Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Helloly, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy and I'm deleted Chuck Reboarding and longtime listeners
Speaker 1: know that sad royal childhoods are a frequent theme of ours,
Speaker 1: But the truth is discussing the youth of a podcast
Speaker 1: subject is usually pretty interesting, whether their royalty or not.
Speaker 1: Whether it's eleot Chellaby showing off to the Sultan, or
Speaker 1: as we discussed recently, paleontologist Mary Anning getting struck by
Speaker 1: lightning as an infant, or even haunts Christian Anderson crashing
Speaker 1: dinner parties in his ill fitting communion suit. I really
Speaker 1: think that taking a closer look at the early years
Speaker 1: often shows a different side of a subject, or sometimes
Speaker 1: even most intriguingly, a sign of what's to come. You know,
Speaker 1: some spark of genius in the early years. But it's
Speaker 1: rare that we devote an entire episode to those early
Speaker 1: pre fame years, as we're going to do today with
Speaker 1: the talented Bronte family. And while we we will follow
Speaker 1: up with an episode on their remarkable breakthroughs and their successes,
Speaker 1: which we all probably know a little bit more about.
Speaker 1: There are a few good reasons for establishing a solid
Speaker 1: footing before we go there. I mean, the first one
Speaker 1: would be that most of the family didn't live much
Speaker 1: beyond childhood, kind of the sad reason why the youngest
Speaker 1: Bronte child to die was only at ten and the
Speaker 1: oldest was thirty eight, so not very long lives at all. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the Bronte children grew up under very strange circumstances. They
Speaker 1: grew up in extreme isolation coupled with endless intellectual stimulation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a New Yorker article by Mary Hawthorne on their
Speaker 1: fantastic drawings and watercolors. Something you might not be aware
Speaker 1: of that the Brontes were actually, in some cases really
Speaker 1: talented artists too. But this article suggested that the peculiarities
Speaker 1: of their upbringing produced quote an extraordinary collective creative mania,
Speaker 1: which I think is a great way to think about
Speaker 1: what they were doing as kids. And there's one third
Speaker 1: reason that we want to go into their childhood a
Speaker 1: little bit first, and that's the Bronte mystique. It almost
Speaker 1: hinges on those earlier years. So how did one remote
Speaker 1: family produce three world class writers and one brilliant wastrel brother.
Speaker 1: How did the isolated and experienced Bronte girls author books
Speaker 1: filled with so much passion and terror? And what was
Speaker 1: in the water at how worth besides death and disease?
Speaker 1: And what made them also brilliant? So the Brontes are
Speaker 1: such a staple of British literature classes that it probably
Speaker 1: surprises some people to learn their origins were in Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland and that their family name wasn't even Bronte. Their father,
Speaker 1: Who's Patrick, was born in seventy seven on St Patrick's
Speaker 1: Day in Northern Ireland, and he was the son of
Speaker 1: Hugh Brunte, who was a ditch mender. And despite the
Speaker 1: poor beginnings, Patrick was the eldest of ten really you know,
Speaker 1: in a really poor family. Uh, they were very story oriented.
Speaker 1: Hugh Brunte was known in his area as being an
Speaker 1: incredible storyteller. Young Patrick grew up reading as much as
Speaker 1: he possibly could. He even memorized Paradise Lost as a kid,
Speaker 1: and that intellectual spark caught the attention of a local
Speaker 1: Presbyterian minister and from there Patrick made one good connection
Speaker 1: after another with wealthy members of the Methodist movement and
Speaker 1: ultimately earned himself a spot at Cambridge, and I read
Speaker 1: a really great biography on Charlotte Bronte by Rebecca Frasier,
Speaker 1: and she said that this jump from being the ditch
Speaker 1: mender's son to attending Cambridge was really an almost unimaginable lee. Again,
Speaker 1: it did remind me a little bit of Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson actually, who had just talked about. In eighteen o six, Patrick,
Speaker 1: who had changed his name to Bronte at school, decided
Speaker 1: to take orders as a clergyman. In eighteen twelve he
Speaker 1: met Mariah Branwell, who was from a well off Cornish
Speaker 1: merchant family with rumors of pirate ancestry. She lived in
Speaker 1: Penzance after all, and Mariah was in a pretty great
Speaker 1: place for an unmarried thirty year old in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: She had some money, she had some independence, and she
Speaker 1: was much loved and valued by her family. But only
Speaker 1: months after meeting Patrick, Mariah packed it in, married him
Speaker 1: and moved north and started having just baby after baby.
Speaker 1: They had six kids and six years Mariah, Elizabeth, Charlotte,
Speaker 1: Patrick Branwell, Emily and Anne. So most of the younger
Speaker 1: Bronte children were born in Thornton, West Yorkshire, where the
Speaker 1: Brontes could socialize. It was near enough to a town
Speaker 1: that they could go visit with friends, They had a
Speaker 1: they had a busy life there, and that was especially
Speaker 1: important considering Mr and Mrs Bronte were already pretty isolated
Speaker 1: from their extended families in Ireland and Cornwall. But of
Speaker 1: course Bronte Buffs know that the kids didn't grow up
Speaker 1: in this busy, sociable town of Thornton Heathcliff, Rome's Moors,
Speaker 1: after all, not some cute little village. So not long
Speaker 1: after Anne's birth in eighteen twenty, Mr Bronte accepted a
Speaker 1: position as the curate of Hawarth and it wasn't really
Speaker 1: too far off from Thornton, but the hills and the
Speaker 1: moor surrounding it made the place inaccessible, plus cold and
Speaker 1: windy and boggy. And today we know that Howard was
Speaker 1: also very, very unhealthy. And I can actually remember this
Speaker 1: from my eleventh grade literature class, my teacher drawing a
Speaker 1: picture of the Bronte house and um the water supply
Speaker 1: and where it came from, and it just very involved, definitely,
Speaker 1: but it's something that unhealthy nous of the town was
Speaker 1: something that Mr Bronte noticed right away and tried to
Speaker 1: fix in his role as parson. I mean, just to
Speaker 1: give you a few examples of how unhealthy this place
Speaker 1: really was, because you might be thinking, you know, a
Speaker 1: small village, how bad could it be? But the Babbage
Speaker 1: Report on Sanitation from about thirty years after the Bronte's
Speaker 1: arrival compared Howard's death rate to that of Whitechapel, London,
Speaker 1: of course, one of the um worst most packed with
Speaker 1: people's slums in London. The average life expectancy with only
Speaker 1: twenty five years. The problems that this place had where
Speaker 1: that there weren't enough previews, no sewers, water was rarely clean,
Speaker 1: and there were too many dead filling up the poorly
Speaker 1: drained churchyard. And guess where the family lived, right by
Speaker 1: the churchyard with a view of the cemetery on two sides.
Speaker 1: Since the local families were mostly quite poor, they were
Speaker 1: laborers and factory workers. There were only a few other, quote,
Speaker 1: you know, respectable people that the Brontes could socialize with,
Speaker 1: so they stuck to themselves. Mainly. There was a class
Speaker 1: thing here. The Brontes were were also, but they were
Speaker 1: middle class because of Mr Bronte's position. The girls grew
Speaker 1: up learning to do things like put up linen, but
Speaker 1: they had servants to do the cleaning and the cooking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read one description of them learning lighthouse keeping, whatever
Speaker 1: that means, because it means I just imagine people walking
Speaker 1: around with a feather nut I don't know, like making
Speaker 1: lace or something. But still, you know, you're probably wondering
Speaker 1: at this point, why would you take this position if
Speaker 1: this town was so unhealthy? But the job meant a
Speaker 1: major raise for Mr Bronte, plus a house for his
Speaker 1: family of eight and a job for life, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty serious thing. But the tragedies started not too
Speaker 1: long after they moved. Only nine months later. Mrs Bronte,
Speaker 1: who hadn't really ever recovered after Anne's birth, started to
Speaker 1: get very sick, and Mr Bronte nursed her himself for
Speaker 1: seven months while she slowly died of what at the
Speaker 1: time people thought was stomach cancer but now what historians
Speaker 1: believe was blood poisoning. Mariah, the oldest daughter, you know,
Speaker 1: still just a little kid, took care of her younger
Speaker 1: sisters and her brother until all six of them also
Speaker 1: got sick. They came down with scarlet fever, and at
Speaker 1: that point Mr Bronte was just at his breaking point
Speaker 1: and wrote to his sister in law, Elizabeth Brandwell, to
Speaker 1: come up to Yorkshire and please help the family. So
Speaker 1: she attended her sister's death and stayed to care for
Speaker 1: the kids, but she really wanted to go home to
Speaker 1: warmer Cornwall. Mr Bronte meanwhile tried to find a new
Speaker 1: wife to help educate his kids and also to study
Speaker 1: his temper and allow his sister in law to go home.
Speaker 1: But he found no takers. I mean, he just wasn't
Speaker 1: in that attractive a position at the time. He had
Speaker 1: six kids and a really low salary, so it just
Speaker 1: didn't help his cause. Yeah, new takers. So with six kids, though,
Speaker 1: and five of them girls, how was he supposed to
Speaker 1: educate them on a poor Parsons income? And the kids were,
Speaker 1: of course precocious, a little Bronte's. They'd read newspapers and
Speaker 1: talk politics. They'd argue about who they thought was Beth
Speaker 1: the Duke of Wellington, or Napoleon or Hannibal or Caesar.
Speaker 1: But they didn't have a formal education, which was especially
Speaker 1: important for girls who might need to actually go work
Speaker 1: later in life, you know, become teachers, become governesses. So
Speaker 1: it seems like kind of a hopeless situation. But then
Speaker 1: a miracle seemed to happen. In eighteen twenty four, a
Speaker 1: new school for the daughters of the poor evangelical clergy
Speaker 1: opened at cowan Bridge, only about fifty miles from Haworth.
Speaker 1: For only fourteen pounds a year, a girl could study history, geography, globes, grammar, writing, arithmetic,
Speaker 1: needlework and fine housekeeping. And you could even choose a
Speaker 1: vocation of sorts. You could choose to learn to be
Speaker 1: a wife, a governess, or your own housekeeper. And for
Speaker 1: added cachet, the school's director was a wealthy clergyman named
Speaker 1: Carus Wilson, which was a really big name to someone
Speaker 1: like Mr Bronte. Okay, though, if you've read Jane Eyre
Speaker 1: you know where this story is going. The school was cold,
Speaker 1: it was damp, the building was overcrowded, too many girls
Speaker 1: in two cramped rooms, with too few provies and poor food.
Speaker 1: And another problem was that Wilson thought deprivation was a
Speaker 1: really good thing. He believed little children were particularly sinful,
Speaker 1: so he probably wasn't the best person to be running
Speaker 1: a school full of little children in an unhealthy spot.
Speaker 1: But by November, the four eldest Bronte girls were at
Speaker 1: Cowan Bridge, and Mariah went home first in February. She
Speaker 1: was dead by May of tuberculosis. Elizabeth went home May
Speaker 1: thirty one, prompting Mr. Bronte to leave the very next
Speaker 1: day and rescue Charlotte and Emily. So I mean that
Speaker 1: gives you a pretty good picture of what kind of
Speaker 1: state Elizabeth must have been in for him to go
Speaker 1: rushing back. She died just two weeks later, and according
Speaker 1: to an article on Elizabeth Brown day Um by Jane
Speaker 1: tripp It, she's actually called the Unknown Bronte because so
Speaker 1: little is really known about her. Mariah also died young,
Speaker 1: but she was sort of the inspiration for Helen Burns
Speaker 1: and you know, really idolized by her family. But Elizabeth
Speaker 1: more of a blank slate. So anyway, this article by
Speaker 1: Jeane Trippett and the Journal Bronte Studies, Elizabeth supposedly also
Speaker 1: met with some unknown quote alarming accident while she was
Speaker 1: at school, her head being quote severely cut according to
Speaker 1: the school's headmistress. So it seems like there were, you know,
Speaker 1: potentially more serious things going on, not that the accident
Speaker 1: was necessarily something um, somebody had caused her harm, but
Speaker 1: just that it wasn't covered in any more detail than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds sketchy, you know. It makes you feel like
Speaker 1: maybe Calvin Bridge was Lowwood from Jane Eyre Chrus Wilson
Speaker 1: could have been the evil Mr Brocklehurst. And I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about Charlotte's legacy in the next episode,
Speaker 1: but since she was the only sister to come really
Speaker 1: famous during her lifetime, a lot of people took an
Speaker 1: interest in that connection. Charlotte herself said that Lowood was true.
Speaker 1: The Wilson camp claimed that Charlotte couldn't be relied on
Speaker 1: for having been a child at the time, she wouldn't
Speaker 1: have remembered things that they really were exactly. According to Fraser,
Speaker 1: their biggest piece of evidence came from a letter signed
Speaker 1: a h which was believed to be the former headmistress
Speaker 1: and inspiration for the kind Miss Temple in Charlotte's book,
Speaker 1: she claimed everything had been Rosie in the nine though
Speaker 1: someone finally bothered too to the math and realized that
Speaker 1: the real Miss Temple had actually been dead when she
Speaker 1: wrote the vindicating letter, and the letter's author was probably
Speaker 1: actually the inspiration for the evil Mrs Scatchard, which doesn't
Speaker 1: sound so good for cowen Bridge all a sudden, but
Speaker 1: with the death of Mariah and Elizabeth in such a
Speaker 1: short span of time, and of course also so soon
Speaker 1: after the death of their mother, uh, the kids were
Speaker 1: really devastated. And remember their house looks out on a
Speaker 1: cemetery too, so there was really no escaping this feeling
Speaker 1: of death. A later guest, remember that Howard's high mortality
Speaker 1: rate was really obvious to anybody who was stopping through,
Speaker 1: because the church bell would constantly toll for the dead,
Speaker 1: and then the tombstone chiseler would always be at work,
Speaker 1: you know, chipping away at the granite blocks, which sounds
Speaker 1: really horrifying in this context of a family who's just
Speaker 1: lost so many people in such a short stand of time.
Speaker 1: So Miss Branwell became the household educator for the girls,
Speaker 1: while Mr Bronte would have given extra Greek and Latin
Speaker 1: lessons to Branwell. They also had an inexhaustible supply of
Speaker 1: reading materials day old newspapers, magazines, borrowed books, methodist tracks,
Speaker 1: and literature. Of course, Charlotte and Branwell read almost all
Speaker 1: of Byron at age thirteen and twelve. The only thing
Speaker 1: that Patrick Bronte seemed to censor was Miss Branwell's Ladies magazine.
Speaker 1: He thought it had silly little stories in it. He
Speaker 1: didn't want his kids to read them. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: probably no surprise that with the kids reading so much
Speaker 1: romantic literature and then geography too and current events, that
Speaker 1: they made up their own world eventually, you know, as
Speaker 1: a way to kind of get away from all that
Speaker 1: was going on in their real life, and filled it
Speaker 1: with byronic heroes and their most famous creation, the Empire
Speaker 1: of Angria, with its capital of glass Town, started when
Speaker 1: Mr Bronte brought home a set of wooden soldiers for Brandwell,
Speaker 1: and Charlotte later described it in a way that sounds
Speaker 1: so genuine. You know, you can imagine kids just picking
Speaker 1: up toys and starting this imaginary world. But she wrote,
Speaker 1: Branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers.
Speaker 1: Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched
Speaker 1: one up and exclaimed, this is the Duke of Wellington.
Speaker 1: This shall be the Duke. Emily's became gravy and Anne's
Speaker 1: waiting boy, and brand Well's Bonaparte. So with all their
Speaker 1: soldiers named, I think the names went through a few variations.
Speaker 1: In some cases the soldiers became what they called the
Speaker 1: young men, and um they lived in Glasstown. The kids
Speaker 1: became these all powerful genies. And then the Glasstown saga
Speaker 1: morphed into something that wasn't just like playing with the
Speaker 1: soldiers on rainy days and making up stories. It really
Speaker 1: became a world for them. Yeah, Brandwell even created a
Speaker 1: language and history and maps for this world. By January nine,
Speaker 1: they started to produce miniature Glasstown magazines with science articles,
Speaker 1: poems and jokes. Actually all the Glasstown writings were done
Speaker 1: on a miniature scale. So the first magazine was two
Speaker 1: and a quarter inch by one in a quarter inch,
Speaker 1: done on scraps of sugar paper or wallpaper in Angria
Speaker 1: and the Angrians, brand Well crammed two thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: words onto a five by seven inch page and they
Speaker 1: called it Scribblemania, which I think is my new band name.
Speaker 1: And you know, they had a reason though, behind all
Speaker 1: of the tiny writing, which they also did to sort
Speaker 1: of imitate print almost. It was a way to keep
Speaker 1: the adults out of their business, you know, because it
Speaker 1: was so impossible to read, probably especially if you were
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century person with bad eyesight. So Emily and
Speaker 1: Anne participated in the world of Angria, but they also
Speaker 1: created their own world called Gondol. And we don't know
Speaker 1: quite as much about Gondol as we do about Glasstown,
Speaker 1: because Charlotte destroyed much of her sister's early writings after
Speaker 1: their deaths. But there is one pretty intriguing fact, especially
Speaker 1: if you've read any of those younger Bront's works. Gondol
Speaker 1: was ruled by women, which certainly set it apart from
Speaker 1: from the world of Angria, which had these really strong
Speaker 1: male protagonists. But all the kids continued writing poems and
Speaker 1: plays and romances about their worlds and these characters well
Speaker 1: into adulthood, and Charlotte would at various times try to
Speaker 1: ditch her imaginary world as she'd get older, but she'd
Speaker 1: come back, you know sometimes. Deplena and I were discussing
Speaker 1: before the podcast, actually that while so charming in their youth,
Speaker 1: it does start to take on a disturbing tone when
Speaker 1: they are still so obsessed with it as they get older.
Speaker 1: But her indirect interest in it ultimately ended up coming
Speaker 1: out partly in some of her more famous work. Charlotte's
Speaker 1: alter ego, The Morna, is very much like her later
Speaker 1: anti hero Mr Rochester, So I mean, there you go.
Speaker 1: But of course they couldn't play at home forever. In
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty and Mr Bronte got sick and nearly died.
Speaker 1: When he recovered, he realized his kids had no safety net,
Speaker 1: so he decided to keep branwell at home, but he
Speaker 1: sent Charlotte to school again to learn to be a governess,
Speaker 1: this time at Mrs Wooler School at roe Head, twenty
Speaker 1: miles from Hollarth. It was different from colin Bridge and
Speaker 1: it was in a charity school. Other students there were
Speaker 1: rich manufacturing daughters, and Charlotte stood out with her Irish
Speaker 1: accent and her funny clothes. To make things worse, she
Speaker 1: was placed at the bottom of the class since her
Speaker 1: entire education had been so haphazard, and she couldn't play
Speaker 1: because she was so nearsighted, so she was really loved
Speaker 1: instead of you know, joining in with ball games. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: according to the BBC documentary In Search of the Brontes,
Speaker 1: she made friends through storytelling, which was really her strength.
Speaker 1: As we know, she would rehash the ghost tales that
Speaker 1: she learned from the Brontes much loved cook Cabby, and
Speaker 1: two of her roe Head friends, Ellen Nussy and Mary Taylor,
Speaker 1: became lifelong correspondence of her. So she did manage to
Speaker 1: make those bonds. Yeah, and as the side note to
Speaker 1: the correspondence with Ellen really is the source of a
Speaker 1: lot of biographical information about not just Charlotte, but the
Speaker 1: Bronte family as a whole. Mary Taylor burned her correspondence,
Speaker 1: so we don't know what all were missing there. So
Speaker 1: Charlotte also worked her way to the top of the
Speaker 1: class and after two years she came home. This is
Speaker 1: maybe one of the happier times in the Brontes lives.
Speaker 1: All the kids were back at the parsonage. Charlotte's friend Ellen,
Speaker 1: who visited in eighteen thirty three, wrote that quote, they
Speaker 1: were beginning to feel conscious of their powers. They were
Speaker 1: rich in each other's companionship. Their health was good, their
Speaker 1: spirits were good. There was often joyousness and mirth. The
Speaker 1: perfection of unrestrained talk and intelligence brightened the close of
Speaker 1: the days which were passing all too swiftly. So we
Speaker 1: can kind of get a picture two of the Bronte's.
Speaker 1: During this period, they would take long walks over the moors,
Speaker 1: and in the evening, the four girls, or if Ellen
Speaker 1: was visiting, would stroll around the sitting room arm in arm.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of pets in the house. Later
Speaker 1: on they had geese named Victoria and Adelaide, which I
Speaker 1: just love. Um brand Will also still seemed like the
Speaker 1: great hope of the family, and that's something that's always
Speaker 1: interesting when you learn about the Brontes, these three very
Speaker 1: famous sisters. Yet the family expected the Sun to be
Speaker 1: the great one. But at this point, you know, it
Speaker 1: seemed likely. He was charming, he was smart, he was
Speaker 1: good at everything he did. He had a well respected
Speaker 1: art teacher at this point, and while his most famous
Speaker 1: work of his sisters is unfortunately pretty crude, not the
Speaker 1: best representation that you'd want as your legacy, he was
Speaker 1: considered an accomplished draftsman, so maybe he was a little
Speaker 1: better at drawing than at oil painting. So Charlotte turned
Speaker 1: down a few governessing jobs to stay at home, but
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty five she eventually got an offer that
Speaker 1: she couldn't refuse. It was a teaching position at roe
Speaker 1: Head with free education offered for one sister, but going
Speaker 1: back to roe Head turned out to be a really
Speaker 1: serious mistake. Emily could barely make it three months before
Speaker 1: she had to go home. She couldn't stand being away
Speaker 1: from home. The more's her imaginary life, so fifteen year
Speaker 1: old and came up instead. Charlotte was also seriously depressed
Speaker 1: and was going through kind of a religious crisis. In
Speaker 1: August eighteen thirty six, she wrote, quote, the thought came
Speaker 1: over me, am, I to spend all the best part
Speaker 1: of my life in this wretched bondage forcibly suppressing my
Speaker 1: ray age at the idleness, the apathy, and the hyperbolical
Speaker 1: and most asinine stupidity of those fat headed oaths on
Speaker 1: a compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity,
Speaker 1: and to make matters worse, Brandwell partly the reason why
Speaker 1: the girls were working in the first place was failing miserably. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had of course taken jobs to help their father out,
Speaker 1: you know, help him support brand Well. And in the
Speaker 1: fall of eight thirty five, Brandwell had gone to London
Speaker 1: to apply to the Royal Academy of the Arts. You know,
Speaker 1: this was going to be this big start. He either
Speaker 1: never made it to London and was robbed on the way,
Speaker 1: or he got to London that didn't end up applying
Speaker 1: to school, or he applied but was turned down. It's
Speaker 1: unclear of what exactly happened, but Brandwell later tried to
Speaker 1: still make his living as an artist, specifically as a
Speaker 1: portrait painter, but he couldn't really compete with a better
Speaker 1: artists and the nude geara types, and he became addicted
Speaker 1: to opium eventually, which was on top of a developing
Speaker 1: drinking problem, and it wasn't long before he had to
Speaker 1: start making his living as a tutor, which you know,
Speaker 1: sounds like a good job for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but it was not something that Brandwell was suited for
Speaker 1: at all. When he was eventually fired from his first position,
Speaker 1: his employers complained that their sons had basically done nothing
Speaker 1: more than make sketches and think up stories to go
Speaker 1: with their tutor strongs, which I don't know, it sounds
Speaker 1: kind of fun for them, but their parents weren't too
Speaker 1: happy they were spending money on that, and there was
Speaker 1: a rumor too, right, there was also a rumor that
Speaker 1: Brandwell might have had an illegitimate child who died with
Speaker 1: a servant um, so, you know, just kind of sketchy.
Speaker 1: Things starting to pick up around his name in that charm,
Speaker 1: that intense energy he had was starting to seem more manic,
Speaker 1: a little more disturbing. After two years at school, Anne
Speaker 1: got sick and had to go home. Charlotte, who was
Speaker 1: depressed to the point of illness, also followed in eight
Speaker 1: and over the next few years the Bronte girls all
Speaker 1: took teaching jobs, even painfully shy Emily, who distinguished herself
Speaker 1: at law Hill by telling her students that she preferred
Speaker 1: the school dog to them. That wouldn't win you many
Speaker 1: most popular teacher points for it at all, and bad.
Speaker 1: Experience with the Ingham family influenced her later novel, Agnes Gray,
Speaker 1: while Charlotte's experience with the Sedgewick family provided inspiration for
Speaker 1: Jane Eyre, and one of Charlotte's charges even threw a
Speaker 1: Bible at her head and was very likely the model
Speaker 1: for John Reid, Jane Eyre's cruel cousin. Yeah, so Charlotte
Speaker 1: wasn't enjoying governor thing to say the least, but she
Speaker 1: also wasn't willing to trade it in for a hasty marriage.
Speaker 1: She turned on two proposals in just six months, the
Speaker 1: first of which came from Ellen's brother, who was a
Speaker 1: Calvinist preacher who really just needed a wife for his
Speaker 1: big move to Sussex. You know, it was proper that
Speaker 1: he was married. Reminds you a little bit of Sint
Speaker 1: John Rivers. I think the second proposal came from a
Speaker 1: clergyman who was just of Dublin University. They met in
Speaker 1: a large group, Charlotte mistook his name as Price instead
Speaker 1: of Bryce, and really the next thing you know, she
Speaker 1: was getting a letter of proposal from him, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't her style. So it seems like all the brilliant
Speaker 1: Brontes were just stuck in a rut. You know that
Speaker 1: they were going to have to the girls were gonna
Speaker 1: have to just tutor forever or beat governess is rather
Speaker 1: um something that they did not care for. Brandwell was
Speaker 1: now working as a railway booking clerk and not taking
Speaker 1: that work very seriously. He was doodling in the ledgers,
Speaker 1: and so out of all this kind of um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, stall dead end sort of life, it seems
Speaker 1: a new idea emerged. Ms Brandwell proposed offering up some
Speaker 1: of her savings. She had been squirreling away money over
Speaker 1: the year from her father's inheritance to her um, even
Speaker 1: though she was paying Mr Bronte rent the whole time
Speaker 1: she insisted on it um. She had managed to save
Speaker 1: a bit, though, and so she offered a pretty good
Speaker 1: um for the three girls to open their own school,
Speaker 1: you know, which would be a lot different than being
Speaker 1: a governess, where you're not really a servant, but you're
Speaker 1: not really a member of the family either, so consequently
Speaker 1: you're just completely isolated. If you had your own school,
Speaker 1: you'd be able to do your own thing. So Charlotte
Speaker 1: really liked this idea. Emily and Anne were into it too,
Speaker 1: But Charlotte cooked up an additional perk. She thought that
Speaker 1: for their school to succeed, the Bronte girls would really
Speaker 1: need to distinguish themselves in some way, have something that
Speaker 1: made them different. So she proposed that she and Emily
Speaker 1: would go off to Brussels for a few months. Mary
Speaker 1: Taylor was studying there and so she had a connection,
Speaker 1: and they had hone their French and their Italian. Maybe
Speaker 1: they'd pick up some German um, you know, pick up
Speaker 1: these accomplishments that would make their school one that people
Speaker 1: in the area would actually want to attend, and Aunt
Speaker 1: Brandwell and Mr Bronte were game, you know, a little skeptical,
Speaker 1: but they were. They were fine with it. Sounded like
Speaker 1: an okay idea. So the Bronte start looking for a school,
Speaker 1: and with their connections and Brussels, you know, they had
Speaker 1: somebody on the on the other side of the channel.
Speaker 1: He could do the legwork for them, and they ultimately
Speaker 1: found a school that was high quality but pretty inexpensive,
Speaker 1: you know, within their budget, and in January forty two
Speaker 1: they settled on the Paulson A A j. So that's
Speaker 1: where we're going to leave off for this episode. I
Speaker 1: can say at this point, you know, the Brontes are
Speaker 1: all grown up. We have exited the growing up Bronte phase.
Speaker 1: And next time we're going to be talking about their
Speaker 1: time in Belgium, their education, and then the three breakout
Speaker 1: novels of course that are published in just one year,
Speaker 1: and then as we know, all of the family tragedy
Speaker 1: that starts um piling up towards the to the end
Speaker 1: of the Bronte saga. Plus we're gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the reputation of the Brontes, which is something
Speaker 1: that I'm very interested in discussing in more detail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting how that reputation evolves, and um the part
Speaker 1: that some of the Brontes themselves playing that. Today we
Speaker 1: just think of them as great novelist, but during the
Speaker 1: Victorian period they were also scandalous women. So I think
Speaker 1: that's a good time for us to move on to
Speaker 1: listener mail and maybe discuss another recent literature related podcasts
Speaker 1: we covered. So we have two emails here that we
Speaker 1: want to read about our Elizabeth Barrett Browning slash Robert
Speaker 1: Browning podcast. We talked about their relationship and how that
Speaker 1: developed and blossomed over the years. We have one here
Speaker 1: from Anna Lisa. She says, I just finished listening to
Speaker 1: the Elizabeth Barrett Brownie and Robert Brownie podcast and I
Speaker 1: love it. But I can't believe you guys didn't talk
Speaker 1: more about Flush, Elizabeth's Dog. If you aren't aware of
Speaker 1: Virginia Wolfs remarkable little book, Flush of Biography, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it as both an imaginative look at the world
Speaker 1: through the dog's eyes and a unique perspective on Elizabeth
Speaker 1: and Robert's romance and marriage. Incidentally, I would also love
Speaker 1: if you did a podcast on Wolf someday, so she
Speaker 1: throws up a little suggestion there, But yeah, we did.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that Elizabeth's dog was one of the few
Speaker 1: possessions that she took with her when they away. Yes,
Speaker 1: but we didn't go. We didn't have time to really
Speaker 1: explore flush. Now I feel like I should stave off
Speaker 1: any other listener emails by noting getting it out there
Speaker 1: that Emily Bronte is really a famous dog lover. To
Speaker 1: get a massive would do these pretty watercolors of it.
Speaker 1: So that's officially on the record now. We also got
Speaker 1: a letter about Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning from Tasha,
Speaker 1: who is studying English and American literature in England, and
Speaker 1: she said she was researching Browning from my Last Duchess,
Speaker 1: which you mentioned in your podcast about Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.
Speaker 1: Apparently the Duchess and the poem is based on one
Speaker 1: of the Medici family. Like Queen Victoria, they just get everywhere.
Speaker 1: Lacrazia di Cosomo de Medici was the daughter of Cosomo
Speaker 1: the first Medici and the sister of Francesco the first
Speaker 1: e Medici, who was the unfortunate quote father in the
Speaker 1: Medici Murders in a Basket Baby podcast. Aged fourteen, she
Speaker 1: married Alonso the second death Day, the fifth Duke of Ferrara,
Speaker 1: who went on to abandon her for two years before
Speaker 1: she died aged just seventeen, of suspected poisoning. That was
Speaker 1: the way a lot of people went back. Then. Ferrara
Speaker 1: went on to marry Barbara of Austria, daughter of the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Emperor of Fernand the First. I thought this
Speaker 1: was an interesting link between the two subjects that you
Speaker 1: guys might appreciate. I always like a Medici connection, so
Speaker 1: thank you Tasha for sharing that. And I like my
Speaker 1: last duchess to We talked about that that that episode
Speaker 1: didn't we um, so thank you guys. It's always neat
Speaker 1: to have some more literary insight or dog insight on subjects,
Speaker 1: and I that's kind of while we're talking about the
Speaker 1: I don't know insight and sources. It was cool to
Speaker 1: research the Brontes because there is so much information on them,
Speaker 1: which is honestly not something that usually happens for most
Speaker 1: of our podcast subject Usually we have to dig and
Speaker 1: dig and dig, so it is kind of nice. Once
Speaker 1: in a while when you have those topics where it's
Speaker 1: just all kind of laid out for you. Well, it's
Speaker 1: strange too, though, because there's so much information on them
Speaker 1: that you get biographies that are countering other biographies. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've mentioned the Rebecca Fraser biography, which I really like,
Speaker 1: but the kind of well it is the original Charlotte
Speaker 1: Bronte biography is the Mrs Gaskell one, and that's full
Speaker 1: of spin in addition to actual biographical information, something again
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in the second episode. There's even a
Speaker 1: whole scholarly journal devoted to the Bronte that was really
Speaker 1: kind of overwhelmed in this episode in a good way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's true. That makes it harder in a
Speaker 1: way because you have to kind of find the commonality
Speaker 1: us and figure out what's sort of in their aerie
Speaker 1: and what's real. Yeah, vastly conflicting opinions about these women
Speaker 1: in their lives. So, um, I don't know, it's it's
Speaker 1: cool to talk about, and we definitely like to know
Speaker 1: your opinions. We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: and we're also on Twitter at mist in History, and
Speaker 1: we are on Facebook and if you'd like to find
Speaker 1: out a little bit more about some of the topics
Speaker 1: we discussed on this podcast. You can find them by
Speaker 1: visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it
Speaker 1: today on iTunes.