Brontës (33 page)

The same is true of the library at Ponden Hall. Again it contained books which the Brontës undoubtedly read, but the collection as a whole was dominated by eighteenth-century literature. This was the period with which the Brontës were least familiar and with which they had least affinity. Among the books mentioned in the Brontës' juvenile writings are many which were at Ponden Hall: Samuel Johnson's
Lives of the Poets
, Gilbert White's
Natural History of Selborne
, Alexander Pope's translation of the
Iliad
, the poetry of Burns, Moore and Butler. These were, however, standard works which any good library would have possessed and there is virtually no overlap between the rest of the collection at Ponden Hall and the Brontës' known sources.
²⁹
In all probability they did borrow books occasionally, but the simple fact that a library existed at Ponden Hall does not mean that it was regularly used by the Heatons' literary-minded neighbours.

The most likely source of books was, in fact, the circulating libraries in Keighley. Mrs Gaskell herself said that the Brontës had used one, though the idea has been dismissed by later biographers on the grounds that Charlotte told her friend Ellen Nussey ‘we do not subscribe to a circulating library at Haworth'.
³⁰
This does not, however, preclude the idea that they used one in Keighley, for which there is strong circumstantial evidence. Mrs Milligan, wife of the Keighley surgeon, was from Haworth herself and claimed that the sisters called in at her house on their way ‘to change books at a Keighley Circulating Library'.
³¹
The son of the Haworth tailor also said that ‘he frequently saw the sisters trudging down to Keighley' he added that Charlotte procured her books, periodicals and reviews from a lending library kept by Mr Hudson, a bookseller in the High Street, who also published the short-lived
Keighley and Haworth Argus.
³²
Another newspaper connection, Robert Aked, the printer of
The Keighley Visitor
, Haworth Church hymnsheets and, among other things, two of Patrick's pamphlets, also kept a circulating library, established as early as 1822.
³³
Although there are no extant catalogues for their collections, they were undoubtedly similar to other circulating libraries of the time and offered the usual diet of
history, biography and travel books with a leavening of fiction, poetry and periodicals. A library of this kind, with its emphasis on the arts and on nineteenth-century publications, would seem to be a more likely source for the Brontës' reading.

Of all the books and periodicals that the Brontë children read, one truly did change their lives. This was
Blackwood's Magazine
, a monthly journal published from 1817 by William Blackwood of Edinburgh. They borrowed it from a Mr Driver, who may have been the Reverend Jonas Driver who lived in Haworth and died at the end of December 1831.
³⁴
A potent miscellany of satire and comment on contemporary politics and literature,
Blackwood's Magazine
formed the tastes and fed the interests of the Brontës for many years. They absorbed its Tory politics, made its heroes, from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Byron, into their own heroes and copied its serio-comic style. Its tremendously long and detailed reviews of new works of biography, history, travel, politics and, to a lesser extent, fiction, gave them access to books and knowledge which were otherwise beyond their reach, especially as extensive quotations were given from the books under review. The soon-to-be thirteen-year-old Charlotte described it as

the most able periodical there is the editor is Mr Christopher North an old man 74 years of age the 1st of April is his Birthday his company are Timothy Ticklar Morgan Odoherty Macrabin Mordecai Mullion [?Warrell] and James Hogg a <12 Mar> man of most extraordinary genius a Scottish Sheppherd.
³⁵

The fictitious names she quotes were, with the real James Hogg, a poet also known as the Ettrick Shepherd, members of an informal drinking club whose rumbustious imaginary conversations at Ambrose's Tavern, Elysium' were recorded under the title
Noctes Ambrosianae
. These were tremendously influential on the young Brontës and were responsible for the conversational style and tavern setting of many of their own writings. No doubt the
Noctes
lent themselves to being performed as plays by the children too, or at least read aloud in character. One can imagine their delight when a version of their own unusual surname appeared in the character of O'Brontë, even if it was only as the Ettrick Shepherd's dog.
³⁶

In addition to these rather precocious tastes, the young Brontës enjoyed the usual children's books of the time. They had copies of Aesop's
Fables
, for example, and the
Arabian Nights' Entertainment
, both of which provided inspiration for their early writings. They would also seem to have had
Dyche's
Spelling Book
, which recounted familiar fables for children, and another immensely influential model for future writing, an edition of Sir Walter Scott's
Tales of a Grandfather
, which was a particularly thoughtful present to her nephew and nieces from Aunt Branwell.
³⁷

They had several books illustrated with the charming woodcuts of Thomas Bewick, including his most famous
History of British Birds
, but also, in all probability, his editions of
Fables
for children. Bewick's vignettes are delightful scenes of human and animal life but they have an additional appeal for observant children in that they often contain irrelevant but crudely funny details, such as a man relieving himself behind a hedge. The simple lines but great detail of the vignettes were endlessly copied by the young Brontës with varying degrees of success.
³⁸
As most of the Brontë drawings seem to date from 1829, it seems likely that this was the year that they began to have art lessons from John Bradley of Keighley. Bradley was one of the founder members and first secretary of the Keighley Mechanics' Institute, later becoming the architect of its new building. He was also a well-known local artist who exhibited regularly throughout the 1820s at the annual summer exhibition in Leeds of the Royal Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. William Dearden, a schoolmaster in Keighley, remembered meeting Patrick, Charlotte and Branwell ‘many times' in Bradley's studio, ‘where they hung with close-gazing inspection and silent admiration over some fresh production of the artist's genius'. Perhaps it was Bradley who encouraged the young Brontës to copy Bewick's vignettes and, recognizing Branwell's particular talent, urged him to more difficult work, such as copying Hogarth's portrait of the
Idle Apprentices
.
³⁹

Keighley not only provided the children with an art master but also a music master, Abraham Sunderland, the parish organist. It is even possible that Branwell had an academic tutor in the Reverend Thomas Plummer, headmaster of the Free Grammar School at Keighley.
⁴⁰
Despite his straitened circumstances, Patrick did everything he could to promote the education and talents of his children.

It would be wrong to create the impression that life for the young Brontës was all work and no play. They had plenty of toys. They had painted wooden alphabet blocks, a wooden lion, a toy barrel and a set of ninepins. For the girls there were wax-headed dolls with hats and frocks, a wickerwork doll's cradle, a children's tea service and even a tiny working model of an iron in brass.
⁴¹
Branwell, too, acquired at least three sets of wooden soldiers from Bradford, Keighley and Leeds, two sets of Turkish
musicians from Keighley and Halifax and one set of Indians from Haworth in only four years.
⁴²

Like any normal children, the Brontës played with their toys, gave them characters and invented stories around them. Their wide range of reading, especially in
Blackwood's Magazine
, gave them endless scope for adventure and a constant stimulus to their imaginations. Just as they had done with Maria and Elizabeth in the days before Cowan Bridge, they made up plays and acted them out with unrestrained enthusiasm. Despite the best efforts of Aunt Branwell to instil some decorum into her female charges, the Brontës, like any children of their age, were full of energy and their games were noisy and exciting. Such was their glee in these performances that on one occasion their servant, Tabby Aykroyd, was driven to take refuge in her nephew's house, declaring

‘William! yah mun gooa up to Mr Brontës, for aw'm sure yon childer's all gooin mad, and aw darn't stop 'ith hause ony longer wi' 'em; an' aw'll stay here woll yah come back!' When the nephew reached the parsonage, ‘the childer set up a great crack o' laughin',' at the wonderful joke they had perpetrated on faithful Tabby.
⁴³

Their childhood plays were about to take on a new dimension, for they were now old enough and literate enough to be able to record their adventures in writing. In 1829, Charlotte looked back over the most important plays they had invented.

Our plays were established Young Men June <1827> 1826 Our fellows July 1827 islanders December 1827. those are our thre[e] great plays that are not kept secret. Emily's and my Bed play's where Established the 1st December 1827 the other March 182<7>8 – Bed plays mean secret plays they are very nice ones all our plays are very strange ones there nature I need not write on paper for I think I shall always remember them. the young man play took its rise from some wooden soldier's Branwell had Our fellows from Esops fables and the Islanders from several events whi[c]h happened.
⁴⁴

The Young Men plays would develop into the complex imaginary world of Glasstown and, ultimately, Angria. The bed plays, which have given rise to much prurient speculation, were simply secret because they excluded Branwell and Anne, not because they had any sexual element. Charlotte and
Emily shared a bed, as was commonplace at the time and a necessity in the cramped conditions at the parsonage. Perhaps inevitably, they invented plays together to while away the hours of darkness and probably, if Emily and Anne's later partnership is anything to go by, their characters were feminine rather than the soldiers and politicians who dominated the daytime plays.

We know more about the play of the islanders, as Charlotte later wrote a graphic account of their origin.

The play of the Islanders was formed in December 1827 in the following maner. One night about the time when the cold sleet and \dreary/ fogs of November are succeeded by the snow storms & high peircing nightwinds of confirmed winter we where all sitting round the warm blazing kitchen fire having just concluded a quarel with Taby concerning the propriety \of/ lighting a candle from which she came of victorious no candles having been produced a long pause suceeded which was at last broken by B saying in a lazy maner I dont know what to do this was reechoed by E & A

T   wha ya may go t'bed

B   Id rather do anything [than] that

& C Your so glum tonight T supose we had each an Island.

B   if we had I would choose the Island of Man

C   & I would choose Isle of Wight

E   the Isle of Arran for me

A   & mine should be Guernsey

C   the D[uke] of Wellington should be my cheif man

B   Her[r]ies should be mine.

E   Walter \Scott/ should be mine

A   I should have Benti[n]ck

here our conversation was interupted by to us dismal sound of the clock striking 7 & we where sumoned of to bed. the next day we added several others to our list of names till we had got allmost all the cheif men in the Kingdom.
⁴⁵

The ‘Tales of the Islanders' went on for several years and were chronicled by Charlotte in four volumes, but eventually they were absorbed into the plays of the Young Men.
⁴⁶

Only one story is extant from Our Fellows, Branwell's ‘History of the Rebellion in My Fellows', which he wrote in 1828, when he was eleven.
Written on music paper, it begins, ‘Good man was A Rascal and did want to Raise a Rebellion' and tells the story of events in the autumn of 1827. The play was set in Lorraine, which was ruled by Branwell's character, Boaster, and follows the rebellion, besieging at Loos and defeat in battle of Good Man, Charlotte's character. After sending embassies to ‘Charlotte's' Country' and negotiating a peace, Boaster ‘began to fortify my country I built c[h]urches castles and other publick Buildings in abundance'. The fact that the children enacted the parts of their characters is quite clear; the story even includes a letter addressed to ‘little Branwell' by Charlotte as Good Man, declaring war on him.
⁴⁷

All the elements of the Brontës' juvenile writings are already present in this story: battles, rebellions and politics were to be their staple diet, reflecting not only their origins in the toy soldiers but also Branwell's dominant role in the plays. The story also presaged future efforts in form as well as subject, for it was written in a hand-made little book less than thirteen centimetres square. At first it was probably the fact that paper was expensive and in short supply that persuaded the young Brontës to write their stories in such tiny books, which they made themselves from scraps of paper, sewn into covers made from odd bits of sugar bags, parcel wrappings and wallpaper. The handwriting was proportionately tiny and, as the children grew older and more skilful, they developed a minuscule hand, designed to look like bookprint, which allowed them to write many more words to the page. The writing cannot be read easily without a magnifying glass, but as all the young Brontës were shortsighted, this would not have been so much of a problem to them. The tiny hand also had the advantage of being illegible to their father and aunt, so the children enjoyed the delicious thrill of knowing that the contents of the little books were a secret shared only among themselves.