The Brontes
How much do you know about the Bronte family? Heathcliff and the moors? Yeah, that’s about right. It turns out that the Bronte children in real life were just about as interesting as some of their characters. Buckle your seat belts for a long, long entry!
First of all, let’s meet the family.
It’s the early 1800′s. Patrick Bronte, aka “Dad,” was a parson in the town of Haworth. Mommy Maria had six children and unfortunately died before the oldest turned eight. Enter Auntie Elizabeth Branwell, Maria’s sister, who cared for the children all their lives (or rather, all the rest of her life). Those children were Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne.
Maria and Elizabeth headed off to boarding school and died of tuberculosis there. (It’s not surprising that Charlotte would have had Jane Eyre’s boarding school stricken with a TB outbreak.) This left four siblings at home, a quirky bunch. They spent their days writing and drawing about imaginary lands of Angria and Gondal and writing books so tiny that one needed a magnifying glass to read them properly.
Branwell
Brother Branwell was a sometime portrait painter, most-time heavy drinker and aimless fellow. He’s the one who painted this picture of the three sisters which currently hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. (He was in it as well, but he painted himself out. Ah, perfectionists…) Although the opium and alcohol could have done him in, it was bronchitis (and suspected tuberculosis) that nailed his coffin in 1848 when he was only 31.
Charlotte
Charlotte, the author of Jane Eyre and several other novels, was the next in age. She headed off to boarding school, went abroad, and got married to her father’s whisker-faced curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, when she was 37. She didn’t last a year as a married lady and died either of tuberculosis or dehydration and starvation caused by severe morning sickness when she was about five months pregnant. You think someone might have been able to tell the difference between the two.
Emily

Emily, the Wuthering Heights lady, went off to school, was a teacher, hated it, and came back home. She died of tuberculosis in 1848. She was a shy thing, but what must have gone on in her mind to dream up the likes of Heathcliff?
Anne

Anne, who wrote the very good and oft-overlooked The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey, lived a life similar to that of Emily in that she went to school, taught, and died of–guess what? Tuberculosis. Bummer life, even if she did get to live on the Yorkshire moors.
Now, what did I, Teacherperson, do on this trip? We parked the car in the lot and saw a pretty sight. We hoped it wasn’t the Bronte Waterfall we had come to hike to.
Our first stop was the toilets…I mean, the Bronte Church, which is actually called Haworth Church (I think).
It’s an active church, as evidenced by the wedding that was just leaving as we arrived.
The church was extra-pretty due to the wedding just having left. But, it would have been lovely even without the flowers.
Did the Bronte sisters stare at this window instead of listening to their father’s sermons?
The Brontes are buried in the church and not in the amazingly-crowded cemetery which is the front lawn of the parsonage and back yard of the church.
It was neat to see Dad;s, Patrick Bronte’s, name on the list of parsons which goes to the present day. (I added the big, red arrow.)
Next, a school building where Charlotte taught. To get a size of the scale of the place, imagine the school, church, and parsonage are all inside a regular-size Wal-Mart. It’s like walking from Health and Beauty to Office Supplies to get from one to the other.
This is the school. But on the right is the graveyard of the church and the left is the parsonage front yard. Not much of a commute to work for Charlotte.

Next, it was time to go to the Bronte Parsonage Museum, the house where they lived and died.
Haworth is very hilly. This picture was taken as we walked from the church and the school to the parsonage, which is what is at the top of the hill.
I kept waiting for that guy to walk the whole way into the door so I could get a great shot, but he just wouldn’t move!
As usual, you couldn’t take pictures inside. So, I bought postcards and took pictures of those to post here for you! This room was to the right after the front door. it is where they sat and did most of their writing. Emily died on that very couch. She pretended she wasn’t sick, but when she finally could pretend no more, she died.

In Jane Eyre, Chapter 20, Charlotte Bronte wrote, “I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite–whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top rose an ebony crucifix and a dying Christ.” Creepy, huh? It turns out that Charlotte actually saw such a cabinet when she was visiting the Eyres! And, here it is.
The Bronte Museum was well worth a visit. They had great displays, lots of actual pictures painted by Branwell, things which belonged to the family, and the rooms decorated much as if they had never left them. But, we didn’t come to Haworth just to see a museum. We came to hike the Yorkshire moors.
Have you read any Bronte novels? Did you like them?
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