| The write stuff  The
Brontë name has proved so evocative of stories of passion and wild
landscapes that it has been adopted to brand everything from spring water
to poultry-processing.
So much so that the financially hard-pressed Brontë Parsonage Museum
in Haworth, West Yorkshire has decided to write to the three dozen companies
trading under the title Brontë to seek support for the running of
the house where the family lived. The museum gets a respectable 80,000
visitors a year but it costs some £562,000 annually to run.
The Brontë heritage industry is largely based in Yorkshire but there
is a strong Irish connection.
Patrick Brontë father of writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne was
born on St. Patrick’s Day 1777 in Emdale Cottage, Drumgooland, Co.
Down. His family was originally from Dundalk although there seems to have
been a Fermanagh branch as well and were originally called Brunty, Prunty
or Ó Pronntaigh depending on which theory you prefer.
Whatever their exact geographic origins in Ireland today you can take
the Brontë Homeland Drive which is indisputably in Co. Down and try
to get some inkling of what helped inspire this extraordinary literary
family.
The Brontë countryside lies between Banbridge and Rathfriland home
to the father and numerous uncles and aunts of the famous novelists. (Incidentally
George Bush’s great great grandmother came from Rathfriland. But
no sign of a heritage centre yet thank goodness.)
The ruins of the cottage at Emdale, the birthplace, are preserved and
two other Brontë houses nearby are still occupied. The hilltop parish
church and school at Drumballyroney where Patrick taught before going
to England is now the nucleus of the tiny Brontë Interpretative Centre.
The drive through this beautiful drumlin countryside is unsurpassable.
Knockiveagh is an ideal place to stop and see the rolling hills and rough
countryside where the young Brontë grew up. A bit further on is Alice
McClory’s cottage, the childhood home of Patrick’s mother.
It was here in the heart of rural Ireland that Patrick heard the folklore
of his native land. He was a fine writer himself publishing several poems
but his literary importance lies in the storytelling gift he passed on
to his three daughters — tales from his Irish childhood which fed
and fired their imaginative genius.
To continue on your Brontë tour you must now relocate to Yorkshire.
Patrick left Ireland in 1802. However even then links with Ireland were
not severed. Charlotte describes an uncle from Belfast who visited them
as “a staid and respectable yeoman of good appearance”. Latterly
this has been amended to an irate Irish uncle coming over to sort out
a critic who had the temerity to criticise Jane Eyre.
There is no doubt however that the Yorkshire Moors were a lasting influence
on this Irish family. In 1820 Patrick Brontë became perpetual curate
of Haworth, West Yorkshire. In Haworth Parsonage Museum you can see where
the good reverend, his wife and six children lived. As well as Emily,
Charlotte and Anne the family also included Maria and Elizabeth who died
in childhood and Branwell who turned into something of ne’er-do-well.
The Haworth house faces the Reverend Brontë’s church with its
tidy graveyard and behind lies the barrenness of the Yorkshire moorland.
The house itself is quite small and as you stand in the tight little downstairs
parlour it’s easy to imagine the Reverend Brontë writing his
sermon while Emily would be working on Wuthering Heights, Charlotte writing
Jane Eyre and Anne putting the finishing touches to Agnes Grey. According
to a diary in the museum the three sisters liked to walk round the table
trading ideas. An extraordinary room to find in the wilds of the Yorkshire
Moors.
Upstairs are the bedrooms including the one which Patrick shared with
Branwell after Patrick’s wife died. Branwell turned out to be a
violent drunk as well as an opium user so his presence in the house was,
to say the least, disruptive.
Haworth Parsonage not surprisingly has an air of sadness about it. While
the heritage centre in Co. Down gives you some idea of where the inspiration
for this phenomenal storytelling family might have come from the melancholy
vicarage on the Moors of West Yorkshire speaks of what-might-have-been.
Branwell, Emily and Anne all died in this little house within a few months
of each other in 1848-1849 the latter two undoubtedly with unfinished
literary gems inside them. You can gaze at the sofa where Emily gradually
grew weaker with TB, look at the pages of manuscript in her tiny hand-writing
and imagine her playing the piano as she insisted on taking a few last
breaths of the Yorkshire Moors.
For an expanded Brontë tour nothing beats Banagher. The Co. Offaly
town is more generally associated with another writer Anthony Trollope
but Hill House, where the current Church of Ireland canon now lives, was
once the home of Arthur Bell Nicholls Charlotte Brontë’s widower.
Charlotte lived in Banagher for a time first having honey-mooned in a
place called Cuba Court, Banagher a previous home of Arthur Bell Nicholls.
Patrick Brontë had the melancholy distinction of outliving all of
his illustrious offspring. Towards the end of his life he spoke of returning
to the land of his youth in Co. Down if only for a visit. It wasn’t
to be and he died in Yorkshire in 1861.
Journeying to both these areas in the wild Yorkshire Moors or the rural
uplands of Co. Down in the shadow of the Mournes gives a brief insight
into these extraordinary and sad literary lives.
n Brontë Parsonage Museum, West Yorkshire is open most of the year,
Tel 01535 642323.
Banbridge tourist information: 02840 623322. |
