An alert from the Brontë Parsonage Museum. In some days, next Saturday December 2 exactly, it will be the centenary of the death of Arthur Bell Nichols:
Arthur Bell Nicholls - A Reassessment:
Talk to commemorate the anniversary of Arthur Bell Nicholls’ death, by Stephen Whitehead of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and author of The Brontës’ Haworth
West Lane Baptist Chapel - 2.00pm - £2.50 - For further information contact Audience Development Manager, 01535 640194/ andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk
More information about The Brontës' Haworth on
this old post of ours.
We can only hope that this reassessment will be positive. As many men in the Brontës story, Arthur Bell Nicholls has been maligned over the years. Arthur Bell Nicholls was just a man of his time. Whatever his proceedings, we must bear in mind that he belonged to a different time and - especially - that
everything he did - however unjust and narrow-minded we may find it today - was done out of love for Charlotte Brontë. Wrongly or rightly so is a wholly different matter, but the man deserves all the credit for his good intentions. Of course we know he would frown upon the idea of such a thing as BrontëBlog :P
Apart from this reassessment, a few years ago Margaret and Robert Cochrane published a biography on him called My Dear Boy and some time next year it is to be expected that Christine Alexander will publish her new book Mr Charlotte Brontë: The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls
(*). Little by little, the Brontë men are regaining their true selves.
The picture is just a low resolution copy. But you can read the original 1906 article on Meredith Birmingham's
The Brontë Family website, where a
high resolution scan can be found.
EDIT:(*) Our mistake. Mr. Charlotte Brontë: The Life of Arthur Bell Nichols it's not written by Christine Alexander but by Alan H. Adamson (great-grand-nephew of Arthur Bell Nicholls himself) next year (that is, in 2007) by McGill/Queen's University Press.
Categories: Alert, Talks, Brontëana
That's an odd title for Christine Alexander's book. Is it more about Bell Nichols or Charlotte I wonder?
ReplyDeleteDon't you like the title then? Oh, I love it! I think it's really good. Charlotte only signed herself as Charlotte Nicholls (and then again it was usually Charlotte B. Nicholls) in letters to friends. Not many women did that back then. So Mr Charlotte Brontë sounds great to me, after all she was the real breadwinner.
ReplyDeleteooh I had totally misread the title. I thought it read "Mrs. Charlotte Bronte" instead of "Mr. Charlotte Bronte".
ReplyDeleteI think it's hilarious with the "Mr" :P
I see now. I'm glad you like it now :D
ReplyDelete