The Secret World of the Brontes

If you grew up in Yorkshire, like me, I’m willing to bet that you know quite a lot about the writers known collectively as The Bronte Sisters.

Everybody knows about them, you might say, they’re famous! Well, yes that is true but I think you got a head start. You probably went on numerous school trips to Howarth; you might have been transfixed by Charlotte’s neat waisted dresses, on display at the Parsonage Museum; marvelled at the miniature books, vowing, right there, to create one of your own and if you were really curious, you might have delved deeper into their family background…

The year is 1820. Patrick Bronte, Irish man, newly employed as Perpetual Curate, brings his Cornish wife, Maria Branwell and six children – Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne to live at the parsonage in Haworth. Sadly, it isn’t long before tragedy strikes, cancer claiming the life of Maria Branwell in 1821. With no mother for his children, Patrick Bronte arranges for his four eldest daughters to attend the Clergy Daughter’s School at Cowan Bridge. It is 1824. He thinks it is a good school but it is not, as he will soon learn. The following year Maria and Elizabeth, weakened by cruelty and malnutrition, die of tuberculosis. The loss of their mother and older sisters has a profound effect on the remaining four children. Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne draw closer together, their experiences of loss imprinting darkly on their developing minds. Imagine the four of them, gathered together around the dining room table studying and exchanging ideas… By 1848 Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall have been published by the authors Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the clue is in their initials). Although they don’t know it they have, between them, created some of the greatest, most startling works of fiction the world will ever know. So how does one family produce not one but three literary heavyweights? Of course we can’t know for sure… but let’s rewind a little bit, back to their childhood and more specifically, to June 1826… Patrick Bronte returns from Leeds with a box of twelve wooden soldiers, a present for Branwell. Charlotte writes in her diary about their arrival: ‘Branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers. Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched up one and exclaimed, ‘This is the Duke of Wellington! This shall be the Duke!’ When I had said this Emily likewise took one up and said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part. Emily’s was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him ‘Gravey.’ Anne’s was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him ‘Waiting-boy.’ Branwell chose his, and called him ‘Bonaparte.’ We are witnessing the birth of the The Glass Town Federation – a fictitious world based in Africa in which they each have their own kingdom. The children invent stories – acted out with the toy soldiers to begin with and later, documented in a series of magazines, poems, short stories and novelettes. Many of these manuscripts still survive today so we know quite a lot about what is happening in Glass Town. Remember those miniature books? They have been especially created by the children for their toy soldiers to read and perhaps also as a way of hiding this fantastical world from short-sighted adults. All is not well with the Federation, though. Already Emily and Anne have renamed their soldiers Sir William Edward Parry and Sir James Clark Ross – Arctic Explorers and clearly not all that impressed with what’s going on in Glass Town – they dream of the far north. Remember this, for it is a seed of what is to come. With a preferred diet of Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding followed by Apple pie and preserves Ross and Parry will not be residing in Africa for very long. In January 1831 Charlotte leaves Howarth to study at Roe Head School, in Mirfield. Emily and Anne see this as their opportunity to break away from The Federation. Why are they driven to this? Firstly, as the two younger siblings, it’s possible that they don’t have much control over what happens in Glass Town – Ross and Parry are no match for the Duke of Wellington and Bonaparte, and secondly, Emily and Anne are extremely close. Ellen Nussey, a lifelong friend of Charlotte, describes them as ‘Like twins’ and ‘In the very closest sympathy which never had any interruption.’ So where now, for the rebel explorers? They head North, and to a large island in the North Pacific, divided into four kingdoms and ruled by rival families… This is the island of Gondal. In a diary entry dated the 24th of November, 1834 Emily writes: ‘The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine.’ This is the first we hear of the new imaginary world. The statement is intriguing, a hallmark of what follows for there is very little paper evidence of this world and what we do have is cryptic and cannot be easily arranged into a narrative. Six diary entries, five lists of names and a collection of poems. Without any prose we can only stitch together these fragments and guess at what they were creating between them. Emily writes in her diary, July 30th 1845: “Anne and I went on our first long journey by ourselves together, leaving home on the 30th of June, Monday, sleeping at York, returning to Keighley Tuesday evening, sleeping there and walking home on Wednesday morning. Though the weather was broken we enjoyed ourselves very much, except during a few hours at Bradford. And during our excursions we were Ronald Macalgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosabella Esmalden, Ella and Julian Egremont, Catherine Navarre, and Cordelia Fitzaphnold, escaping from the palaces of instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans. The Gondals still flourish bright as ever. I am at present writing a work on the First Wars – Anne has been writing some articles on this, and a book by Henry Sophona – we intend sticking firm by the rascals as long as they delight us which I am glad to say they do at present.” It is possible that ‘Gondal’ was acted out more than it was documented, that it was essentially a private game between the two of them. So what have they allowed us to see? The poems describe a landscape of moorland and heather, ferns and bluebells, snowy mountains and icy winter winds, not unlike to the landscape beyond their own windows, but the glimpses we get of the drama are full of war, rebellion; exile, death; torture and romantic passion – drama far beyond the realms of their own experience. It is thought, in some circles, that Gondal is an early version of Wuthering Heights, something that would be impossible to confirm but it is easy to draw comparisons between the two and perhaps conclude that its characters and drama preoccupied Emily deeply, and into adulthood. But what about Anne? There is evidence that she very much followed Emily’s lead when it came to their joint adventure. Listen to her diary entry, dated July 31st 1845: “Emily is engaged in writing the Emperor Julius’s Life. She has read some of it, and I want very much to hear the rest. She is writing some poetry, too. I wonder what it is about? I have begun the third of Passages in the Life of an Individual. I wish I had finished it. This afternoon I began to set about making my grey figured silk frock that was dyed at Keighley. What sort of a hand shall I make of it? E. and I have a great deal of work to do. When shall we sensibly diminish it? I want to get a habit of early rising. Shall I succeed? We have not yet finished our Gondal Chronicles that we began three years and a half ago. When will they be done? The Gondals are at present in a sad state. The Republicans are uppermost, but the Royalists are not quite overcome. The young sovereigns, with their brothers and sisters, are still at the Palace of Instruction. The Unique Society, about half a year ago, were wrecked on a desert Island as they were returning from Gaaldine. They are still there, but we have not played at them much yet.” It seems that Anne’s involvement is never as all consuming as Emily’s. Her Gondal poems, of which there are comparatively few, are written only when she is living at home with Emily and, unlike her sister, there is little evidence that she drew on the fantasy world to create her own fiction. As she matures as a person and a writer she appears to move away from Gondal, her female protagonists Agnes Grey and Helen Graham are very much women of the real world with all its suffering and dilemmas. She deliberately distinguishes between what is fantasy and what is her own experience of life. It is summer, 1848. The sisters are young, newly published authors. Literary success seems almost certain. How cruel, then, that tragedy strikes the family once again. Within the next ten months three of the siblings will have succumbed to tuberculosis, Branwell first on the 24th of September then Emily on December 19th. By January, Anne is also ill. She persuades Charlotte to accompany her on a visit to Scarborough where she hopes the sea air will return her to health. She dies on the 28th of May 1849. Charlotte decides to ‘let the flower lie where it has fallen’ and has her buried in St Mary’s churchyard, beneath the castle walls, overlooking the bay. And now there will be no more Gondal. The two sisters have taken their imaginary world with them to the grave. What is left for us will always be just out of reach and perhaps all the more mesmerising for it.