Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. We recently got a request from listener
Speaker 1: Erica to re release our past episodes on the Brontes
Speaker 1: as a Saturday classic. Now. These are the work of
Speaker 1: past hosts Sarah and Deblina from back in We hear
Speaker 1: so often that longtime listeners think that is one of
Speaker 1: the absolute best episodes that Sarah and Deblina ever did.
Speaker 1: They are definitely a top listener favorite, so we are
Speaker 1: very happy to oblige with Erica's request. Today's installment is
Speaker 1: called Growing Up Bronte, and as the name suggests, it
Speaker 1: is about the unconventional childhoods of the Bronte siblings. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Steph you missed in history class from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck reporting 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: object is usually pretty interesting, whether their royalty or not.
Speaker 1: Whether it's Elliot 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 Hans Christian Anderson crashing
Speaker 1: dinner parties in his ill fitting communions. I really think
Speaker 1: that taking a closer look at the early years often
Speaker 1: shows a different side of a subject, or sometimes even
Speaker 1: 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. While we we will follow up
Speaker 1: 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. That's kind of the sad reason why the
Speaker 1: youngest Bronte child to die was only at ten and
Speaker 1: the oldest was thirty eight, so not very long lives
Speaker 1: at all. Secondly, the Bronte children grew up under very
Speaker 1: strange circumstances. They grew up in extreme isolation coupled with
Speaker 1: endless intellectual stimulation. Yeah, there's a New Yorker article by
Speaker 1: Mary Hawthorne on their fantastic drawings and watercolors. Something you
Speaker 1: might not be aware of that the Brontes were actually,
Speaker 1: in some cases really talented artists too. But this article
Speaker 1: suggested that the peculiarities of their upbringing produced quote an
Speaker 1: extraordinary collective creative mania, which I think is a great
Speaker 1: way to think about what they were doing as kids.
Speaker 1: And there's one third reason that we want to go
Speaker 1: into their childhood a little bit first, and that's the
Speaker 1: Bronte mystique. It almost hinges on those earlier years. So
Speaker 1: how did one remote family produce three world class writers
Speaker 1: and one brilliant way stroll brother. How did the isolated
Speaker 1: and experienced Bronte girls author books filled with so much
Speaker 1: passion and terror? And what was in the water at
Speaker 1: how worth besides death and disease? And what made them
Speaker 1: also brilliant? So the Brontes are such a staple of
Speaker 1: British literature classes that it probably surprises some people to
Speaker 1: learn their origins were in Northern Ireland and that their
Speaker 1: family name wasn't even Bronte. Their father, who's Patrick, was
Speaker 1: born in sevent seventy seven on St. Patrick's day in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, and he was the son of Hugh Bruntie,
Speaker 1: who was a ditch mender. And despite the poor beginnings,
Speaker 1: Patrick was the eldest of ten really you know, in
Speaker 1: a really poor family. Uh. They were very story oriented.
Speaker 1: Hugh Brunty 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 Fraser,
Speaker 1: and she said that this jomp from being the ditchmender's
Speaker 1: son to attending Cambridge was really an almost unimaginable leap. 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 Trick, Mariah packted in, married him and
Speaker 1: moved north and started having just baby after baby. They
Speaker 1: had six kids and six years Mariah, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Patrick Branwell,
Speaker 1: Emily and Anne. So most of the younger Bronte children
Speaker 1: were born in Thornton, West Yorkshire, where the Brontes could socialize.
Speaker 1: It was near enough to a town that they could
Speaker 1: go visit with friends, They had a They had a
Speaker 1: busy life there, and that was especially important considering Mr
Speaker 1: and Mrs Bronte were already pretty isolated from their extended
Speaker 1: families in Ireland and Cornwall. But of course Bronte buffs
Speaker 1: know that the kids didn't grow up in this busy,
Speaker 1: sociable town of Thornton Heathcliff, Romes Moor's after all, not
Speaker 1: some cute little village, so not long after Anne's birth.
Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty, Mr Bronte accepted a position as the
Speaker 1: curate of Haworth and it wasn't really too far off
Speaker 1: from Thornton, but the hills and the moor surrounding it
Speaker 1: made the place inaccessible, plus cold and windy and boggy.
Speaker 1: And today we know that Howard was also very, very unhealthy.
Speaker 1: And I can actually remember this from my eleventh grade
Speaker 1: literature class, my teacher drawing a picture of the Bronte
Speaker 1: house and um the water supply and where it came from,
Speaker 1: and it just takes very involved, definitely, but it's something.
Speaker 1: The unhealthy nous of the town was something that Mr
Speaker 1: Bronte noticed right away and tried to fix in his
Speaker 1: role as parson. I mean, just to give you a
Speaker 1: few examples of how unhealthy this place really was, because
Speaker 1: he might be thinking, you know, small village, how bad
Speaker 1: could it be? But the Babbage Report on Sanitation from
Speaker 1: about thirty years after the Bronte's arrival compared Howard's death
Speaker 1: rate to that of White Chapel, London, of course, one
Speaker 1: of the um worst most packed with people's slums in London.
Speaker 1: The average life expectancy was only twenty five years. The
Speaker 1: problems that this place had where that there weren't enough privies,
Speaker 1: no sewers, water was rarely clean, and there were too
Speaker 1: many dead filling up the poorly drained churchyard. And guess
Speaker 1: where the family lived, right by the churchyard with a
Speaker 1: view of the cemetery on two sides. Since the local
Speaker 1: families were mostly quite poor, they were laborers and factory workers.
Speaker 1: There were only a few other, quote, you know, respectable
Speaker 1: people that the Brontes could socialize with, so they stuck
Speaker 1: to themselves mainly. There was a class thing here. The
Speaker 1: Brontes were poor also, but they were middle class because
Speaker 1: of Mr Bronte's position. The girls grew up learning to
Speaker 1: do things like put up linen, but they had servants
Speaker 1: to do the cleaning and the cooking. Yeah, I read
Speaker 1: one description of them learning lighthousekeeping whatever that means, because
Speaker 1: it means I just imagine people walking around with a
Speaker 1: feather nut when I hear being I don't know, like
Speaker 1: making lace or something. But still, you know, you're probably
Speaker 1: wondering at this point, why would you take this position
Speaker 1: if this town was so unhealthy. But the job meant
Speaker 1: a major raise for Mr Bronte. Plus the house for
Speaker 1: his family of eight and a job for life, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty serious thing. But the tragedies started not
Speaker 1: too 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. M 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 Branwell, 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, no 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, their little Brontes. They'd read newspapers and
Speaker 1: talk politics. They'd argue about who they thought was best,
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: mere goal seemed to happen. In eighteen four, a new
Speaker 1: school for the daughters of the poor evangelical clergy opened
Speaker 1: at cowan Bridge, only about fifty miles from Haworth. For
Speaker 1: 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 cache, 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 privies, 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 Bronte um by Jean Trippet.
Speaker 1: She's actually called the Unknown Bronte because so little is
Speaker 1: really known about her. Mariah also died young, but she
Speaker 1: was sort of the inspiration for Helen Burns and you know,
Speaker 1: really idolized by her family. But a Elizabeth more of
Speaker 1: a blank slate. So anyway, this article by Jeane Trippett
Speaker 1: and the journal Bronte Studies. Elizabeth supposedly also met with
Speaker 1: some unknown quote alarming accident while she was at school,
Speaker 1: her head being quote severely cut according to the school's headmistress.
Speaker 1: So it seems like there were, you know, potentially more
Speaker 1: serious things going on, not that the accident was necessarily
Speaker 1: something um, somebody had caused her harm, but just that
Speaker 1: 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 cowen Bridge was Lowwood from Jane Eyre, Charus 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 become 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 wouldn't have
Speaker 1: remembered things as they really were exactly. According to Frasier,
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 rosy in n though someone
Speaker 1: finally bothered too to the math and realized that the
Speaker 1: real Miss Temple had actually been dead when she wrote
Speaker 1: the vindicating letter, and the letter's author was probably actually
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the evil Mrs Scatchard, which doesn't sound
Speaker 1: so good for cowen Bridge all of 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 remembered 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 told 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 has
Speaker 1: just lost so many people in such a short span
Speaker 1: of time. So Miss Branwell became the household educator for
Speaker 1: the girls, while Mr Bronte would have given extra Greek
Speaker 1: and Latin lessons to Branwell. And they also had an
Speaker 1: inexhaustible supply of reading materials day old newspapers, magazines, borrowed books,
Speaker 1: methodist tracks, and literature. Of course, Charlotte and Branwell read
Speaker 1: almost all of Byron at age thirteen and twelve. The
Speaker 1: only thing that Patrick Bronte seemed to censor was Miss
Speaker 1: Branwell's Ladies magazine because he thought it had silly little
Speaker 1: stories in it. He didn't want his kids to read them. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's probably no surprise that with the kids reading
Speaker 1: so much romantic literature and then geography too and current events,
Speaker 1: that they made up their own world eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: as a way to kind of get away from all
Speaker 1: that was going on in their real life and filled
Speaker 1: it with byronic heroes and their most famous creation, the
Speaker 1: Empire of Angria, with its capital of glass Town, started
Speaker 1: when Mr Bronte brought home a set of wooden soldiers
Speaker 1: from Brandwell, and Charlotte later described it in a way
Speaker 1: that sounds so genuine. You know, you can imagine kids
Speaker 1: just picking up toys and starting this imaginary world. But
Speaker 1: she wrote, Brandwell came to our door with a box
Speaker 1: of soldiers. Emily and I jumped out of bed, and
Speaker 1: I snatched one up and exclaimed, this is the Duke
Speaker 1: of Wellington. This shall be the Duke. Emily's became Gravy,
Speaker 1: and Anne's waiting boy, and brand Well's Bonaparte. So with
Speaker 1: all their soldiers named, I think the names went through
Speaker 1: a few variations in some cases. Uh, the soldiers became
Speaker 1: what they called the young men, and um they lived
Speaker 1: in Glasstown. The kids became these all powerful genies. And
Speaker 1: then the Glasstown saga morphed into something that wasn't just
Speaker 1: like playing with the soldiers on rainy days and making
Speaker 1: up stories. It really became a world for them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Brand Will even created a language in history and maps
Speaker 1: for this world. By January eighty nine, they started to
Speaker 1: produce miniature Glasstown magazines with science articles, poems, and jokes. Actually,
Speaker 1: all the Glasstown writings were done on a miniature scale.
Speaker 1: So the first magazine was two and a quarter inch
Speaker 1: by one in a quarter inch, done on scraps of
Speaker 1: sugar paper or wallpaper in Angria and the Angrians brand
Speaker 1: Well crammed two thousand, five hundred words onto a five
Speaker 1: by seven inch page and they called it Scribblemania, which
Speaker 1: I think is my new band name. And you know,
Speaker 1: they had a reason, though, behind all of this tiny writing,
Speaker 1: which they also did to sort of imitate print almost.
Speaker 1: It was a way to keep the adults out of
Speaker 1: their business, you know, because it was so impossible to read,
Speaker 1: probably especially if you're a nineteenth century person with bad eyesight.
Speaker 1: So Emily and Anne participated in the world of Angria,
Speaker 1: but they also created their own world called Gondol. And
Speaker 1: we don't know quite as much about Gondol as we
Speaker 1: do about Glasstown, because Charlotte destroyed much of her sister's
Speaker 1: early writings after their deaths. But there is one pretty
Speaker 1: intriguing fact, especially if you've read any of those younger
Speaker 1: Bront's works. Gondol was ruled by women, which certainly set
Speaker 1: it apart from from the world of Angria, which had
Speaker 1: these really strong male protagonists. But all the kids continued
Speaker 1: writing poems and plays and romances about their worlds and
Speaker 1: these characters well into adulthood, and Charlotte Wood at various
Speaker 1: times try to ditch her imaginary world as she'd get older,
Speaker 1: but she'd come back, you know sometimes. Deklena and I
Speaker 1: were discussing before the podcast actually that while so charming
Speaker 1: in their youth, it does start to take on a
Speaker 1: disturbing tone when they are still so obsessed with it
Speaker 1: as they get older. But her indirect interest in it
Speaker 1: ultimately ended up coming out partly in some of her
Speaker 1: more famous work. Charlotte's alter ego, The Morna is very
Speaker 1: much like her later anti hero Mr Rochester, So I mean,
Speaker 1: there you go. But of course they couldn't play at
Speaker 1: home forever. In eighteen thirty, Mr Bronte got sick and
Speaker 1: nearly died. When he recovered, he realized his kids had
Speaker 1: no safety net, so he decided to keep branwell at home,
Speaker 1: but he sent Charlotte to school again to learn to
Speaker 1: be a governess, this time at Mrs Wooler School at
Speaker 1: roe Head, twenty miles from Hollworth. It was different from
Speaker 1: colin Bridge and it wasn't a charity school. Other students
Speaker 1: there were rich manufacturing daughters, and Charlotte stood out with
Speaker 1: her Irish accent and her funny clothes. To make things worse,
Speaker 1: she was placed at the bottom of the class since
Speaker 1: her entire education had been so haphazard, and she couldn't
Speaker 1: play because she was so nearsighted, so she was really
Speaker 1: left out right instead of you know, joining in with
Speaker 1: ball games. Eventually, though, according to the BBC documentary In
Speaker 1: Search of the Brontes, she made friends through storytelling, which
Speaker 1: was really her strength. As we know, she would rehash
Speaker 1: the ghost tales that she learned from the Bronte's much
Speaker 1: loved cook Tabby, and two of her roe Head friends,
Speaker 1: Ellen Nucy and Mary Taylor, became lifelong correspondence of her.
Speaker 1: So she did manage to make those bonds. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: as a side note to the correspondence with Ellen really
Speaker 1: is the source of a lot of biographical information about
Speaker 1: not just Charlotte, but the Bronte family as a whole.
Speaker 1: Mary Taylor burned her correspondence, so we don't know what
Speaker 1: all we're missing there. So Charlotte also worked her way
Speaker 1: to the top of the class, and after two years
Speaker 1: she came home. This is maybe one of the happier
Speaker 1: times in the Brontes lives. All the kids were back
Speaker 1: at the parsonage. Charlotte's friend Ellen, who visited in eighty three,
Speaker 1: wrote that quote. They were beginning to feel conscious of
Speaker 1: their powers. They were in each other's companionship. Their health
Speaker 1: was good, their spirits were good. There was awten joyousness
Speaker 1: and mirth. The perfection of unrestrained talk and intelligence brightened
Speaker 1: the close of the days which were passing all too swiftly.
Speaker 1: So we can kind of get a picture two of
Speaker 1: the Brontes during this period. They would take long walks
Speaker 1: over the moors, and in the evening, the four girls,
Speaker 1: or if Ellen was visiting, would stroll around the sitting
Speaker 1: room arm in arm. There were a lot of pets
Speaker 1: in the house. Later on they had geese named Victoria
Speaker 1: and Adelaide, which I just love. Um brand Will also
Speaker 1: still seemed like the great hope of the family, and
Speaker 1: that's something that's always interesting when you learn about the Brontes.
Speaker 1: These three very famous sisters yet the family expected the
Speaker 1: Sun to be the great one. But at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, it seemed likely. He was charming, He was smart,
Speaker 1: he was good at everything he did. He had a
Speaker 1: well respected art teacher at this point, and while his
Speaker 1: most famous work of his sisters is unfortunately pretty crude,
Speaker 1: not the best representation and that you'd want as your legacy,
Speaker 1: he was considered an accomplished draftsman, so maybe he was
Speaker 1: a little better at drawing than at oil painting. So
Speaker 1: Charlotte turned down a few governessing jobs to stay at home,
Speaker 1: but in eighteen thirty five she eventually got an offer
Speaker 1: that she couldn't refuse. It was a teaching position at
Speaker 1: roe Head with free education offered for one sister. But
Speaker 1: going back to roe Head turned out to be a
Speaker 1: really serious mistake. Emily could barely make it three months
Speaker 1: before she had to go home. She couldn't stand being
Speaker 1: away from home. The more's her imaginary life, so fifteen
Speaker 1: year old and came up instead. Charlotte was also seriously
Speaker 1: depressed and was going through kind of a religious crisis.
Speaker 1: In August eighteen thirty six, she wrote, quote, the thought
Speaker 1: came over me, am I to spend all the best
Speaker 1: part of my life in this wretched bondage forcibly suppressing
Speaker 1: my rage at the idleness, the apathy, and the hyperbolical
Speaker 1: and most asinine stupidity of those fat headed oaths on compulsion,
Speaker 1: assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity, and to
Speaker 1: make matters worse, brand Well partly the reason why the
Speaker 1: 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 eighty five, Brandwell had gone to London to
Speaker 1: apply to the Royal Academy of the Arts. You know,
Speaker 1: this was going to be his 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 gara 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 sounds like
Speaker 1: a good job for a lot of people, but it
Speaker 1: was not something that Brandwell was suited for at all.
Speaker 1: When he was eventually fired from his first position, his
Speaker 1: employers complained that their sons had basically done nothing more
Speaker 1: than make sketches and think up stories to go with
Speaker 1: their tutor strongs, which I don't know, it sounds kind
Speaker 1: of fun for them, but telling 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, and 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 eighty 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 stwodents that she preferred
Speaker 1: the school dog to them. That wouldn't win you many
Speaker 1: most popular teacher points at all, and bad experience with
Speaker 1: the Ingham family influenced her later novel Agnes Gray, while
Speaker 1: Charlotte's experience with the Sedgewick family provided inspiration for Jane Eyre,
Speaker 1: and one of Charlotte's charges even threw a Bible at
Speaker 1: her head and was very likely the model for John Reid,
Speaker 1: Giant Eyre's cruel cousin. Yeah. So Charlotte wasn't enjoying governess thing,
Speaker 1: to say the least, but she also wasn't willing to
Speaker 1: trade it in for a hasty marriage. She turned on
Speaker 1: two proposals in just six months, the first of which
Speaker 1: came from Ellen's brother, who was a Calvinist preacher who
Speaker 1: really just needed a wife for his big move to Sussex.
Speaker 1: You know it was proper that he was married. Reminds
Speaker 1: you a little bit of Sint Jhon Rivers. I think.
Speaker 1: The second proposal came from a clergyman who was just
Speaker 1: out of Dublin University. They met in a large group.
Speaker 1: Charlotte mistook his name as Price instead of Bryce, and
Speaker 1: really the next thing, you know, she was getting a
Speaker 1: letter of proposal from him, and that wasn't her style.
Speaker 1: So it seems like all the brilliant Brontes were just
Speaker 1: stuck in a rut, you know, that they were going
Speaker 1: to have to the girls were gonna have to just
Speaker 1: tutor forever or be governess is rather um something that
Speaker 1: they did not care for. Brandwell was now working as
Speaker 1: a railway booking clerk and not taking that work very seriously.
Speaker 1: He was doodling in the ledgers, and so out of
Speaker 1: all this kind of um, I don't know, stall dead
Speaker 1: end sort of life, it seems a new idea emerged.
Speaker 1: Ms Brandwell proposed offering up some of her savings. She
Speaker 1: had been squirreling away money over the year from her
Speaker 1: father's inheritance to her um, even though she was paying
Speaker 1: Mr Bronte rent the whole time she insisted on it. Um.
Speaker 1: She had managed to save a bit, though, and so
Speaker 1: she offered a pretty good sum for the three girls
Speaker 1: to open their own school, you know, which would be
Speaker 1: a lot different than being a governess, where you're not
Speaker 1: really a servant, but you're not really a member of
Speaker 1: the family either. So Consequently, you're just completely isolated. If
Speaker 1: you had your own school, you'd be able to do
Speaker 1: your own things. So Charlotte really liked this idea. Emily
Speaker 1: and Anne were into it too, but Charlotte cooked up
Speaker 1: an additional perk. She thought that for their school to succeed,
Speaker 1: the Bronte girls would really need to distinguish themselves in
Speaker 1: some way, have something that made them different. So she
Speaker 1: proposed that she and Emily would go off to Brussels
Speaker 1: for a few months. Mary Taylor was studying there and
Speaker 1: so she had a connection, and they had hone their
Speaker 1: French and their Italian. Maybe they'd pick up some German um,
Speaker 1: you know, pick up these accomplishments that would make their
Speaker 1: school one that people in the area would actually want
Speaker 1: to attend. And Aunt Brandwell and Mr Bronte were game,
Speaker 1: you know, a little skeptical, but they were. They were
Speaker 1: fine with it. Sounded like an okay idea. So the
Speaker 1: Bronte started looking for a school, and with their connections
Speaker 1: and Brussels, you know, they had somebody on the on
Speaker 1: the other side of the channel who could do the
Speaker 1: legwork for them, and they utimately found a school that
Speaker 1: was high quality but pretty inexpensive, you know, within their budget,
Speaker 1: and in January ET two they settled on the Palsiona
Speaker 1: a j So that's where we're going to leave off
Speaker 1: for this episode. I can say at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: the Brontes are all grown up. We have exited the
Speaker 1: growing up Bronte phase. And next time we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about their time in Belgium, their education, and
Speaker 1: then the three breakout novels of course that are published
Speaker 1: in just one year, and then as we know, all
Speaker 1: of the family tragedy that starts um piling up towards
Speaker 1: the to the end of the Bronte saga. Plus we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit about the reputation of the Brontes,
Speaker 1: which is something that I'm very interested in discussing in
Speaker 1: more detail. Yeah, it's interesting how that reputation evolves and
Speaker 1: um the part that some of the Brontes themselves playing that.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic.
Speaker 1: Since this is out of the archive, if you heard
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