ANNE OTHER BRONTË

This page: The Black Bull at the top of Haworth Main Street. Anne Brontë portrait by Branwell Brontë. Opposite: The Brontë Parsonage Museum.  Iam sitting in the Brontë Parsonage Museum archives with a small painting of Anne Brontë aged 16, drawn by her sister Charlotte. Anne is wearing a string of simple glowing amber beads, which had belonged to their mother; who had died when Anne was not even a year old. Thanks to the museum’s Lauren Livesey, I also have the real beads in front of me. She has dug out a selection of objects connected to “my favourite Brontë sister”.

I am still trying to process the impact of this young motherless woman with her brown curls and her few cherished possessions, on my life and on the long campaign for women’s rights. I didn’t visit the Parsonage or the landscape that Anne Brontë roamed till long after she’d captured my imagination.

Her two novels are the works of a whistle-blower confronting the truth of Victorian womanhood. Agnes Grey recounts in documentary detail the grim reality of her own experience as a poor governess to wild children in a dysfunctional family.

Anne’s masterpiece The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a revolutionary novel recounting the degradations of a woman trying to escape with her young son from a marriage to a violent alcoholic. “Things that formerly shocked and disgusted me, now seem only natural,” her heroine Helen writes in her diary mourning her entrapment. It may have drawn some of its detail from observing the wretched decline of her brother Branwell, but the novel was campaign literature for all women. It challenged the right of men to own their wives entirely. Anne’s writing astounded me. It seemed to speak across the centuries.

For decades her reputation was damaged and overshadowed by Charlotte’s negative assessment of her work and character. But in the 20th century, Anne with her clear eyed passion for justice and equality was reclaimed by feminists and scholars. She seemed to be a modern woman in not modern times.

Winning a place at Oxford in 1986, I chose to study the new Women’s Studies option as part of my English Literature degree. Alongside reading the exciting new African American prose emerging from the likes of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Property and Possession: The Politics of Marriage in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, looking at connections with the eventual 1870 Married Women’s Property Act that finally granted women some rights – 22 years later.

After graduating I finally visited Haworth for the first time with my sister, herself then a schoolteacher in York. And most recently I’ve brought my own daughter to this breathtaking landscape on the spectacular moors for her to experience the ancient wild beauty that inspired the sisters.

In Haworth Parsonage (became the Brontë Parsonage Museum in 1928) I am mesmerised by the tiny dim parlour where the girls walked round the dining table sharing their stories of their elaborately imagined early fantasy worlds. In the archive I smile seeing Anne’s drawing of one of the strong Amazonian women of her imaginary island creation Gondal; standing tall and confident on the rocky seashore, looking out to the horizon and a world of adventure.

A desired destination for international literary lovers, the West Yorkshire village of Haworth was home to one of the world’s most lauded writing families. On the 200th anniversary of sister Anne’s birth, Samira Ahmed visits a corner of the county that sparked much creativity and shares her thoughts on the inspirational and youngest Brontë.

Clockwise from top left: Top Withens. Inside the Brontë Parsonage Museum where Anne Brontë lived and worked. A blue plaque marks the site of Anne Brontë’s death at the Grand Hotel, Scarborough. Below: Anne practises the signature for her pen name of Acton Bell, both of her novels were first published under this name.

THERE IS A REAL JOY IN KNOWING ANNE’S REPUTATION HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER.

I look at the sketch portrait of William Weightman, the handsome young curate, who looks rather like the actor Toby Stephens, about whom Anne clearly had strong feelings. Did he know? His death from typhoid inspired in the natural poet Anne some of her most grief-stricken verse.

What moves me most about visiting Haworth, is the dramatic view from almost every room. In the Brontë home, so many overlook the church graveyard. In winter it is full of crows and the trees are towering and bare, but in summer the garden is in colourful bloom and the neighbouring moorland alive with a different wildness and magnificent open skies.

When I first visited Scarborough in my early twenties, it was summer. After the long drive through the heather covered moors, looking down from the cliff top by the blue plaque to her name where Wood’s Lodgings once stood, I saw Anne’s love of this spa town, the romantic view from the cliffs, the castle ruins, the excitement of the social scene, and the gorgeous curve of the sandy bay. And it is that sunny optimism that haunts me most about Anne. She loved life. She fought her illness. When she returned here it was in hope of a sea cure, yet it became her final resting place.

Back in the Parsonage archive Lauren hands me the black edged “cross” letter Anne wrote to her friend Ellen Nussey on mourning paper (it was just months after Branwell and Emily’s deaths), and just weeks before she herself was to die at just 29. The exquisite penmanship intersects as she turned the paper 90 degrees to maximise the number of lines, to save paper and postage.

“I have no horror of death,” she wrote. “If I thought it inevitable I think I could quietly resign myself to the prospect ... But I wish it would please God to spare me not only for Papa’s and Charlotte’s sakes but because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practise, humble and limited indeed, but still I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose.”

It is a letter Lauren, warns me, that usually provokes tears. She is right. But there is a real joy in knowing Anne Bronte’s reputation has never been greater and continues to grow as more and more readers discover her work and ideas. I like to imagine her as that proud Amazonian, on the distant shore of Gondal looking out at us, and seeing us waving back.

THE BRONTË TRAIL

 O ne of the most photographed and impressive streets in the country, the famous Haworth cobbles are world-renowned. Lined with a selection of shops, cosy tearooms, intimate inns and places to stay, steeped in history it’s surrounded by stunning countryside and vast picturesque moorland.

CHECK IN TO

WEAVERS GUESTHOUSE

Built circa 1840 at the time the Brontë family lived just across the way at the Parsonage, Weavers Guesthouse offers stylish bed and breakfast accommodation and is a perfect base for enjoying the village of Haworth and exploring its beautiful countryside. weaversguesthouse.co.uk GO TO THE

BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM

In the bicentenary year of youngest sister Anne’s birth, explore the Brontë Parsonage Museum, home of the internationally famous literary family. This picturesque, historical setting was where the famous siblings Charlotte (Jane Eyre, Villette, Shirley), Emily (Wuthering Heights) and Anne (Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) wrote groundbreaking novels. The house contains a wealth of Brontë belongings, from clothes and rooms furnished as they were at the time the family resided there, to pieces of writing including a ‘little book’ written by Charlotte Brontë when she was 14, which the Brontë Society recently acquired at auction with the help of a high-profile public fundraising campaign. bronte.org.uk

HAVE A PINT IN

THE FLEECE

Perfectly positioned on the famous Haworth cobbles midway between the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway is The Fleece. Serving delicious dishes and a wide range of drinks, including locally brewed prizewinning Timothy Taylor’s Yorkshire beers and ales (apparently a favourite tipple of Madonna), cosy rooms are available too if you want to spend a night or more in this beautiful village. fleeceinnhaworth.co.uk TAKE A RIDE ON

THE KEIGHLEY & WORTH VALLEY RAILWAY

Post Brontës, the historic 5 mile line opened in 1867 and runs from Keighley to Oxenhope, with an annual schedule of exciting events aboard its classic locomotives. You may recognise many of the route’s locations in a wide range of film and TV productions. From Peaky Blinders and even Pink Floyd’s The Wall to Swallows and Amazons, the heritage train line has appeared on screen regularly over the years. 2020 is the 50th anniversary of its starring role in The Railway Children. Tickets are now on sale for the Elf Express to Kringle Town Station, a brand new Christmas adventure, but hurry as tickets are selling fast. kwvr.co.uk

WALK ON

THE BRONTË WAY

The Brontë Way is a 69km (43 mile) long-distance footpath. The route winds its way past many places of interest to Brontë enthusiasts, including the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton. Scenic highlights are Penistone Hill country park, perched on the moors high above Haworth, the trail to the Brontë Waterfall and over the Brontë Bridge up to Top Withens.

Top left and right: Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. Left: The Brontë waterfall near Haworth. The Waterfalls and Top Withens walk explores the Pennine moors made famous by the Brontë sisters. You’ll reach the Brontë Waterfalls first, which were famously described by Charlotte Brontë as a ‘perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful’.