The Titterington connection

The Lancashire Evening Post publishes a curious story:

For people with surnames like Brown, Jones or Smith, meeting a namesake is a regular occurrence, but the Titteringtons are a more exclusive bunch.
But every year a growing band of them comes together from as far afield as the USA to trace their roots and meet relatives.
On Tuesday approximately 70 people who share the unusual name converged on Kirkham. (Ben Robinson)

No need of six degrees of separation, there is a Brontë-Titterington direct connection:

The group also viewed the oldest image of a Titterington – called John - which was painted by Branwell Bronte in 1845, brother of the famous Bronte sisters. (Ben Robinson)

Here is more information about the portrait (Picture source):

The link between a John Titterington and Branwell Bronte, brother of the famous Bronte sisters has long been known from Branwell's diaries. What is much less well known is that Branwell painted portraits of his friend John and also of John's wife Mary Holdsworth.
These pictures are still in the possession of Alan Titterington (of Halifax) and his family and are the earliest known pictures of Titteringtons. John Titterington was the eldest son of Eli Titterington and Grace Ogden and was a worsted spinner, manufacturer who resided at Higgin Chamber Mill, Sowerby, Halifax.

However, The Art of the Brontës doesn't list this painting and the Titterington we have traced as being acquainted with Branwell in Luddenden Foot is one James - not John - Titterington. We are also definitely dubious about the 1845 date as by then the Luddenden Foot days were far behind, as were the portrait-painting days.

Robert and Louise Barnard's entry on James Titterington in their Brontë Encyclopedia reads as follows:

Titterington, James (?1815-52): worsted manufacturer, of Midgley, near Luddenden. Branwell, in the notebook kept during his time in Luddendenfoot, records quarrelling and then wrestling with him, but later becoming friends (18 Aug 1841).

EDIT: We have received the folling information from the Brontë Parsonage Museum which clarifies the 'mystery':

We are aware that there is a portrait supposedly of James Titterington (and another of his wife Mary Holdsworth actually both c.1840-2) in existence. Ann Dinsdale and her colleague Jane Sellars (author of The Art of the Brontës) spent a great deal of time desperately trying to authenticate the portrait as a Branwell one but sadly they reached the conclusion that it wasn’t for various reasons to do with the painter’s technique and style being dissimilar to Branwell’s.
The portrait was used in an exhibition Branwell Brontë and his Circle at Cartwright Hall in Bradford in 1994. (Sarah Laycock)

The List presents the upcoming (Tue 21–Sat 25 Apr) Tamasha performances of Wuthering Heights in Glasgow:

‘Out on the winding, windy moors,’ sang Kate Bush in her 1978 homage to Emily Brontë’s romantic classic, Wuthering Heights. Those lyrics may need a re-think now that British Asian theatre company Tamasha has got its hands on the novel.
Gone are the windswept Yorkshire fields, replaced instead by the scorched deserts of Rajasthan, the largest state in India, while the tumultuous relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff is played out by Shakuntala, the headstrong daughter of a merchant and Krishan, the wild street urchin her father adopts.
‘The main thing was to choose a landscape just as epic and harsh as the Yorkshire moors,’ says director, Kristine Landon-Smith. ‘And Rajasthan is perfect. Where you’ve got wind and rain in Yorkshire, you’ve got heat and dryness in the desert – it’s man against the elements. In the novel, Heathcliff and Cathy run out into a thunder storm – here Shakuntala and Krishan run into a sand storm. Great theatrical possibilities were presented to us by that landscape, and it’s worked well.’
Tamasha has won widespread acclaim for productions such as Strictly Dandia and East is East, but Brontë does Bollywood is a whole different ball game. Landon-Smith is confident that even literary purists will be won over. ‘You can absolutely recognise all those classic scenes from the book,’ she says. ‘And Bollywood has huge themes of love, death, destiny, unrequited love, good and evil, just like Wuthering Heights – so we thought it made sense to marry them together.’ (Kelly Apter)

Check our sidebar if you are interested in two free tickets for the London performances. You still have time until tomorrow to enter our contest.

BBC Berkshire talks about the student years of the British film director Jan Dunn, uncovering a Brontë past:

“I was crap at school.” Jan Dunn told BBC Berkshire, “But one teacher changed my life, my drama teacher at Furze Platt.
“She was called Mrs Collins and she totally changed my life completely and radically.
“I'd never done any acting, never even read a book, I was 14 and this teacher saw something in me.
“Thanks to her, I read a book for the first time. I did it for her. It was Wuthering Heights. “
Jan fell in love with the complicated structure and character driven plot of Wuthering Heights, and began reading Shakespeare and Hardy.
She went on to become a jobbing actress for ten years before realising her life-long dream and making her first film in 1994.

More Brontë skeletons in the closet. Cynsations talks with the author Jenny Moss:

What were you like as a young reader?
I read a lot. A lot, a lot. It opened up worlds a bit different than suburbia. As a young girl, my favorites were A Little Princess, Little Women, and every Nancy Drew I could find.
As a teen, I'd feel guilty when I read Gothic novels in lieu of one of the classics, but that didn't stop me, especially when it came to the books of Victoria Holt. I also liked Rebecca, Joy in the Morning, Jane Eyre, Marjorie Morningstar, and Agatha Christie.

The "Heathcliff with an earring" mention returns in a USA Today article which presents Isabel Gillies'memoir Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story:

As adults, the two reconnect at a wedding and get married. With his Harvard Ph.D, this "Heathcliff with an earring" snags a spot teaching poetry at Oberlin. Gillies gives up her acting career and, with their two small sons, heads to Ohio. "Josiah" falls out of love with his wife and in love with his minx-like fellow English professor, Sylvia. (Deirdre Donahue)

A few blogs: Not Another Teen Blog writes briefly about Wuthering Heights, Libros, Mundos Paralelos posts in Spanish about Jane Eyre and Best Reviewed recalls a recent trip to Haworth.

Categories: Branwell Brontë, Brontëana, Brontëites, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights