, and although startled at first by the form of Charlotte Brontë’s first literary venture, yet was never in any doubt about her rare endowments. I am writing all this irrelevance to show that I have the “atmosphere”. Well, to tell me that Branwell Brontë wrote “Wuthering Heights” is just monstrous. There was never a breath of doubt about Emily Brontë’s whole authorship, nor of her ability to do it. I have heard the book discussed for years in its time, and should have heard any breath of hesitation. Emily Brontë being a most disagreeable woman—Charlotte Brontë the only person who could “get on with her”—people might not have been unwilling to diminish her glory—yet never a word! So far as I remember, I never saw Branwell Brontë, and he was rarely spoken of—just silence. Not merely because he was a bad egg—but because he was not credited with any of the family ability, or only some phosphorescence of it, he was just negligible, save as a thorn in other people’s flesh. He seems to have been an irresponsible and boastful fellow. As to what a woman of genius can realize in scenes of savagery or degradation—I once discussed this with George Eliot in respect of the public scene in Silas Marner—these folk have some uncanny insight, a Cuvier-like faculty of ex pede Herculem.
Excuse this enormous and very hurried scrawl (I am very busy). Kindest regards to Mrs. Gosse and yourself.— Sincerely yours,
Clifford Allbutt.

498 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.

• Allbutt, Clifford (1836-1925) (22), Dewsbury-born physician (Leeds Infirmary 1861-89), inventor of the clinical thermometer, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge 1892-his death ·
• 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 ·
• Brontë, Emily (3) ·
• 📌Dewsbury (21) ·
• Eliot, George (2) ·
• Gosse, Edmund (1) ·
• 📌Haworth (6), village 10 miles west of Bradford, known for the Brontës and the Keighley and Worth Valley heritage railway ·
• Henry Holland, 1st Viscount Knutsford (1) ·
• Silas Marner (1), George Eliot's third novel, published 1861: an outwardly simple tale of a linen weaver, the novel is notable for its strong realism and its sophisticated treatment of a variety of issues ranging from religion to industrialisation to community ·
• Wooler, Margaret (2) ·
• Wuthering Heights (3) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 26 July 1858: Walter White samples the nascent Brontë tourist industry at Haworth, but declines to buy photographs or visit the father
• 19 January 1831: Charlotte Brontë (14) starts at Roe Head School, Mirfield (Kirklees), witnessed by her later friend Mary Taylor
• 30 January 1846: Charlotte Brontë tells her old schoolmistress, Margaret Wooler, that Emily’s railway investment strategy may be unsustainable
• 12 June 1810: Curate Patrick Brontë anticipates muscular Christianity and creates material for Charlotte during a Whit walk from Dewsbury to Earlsheaton
• 15 December 1846: Charlotte Brontë tells Ellen Nussey of cold, boredom and debts at Haworth
• 27 May 1849: Scarborough on the last evening of Anne Brontë’s life, as told by Ellen Nussey
• 19 October 1909: Opening a nurses’ home in Dewsbury, Clifford Allbutt describes their predecessors in the Leeds fever hospital in the 1860s
• 24 December 1777: Christmas Eve at Wuthering Heights, as told by housekeeper Nelly Dean
• 19 May 1812: An Anglican Whit walk encounters a Nonconformist one at “Briarfield” (Birstall), amid Luddites and wars with France and the US, in the imagination of Charlotte Brontë
• 15 April 1924: Writing to The Lancet, Clifford Allbutt tells how a nursing hack eliminated (typhoid) thromboses in the Leeds fever hospital in the 1860s