WEBVTT - Growing Up Brontë 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:03.800 Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:14.000 stuff works dot com. Helloly, welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.320 Sarah Dowdy and I'm deleted Chuck Reboarding and longtime listeners 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:21.280 know that sad royal childhoods are a frequent theme of ours, 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:23.880 But the truth is discussing the youth of a podcast 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:27.480 subject is usually pretty interesting, whether their royalty or not. 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.040 Whether it's eleot Chellaby showing off to the Sultan, or 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.519 as we discussed recently, paleontologist Mary Anning getting struck by 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:39.440 lightning as an infant, or even haunts Christian Anderson crashing 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:43.160 dinner parties in his ill fitting communion suit. I really 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:45.720 think that taking a closer look at the early years 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:50.040 often shows a different side of a subject, or sometimes 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:53.120 even most intriguingly, a sign of what's to come. You know, 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.400 some spark of genius in the early years. But it's 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.840 rare that we devote an entire episode to those early 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.279 pre fame years, as we're going to do today with 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:07.240 the talented Bronte family. And while we we will follow 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:11.000 up with an episode on their remarkable breakthroughs and their successes, 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:13.160 which we all probably know a little bit more about. 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:16.600 There are a few good reasons for establishing a solid 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:18.600 footing before we go there. I mean, the first one 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:22.080 would be that most of the family didn't live much 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:25.560 beyond childhood, kind of the sad reason why the youngest 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.120 Bronte child to die was only at ten and the 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:34.280 oldest was thirty eight, so not very long lives at all. Secondly, 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:38.720 the Bronte children grew up under very strange circumstances. They 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:43.960 grew up in extreme isolation coupled with endless intellectual stimulation. Yeah, 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:47.200 there's a New Yorker article by Mary Hawthorne on their 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.840 fantastic drawings and watercolors. Something you might not be aware 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.800 of that the Brontes were actually, in some cases really 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:58.040 talented artists too. But this article suggested that the peculiarities 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:03.080 of their upbringing produced quote an extraordinary collective creative mania, 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:05.760 which I think is a great way to think about 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:09.000 what they were doing as kids. And there's one third 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.239 reason that we want to go into their childhood a 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.640 little bit first, and that's the Bronte mystique. It almost 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:19.919 hinges on those earlier years. So how did one remote 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.600 family produce three world class writers and one brilliant wastrel brother. 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:29.000 How did the isolated and experienced Bronte girls author books 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.000 filled with so much passion and terror? And what was 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:35.480 in the water at how worth besides death and disease? 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:39.040 And what made them also brilliant? So the Brontes are 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:43.160 such a staple of British literature classes that it probably 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.760 surprises some people to learn their origins were in Northern 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:50.799 Ireland and that their family name wasn't even Bronte. Their father, 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:55.600 Who's Patrick, was born in seventy seven on St Patrick's 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.080 Day in Northern Ireland, and he was the son of 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.520 Hugh Brunte, who was a ditch mender. And despite the 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.600 poor beginnings, Patrick was the eldest of ten really you know, 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:11.040 in a really poor family. Uh, they were very story oriented. 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:13.360 Hugh Brunte was known in his area as being an 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.880 incredible storyteller. Young Patrick grew up reading as much as 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:20.600 he possibly could. He even memorized Paradise Lost as a kid, 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.760 and that intellectual spark caught the attention of a local 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.959 Presbyterian minister and from there Patrick made one good connection 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:33.000 after another with wealthy members of the Methodist movement and 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:36.720 ultimately earned himself a spot at Cambridge, and I read 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:40.800 a really great biography on Charlotte Bronte by Rebecca Frasier, 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.240 and she said that this jump from being the ditch 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:50.920 mender's son to attending Cambridge was really an almost unimaginable lee. Again, 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:52.760 it did remind me a little bit of Hans Christian 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:56.520 Anderson actually, who had just talked about. In eighteen o six, Patrick, 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.120 who had changed his name to Bronte at school, decided 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.400 to take orders as a clergyman. In eighteen twelve he 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.840 met Mariah Branwell, who was from a well off Cornish 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.600 merchant family with rumors of pirate ancestry. She lived in 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:13.480 Penzance after all, and Mariah was in a pretty great 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.159 place for an unmarried thirty year old in the nineteenth century. 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.599 She had some money, she had some independence, and she 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.840 was much loved and valued by her family. But only 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:27.000 months after meeting Patrick, Mariah packed it in, married him 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:30.880 and moved north and started having just baby after baby. 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:35.640 They had six kids and six years Mariah, Elizabeth, Charlotte, 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:40.080 Patrick Branwell, Emily and Anne. So most of the younger 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.000 Bronte children were born in Thornton, West Yorkshire, where the 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:48.000 Brontes could socialize. It was near enough to a town 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:50.240 that they could go visit with friends, They had a 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:52.960 they had a busy life there, and that was especially 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:56.880 important considering Mr and Mrs Bronte were already pretty isolated 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.600 from their extended families in Ireland and Cornwall. But of 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:03.719 course Bronte Buffs know that the kids didn't grow up 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:08.600 in this busy, sociable town of Thornton Heathcliff, Rome's Moors, 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.040 after all, not some cute little village. So not long 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:17.000 after Anne's birth in eighteen twenty, Mr Bronte accepted a 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:22.440 position as the curate of Hawarth and it wasn't really 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:25.400 too far off from Thornton, but the hills and the 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.440 moor surrounding it made the place inaccessible, plus cold and 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.000 windy and boggy. And today we know that Howard was 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:36.800 also very, very unhealthy. And I can actually remember this 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:40.440 from my eleventh grade literature class, my teacher drawing a 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:44.200 picture of the Bronte house and um the water supply 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:48.600 and where it came from, and it just very involved, definitely, 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.320 but it's something that unhealthy nous of the town was 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:55.040 something that Mr Bronte noticed right away and tried to 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.479 fix in his role as parson. I mean, just to 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.760 give you a few examples of how unhealthy this place 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:04.520 really was, because you might be thinking, you know, a 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:06.960 small village, how bad could it be? But the Babbage 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:11.039 Report on Sanitation from about thirty years after the Bronte's 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:15.360 arrival compared Howard's death rate to that of Whitechapel, London, 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.960 of course, one of the um worst most packed with 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:24.119 people's slums in London. The average life expectancy with only 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:28.680 twenty five years. The problems that this place had where 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:32.839 that there weren't enough previews, no sewers, water was rarely clean, 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:35.680 and there were too many dead filling up the poorly 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:40.200 drained churchyard. And guess where the family lived, right by 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.440 the churchyard with a view of the cemetery on two sides. 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.960 Since the local families were mostly quite poor, they were 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:51.280 laborers and factory workers. There were only a few other, quote, 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:55.080 you know, respectable people that the Brontes could socialize with, 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:58.640 so they stuck to themselves. Mainly. There was a class 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.240 thing here. The Brontes were were also, but they were 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:05.000 middle class because of Mr Bronte's position. The girls grew 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.080 up learning to do things like put up linen, but 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:10.040 they had servants to do the cleaning and the cooking. Yeah. 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:14.040 I read one description of them learning lighthouse keeping, whatever 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:16.800 that means, because it means I just imagine people walking 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.280 around with a feather nut I don't know, like making 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:24.200 lace or something. But still, you know, you're probably wondering 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.800 at this point, why would you take this position if 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.560 this town was so unhealthy? But the job meant a 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.800 major raise for Mr Bronte, plus a house for his 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:35.240 family of eight and a job for life, which is 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:39.240 a pretty serious thing. But the tragedies started not too 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.800 long after they moved. Only nine months later. Mrs Bronte, 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.400 who hadn't really ever recovered after Anne's birth, started to 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:50.600 get very sick, and Mr Bronte nursed her himself for 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:54.080 seven months while she slowly died of what at the 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.160 time people thought was stomach cancer but now what historians 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:01.720 believe was blood poisoning. Mariah, the oldest daughter, you know, 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.920 still just a little kid, took care of her younger 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.520 sisters and her brother until all six of them also 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:10.840 got sick. They came down with scarlet fever, and at 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.000 that point Mr Bronte was just at his breaking point 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.320 and wrote to his sister in law, Elizabeth Brandwell, to 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.520 come up to Yorkshire and please help the family. So 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.480 she attended her sister's death and stayed to care for 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.400 the kids, but she really wanted to go home to 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:31.640 warmer Cornwall. Mr Bronte meanwhile tried to find a new 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.880 wife to help educate his kids and also to study 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:37.240 his temper and allow his sister in law to go home. 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.199 But he found no takers. I mean, he just wasn't 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.840 in that attractive a position at the time. He had 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:46.880 six kids and a really low salary, so it just 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:51.120 didn't help his cause. Yeah, new takers. So with six kids, though, 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.320 and five of them girls, how was he supposed to 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.480 educate them on a poor Parsons income? And the kids were, 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:02.520 of course precocious, a little Bronte's. They'd read newspapers and 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.840 talk politics. They'd argue about who they thought was Beth 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.120 the Duke of Wellington, or Napoleon or Hannibal or Caesar. 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:12.880 But they didn't have a formal education, which was especially 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.280 important for girls who might need to actually go work 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.560 later in life, you know, become teachers, become governesses. So 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.160 it seems like kind of a hopeless situation. But then 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:26.880 a miracle seemed to happen. In eighteen twenty four, a 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.360 new school for the daughters of the poor evangelical clergy 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:34.280 opened at cowan Bridge, only about fifty miles from Haworth. 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:42.199 For only fourteen pounds a year, a girl could study history, geography, globes, grammar, writing, arithmetic, 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:46.040 needlework and fine housekeeping. And you could even choose a 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:48.720 vocation of sorts. You could choose to learn to be 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:51.760 a wife, a governess, or your own housekeeper. And for 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:55.160 added cachet, the school's director was a wealthy clergyman named 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:58.640 Carus Wilson, which was a really big name to someone 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:02.120 like Mr Bronte. Okay, though, if you've read Jane Eyre 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.600 you know where this story is going. The school was cold, 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:09.520 it was damp, the building was overcrowded, too many girls 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.320 in two cramped rooms, with too few provies and poor food. 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.640 And another problem was that Wilson thought deprivation was a 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.400 really good thing. He believed little children were particularly sinful, 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:24.760 so he probably wasn't the best person to be running 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.960 a school full of little children in an unhealthy spot. 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.440 But by November, the four eldest Bronte girls were at 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:37.440 Cowan Bridge, and Mariah went home first in February. She 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:42.160 was dead by May of tuberculosis. Elizabeth went home May 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:46.959 thirty one, prompting Mr. Bronte to leave the very next 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.400 day and rescue Charlotte and Emily. So I mean that 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.120 gives you a pretty good picture of what kind of 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:54.400 state Elizabeth must have been in for him to go 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:57.920 rushing back. She died just two weeks later, and according 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.640 to an article on Elizabeth Brown day Um by Jane 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:06.160 tripp It, she's actually called the Unknown Bronte because so 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.000 little is really known about her. Mariah also died young, 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:11.880 but she was sort of the inspiration for Helen Burns 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:14.400 and you know, really idolized by her family. But Elizabeth 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.679 more of a blank slate. So anyway, this article by 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:22.280 Jeane Trippett and the Journal Bronte Studies, Elizabeth supposedly also 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:26.400 met with some unknown quote alarming accident while she was 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:30.120 at school, her head being quote severely cut according to 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.840 the school's headmistress. So it seems like there were, you know, 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:37.160 potentially more serious things going on, not that the accident 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:41.000 was necessarily something um, somebody had caused her harm, but 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.560 just that it wasn't covered in any more detail than that. Yeah, 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:46.839 it sounds sketchy, you know. It makes you feel like 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:51.680 maybe Calvin Bridge was Lowwood from Jane Eyre Chrus Wilson 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:55.079 could have been the evil Mr Brocklehurst. And I mean, 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.120 we'll talk more about Charlotte's legacy in the next episode, 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.640 but since she was the only sister to come really 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.880 famous during her lifetime, a lot of people took an 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:08.320 interest in that connection. Charlotte herself said that Lowood was true. 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.040 The Wilson camp claimed that Charlotte couldn't be relied on 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:14.320 for having been a child at the time, she wouldn't 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:18.400 have remembered things that they really were exactly. According to Fraser, 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:21.199 their biggest piece of evidence came from a letter signed 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.080 a h which was believed to be the former headmistress 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:28.840 and inspiration for the kind Miss Temple in Charlotte's book, 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:33.280 she claimed everything had been Rosie in the nine though 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:36.400 someone finally bothered too to the math and realized that 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.560 the real Miss Temple had actually been dead when she 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:43.079 wrote the vindicating letter, and the letter's author was probably 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:47.360 actually the inspiration for the evil Mrs Scatchard, which doesn't 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.280 sound so good for cowen Bridge all a sudden, but 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:54.200 with the death of Mariah and Elizabeth in such a 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.040 short span of time, and of course also so soon 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:00.000 after the death of their mother, uh, the kids were 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.320 really devastated. And remember their house looks out on a 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:06.720 cemetery too, so there was really no escaping this feeling 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:11.000 of death. A later guest, remember that Howard's high mortality 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:15.200 rate was really obvious to anybody who was stopping through, 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.480 because the church bell would constantly toll for the dead, 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:23.000 and then the tombstone chiseler would always be at work, 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.800 you know, chipping away at the granite blocks, which sounds 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.120 really horrifying in this context of a family who's just 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.000 lost so many people in such a short stand of time. 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.160 So Miss Branwell became the household educator for the girls, 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:40.079 while Mr Bronte would have given extra Greek and Latin 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:44.280 lessons to Branwell. They also had an inexhaustible supply of 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:50.120 reading materials day old newspapers, magazines, borrowed books, methodist tracks, 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:53.720 and literature. Of course, Charlotte and Branwell read almost all 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:57.160 of Byron at age thirteen and twelve. The only thing 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.760 that Patrick Bronte seemed to censor was Miss Branwell's Ladies magazine. 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:03.520 He thought it had silly little stories in it. He 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.640 didn't want his kids to read them. Um. So it's 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.520 probably no surprise that with the kids reading so much 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:14.160 romantic literature and then geography too and current events, that 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.080 they made up their own world eventually, you know, as 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:19.000 a way to kind of get away from all that 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.760 was going on in their real life, and filled it 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:25.560 with byronic heroes and their most famous creation, the Empire 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:29.760 of Angria, with its capital of glass Town, started when 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:33.800 Mr Bronte brought home a set of wooden soldiers for Brandwell, 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.400 and Charlotte later described it in a way that sounds 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.920 so genuine. You know, you can imagine kids just picking 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.240 up toys and starting this imaginary world. But she wrote, 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.200 Branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers. 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:48.800 Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:51.840 one up and exclaimed, this is the Duke of Wellington. 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.760 This shall be the Duke. Emily's became gravy and Anne's 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:59.920 waiting boy, and brand Well's Bonaparte. So with all their 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.360 soldiers named, I think the names went through a few variations. 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.120 In some cases the soldiers became what they called the 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:11.040 young men, and um they lived in Glasstown. The kids 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:15.120 became these all powerful genies. And then the Glasstown saga 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.680 morphed into something that wasn't just like playing with the 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:20.520 soldiers on rainy days and making up stories. It really 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:24.120 became a world for them. Yeah, Brandwell even created a 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.880 language and history and maps for this world. By January nine, 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.800 they started to produce miniature Glasstown magazines with science articles, 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:36.880 poems and jokes. Actually all the Glasstown writings were done 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:40.400 on a miniature scale. So the first magazine was two 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:42.640 and a quarter inch by one in a quarter inch, 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:47.080 done on scraps of sugar paper or wallpaper in Angria 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.720 and the Angrians, brand Well crammed two thousand, five hundred 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.680 words onto a five by seven inch page and they 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.840 called it Scribblemania, which I think is my new band name. 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.720 And you know, they had a reason though, behind all 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:02.560 of the tiny writing, which they also did to sort 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:05.760 of imitate print almost. It was a way to keep 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.080 the adults out of their business, you know, because it 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.080 was so impossible to read, probably especially if you were 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.880 a nineteenth century person with bad eyesight. So Emily and 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:18.600 Anne participated in the world of Angria, but they also 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.640 created their own world called Gondol. And we don't know 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.760 quite as much about Gondol as we do about Glasstown, 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:29.000 because Charlotte destroyed much of her sister's early writings after 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.760 their deaths. But there is one pretty intriguing fact, especially 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.760 if you've read any of those younger Bront's works. Gondol 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:40.120 was ruled by women, which certainly set it apart from 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:42.680 from the world of Angria, which had these really strong 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:46.760 male protagonists. But all the kids continued writing poems and 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:50.600 plays and romances about their worlds and these characters well 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.000 into adulthood, and Charlotte would at various times try to 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:56.680 ditch her imaginary world as she'd get older, but she'd 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.200 come back, you know sometimes. Deplena and I were discussing 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.920 before the podcast, actually that while so charming in their youth, 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:05.800 it does start to take on a disturbing tone when 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:09.080 they are still so obsessed with it as they get older. 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:14.640 But her indirect interest in it ultimately ended up coming 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:17.440 out partly in some of her more famous work. Charlotte's 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:21.320 alter ego, The Morna, is very much like her later 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.200 anti hero Mr Rochester, So I mean, there you go. 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:27.760 But of course they couldn't play at home forever. In 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:31.199 eighteen thirty and Mr Bronte got sick and nearly died. 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:35.080 When he recovered, he realized his kids had no safety net, 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:37.840 so he decided to keep branwell at home, but he 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.640 sent Charlotte to school again to learn to be a governess, 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.359 this time at Mrs Wooler School at roe Head, twenty 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.800 miles from Hollarth. It was different from colin Bridge and 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.440 it was in a charity school. Other students there were 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.320 rich manufacturing daughters, and Charlotte stood out with her Irish 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.560 accent and her funny clothes. To make things worse, she 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:00.000 was placed at the bottom of the class since her 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:04.119 entire education had been so haphazard, and she couldn't play 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:06.520 because she was so nearsighted, so she was really loved 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:11.440 instead of you know, joining in with ball games. Eventually, though, 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.560 according to the BBC documentary In Search of the Brontes, 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.280 she made friends through storytelling, which was really her strength. 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.240 As we know, she would rehash the ghost tales that 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.719 she learned from the Brontes much loved cook Cabby, and 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:28.000 two of her roe Head friends, Ellen Nussy and Mary Taylor, 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.000 became lifelong correspondence of her. So she did manage to 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.520 make those bonds. Yeah, and as the side note to 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.919 the correspondence with Ellen really is the source of a 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:40.760 lot of biographical information about not just Charlotte, but the 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:45.440 Bronte family as a whole. Mary Taylor burned her correspondence, 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:49.200 so we don't know what all were missing there. So 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:51.560 Charlotte also worked her way to the top of the 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:55.080 class and after two years she came home. This is 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:57.600 maybe one of the happier times in the Brontes lives. 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:00.840 All the kids were back at the parsonage. Charlotte's friend Ellen, 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:04.000 who visited in eighteen thirty three, wrote that quote, they 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.200 were beginning to feel conscious of their powers. They were 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:10.320 rich in each other's companionship. Their health was good, their 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:14.280 spirits were good. There was often joyousness and mirth. The 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.199 perfection of unrestrained talk and intelligence brightened the close of 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.800 the days which were passing all too swiftly. So we 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:24.200 can kind of get a picture two of the Bronte's. 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.080 During this period, they would take long walks over the moors, 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.879 and in the evening, the four girls, or if Ellen 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.480 was visiting, would stroll around the sitting room arm in arm. 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:35.920 There were a lot of pets in the house. Later 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.440 on they had geese named Victoria and Adelaide, which I 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.919 just love. Um brand Will also still seemed like the 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.200 great hope of the family, and that's something that's always 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.400 interesting when you learn about the Brontes, these three very 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.919 famous sisters. Yet the family expected the Sun to be 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:53.320 the great one. But at this point, you know, it 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.320 seemed likely. He was charming, he was smart, he was 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:58.760 good at everything he did. He had a well respected 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:02.200 art teacher at this point, and while his most famous 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:06.320 work of his sisters is unfortunately pretty crude, not the 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.159 best representation that you'd want as your legacy, he was 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:13.480 considered an accomplished draftsman, so maybe he was a little 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.960 better at drawing than at oil painting. So Charlotte turned 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.919 down a few governessing jobs to stay at home, but 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:22.480 in eighteen thirty five she eventually got an offer that 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.000 she couldn't refuse. It was a teaching position at roe 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:29.600 Head with free education offered for one sister, but going 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.200 back to roe Head turned out to be a really 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:35.720 serious mistake. Emily could barely make it three months before 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:38.359 she had to go home. She couldn't stand being away 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:42.080 from home. The more's her imaginary life, so fifteen year 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:46.159 old and came up instead. Charlotte was also seriously depressed 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.240 and was going through kind of a religious crisis. In 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:53.080 August eighteen thirty six, she wrote, quote, the thought came 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:56.040 over me, am, I to spend all the best part 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.639 of my life in this wretched bondage forcibly suppressing my 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:03.440 ray age at the idleness, the apathy, and the hyperbolical 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:07.280 and most asinine stupidity of those fat headed oaths on 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:11.960 a compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity, 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:14.960 and to make matters worse, Brandwell partly the reason why 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:20.119 the girls were working in the first place was failing miserably. Yeah, 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:24.200 they had of course taken jobs to help their father out, 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:26.520 you know, help him support brand Well. And in the 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.840 fall of eight thirty five, Brandwell had gone to London 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:32.760 to apply to the Royal Academy of the Arts. You know, 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:34.800 this was going to be this big start. He either 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:38.680 never made it to London and was robbed on the way, 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:41.320 or he got to London that didn't end up applying 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.320 to school, or he applied but was turned down. It's 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:48.520 unclear of what exactly happened, but Brandwell later tried to 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.080 still make his living as an artist, specifically as a 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:53.560 portrait painter, but he couldn't really compete with a better 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:57.640 artists and the nude geara types, and he became addicted 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:01.520 to opium eventually, which was on top of a developing 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:04.960 drinking problem, and it wasn't long before he had to 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:07.479 start making his living as a tutor, which you know, 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:09.560 sounds like a good job for a lot of people, 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:11.840 but it was not something that Brandwell was suited for 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:15.400 at all. When he was eventually fired from his first position, 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:19.840 his employers complained that their sons had basically done nothing 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:22.800 more than make sketches and think up stories to go 0:22:22.840 --> 0:22:24.720 with their tutor strongs, which I don't know, it sounds 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:27.920 kind of fun for them, but their parents weren't too 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:30.600 happy they were spending money on that, and there was 0:22:30.640 --> 0:22:33.199 a rumor too, right, there was also a rumor that 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:36.840 Brandwell might have had an illegitimate child who died with 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.440 a servant um, so, you know, just kind of sketchy. 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:44.440 Things starting to pick up around his name in that charm, 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:48.320 that intense energy he had was starting to seem more manic, 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.680 a little more disturbing. After two years at school, Anne 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.800 got sick and had to go home. Charlotte, who was 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:58.600 depressed to the point of illness, also followed in eight 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:01.480 and over the next few years the Bronte girls all 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:05.639 took teaching jobs, even painfully shy Emily, who distinguished herself 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:08.840 at law Hill by telling her students that she preferred 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:12.440 the school dog to them. That wouldn't win you many 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:16.360 most popular teacher points for it at all, and bad. 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:20.240 Experience with the Ingham family influenced her later novel, Agnes Gray, 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:24.199 while Charlotte's experience with the Sedgewick family provided inspiration for 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:27.080 Jane Eyre, and one of Charlotte's charges even threw a 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:29.200