WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Growing Up Brontë 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.320 Happy Saturday, everybody. We recently got a request from listener 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:10.320 Erica to re release our past episodes on the Brontes 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:12.560 as a Saturday classic. Now. These are the work of 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.400 past hosts Sarah and Deblina from back in We hear 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.479 so often that longtime listeners think that is one of 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.639 the absolute best episodes that Sarah and Deblina ever did. 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:25.080 They are definitely a top listener favorite, so we are 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:29.600 very happy to oblige with Erica's request. Today's installment is 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:32.680 called Growing Up Bronte, and as the name suggests, it 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:37.640 is about the unconventional childhoods of the Bronte siblings. Welcome 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:40.760 to Steph you missed in history class from how Stuff 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:50.000 Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.360 Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck reporting and longtime listeners 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:57.280 know that sad royal childhoods are a frequent theme of ours, 0:00:57.360 --> 0:00:59.920 But the truth is discussing the youth of a podcast 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.520 object is usually pretty interesting, whether their royalty or not. 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:07.040 Whether it's Elliot Chellaby showing off to the Sultan, or, 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:11.520 as we discussed recently, paleontologist Mary Anning getting struck by 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:15.440 lightning as an infant, or even Hans Christian Anderson crashing 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:19.360 dinner parties in his ill fitting communions. I really think 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:22.160 that taking a closer look at the early years often 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:26.360 shows a different side of a subject, or sometimes even 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.160 most intriguingly, a sign of what's to come, you know, 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.400 some spark of genius in the early years. But it's 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:35.880 rare that we devote an entire episode to those early 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.280 pre fame years, as we're going to do today with 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:43.480 the talented Bronte family. While we we will follow up 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:47.040 with an episode on their remarkable breakthroughs and their successes, 0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:49.240 which we all probably know a little bit more about. 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.600 There are a few good reasons for establishing a solid 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:54.600 footing before we go there. I mean, the first one 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.120 would be that most of the family didn't live much 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.160 beyond childhood. That's kind of the sad reason why the 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.840 youngest Bronte child to die was only at ten and 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:09.160 the oldest was thirty eight, so not very long lives 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.799 at all. Secondly, the Bronte children grew up under very 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:17.480 strange circumstances. They grew up in extreme isolation coupled with 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.600 endless intellectual stimulation. Yeah, there's a New Yorker article by 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:26.080 Mary Hawthorne on their fantastic drawings and watercolors. Something you 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:28.240 might not be aware of that the Brontes were actually, 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.880 in some cases really talented artists too. But this article 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.359 suggested that the peculiarities of their upbringing produced quote an 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:40.240 extraordinary collective creative mania, which I think is a great 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:43.240 way to think about what they were doing as kids. 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:47.280 And there's one third reason that we want to go 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:49.400 into their childhood a little bit first, and that's the 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:54.600 Bronte mystique. It almost hinges on those earlier years. So 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:58.600 how did one remote family produce three world class writers 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.400 and one brilliant way stroll brother. How did the isolated 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:06.000 and experienced Bronte girls author books filled with so much 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.040 passion and terror? And what was in the water at 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.400 how worth besides death and disease? And what made them 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.640 also brilliant? So the Brontes are such a staple of 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.360 British literature classes that it probably surprises some people to 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.840 learn their origins were in Northern Ireland and that their 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:28.160 family name wasn't even Bronte. Their father, who's Patrick, was 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.120 born in sevent seventy seven on St. Patrick's day in 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.960 Northern Ireland, and he was the son of Hugh Bruntie, 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:39.480 who was a ditch mender. And despite the poor beginnings, 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.720 Patrick was the eldest of ten really you know, in 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:47.080 a really poor family. Uh. They were very story oriented. 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.360 Hugh Brunty was known in his area as being an 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.880 incredible storyteller. Young Patrick grew up reading as much as 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.600 he possibly could. He even memorized Paradise Lost as a kid. 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.760 And that intellectual spark caught the attention of a local 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:05.000 Presbyterian minister and from there Patrick made one good connection 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:09.000 after another with wealthy members of the Methodist movement and 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.720 ultimately earned himself a spot at Cambridge. And I read 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:16.880 a really great biography on Charlotte Bronte by Rebecca Fraser, 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:21.760 and she said that this jomp from being the ditchmender's 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:26.920 son to attending Cambridge was really an almost unimaginable leap. Again, 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:28.760 it did remind me a little bit of Hans Christian 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:32.560 Anderson actually, who had just talked about. In eighteen o six, Patrick, 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.159 who had changed his name to Bronte at school, decided 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:38.400 to take orders as a clergyman. In eighteen twelve, he 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:41.839 met Mariah Branwell, who was from a well off Cornish 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:45.640 merchant family with rumors of pirate ancestry. She lived in 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.479 Penzance after all, and Mariah was in a pretty great 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.160 place for an unmarried thirty year old in the nineteenth century. 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:55.599 She had some money, she had some independence, and she 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.880 was much loved and valued by her family. But only 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:03.240 months after meeting Trick, Mariah packted in, married him and 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:07.120 moved north and started having just baby after baby. They 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:12.800 had six kids and six years Mariah, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:17.279 Emily and Anne. So most of the younger Bronte children 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:21.920 were born in Thornton, West Yorkshire, where the Brontes could socialize. 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:24.599 It was near enough to a town that they could 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:26.760 go visit with friends, They had a They had a 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:30.479 busy life there, and that was especially important considering Mr 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.920 and Mrs Bronte were already pretty isolated from their extended 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:37.960 families in Ireland and Cornwall. But of course Bronte buffs 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:41.039 know that the kids didn't grow up in this busy, 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:45.440 sociable town of Thornton Heathcliff, Romes Moor's after all, not 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:49.159 some cute little village, so not long after Anne's birth. 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:54.520 In eighteen twenty, Mr Bronte accepted a position as the 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:59.680 curate of Haworth and it wasn't really too far off 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.360 from Thornton, but the hills and the moor surrounding it 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:06.880 made the place inaccessible, plus cold and windy and boggy. 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:11.160 And today we know that Howard was also very, very unhealthy. 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:14.080 And I can actually remember this from my eleventh grade 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.480 literature class, my teacher drawing a picture of the Bronte 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:21.360 house and um the water supply and where it came from, 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:25.440 and it just takes very involved, definitely, but it's something. 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.000 The unhealthy nous of the town was something that Mr 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:32.039 Bronte noticed right away and tried to fix in his 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.520 role as parson. I mean, just to give you a 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:39.559 few examples of how unhealthy this place really was, because 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:41.719 he might be thinking, you know, small village, how bad 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.440 could it be? But the Babbage Report on Sanitation from 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:49.360 about thirty years after the Bronte's arrival compared Howard's death 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.080 rate to that of White Chapel, London, of course, one 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:57.560 of the um worst most packed with people's slums in London. 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:01.919 The average life expectancy was only twenty five years. The 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:06.240 problems that this place had where that there weren't enough privies, 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:10.160 no sewers, water was rarely clean, and there were too 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.480 many dead filling up the poorly drained churchyard. And guess 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:17.360 where the family lived, right by the churchyard with a 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.640 view of the cemetery on two sides. Since the local 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:24.760 families were mostly quite poor, they were laborers and factory workers. 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.720 There were only a few other, quote, you know, respectable 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.160 people that the Brontes could socialize with, so they stuck 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.120 to themselves mainly. There was a class thing here. The 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.440 Brontes were poor also, but they were middle class because 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.600 of Mr Bronte's position. The girls grew up learning to 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.200 do things like put up linen, but they had servants 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:46.400 to do the cleaning and the cooking. Yeah, I read 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:51.360 one description of them learning lighthousekeeping whatever that means, because 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:53.160 it means I just imagine people walking around with a 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:55.480 feather nut when I hear being I don't know, like 0:07:56.000 --> 0:08:00.000 making lace or something. But still, you know, you're probably 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:02.600 wondering at this point, why would you take this position 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.400 if this town was so unhealthy. But the job meant 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:08.640 a major raise for Mr Bronte. Plus the house for 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.200 his family of eight and a job for life, which 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.880 is a pretty serious thing. But the tragedies started not 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.800 too long after they moved. Only nine months later, Mrs Bronte, 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:22.400 who hadn't really ever recovered after Anne's birth, started to 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:26.600 get very sick, and Mr Bronte nursed her himself for 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.120 seven months while she slowly died of what at the 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.199 time people thought was stomach cancer but now what historians 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:37.760 believe was blood poisoning. M Mariah, the oldest daughter, you know, 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.960 still just a little kid, took care of her younger 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.520 sisters and her brother until all six of them also 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:46.840 got sick. They came down with scarlet fever, and at 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.040 that point Mr Bronte was just at his breaking point 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.320 and wrote to his sister in law, Elizabeth Branwell, to 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:57.559 come up to Yorkshire and please help the family. So 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.480 she attended her sister's death and stayed to care for 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.440 the kids, but she really wanted to go home to 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:07.680 warmer Cornwall. Mr Bronte meanwhile tried to find a new 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.920 wife to help educate his kids and also to study 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.280 his temper and allow his sister in law to go home, 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:16.200 but he found no takers. I mean, he just wasn't 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.880 in that attractive a position at the time. He had 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.920 six kids and a really low salary, so it just 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:27.160 didn't help his cause. Yeah, no takers. So with six kids, though, 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:30.360 and five of them girls, how was he supposed to 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:34.560 educate them on a poor Parsons income. And the kids were, 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:38.640 of course precocious, their little Brontes. They'd read newspapers and 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:41.880 talk politics. They'd argue about who they thought was best, 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.160 the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon or Hannibal or Caesar. 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.920 But they didn't have a formal education, which was especially 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:53.320 important for girls who might need to actually go work 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.560 later in life, you know, become teachers, become governesses. So 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.200 it seems like kind of a hopeless situation, But then 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.160 mere goal seemed to happen. In eighteen four, a new 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.840 school for the daughters of the poor evangelical clergy opened 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:11.360 at cowan Bridge, only about fifty miles from Haworth. For 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:18.239 only fourteen pounds a year, a girl could study history, geography, globes, grammar, writing, arithmetic, 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:22.079 needlework and fine housekeeping. And you could even choose a 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:24.760 vocation of sorts. You could choose to learn to be 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.760 a wife, a governess, or your own housekeeper. And for 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.200 added cache, the school's director was a wealthy clergyman named 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.679 Carus Wilson, which was a really big name to someone 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:48.160 like Mr Bronte. Okay, though, if you've read Jane Eyre, 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.800 you know where this story is going. The school was cold, 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:55.479 it was damp, the building was overcrowded, too many girls 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:59.360 in two cramped rooms with too few privies, and poor food. 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:03.680 And another problem was that Wilson thought deprivation was a 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.439 really good thing. He believed little children were particularly sinful, 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:10.800 so he probably wasn't the best person to be running 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:14.000 a school full of little children in an unhealthy spot. 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:18.480 But by November, the four eldest Bronte girls were at 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:23.480 Cowan Bridge, and Mariah went home first in February. She 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:28.160 was dead by May of tuberculosis. Elizabeth went home May 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:33.000 thirty one, prompting Mr Bronte to leave the very next 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:35.440 day and rescue Charlotte and Emily. So I mean that 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:38.160 gives you a pretty good picture of what kind of 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:40.400 state Elizabeth must have been in for him to go 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:43.960 rushing back. She died just two weeks later, and according 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:48.040 to an article on Elizabeth Bronte um by Jean Trippet. 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:52.760 She's actually called the Unknown Bronte because so little is 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:55.320 really known about her. Mariah also died young, but she 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:58.320 was sort of the inspiration for Helen Burns and you know, 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.000 really idolized by her family. But a Elizabeth more of 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.480 a blank slate. So anyway, this article by Jeane Trippett 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:08.839 and the journal Bronte Studies. Elizabeth supposedly also met with 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:13.040 some unknown quote alarming accident while she was at school, 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:17.360 her head being quote severely cut according to the school's headmistress. 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.640 So it seems like there were, you know, potentially more 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.360 serious things going on, not that the accident was necessarily 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.360 something um, somebody had caused her harm, but just that 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.600 it wasn't covered in any more detail than that. Yeah, 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:32.880 it sounds sketchy, you know, it makes you feel like 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:37.720 maybe cowen Bridge was Lowwood from Jane Eyre, Charus Wilson 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:41.120 could have been the evil Mr Brocklehurst. And I mean, 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.160 we'll talk more about Charlotte's legacy in the next episode. 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:46.680 But since she was the only sister to become really 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:49.920 famous during her lifetime, a lot of people took an 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:54.360 interest in that connection. Charlotte herself said that Lowood was true. 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.080 The Wilson camp claimed that Charlotte couldn't be relied on 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:00.520 for having been a child at the time wouldn't have 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.360 remembered things as they really were exactly. According to Frasier, 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.240 their biggest piece of evidence came from a letter signed 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:11.120 a h which was believed to be the former headmistress 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:14.880 and inspiration for the kind Miss Temple. In Charlotte's book, 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:19.640 she claimed everything had been rosy in n though someone 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:22.560 finally bothered too to the math and realized that the 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:25.959 real Miss Temple had actually been dead when she wrote 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:29.840 the vindicating letter, and the letter's author was probably actually 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:33.840 the inspiration for the evil Mrs Scatchard, which doesn't sound 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:36.320 so good for cowen Bridge all of a sudden, but 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.240 with the death of Mariah and Elizabeth in such a 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.080 short span of time, and of course also so soon 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.960 after the death of their mother, uh, the kids were 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:49.360 really devastated. And remember their house looks out on a 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.760 cemetery too, so there was really no escaping this feeling 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:57.040 of death. A later guest remembered that Howard's high mortality 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:01.240 rate was really obvious to anybody who was stopping through, 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.520 because the church bell would constantly told for the dead, 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:09.040 and then the tombstone chiseler would always be at work, 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.840 you know, chipping away at the granite blocks, which sounds 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:16.000 really horrifying in this context of a family who has 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:18.520 just lost so many people in such a short span 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:22.680 of time. So Miss Branwell became the household educator for 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.680 the girls, while Mr Bronte would have given extra Greek 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.680 and Latin lessons to Branwell. And they also had an 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:35.080 inexhaustible supply of reading materials day old newspapers, magazines, borrowed books, 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:39.040 methodist tracks, and literature. Of course, Charlotte and Branwell read 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:42.600 almost all of Byron at age thirteen and twelve. The 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.560 only thing that Patrick Bronte seemed to censor was Miss 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.600 Branwell's Ladies magazine because he thought it had silly little 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.960 stories in it. He didn't want his kids to read them. Um. 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.120 So it's probably no surprise that with the kids reading 0:14:55.200 --> 0:14:59.800 so much romantic literature and then geography too and current events, 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.960 that they made up their own world eventually, you know, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:04.920 as a way to kind of get away from all 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.640 that was going on in their real life and filled 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.160 it with byronic heroes and their most famous creation, the 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:15.600 Empire of Angria, with its capital of glass Town, started 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:19.200 when Mr Bronte brought home a set of wooden soldiers 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:21.920 from Brandwell, and Charlotte later described it in a way 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:25.120 that sounds so genuine. You know, you can imagine kids 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.400 just picking up toys and starting this imaginary world. But 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.440 she wrote, Brandwell came to our door with a box 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.200 of soldiers. Emily and I jumped out of bed, and 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.160 I snatched one up and exclaimed, this is the Duke 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:41.239 of Wellington. This shall be the Duke. Emily's became Gravy, 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:45.600 and Anne's waiting boy, and brand Well's Bonaparte. So with 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.440 all their soldiers named, I think the names went through 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.280 a few variations in some cases. Uh, the soldiers became 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.600 what they called the young men, and um they lived 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:59.480 in Glasstown. The kids became these all powerful genies. And 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.640 then the Glasstown saga morphed into something that wasn't just 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:05.560 like playing with the soldiers on rainy days and making 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:09.000 up stories. It really became a world for them. Yeah. 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.040 Brand Will even created a language in history and maps 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.520 for this world. By January eighty nine, they started to 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:20.960 produce miniature Glasstown magazines with science articles, poems, and jokes. Actually, 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:24.120 all the Glasstown writings were done on a miniature scale. 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:27.200 So the first magazine was two and a quarter inch 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:29.920 by one in a quarter inch, done on scraps of 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:34.520 sugar paper or wallpaper in Angria and the Angrians brand 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.880 Well crammed two thousand, five hundred words onto a five 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.360 by seven inch page and they called it Scribblemania, which 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:44.080 I think is my new band name. And you know, 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:46.760 they had a reason, though, behind all of this tiny writing, 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:50.520 which they also did to sort of imitate print almost. 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:52.720 It was a way to keep the adults out of 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.520 their business, you know, because it was so impossible to read, 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:59.640 probably especially if you're a nineteenth century person with bad eyesight. 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:04.080 So Emily and Anne participated in the world of Angria, 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:06.919 but they also created their own world called Gondol. And 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:09.720 we don't know quite as much about Gondol as we 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:13.360 do about Glasstown, because Charlotte destroyed much of her sister's 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:17.359 early writings after their deaths. But there is one pretty 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.200 intriguing fact, especially if you've read any of those younger 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:24.840 Bront's works. Gondol was ruled by women, which certainly set 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.919 it apart from from the world of Angria, which had 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.720 these really strong male protagonists. But all the kids continued 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.040 writing poems and plays and romances about their worlds and 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:39.399 these characters well into adulthood, and Charlotte Wood at various 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.280 times try to ditch her imaginary world as she'd get older, 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:44.600 but she'd come back, you know sometimes. Deklena and I 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.400 were discussing before the podcast actually that while so charming 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:50.480 in their youth, it does start to take on a 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.040 disturbing tone when they are still so obsessed with it 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:57.480 as they get older. But her indirect interest in it 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:01.840 ultimately ended up coming out partly in some of her 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:06.160 more famous work. Charlotte's alter ego, The Morna is very 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:09.520 much like her later anti hero Mr Rochester, So I mean, 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.959 there you go. But of course they couldn't play at 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.399 home forever. In eighteen thirty, Mr Bronte got sick and 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:20.000 nearly died. When he recovered, he realized his kids had 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:23.480 no safety net, so he decided to keep branwell at home, 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.000 but he sent Charlotte to school again to learn to 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:29.480 be a governess, this time at Mrs Wooler School at 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.920 roe Head, twenty miles from Hollworth. It was different from 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.000 colin Bridge and it wasn't a charity school. Other students 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:39.679 there were rich manufacturing daughters, and Charlotte stood out with 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.520 her Irish accent and her funny clothes. To make things worse, 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:45.880 she was placed at the bottom of the class since 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.880 her entire education had been so haphazard, and she couldn't 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.240 play because she was so nearsighted, so she was really 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.320 left out right instead of you know, joining in with 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:59.440 ball games. Eventually, though, according to the BBC documentary In 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:03.400 Search of the Brontes, she made friends through storytelling, which 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:06.200 was really her strength. As we know, she would rehash 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:08.840 the ghost tales that she learned from the Bronte's much 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:12.080 loved cook Tabby, and two of her roe Head friends, 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:16.080 Ellen Nucy and Mary Taylor, became lifelong correspondence of her. 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.720 So she did manage to make those bonds. Yeah, and 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:22.000 as a side note to the correspondence with Ellen really 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.359 is the source of a lot of biographical information about 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.480 not just Charlotte, but the Bronte family as a whole. 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:32.520 Mary Taylor burned her correspondence, so we don't know what 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:43.320 all we're missing there. So Charlotte also worked her way 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:45.840 to the top of the class, and after two years 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.880 she came home. This is maybe one of the happier 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:51.200 times in the Brontes lives. All the kids were back 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:55.120 at the parsonage. Charlotte's friend Ellen, who visited in eighty three, 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:58.200 wrote that quote. They were beginning to feel conscious of 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:02.160 their powers. They were in each other's companionship. Their health 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.800 was good, their spirits were good. There was awten joyousness 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.080 and mirth. The perfection of unrestrained talk and intelligence brightened 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.120 the close of the days which were passing all too swiftly. 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.159 So we can kind of get a picture two of 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:18.919 the Brontes during this period. They would take long walks 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.720 over the moors, and in the evening, the four girls, 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.960 or if Ellen was visiting, would stroll around the sitting 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:27.520 room arm in arm. There were a lot of pets 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.160 in the house. Later on they had geese named Victoria 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:33.399 and Adelaide, which I just love. Um brand Will also 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:35.800 still seemed like the great hope of the family, and 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.959 that's something that's always interesting when you learn about the Brontes. 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.800 These three very famous sisters yet the family expected the 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.440 Sun to be the great one. But at this point, 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.680 you know, it seemed likely. He was charming, He was smart, 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:50.520 he was good at everything he did. He had a 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.760 well respected art teacher at this point, and while his 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:58.600 most famous work of his sisters is unfortunately pretty crude, 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:02.000 not the best representation and that you'd want as your legacy, 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.760 he was considered an accomplished draftsman, so maybe he was 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.679 a little better at drawing than at oil painting. So 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:12.400 Charlotte turned down a few governessing jobs to stay at home, 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:14.919 but in eighteen thirty five she eventually got an offer 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.320 that she couldn't refuse. It was a teaching position at 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:21.800 roe Head with free education offered for one sister. But 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:24.399 going back to roe Head turned out to be a 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:28.000 really serious mistake. Emily could barely make it three months 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:30.640 before she had to go home. She couldn't stand being 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:34.439 away from home. The more's her imaginary life, so fifteen 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.160 year old and came up instead. Charlotte was also seriously 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:41.200 depressed and was going through kind of a religious crisis. 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:45.399 In August eighteen thirty six, she wrote, quote, the thought 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.320 came over me, am I to spend all the best 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:52.159 part of my life in this wretched bondage forcibly suppressing 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:56.040 my rage at the idleness, the apathy, and the hyperbolical 0:21:56.200 --> 0:22:00.639 and most asinine stupidity of those fat headed oaths on compulsion, 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:05.000 assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity, and to 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:07.639 make matters worse, brand Well partly the reason why the 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:12.760 girls were working in the first place was failing miserably. Yeah, 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:16.800 they had of course taken jobs to help their father out, 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.119 you know, help him support brand Well. And in the 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.600 fall of eighty five, Brandwell had gone to London to 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:25.359 apply to the Royal Academy of the Arts. You know, 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:27.400 this was going to be his big start. He either 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:31.280 never made it to London and was robbed on the way, 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:33.880 or he got to London that didn't end up applying 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:36.880 to school, or he applied but was turned down. It's 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:41.119 unclear of what exactly happened, but Brandwell later tried to 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:43.679 still make his living as an artist, specifically as a 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:46.160 portrait painter, but he couldn't really compete with a better 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:50.240 artists and the nude gara types, and he became addicted 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:54.080 to opium eventually, which was on top of a developing 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:57.520 drinking problem, and it wasn't long before he had to 0:22:57.560 --> 0:23:00.720 start making his living as a tutor, which sounds like 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:02.399 a good job for a lot of people, but it 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:04.960 was not something that Brandwell was suited for at all. 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:08.199 When he was eventually fired from his first position, his 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.680 employers complained that their sons had basically done nothing more 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:15.480 than make sketches and think up stories to go with 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:17.479 their tutor strongs, which I don't know, it sounds kind 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:20.520 of fun for them, but telling their parents weren't too 0:23:20.520 --> 0:23:23.200 happy they were spending money on that, and there was 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:25.800 a rumor too, right, there was also a rumor that 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:29.439 Brandwell might have had an illegitimate child who died with 0:23:29.480 --> 0:23:33.040 a servant um. So, you know, just kind of sketchy 0:23:33.080 --> 0:23:37.000 things starting to pick up around his name, and that charm, 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:40.880 that intense energy he had was starting to seem more manic, 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:44.280