Historical and Literary Fiction / Essays / Poetry / Reviews /Book Cover and Interior Illustrations / Pet Portraits and Other Commissioned Artwork … "Prose may be the lowest order of the rhythmic composition, but we know it is capable of such purity, sweetness, strength, elasticity, as entitle it to a place as a sister art with poetry." Thomas Hall Caine (1853 -1931) from his firsthand "Reflections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti"
July 30th marks the anniversary in 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire of the birth of Emily Brontë, one of the most uniquely fearless, impassioned, enigmatic, and elusive poets and novelists of all time.
My novel Without the Veil Between, published in November 2017, focuses on Anne Bronte, but Emily is very present in it. Long after all the Brontë sisters had died, Charlotte’s friend Ellen Nussey wrote in Reminisces of Charlotte Brontë that “[Emily] and Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.”
Illustration by DM Denton from Without the Veil Between
Emily was as essential to Anne as Anne was to Emily, whether she and Anne were together at Haworth, on an excursion to York, or physically apart like when Emily was at school in Brussels or Anne was working as a governess. They invigorated each other’s imagination, offered a sense of belonging, and balanced each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The ethereal essence of their connection was enough to overcome their growing apart when it came to the fantasy writing that had bonded them as children and adolescents.
Emily never stopped being an imaginative and liberating influence on dutiful, devout Anne, a constant and protective best friend who by example more than precept reminded her youngest sister to leave at least some of her spirit unfettered and even encouraged her to now and then step out of life’s responsibilities and live a little wildly.
O come with me, thus ran the song, The moon is bright in Autumn’s sky, And thou hast toiled and laboured long With aching head and weary eye.
~ From OCome WithMe by Emily Brontë
Anne’s influence on Emily was less obvious, easier to view Emily as more akin to nature and mystery than real people, floating untethered in her own self-created, solitary, independent, irreligious orbit. For me, all of that remains true while, at the same time, I feel Emily was deeply attached to Anne: that she admired her level-headedness and faith-filled, forgiving, moralistic, yielding yet strong nature, and valued her opinion, especially creatively.
Anne was a safe haven where Emily could rely on something besides her own fortitude and segregation. Anne was someone who understood her and had no wish to change her.
There was profound understanding and acceptance, truth and endurance in the love each had for the other.
What better way to enjoy time with Emily again than by resuming their habit of wandering west to meet only earth and sky. Their dogs, like themselves, with contrasting physiques and personalities, were intrinsically similar, especially in their need to frequently escape the stuffiness and limited amusement of being indoors.
“Flossy, come back,” Anne tried to command the impulsive spaniel off once more to chase sheep.
Emily had no trouble getting Keeper to lie down with a firm annunciation of his name while she pointed to the ground, although his whimpering implied he was still thinking about following Flossy’s example.
“Flossy. Bad boy, bad boy.”
“If you control your little Robinsons like you do that sassy mutt, I fear they won’t live long.”
As if it heard Emily’s prediction, a large ewe turned on Flossy, which brought the dog running back up the steep slope to his forgiving mistress.
On second thought, Anne tried to be tougher with a disciplinary tap on Flossy’s nose, then embraced him again. “Good boy.”
“Methinks he’s exactly what you always wanted … to be.” Emily was walking again, her direction declaring her destination. Their ascent to Top Withens would be delayed an hour or more, if Emily’s mood was more for reclining and swirling her hand in the water to stir up tadpoles.
When Ellen Nussey was with them, from crossing the slabbed bridge over Sladen Beck to climbing a rugged bank, navigating greasy stones and not minding a little dampening, there was always an echo of “watch your step”. With just Anne and the dogs following her lead, Emily didn’t have anything to say until they were at the best seat in view of the waterfall.
“No, you take it, Annie. I relinquish my throne to you.”
“Any of the other stones would do for me.”
“I insist on taking care of you.”
Anne didn’t mind Emily acting more like an older brother than Branwell ever did, or even a gallant lover, reminiscent of childish acting-out. In truth, she depended on it. In that small oasis of time, standing still where they were hidden from the world, their faithful companions conspiring to find something to occupy themselves, there was so much to enjoy and be grateful for. The sky was open in sight of heaven, high ground around and beyond them, the sun warming and a breeze cooling, the sound of water calming, and faintly fragrant moss glistening on the rocks with tiny white stars appearing between some of them.
Yet, more as if she was on a stormy ocean than in a quiet cove, panic overwhelmed Anne until she could hardly breathe.
Emily lightly rubbed Anne’s back and twisted up a strand of her hair loosened from its simple arrangement.
Anne cleared her throat, choking, Flossy pawing at her knees, Keeper barking.
“Go ahead and spit.” Emily helped her sister lean over to do so. “Other than me, there’s only the dogs, flies, tadpoles and, perhaps, God to witness it.”
Anne laughed and spoke hoarsely, “What would I do without you?”
When weary with the long day’s care, And earthly change from pain to pain, And lost and ready to despair, Thy kind voice calls me back again: Oh, my true friend! I am not lone, While thou canst speak with such a tone!
Today, July 30, 2019, marks the 201st anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë. Last year’s bicentennial was, of course, awash in commemorations and celebrations at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire and elsewhere, including all over the internet. But, as I’m sure many others feel, Emily’s natal day should always be marked with enthusiasm and gratefulness, for it gave us one of the most uniquely fearless, impassioned, enigmatic, and elusive poets and novelists of all time.
Long after all the Brontë sisters had died, Charlotte’s friend Ellen Nussey wrote in Reminisces of Charlotte Brontë that “[Emily] and Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.”
Illustration by DM Denton from Without the Veil Between
Emily was as essential to Anne as Anne was to Emily, whether she and Anne were together at Haworth, on an excursion to York, or physically apart like when Emily was at school in Brussels or Anne was working as a governess. They invigorated each other’s imagination, offered a sense of belonging, and balanced each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The ethereal essence of their connection was enough to overcome their growing apart when it came to the fantasy writing that had bonded them as children and adolescents.
Emily never stopped being an imaginative and liberating influence on dutiful, devout Anne, a constant and protective best friend who by example more than precept reminded her youngest sister to leave at least some of her spirit unfettered and even encouraged her to now and then step out of life’s responsibilities and live a little wildly.
O come with me, thus ran the song, The moon is bright in Autumn’s sky, And thou hast toiled and laboured long With aching head and weary eye.
~ From OCome WithMe by Emily Brontë
Anne’s influence on Emily was less obvious, easier to view Emily as more akin to nature and mystery than real people, floating untethered in her own self-created, solitary, independent, irreligious orbit. For me, all of that remains true while, at the same time, I feel Emily was deeply attached to Anne: that she admired her level-headedness and faith-filled, forgiving, moralistic, yielding yet strong nature, and valued her opinion, especially creatively.
Anne was a safe haven where Emily could rely on something besides her own fortitude and segregation. Anne was someone who understood her and had no wish to change her.
There was profound understanding and acceptance, truth and endurance in the love each had for the other.
What better way to enjoy time with Emily again than by resuming their habit of wandering west to meet only earth and sky. Their dogs, like themselves, with contrasting physiques and personalities, were intrinsically similar, especially in their need to frequently escape the stuffiness and limited amusement of being indoors.
“Flossy, come back,” Anne tried to command the impulsive spaniel off once more to chase sheep.
Emily had no trouble getting Keeper to lie down with a firm annunciation of his name while she pointed to the ground, although his whimpering implied he was still thinking about following Flossy’s example.
“Flossy. Bad boy, bad boy.”
“If you control your little Robinsons like you do that sassy mutt, I fear they won’t live long.”
As if it heard Emily’s prediction, a large ewe turned on Flossy, which brought the dog running back up the steep slope to his forgiving mistress.
On second thought, Anne tried to be tougher with a disciplinary tap on Flossy’s nose, then embraced him again. “Good boy.”
“Methinks he’s exactly what you always wanted … to be.” Emily was walking again, her direction declaring her destination. Their ascent to Top Withens would be delayed an hour or more, if Emily’s mood was more for reclining and swirling her hand in the water to stir up tadpoles.
When Ellen Nussey was with them, from crossing the slabbed bridge over Sladen Beck to climbing a rugged bank, navigating greasy stones and not minding a little dampening, there was always an echo of “watch your step”. With just Anne and the dogs following her lead, Emily didn’t have anything to say until they were at the best seat in view of the waterfall.
“No, you take it, Annie. I relinquish my throne to you.”
“Any of the other stones would do for me.”
“I insist on taking care of you.”
Anne didn’t mind Emily acting more like an older brother than Branwell ever did, or even a gallant lover, reminiscent of childish acting-out. In truth, she depended on it. In that small oasis of time, standing still where they were hidden from the world, their faithful companions conspiring to find something to occupy themselves, there was so much to enjoy and be grateful for. The sky was open in sight of heaven, high ground around and beyond them, the sun warming and a breeze cooling, the sound of water calming, and faintly fragrant moss glistening on the rocks with tiny white stars appearing between some of them.
Yet, more as if she was on a stormy ocean than in a quiet cove, panic overwhelmed Anne until she could hardly breathe.
Emily lightly rubbed Anne’s back and twisted up a strand of her hair loosened from its simple arrangement.
Anne cleared her throat, choking, Flossy pawing at her knees, Keeper barking.
“Go ahead and spit.” Emily helped her sister lean over to do so. “Other than me, there’s only the dogs, flies, tadpoles and, perhaps, God to witness it.”
Anne laughed and spoke hoarsely, “What would I do without you?”
When weary with the long day’s care, And earthly change from pain to pain, And lost and ready to despair, Thy kind voice calls me back again: Oh, my true friend! I am not lone, While thou canst speak with such a tone!
In December 1847 (possibly the 13th), a triple-book set of novels was published. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights made up the first two volumes and Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, the third.
It was appropriate that Anne and Emily, who were so close to each other in affection and understanding, should have their novels make their first public appearance together. Although accepted for publication by Thomas Newby before Jane Eyre was by Smith, Elder & Co, Charlotte’s novel beat her sisters’ to the presses by a couple of months.
First edition Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey
Anne had made many corrections in her proofing of Agnes Grey, but Newby neglected to follow through on them.
After months of being upset by Newby’s negligence, Anne could finally smile a little at all the red marks in her personal copy of Agnes Grey.
The long delay in the release of her and Emily’s novels had been exasperating. Then Newby rushed them into print and, although Anne carefully labored over final corrections, overdue Agnes was born with defects that couldn’t be hidden. The results of Emily’s expectancy weren’t much better.
~ from Without the Veil Between
A review in the Atlas, January 22, 1848, must have been disappointing to Anne:
It leaves no painful impression on the mind – some may think it leaves no impression at all. There is a want of distinctness in the character of Agnes, which prevents the reader from taking much interest in her fate.
Much later, long after Anne was gone, the Irish novelist George Moore (1852 – 1933) couldn’t have disagreed more, praising Agnes Grey as the most perfect prose narrative in English letters.
An article by Samantha Ellis, author of Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, reflects on Agnes Grey from the present, but, surely, touches upon how Anne set out to maintain her life, integrity, and purpose in the world of her time.
Agnes is a quieter heroine than Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights’s Cathy Earnshaw, but she burns with her own anger. Agnes Grey is often a furious novel, and a feminist novel. Its main concern is how a woman can do what Agnes wants to do at the start: “to go out into the world; to act for myself; to exercise my unused faculties; to try my own unknown powers”. ~ from Anne Brontë: the sister who got there first
The beginning of summer ended the pursuit of a publisher for Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, if less than satisfactorily with Thomas Cautley Newby’s request for fifty pounds to produce them.
“We resolved not to pay to see our novels in print. And here we are about to do so.”
“Sometimes resolve must be adjusted, Anne.”
∼
How could Anne not think of her first “girl” and wonder whether she would be clothed more elegantly than Jane or as plain in cloth-backed gray-boards with little trim. As the months since proofing dragged on without a sign from Newby other than him giving his word to break it, would Agnes make a public appearance at all?
Anne continued to have faith, although she was more prepared for betrayal than before she knew its look, how it spoke and maneuvered. She had written Agnes Grey as a reaction to her inaugural governess experience with the Ingrams, but, also, as an instructional reflection. She had meant to bring less naiveté to Thorpe Green and the writing she did in the limited free time allowed her there. She had soon discovered—or rediscovered—it was easier to live with wit and wisdom, to maintain a pensive cheerfulness or, at least, a philosophical viewpoint, through imaginary encounters rather than actual ones.
The passages of Agnes had brought Anne through insecurity, loneliness, worry, wavering, weariness, and grief. Agnes’ story had helped Anne navigate a life that wasn’t hers but needed to be traveled with enough involvement for learning and growing towards the best purpose of the one that was. The challenge was not to lose sight of the destination she hoped was ahead of her: to do the most good she could in the world before she left it.
The journey of someone who never existed was at times more real than Anne’s own, its importance to her not diminished by how few knew of it. Even if the book never made it to the presses and fifty pounds was lost or required legal action to retrieve, nothing would change Anne having conceived it and carried it full term. No matter if Agnes was stillborn, lived for a few years or many, she was the offspring of Anne’s desire to write with more purpose than being clever with words and entertaining. Instead, to produce a calm, undistracted, useful, and benevolent child who, if anyone did encounter her, would whisper a few wholesome truths to make them wiser and kinder, and open their minds and hearts.
~ from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit
Miniature edition of Agnes Grey that my mom found in a secondhand bookstore in Oxford in the 1980s.
The human heart is like india-rubber; a little swells it, but a great deal will not burst it. If “little more than nothing will disturb it, little less than all things will suffice” to break it. As in the outer members of our frame, there is a vital power inherent in itself that strengthens it against external violence. Every blow that shakes it will serve to harden it against a future stroke; as constant labour thickens the skin of the hand, and strengthens its muscles instead of wasting them away: so that a day of arduous toil, that might excoriate a lady’s palm, would make no sensible impression on that of a hardy ploughman.
~ Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Today is my mother’s 89th birthday. Since early November of last year, she has been in the hospital and rehab twice, for a total of nine weeks. The first time was because of infections that caused her to have some scary delirium and the second because of hypoglycemia (low blood glucose), when she almost fell into a coma, and, again, infection, mainly in her legs. I am so grateful she is doing well and returned home yesterday. Our kitty-boys are, of course, thrilled!
To mark her home coming and birthday, I am sharing the essay I included at the back of my recently released novel, Without the Veil Between, Anne Bronte: A Fine and Subtle Spirit. It is not only about how I came to initially read the Brontës, but, also, a tribute to my mom’s own love-affair with their work that she shared with me when I was a girl, which set me reading voraciously and inspired my own long and winding road of being a novelist.
I cannot help but consider how fortunate I am to still have my mother with me after sixty-four and a half years. She only had hers for ten, the loss still raw to this day. Anne Brontë was one and a half when her mother died, her grief for what she never knew.
After the essay I offer a prose-poetry piece I wrote some time ago: hence, a little repetition. Oh, so worth repeating.
My mom, June, at nineteen
Reading the Brontës
Merry Christmas from Aunt Renee, 1943. When my mother was fourteen she received a book that fed her appetite for novels and offered an escape from her own complicated narrative. Published by Random House, New York, it was wider and “taller” than it was thick, bound in dark blue-green with a slightly gullied joint and gold lettering on a strong spine, front and back boards illustrated by the work of Fritz Eichenberg, more of his moodily magnificent wood engravings within. Monotype Bodoni with long descenders and double-columns presented its text, chapters running on without pause, like the brave and breathless mind and spirit that filled it with one of the most mercilessly compelling, passionate, earthy unearthly stories ever told.
Over twenty years later this classic hardcover edition of Wuthering Heights was re-gifted to me and my reading the Brontës began with Emily. She immediately and irrevocably enticed me out of 1960s suburban America, away from fenced-in yards, narrow sidewalks, and managed nature, into the wilderness of her West Yorkshire world, inexhaustible imagination and uncompromising soul. I had never before read a novel as descriptive and dramatic, bold and mesmerizing, as validating of my own mystic inclinations. Of course, I hadn’t. I was only twelve.
I believe I can credit reading Emily with the early maturing of my literary preferences. Her poetry soon followed and I felt even more akin to her: introverted but intense, a homebody with wanderlust, quiet with much “to say”, my fantasies my salvation.
Wuthering Heights led to Jane Eyre, also at my adolescent fingertips. My mother owned the matching 1943 edition originally boxed as a set with Wuthering Heights. Lent to a reckless relative, it came to me a little battered and begged to be handled devotedly. Soon I was occupied by the reticence, resilience, and quiet and artistic sensibility of Jane, and entertained by the romance, mystery and maneuverings of her journey. If in my younger days I didn’t feel the empathy with Charlotte I did with Emily, later, much later I found myself identifying with Charlotte’s struggles and strength, even her stubbornness, certainly her conflicted ambition. Earlier and later I couldn’t help appreciate and aspire to Charlotte’s mastery at storytelling.
Unfortunately, neither of Anne’s novels were included in the Eichenberg illustrated collection. Still, a treasured copy of Agnes Grey also found its way to me through my mother: a 3 ¼ by 5 ¼ hardcover edition she had purchased from a second-hand book store in Oxford on a visit while I was living in England. It was part of the Oxford University World Classics range, first published in 1907 and reprinted numerous times up until the 1970s, which included all four of Charlotte’s novels, Wuthering Heights, and, also, Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Despite the diminutive dimensions of this edition of Agnes Grey, the front of its burnt-sienna dust jacket had space for a Leonard Rosoman black and white illustration of governess Agnes. Its text was tiny, reminiscent of the Brontë juvenilia, requiring youthful eyes or a magnifying glass.
From the multitude of documentaries about the Brontës, and movies, even pop music, inspired by Charlotte’s and Emily’s books, it was all too easy to neglect Anne’s presence and influence in her family and literature. As an English major in college, those “in charge” of my education barely mentioned her if at all. They might have been directing my edification as they thought necessary, but not my curiosity more piqued by the neglected than celebrated.
In the mid-1990s while organizing book shelves I happened upon my miniature Agnes Grey. Flipping through it I stopped at Chapter XXIV, The Sands. I was reminded of my first and only visit to Scarborough, North Yorkshire in March 1974 when sightseeing took me up to the medieval fortress on the town’s northern headland. Back down Castle Road I detoured into the yard of the little church—St. Mary’s—where, a month or so earlier, when at last I made it to Haworth, I had learned Anne was buried. If walking through the cold, rolling fog behind the Brontë Parsonage unable to resist calling out “Heathcliff” was surreal, standing at the small wind-and-salt weathered monument to Anne’s courageous self-determination opened a new chapter in my Brontë reading. Finding her interred apart from her family, away from the place name and environment that, for me as for so many others, she and her siblings were inevitably associated with, my first thoughts on “why?” were intuitive rather than informed.
I could understand Anne wanting to be near Scarborough’s curve of headlands, beaches, and watery outlook to somewhere foreign and, therefore, appealing. I found myself in her reasons to value those rare moments in sight and sound and smell of the sea. I identified with her relief and exhilaration when she was out-of-sight of all whose assumptions had for too long defined and restricted her.
Copyright by DM Denton 2017
Even when all I had to go on was a hunch, I suspected Anne Brontë was something of a rebel, not in defiance but for discovery.
Scarborough had lured Anne to move from mortality to eternity because she couldn’t ignore her need for a way all her own. The only thing in error regarding her burial away from Haworth was the inscription on the stone noting her age when she died. Symbolically that chiseled “typo” took away the year of Anne’s greatest accomplishment, forewarning Charlotte literally doing so when she refused a posthumous reprinting of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
I’ll admit I didn’t read Anne’s second novel until I decided to write one about her and wondered—and soon recognized—why it had taken me over half a century to do both.
Sometimes the closest thing to ourselves takes a long time to reach. My mother made it to Haworth in 1975. For reasons that seemed important at the time and now I can only regret, I wasn’t with her as she walked up the hill, heard her steps on the cobblestones and voices of the dead, inhaled the mist, saw the parsonage and windswept trees and moors, and, perhaps, if silently, did a little Heathcliff calling of her own to turn the pages back. I didn’t see if her eyes sparkled, but like to think they did.
Copyright by DM Denton 2017 Click image to find out how you can purchase a print
Happy Birthday, Mom …
You gave me many gifts, like the gods and goddesses gave Pandora: a sense of beauty, charm, music, curiosity and persuasion. In particular there was a book, large and beautifully bound, its writing in columns and essence carved in wood.
You were as naïve as I was.
For it was also a box of unknowns, like Pandora’s, that unleashed more than either of us bargained for. I preferred the version of the myth that claimed good things were allowed to escape. All except for one.
We never lost hope.
You put the faraway in my hands, so how could I not want to go there? Of course, you meant for me to travel pages not miles.
You said you would never forgive me.
How many months we didn’t speak; how many years we paid dearly for conversations in such different time zones, trying to being ordinary when it was all so impossible.
We were both alone with our mistakes.
I never thought it would be that difficult to be away from you. My youth was lost, not to romantic discontent but missing what was true.
Could you ever forgive me?
Perhaps you did a little. When you traveled as I did, because I did: over the sea, to another country, to places you had and hadn’t visited. You walked up the hill, heard your heels on the cobblestones and voices of the dead, inhaled the mist, saw the parsonage, the windswept trees and moors, and turned the pages back.
I didn’t see if your eyes sparkled, but I like to believe they did.
A new novel about Anne Brontë
(youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily)
Poet and Novelist
Author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
This new novel gives us Anne. Not Anne, the ‘less gifted’ sister of Charlotte and Emily (although we meet them too as convincingly drawn individuals); nor the Anne who ‘also wrote two novels’, but Anne herself, courageous, committed, daring and fiercely individual: a writer of remarkable insight, prescience and moral courage whose work can still astonish us today. ~ Deborah Bennison, Bennison Books Read the full review …
Whole passages are beautifully written: meticulous, poetic, luminous, and powerful. I can’t think of anyone better suited to bring us into the world and the life of the sensitive, creative, and quietly courageous Anne Brontë.
Read full review …
~ Mary Clark, author of Tally: An Intuitive Life, Miami Morning and Racing the Sun
Anne was, at least to the modern sensibility, a great novelist in spite of her contemporary reputation, and as she weaves her gentle spirit into dealing with the dissolution of her brother, her father’s loving distraction, and her two sisters’ determination to overcome the limitations of their sex in Victorian society, the reader gets a sense of how genius rose out of the tensions, love, and straining within the family itself. Read the full review …
~ Thomas Davis, author of The Weirding Storm
***
Whole passages are beautifully written: meticulous, poetic, luminous, and powerful. I can’t think of anyone better suited to bring us into the world and the life of the sensitive, creative, and quietly courageous Anne Brontë. Read full review …
~ Mary Clark, author of Tally: An Intuitive Life, Miami Morning and Racing the Sun
The novel includes original illustrations by DM Denton
Books can truly change our lives:
the lives of those who read them,
the lives of those who write them.
Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew
about the world and about themselves.
~ Lloyd Chudley Alexander, 1924 – 2007, American author
Of course, the Brontë Society and Parsonage Museum have long been the pride of West Yorkshire and its natives. But, as it was for me since the threshold of puberty when I first became aware of Haworth‘s famous literary siblings, their home for most of their lives has long been a dream destination for countless visitors from hundreds and thousands of miles, oceans, continents and centuries away.
Brontë Parsonage, Haworth, llustration by DM Denton Copyright 2017
Once the identity of the author of Jane Eyre was no longer masked by a pseudonym, fans of the book started turning up in Haworth. A few years after Charlotte’s death, spurred on by the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of her, even more came, many from America where Jane Eyre was very popular. The local shops looked to benefit, for example, by selling photographs of the family that probably weren’t. Patriarch Patrick Brontë even began cutting up Charlotte’s letters in order to fulfill requests for samples of her handwriting.
The narrative of the Brontë sisters’ lives and the place they passed from childhood to adulthood in became as important to their legacy as the stories they penned. Not everyone agreed it should be so and others were skeptical but open to being convinced. Henry James (1843—1916) thought it unfortunate that the “beguiled fascination” with the Brontës’ “tragic history, their loneliness and poverty of life” got more attention than critical reaction to their writings. In 1904 Virginia Woolf (1882—1941) wrote an extensive account of and reflection on her “expedition to Haworth” to discover if, as Mrs. Gaskell implied, “Haworth and the Brontës (were) somehow inextricably mixed. The curiosity (is) only legitimate when the house of a great writer or the country in which it is set adds something to our understanding of his books. This justification you have for a pilgrimage to the home and country of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters.”
I don’t believe searching for Charlotte, Emily and Anne through the rooms they lived in, church they worshipped in, pathways they walked, objects they used, books they read, clothes they wore, music they collected, pets they had, or weather they enjoyed and endured conflicts with discovering them as writers or detracts from what they wrote. If anything, their outer and inner worlds: the “poverty” (as Mr. James called it), constraints and remoteness of their lives, the struggles of their passions and intellect, the tragedies that took young loved ones from them (not unusual in families of the time), the persistence and fearlessness of their imaginations and efforts all constructed the foundation and framework that rose into the building of their poetry and prose to stand the test of time and with the best.
Crowd at opening of Parsonage Museum in1895
“The museum is certainly rather a pallid and inanimate collection of objects. An effort ought to be made to keep things out of these mausoleums, but the choice often lies between them and destruction, so that we must be grateful for the care which has preserved much that is, under any circumstances, of deep interest. Here are many autograph letters, pencil drawings, and other documents. But the most touching case – so touching that one hardly feels reverent in one’s gaze – is that which contains the little personal relics of the dead woman. The natural fate of such things is to die before the body that wore them, and because these, trifling and transient though they are, have survived, Charlotte Brontë the woman comes to life, and one forgets the chiefly memorable fact that she was a great writer. Her shoes and her thin muslin dress have outlived her. One other object gives a thrill; the little oak stool which Emily carried with her on her solitary moorland tramps, and on which she sat, if not to write, as they say, to think what was probably better than her writing.”
~ Virginia Woolf, Haworth, November 1904
The original Brontë Society was founded in 1893. Two years later a small museum opened above the Yorkshire Penny Bank on Main Street in Haworth. Brontë treasures began to be donated and also obtained by the Society at auction, monetary bequests allowing the Society to purchase them. The museum soon saw around 10,000 visitors. It wasn’t until 1928 that the deed for the Parsonage was put into the Society’s hands by Haworth native wool merchant and Society member Sir James Roberts, who had purchased it for £3,000 from the Church. A lot of Brontë memorabilia had found its way to the US and in 1926 a large collection that included Bronte manuscripts, letters, first editions and personal effects was willed to the Society by Henry Houston, a Philadelphia publisher.
Brontë possessions are still being found and coming to the museum from far and wide. In 2011 Charlotte’s mahogany desk was donated anonymously (it was known to have been owned by William Law, who collected rare Bronte material subsequently inherited by his nephew, its whereabouts a mystery after Sir Alfred Law’s death in 1939 until the desk and a few other precious items turned up). In 2015 the Society obtained the mahogany drop-leaf table, complete with ink blots, a large candle burn and a letter E carved into it, the sisters wrote on.
A table at which the Brontë sisters wrote has been brought back to the family home in Yorkshire after being purchased with a grant of £580,000.
No, there’s nothing new about the international interest in the Brontës. Less than a year after Charlotte’s death a German version of Jane Eyre—Die Waise vin Lowood (The Orphan of Lowood) was staged in New York. According to a biographer of Chekhov, the Russian writer was likely influenced by Olga Peterson’s biography of the Brontës when he wrote his play The Three Sisters. This link takes you to a Wikipedia page that lists adaptations of Jane Eyre, including, in the 1950s, a Hindi, Hong Kong, and, in the 1960s and 70s a couple of Mexican and Indian movie versions.
In the 1970s, the French produced a film, the aesthetic and atmospheric Les Soeurs Brontë, which takes a lot of liberties but I couldn’t help but be hypnotized by.
Still from Les Soeurs Brontë Isabelle Adjani as Emily, Isabelle Huppert as Anne and Marie-France Pisier as Charlotte
The French also did an adaptation of Wuthering Heights: Hurlevent (Howling Wind) in 1985, and so did director Yoshishige Yoshida in 1988: Arashi ga Oka, neither of which I have seen (the former saved to my yet-to-be-released Netflix list). In 2009 a Japanese musical adaptation of Jane Eyre was released and I have to admit I was really drawn in by the video clips on YouTube:
Exhibit notes and footpaths signs in Japanese reflect the thousands from Japan who visit Haworth and the Parsonage and make the walks to the Brontë waterfall and Top Withens yearly, the largest group from a specific foreign (to the UK) country. There is a great article from The Japan Times titled Why are Japanese Women still Bewitched by the Brontës. Here’s the article’s opening:
Some years ago a sassy Osaka lady asked me to introduce her to the pleasures of Western literature. I duly handed her a variety of classic books, including “The Turn of the Screw,” “Heart of Darkness,” “Lolita” and “A Study in Scarlet.” They were all methodically if unenthusiastically read, but when I presented her with a copy of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” she devoured the book, raved about it, rereading it again and again.
Japan seem to be besotted with the three Bronte sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne. It’s a fascination that goes beyond reading and imagining. A disproportionately high number of Japanese women visit the Bronte’s home village of Haworth in the north of England each year, a pilgrimage …
The article explores possible reasons why Japanese women love the Brontës’ novels. I particularly liked, and, dare to admit, related to one:
The extravagance of the heroine Catherine’s passionate behavior and her ardor for the enigmatic Heathcliff is one aspect of the novel’s appeal to Japanese female readers, according to Pascoe.
“An older Japanese woman told me that the novel filled her with longing,” she says, “both for the foreign English locale and for the possibility of being a different, less subdued kind of person.” Read full article …
The Bronte Society of Japan has its own Facebook page, website and blog. On the latter the administrators recently and very kindly added a post, in Japanese and English, about my upcoming novel Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit, which you can view by clicking here.
And, of course, there is a US chapter. Because of the number of American Chapter members and their wide dispersion regions were created. Each region includes several states under a Brontë Society regional representative who acts as a liaison between their members and the American Chapter Representative.
On of my favorite foreign Brontë groups, which I discovered some time ago, is The Sisters’ Room, A Bronte Inspired Blog, Italian with a mirror English version that is administrated by two lovely young women, Selene Chilla and Serena Di Battista, who travel with others from Italy to Haworth on a regular basis. They met at university, where (they) developed a true and deep passion for the English language, literature and culture. Moreover, (they) have always been interested in the Brontë sisters’ lives, works and places, and over time this passion grew and grew … They also have a Facebook Page where they have kindly shared news of my upcoming Anne novel.
The Sisters’ Room works in conjunction with the Italian chapter of the The Brontë Society, La Sezione Italiana della Bronte Society, which was born in 1997 when its two founders, Maddalena De Leo and Franca Musi, met at a conference called The Legacy of the Brontës organized by the British Council in Bologna. Maddalena De Leo is the representative of La Sezione Italiana della Bronte Society and on the Brontë Studies editorial board, who has worked very hard for many years to have the Brontë sisters known in Italy and worldwide. As well as writing various articles for the Brontë Studies literary journal, she has translated unpublished Brontë works. Here is a fascinating interview with Prof. De Leo The Sisters’ Room posted with her in 2015: Today’s Guest: Prof. De Leo, Representative of the Brontë Society in Italy. The Sisters’ Room has a page dedicated to the Brontë Society in Italy where you can read a number of fascinating articles by Prof. De Leo.
Maddalena de Leo’s fictional account of Maria Branwell’s life
I’m sure there are more international groups/organizations/fans to discover. Knowing there is so much interest in the subject of Without the Veil Between is a new experience on the publishing journey for me, my first two novels focusing on more obscure figures in music and history. Hopefully, the global interest in the Brontës will translate into a larger readership than I have experienced before.
Readers are often fans of Authors, but I, myself, am a fan of readers. They are the ones who breathe life into the pages that we give birth to, after all.
~ Janae Mitchell
When my mother was fourteen a book was given to her appetite for reading and need to escape her own complicated narrative. Published by Random House, New York, it was wider and “taller” than it was thick, bound in dark blue-green with a slightly gullied joint and gold lettering on a strong spine, front and back boards illustrated by the work of Fritz Eichenberg, more of his moodily magnificent wood engravings within. Monotype Bodoni with long descenders and double-columns presented its text, chapters running on without pause, like the brave and breathless mind and spirit that filled it with one of the most mercilessly compelling, passionate, earthy unearthly stories ever told.
Over twenty years later this classic hardcover edition of Wuthering Heightswas re-gifted to me and my reading the Brontës began with Emily. She immediately and irrevocably enticed me out of 1960s suburban America, away from fenced-in yards, narrow sidewalks, and managed nature, into the wilderness of her West Yorkshire world, inexhaustible imagination and uncompromising soul. I had never before read a novel as descriptive and dramatic, bold and mesmerizing, as validating of my own mystic inclinations. Of course, I hadn’t. I was twelve.
Fritz Eichenberg Illustration for 1943 Edition of Wuthering Heights
Emily was an important presence in Anne’s life as Anne was in hers. In 1833, when Emily was fifteen and Anne thirteen, friend of the family Ellen Nussey noted, on a visit to Haworth, they were “like twins – inseparable companions … in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.” A few years earlier, in the interval between Charlotte going away to school and Emily joining her, Anne and Emily had liberated themselves from their older sister and brother Branwell, especially in their writings, to create their own fantasy world. Set in the North Pacific, it consisted of at least four kingdoms: Gondal (how their juvenilia is usually referenced), Angora, Exina and Alcona. (“None of the prose fiction now survives but poetry still exists, mostly in the form of a manuscript donated to the British Museum in 1933; as do diary entries and scraps of lists” – Wikipedia).
The first known reference to the Gondal Saga is in their also joint diary paper of 1834 (below as originally written):
Anne and I have been peeling apples for Charlotte to make an apple pudding . . . Taby said just now come Anne pillopuate a potato Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said where are you feet Anne Anne answered on the on the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour Door and said B gave Branwell a Letter saying here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte – The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine. Sally mosley is washing in the back kitchin.
In her biography of Anne, Winifred Gerin writes “Unlike Charlotte’s and Branwell’s Angria … the permanence of Gondal lay in the fact that it was not a world at several removes from reality but only a slightly blurred print of the landscape of home.”
It was the Haworth moors that inspired the poetry of Gondal. Gerin writes: “To Emily, nature became an end in itself; to Anne, a pathway to God; to both of them a necessity.”
Anne, in one of her Gondal poems (Z ———‘s Dream), surely expressed the experience and essence of both their spirits:
I loved free air and open sky Better than books and tutors grim, And we had wandered far that day O’er that forbidden ground away – Ground, to our rebel feet how dear; Danger and freedom both were there! — Had climbed the steep and coursed the dale …
Ellen Nussey was not altogether correct when she claimed Emily and Anne’s closeness “never had any interruption”. Physical separations, caused by periods away at school and governess stints, especially Anne’s briefly at Blake Hall and then for five years at Thorpe Green forty miles from Haworth, were bound to test their unity. As they left their childhood behind and stumbled into womanhood, Anne’s maturing sense of duty, hope for self-sufficiency, not always pleasant experience of “the world” and literary insistence for speaking truth over indulging in fantasy left less time and inclination for the Gondal prose and poetry Emily continued to feel enthusiastic about.
In 1842, returning home from Brussels for the Christmas holiday, Emily exerted her independence in the opposite way Anne did and was more adamant than ever to stay humbly domestic and wildly imaginative in her own isolated piece of the planet at and around Haworth. She remained there for the rest of her life, never going further away than nearby Keighley, Bradford or Manchester or for longer than a few days as in early summer 1845.
Anne and I went our first long journey by ourselves together–leaving Home on the 30th of June-monday sleeping at York–returning to Keighley Tuesday evening sleeping there and walking home on Wednesday morning–though the weather was broken, we enjoyed ourselves very much except during a few hours at Bradford and during our excursion we were Ronald Macelgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosobelle Esualdar, Ella and Julian Egramont Catherine Navarre and Cordelia Fitzaphnold escaping from the palaces of Instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans–The Gondals still flourish bright as ever I am at present writing a work on the First Wars–Anne has been writing some articles on this and a book by Henry Sophona–We intend sticking firm by the rascals as long as they delight us which I am glad to say they do at present. ~from Emily’s diary paper, written on her birthday, July 30, 1845.
In her paper written on the same date, Anne didn’t mention the York trip and her reflection on Gondal hints, I think, of her trying to hold onto the past mostly for Emily’s sake.
How will it be when we open this paper and the one Emily has written? I wonder whether the Gondalian will still be flourishing, and what will be their condition. I am now engaged in writing the fourth volume of Solala Vernon’s Life.
When, in September 1845, Charlotte, whether by accident or design, happened upon the magnificent poems Emily had written and, up until then, kept from her sisters, it was Anne who understood Emily’s anger at having her sacred privacy broken into.
“You robbed me!”
Emily took her tirade to the kitchen, slamming doors, yelling at the dogs, and rattling pots. It was fortunate their father was out and Tabby was almost deaf and knew how to soothe her. Martha was prudent enough not to try.
It was also Anne who mediated the battle that ensued between her sisters, a task not made easier by Charlotte’s insistence that Emily’s poetry be published. Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell – and, subsequently, Wuthering Heights – might never have made it into print if Anne hadn’t offered Charlotte a look at her own verses and somehow softened Emily’s resistance to sharing herself, even under a pseudonym, so publically.
“If you must, publish the poems. But I’ll not be revealed.”
“You mean, your name?” Charlotte took off her glasses, unmasking the strain in her eyes.
“Not any part of me.”
“Noms de plume,” Anne realized with a mixture of relief and regret.
“Hmm.” Charlotte nodded. “As much for hiding our sex as our Emily’s obsession with being invisible.”
“All Gondal references must be removed.” Emily knocked off her shoes. “Yours, too, Annie.”
“Yes, I realize that.”
Emily put her feet on the sofa and her head back. “You need something to do. Both of you. I’m sick of seeing you mope around, one wondering whether she’s loved and the other what God wants her to do.”
“You might try, Em, but you won’t irritate me.” Charlotte returned her poetry to her. “Not while I’m so glad we’re finally all in agreement.”
Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree — The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most constantly?
~ from Mild the Mist Upon the Hill by Emily Brontë
My mom turns 88 today/tomorrow, depending on where you are when you read this: March 10th.
We have lived together since my return from England in 1990 (my father died in 1986) after we had been apart, except for a few visits one way or other, for 16 years. It’s difficult to remember when we were so estranged from the everyday of each other’s life – even though we acted as though this was meant to be, we knew, in our hearts, it wasn’t. As the French Philosopher Simone Weil wrote: “When friends are far apart there is no separation.”
Yes, we are mother and daughter, but I think, what has been more affecting in my life is our friendship: the best I have known because it has been honest and difficult and, yet, supportive and enduring, especially as it has tested our ability to remain friends, loving friends. As with any close relationship, there have been tricky moments (and still are), and it has evolved and required adjustments and a fuller appreciation that giving and receiving love is not for making us feel better but BE better.
I first posted the piece below for Mother’s Day a few years ago, when I had no idea I would return in more depth to what she wanted us to have in common, obliging then through my reading and now through my writing: a novel about Anne Brontë, which is very near to being finished, Without the Veil Between.
Happy Birthday, Mom …
You gave me many gifts, like the gods and goddesses gave Pandora: a sense of beauty, charm, music, curiosity and persuasion. In particular there was a book, large and beautifully bound, its writing in columns and essence carved in wood.
You were as naïve as I was.
For it was also a box of unknowns, like Pandora’s, that unleashed more than either of us bargained for. I preferred the version of the myth that claimed good things were allowed to escape. All except for one.
We never lost hope.
You put the faraway in my hands, so how could I not want to go there? Of course, you meant for me to travel pages not miles.
You said you would never forgive me.
How many months we didn’t speak; how many years we paid dearly for conversations in such different time zones, trying to being ordinary when it was all so impossible.
We were both alone with our mistakes.
I never thought it would be that difficult to be away from you. My youth was lost, not to romantic discontent but missing what was true.
Could you ever forgive me?
Perhaps you did a little. When you traveled as I did, because I did: over the sea, to another country, to places you had and hadn’t visited. You walked up the hill, heard your heels on the cobblestones and voices of the dead, inhaled the mist, saw the parsonage, the windswept trees and moors, and turned the pages back.
I didn’t see if your eyes sparkled, but I like to believe they did.
Bronte Parsonage, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England Painted in the 1970’s. Copyright 2013 by DM Denton
Though solitude, endured too long, Bids youthful joys too soon decay, Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue, And overclouds my noon of day;
When kindly thoughts that would have way, Flow back discouraged to my breast; I know there is, though far away, A home where heart and soul may rest.
Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine, The warmer heart will not belie; While mirth, and truth, and friendship shine In smiling lip and earnest eye.
The ice that gathers round my heart May there be thawed; and sweetly, then, The joys of youth, that now depart, Will come to cheer my soul again.
~ Anne Brontë, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
My mom turns 87 this week. She has been widowed for 30 years, at first struggling to come to terms with this sudden circumstance, but eventually tapping into her strength, talents, and capacity for independence and growth.
We have lived together since my return from England in 1990 after we had been apart, except for a few visits one way or other, for 16 years. It’s difficult to remember when we were so estranged from the everyday of each other’s life. Perhaps, even as we acted as though this was meant to be, we knew, in our hearts, it wasn’t. That is my emotional memory of those times. As the French Philosopher Simone Weil wrote: “When friends are far apart there is no separation.”
Yes, we are mother and daughter, but I think, what has been more affecting in my life is our friendship: the best I have known because it has been honest and difficult and, yet, supportive and enduring, especially as it has tested our ability to remain friends, loving friends. As with any close relationship, there have been tricky moments (and still are), and it has evolved and required adjustments and a fuller appreciation that giving and receiving love is not for making us feel better but BE better.
I first posted the piece below for Mother’s Day a few years ago, when I had no idea I would return in more depth to what she wanted us to have in common, obliging then through my reading and now through my writing (a novel about Anne Brontë).
Happy Birthday, Mom …
You gave me many gifts, like the gods and goddesses gave Pandora: a sense of beauty, charm, music, curiosity and persuasion. In particular there was a book, large and beautifully bound, its writing in columns and essence carved in wood.
You were as naïve as I was.
For it was also a box of unknowns, like Pandora’s, that unleashed more than either of us bargained for. I preferred the version of the myth that claimed good things were allowed to escape. All except for one.
We never lost hope.
You put the faraway in my hands, so how could I not want to go there? Of course, you meant for me to travel pages not miles.
You said you would never forgive me.
How many months we didn’t speak; how many years we paid dearly for conversations in such different time zones, trying to being ordinary when it was all so impossible.
We were both alone with our mistakes.
I never thought it would be that difficult to be away from you. My youth was lost, not to romantic discontent but missing what was true.
Could you ever forgive me?
Perhaps you did a little. When you traveled as I did, because I did: over the sea, to another country, to places you had and hadn’t visited. You walked up the hill, heard your heels on the cobblestones and voices of the dead, inhaled the mist, saw the parsonage, the windswept trees and moors, and turned the pages back.
I didn’t see if you eyes sparkled, but I like to believe they did.
Bronte Parsonage, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England Painted in the 1970’s. Copyright 2013 by DM Denton
Though solitude, endured too long, Bids youthful joys too soon decay, Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue, And overclouds my noon of day;
When kindly thoughts that would have way, Flow back discouraged to my breast; I know there is, though far away, A home where heart and soul may rest.
Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine, The warmer heart will not belie; While mirth, and truth, and friendship shine In smiling lip and earnest eye.
The ice that gathers round my heart May there be thawed; and sweetly, then, The joys of youth, that now depart, Will come to cheer my soul again.
~ Anne Brontë, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
Oh, those early years when all my shyness wanted was to go home to you. You trusted me on sick days and walked miles on your lunch hour to bring me paper dolls and make sure I was safe.
I was the child you wanted me to be.
Copyright 2012 by Diane’s mom, June
You gave me many gifts, like the gods and goddesses gave Pandora: a sense of beauty, charm, music, curiosity and persuasion. In particular there was a book, large and beautifully bound, its writing in columns and essence carved in wood.
You were as naïve as I was.
For it was also a box of unknowns, like Pandora’s, that unleashed more than either of us bargained for. I preferred the version of the myth that claimed good things were allowed to escape. All except for one.
We never lost hope.
You put the faraway in my hands, so how could I not want to go there? Of course, you meant for me to travel pages not miles.
You said you would never forgive me.
How many months we didn’t speak; how many years we paid dearly for conversations in such different time zones, trying to being ordinary when it was all so impossible.
We were both alone with our mistakes.
I never thought it would be that difficult to be away from you. My youth was lost, not to romantic discontent but missing what was true.
How could you ever forgive me?
Perhaps you did a little. When you traveled as I did, because I did: over the sea, to another country, to places you had and hadn’t visited. You walked up the hill, heard your heels on the cobblestones and voices of the dead, inhaled the mist, saw the parsonage, the windswept trees and moors, and turned the pages back.
I didn’t see if you eyes sparkled, but I like to believe they did.
Bronte Parsonage, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England Painted in the 1970’s. Copyright 2013 by DM Denton
“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it – but take care not to smile at any part of it.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Written for my mom on Mother’s Day,
Sunday May 12, 2013.
Blessings to all who nurture and care, love and forgive, and who never lose hope.
©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to 
©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to 
©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to 
When my mother was fourteen a book was given to her appetite for reading and need to escape her own complicated narrative. Published by Random House, New York, it was wider and “taller” than it was thick, bound in dark blue-green with a slightly gullied joint and gold lettering on a strong spine, front and back boards illustrated by the work of 
As many of you are already aware, my novel about her youngest sister, Anne – 
bardessdmdenton - author- artist 