Brontës (172 page)
Authors: Juliet Barker
III: PRINTED SOURCES
Unless stated otherwise, references to the Brontë's published novels are to the World's Classics editions published by Oxfrd University Press (Oxford, 1980â1993).
| A&S | Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, The Art of the Brontës (Cambridge, 1995). |
| Allott | Miriam Allott (ed.), The Brontës: The Critical Heritage (London, 1974). |
| Babbage | Benjamin Herschel Babbage, Report to the General Board of Health on a Preliminary Inquiry into the Sewerage, Drainage, and Supply of Water, and the Sanitary Condition of the Inhabitants of the Hamlet of Haworth (London, 1850). |
| Baines | Edward Baines, History, Directory and Gazetteer of the County of York (Leeds, 1822), 2 vols. |
| BM | Blackwood's Magazine (1817â1861). |
| BO | Bradford Observer (6 Feb 1834âDec 1861). |
| Brontëana | J. Horsfall Turner (ed.), Brontëana: The Reverend Patrick Brontë's Collected Works (Bingley, 1898). |
| BST | Brontë Society, Transactions (Haworth, 1895â2001); from 2002 published as Brontë Studies . |
| Buckworth | Anon., Memoir of the Rev. John Buckworth, M.A., Late Vicar of Dewsbury, Yorkshire (London, 1836). |
| C&P | J.A.V. Chapple & Arthur Pollard (eds.), The Letters of Mrs Gaskell (Manchester, 1966), 3 vols. |
| CA | Christine Alexander (ed.), An Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (Oxford, 1987â91), 2 vols. |
| CA EW | Christine Alexander, The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë (Oxford, 1983). |
| CB BN | Charlotte Brontë, âBiographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell', in Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights , edited with an introduction by Ian Jack (Oxford, 1981), 359â65. |
| Chadwick | Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick, In the Footsteps of the Brontës (London, 1914). |
| Chitham | Edward Chitham (ed.), The Poems of Anne Brontë: A New Text and Commentary (London, 1979). |
| Du Maurier | Daphne du Maurier, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (Harmondsworth, 1972). |
| ECG, Life | Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë , edited with an introduction by Angus Easson (Oxford, 1996). |
| Fraser | Rebecca Fraser, Charlotte Brontë (London, 1988). |
| Glen | Heather Glen (ed.), Charlotte Brontë: Tales of Angria (London, 2006). |
| Grundy | Francis H. Grundy, Pictures of the Past (London, 1879). |
| HG | Halifax Guardian (9 Jan 1838âDec 1861). |
| HKW | Henry Kirke White, The Remains of Henry Kirke White (London 1823). |
| Holgate | Ivy Holgate, âThe Brontës at Thornton, 1815â1820', BST :13:69:323â38. |
| JB BLL | Juliet Barker (ed.), The Brontës: A Life in Letters (London, 1997). |
| JB CBJ | Juliet Barker (ed.), Charlotte Brontë: Juvenilia 1829â35 (London, 1996). |
| JB SP | Juliet Barker (ed.), The Brontës: Selected Poems (London, repr. 1993). |
| JB ST | Juliet Barker, Sixty Treasures: The Brontë Parsonage Museum (Haworth, 1988). |
| L&D | John Lock and Canon W.T. Dixon, A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters and Times of the Reverend Patrick Brontë (London, 1965). |
| L&L | T.J. Wise and J.A. Symington, The Lives, Friendships and Correspondence of the Brontë Family (Oxford, 1932), 4 vols. |
| LCB | Margaret Smith (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë (Oxford, 1995â2004), 3 vols. |
| Leyland | Francis A. Leyland, The Brontë Family (London, 1886), 2 vols. |
| LI | Leeds Intelligencer (Nov 1809âDec 1861). |
| LM | Leeds Mercury (Dec 1809âDec 1861). |
| Lonoff | Sue Lonoff (ed. and trans.), The Belgian Essays: Charlotte and Emily Brontë: A Critical Edition (New Haven and London, 1996). |
| LRPB | Dudley Green (ed.), The Letters of the Reverend Patrick Brontë (Stroud, 2005). |
| M&U | T.J. Wise & J.A. Symington (eds.), The Miscellaneous & Unpublished Writings of Charlotte Brontë & Patrick Branwell Brontë (Oxford, 1934), 2 vols. |
| Neufeldt | Victor Neufeldt (ed.), The Works of Patrick Branwell Brontë (New York, 1997â9), 3 vols. |
| Poems , 1846 | Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (Aylott & Jones, 1846). |
| Poems , 1934 | T.J. Wise and J. Alex Symington (eds.), The Poems of Emily Jane Brontë and Anne Brontë (Oxford, 1934). |
| PV | William Morgan (ed.), The Pastoral Visitor (1815â16). |
| Ratchford | Fannie E. Ratchford, The Brontës' Web of Childhood (New York, 1941). |
| Reid | T.W. Reid, Charlotte Brontë: A Monograph (New York, 1877). |
| Roper | Derek Roper (ed.) with Edward Chitham, The Poems of Emily Brontë (Oxford, 1995). |
| Scruton | William Scruton, Thornton and the Brontës (Bradford, 1898). |
| Scruton EN | William Scruton, âReminiscences of the late Miss Ellen Nussey', BST :1:7:24â42. |
| Shorter | Clement K. Shorter, Charlotte Brontë & Her Circle (London, 1896). |
| Slugg | J.T. Slugg, Woodhouse Grove School: Memorials and Reminiscences (London, 1885). |
| Smith | George Smith, A Memoir, with Some Pages of Autobiography (London, private circulation, 1902). |
| Stevens | Joan Stevens (ed.), Mary Taylor: Friend of Charlotte Brontë: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere (Oxford, 1972). |
| THAS | Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society . |
| Venn | J.A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigiensis: Part II (1752â1900) (Cambridge, 1951), 6 vols. |
| VN CB | Victor Neufeldt (ed.), The Poems of Charlotte Brontë: A New Text and Commentary (New York, 1985). |
| VN PBB | Victor Neufeldt (ed.), The Poems of Patrick Branwell Brontë: A New Text and Commentary (New York, 1990). |
| WG AB | Winifred Gérin, Anne Brontë (London, 1959). |
| WG CB | Winifred Gérin, Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius (Oxford, 1967). |
| WG EB | Winifred Gérin, Emily Brontë (Oxford, 1971). |
| WG FN | Winifred Gérin (ed.), Five Novelettes (London, 1971). |
| WG PBB | Winifred Gérin, Branwell Brontë (London, 1961). |
| White | William White, History, Gazetteer & Directory of the West Riding of Yorkshire (Sheffield and Leeds, 1837â8), 2 vols. |
| Wright | William Wright, The Brontës in Ireland (London, 1893). |
| Yates | W.W. Yates, The Father of the Brontës: His Life and Work at Dewsbury and Hartshead (Leeds, 1897). |
NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: AN AMBITIOUS MAN
1.
Admissions Register 1802â35: MS C4.5 no. 1235, SJC.
2.
Residence Register: MS C27.1 no 2, SJC. James Wood, Patrick's tutor, made a similar mistake and had to alter the name in his list of pupils from âBrante' to âBronte': MS TU 1.1 p. 64, SJC. It seems likely that this was the moment Patrick formalized the spelling of his name (see below n. 6). As a classical scholar he would have known that Brontë was the Greek word for thunder but Horatio Nelson had been created Duke of Brontë (a village in Sicily) in 1799 by the King of the Two Sicilies and some contemporaries assumed there was a link with Nelson: Jane Gray Nelson, âSicily and the Brontë Name',
BST
:16:81:43â5; CB to WSW, 5 Nov 1849: MS n.l. [
LCB
, ii, 279].
3.
PB to ECG, 20 June 1855: MS EL B121 pp. 1â2, Rylands [
BST
:8:43:88].
4.
The fictions of William Wright,
The Brontës in Ireland
(London, 1893) have entered Brontë mythology, despite the devastating and unanswerable criticisms which appeared within a few years of its publication in Angus Mckay, âA Crop of Brontë Myths',
Westminster Review
, Oct 1895, 424â37; J. Ramsden,
The Brontë Homeland
(London, [1898]);
Brontëana
, 267â304. There is no evidence at all for Wright's claims that Hugh Brontë was the originator of Irish tenant-rights theories, that
Wuthering Heights
was the story of his childhood and that Patrick owed his early career to local Presbyterian patron-age: as Wright himself admitted ânone of the Irish Brontës knew anything of the early history of the family ⦠the information they had to communicate was merely an echo from the English biographies': ibid, 50. Edward Chitham,
The Brontës' Irish Background
(London, 1986) is a misguided and unconvincing attempt to rehabilitate Wright.
5.
Wright originated the claim that Patrick's mother was Roman Catholic. Eleanor McClory and Hugh Brontë were apparently married in 1776 at the Protestant Magherally Church, though there are no registers for the period to confirm this. Six of their children were baptized at the Protestant Drumballyroney Church but there were no registers at the time of Patrick's birth and those for the period after 1791, when the three youngest daughters were born, are missing:
Brontëana
, 284. According to the
Banbridge Chronicle
's account of the funeral of Patrick's youngest sister, Alice, who died aged 95 on 15 Jan 1891, the family grave was also in Drumballyroney churchyard, on the south side of the church: Ramsden,
The Brontë Homeland
, 96.
6.
The name is recorded five times as âBrunty' in 1779â91 and once as âBruntee' in 1786 in the Register of Baptisms, Drumballyroney Church [
Brontëana
, 284]. The family were known locally as âPrunty' according to a report in the
Belfast Mercury
in April 1855, just after Charlotte Brontë's death [
L&L
, iv, 184â5]. Several books said to have belonged to the Irish Brontës contain âPatrick Prunty' autographs of extremely doubtful authenticity: see Elias Voster,
Arithmetic in Whole and Broken Numbers
(Dublin, 1789), 65: HAOBP:bb65, BPM; Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy,
Geography for Youth
(Dublin, 1795), 129: HAOBP:bb200, BPM. Though these are cited as the main evidence for Patrick's having deliberately changed his name, the autographs are inconsistent with his genuine signature and appear to me to be blatant forgeries. A John and William âBronte' were tenants of Henry Stafford Willock of Tullyquilly, near Rathfriland (close to the Brontës' home) in 1780, though there were many variants of the
name in the records of Counties Armargh and Tyrone: T.G.F. Paterson, âThe Brontës and Co Armagh',
The Armagh Guardian
, 16 Aug 1957 p.3. For arguments concerning the origin of the Brontë name see
Brontëana
, 280â5; Chitham,
The Brontës' Irish Background
, 34â6.
7.
PB, notes accompanying his letter to ECG, 20 June 1855: MS EL B121 p.2, Rylands [
LRPB
, 233]. Wright âfound' the birthplace at Emdale on a visit to the area and reproduced a photograph of it as his frontispiece, but there is no documentary evidence to support his identification.
8.
Patrick's siblings, with their dates of baptism, were: William (6 Mar 1779); Hugh (27 May 1781); James (8 Nov 1783); Walsh (19 Feb 1786); Jane (1 Feb 1789); Mary (1May 1791). The twins Rose and Sarah were born
c
.1793 and Alice
c
.1795: their baptismal records are missing. I am grateful to the Revd William Seale, rector of Drumgooland, for checking the entries on my behalf. Sarah, the only one of Patrick's sisters to marry, eloped with Simon Collins: one of her daughters, Rose Ann, lived in Bradford, England, after her marriage to David Heslip. There is no evidence of any contact between her and her cousins at Haworth: âA Relative of the Brontës',
Sketch
, 10 Feb 1897 p.118; William Wright, âMrs Heslip and the Brontës in Ireland', ibid., 10 Mar 1897 p.288.
9.
It is possible that the Brontës only ever lived at Lisnacreevy and Ballynaskeagh if the Emdale cottage âbirthplace' is another of Wright's fictions. The Drumballyroney baptismal records give Ballyroney as the birthplace for William (1779) and Lisnacreevy for Hugh, James, Walsh, Jane and Mary (1781â91). Alice, the youngest sister (see above n. 5), was apparently the source for the information that she was born at Ballynaskeagh:
Brontëana
, 284, 293â4. The farm at Ballynaskeagh remained the family home until at least the death of Hugh jnr in 1863: for a photograph see ibid., vii.