Three rather strange sisters

Nigel Richardson writes in The Telegraph a lovely article on the Brontë Parsonage Museum focusing on Branwell's exhibition together with the do's and don't's in Haworth:

Angria was the fictional country created in a series of stories by Charlotte Brontë and her brother Branwell, before Charlotte got into her writing stride with Jane Eyre and Branwell self-destructed. A new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire, tells the story of Angria and gives Branwell, the hapless sibling, due credit as an inspiration and catalyst for his sisters’ creative imaginations.
Quaint, cobbled Haworth, with its tea shops, its graveyard and its hinterland of forbidding moorland, is saturated with the Brontës. Their books and characters are reflected in the names of cab companies, Indian restaurants, hotels and streets. The annual throughput of 75,000 tourists – almost all pilgrims to the Parsonage Museum – may appreciate the atmosphere of bygone days, but Haworth’s prize tourist asset is far from complacent.
That’s why the dour, four-square, moorland house where, more than a century and a half ago, three rather strange sisters produced works of literary greatness – and a brother wasted his promise – is in the midst of a rolling redevelopment. Last year it reopened with a freshly designed exhibition space on the first floor that shows the minute storybooks that brought Angria to life, complete with magnifying glasses to read the exquisitely tiny handwriting. Downstairs in the Bonnell Room is a temporary exhibition on the hitherto neglected Branwell called Sex, Drugs and Literature: the Infernal World of Branwell Brontë.
Branwell is generally remembered for the spectacular trajectory of his self-destruction, as implied in the lurid title of this exhibition. The details of his downward spiral are well chronicled through his drawings, notebooks and letters.
According to Elizabeth Gaskell, novelist and biographer of Charlotte Brontë, Branwell was “perhaps, to begin with, the greatest genius in this rare family” but he dissipated his talents as artist and writer in drink and drugs.
After trying his hand as a portrait painter in Bradford (largely unsuccessful), he worked as a family tutor (dismissed), as a railway employee (dismissed) and once more as a tutor (dismissed again after a love affair with the mistress of the house – the traumatic event that pitched him even further into what we would nowadays call substance abuse).
When he died of tuberculosis in 1848 at the age of 31, having achieved little of note, Charlotte wrote: “I do not weep from a sense of bereavement, but for the wreck of a talent, the ruin of promise… ”
The upstairs rooms of the museum provide a corrective to this negative view of Branwell. In his “studio” – which actually served for most of the time as a bedroom – hang portraits of Bradford worthies that show him to have been a competent if uninspired artist. Next door, in the revamped Exhibition Room dedicated to the Brontës as writers, Branwell is revealed as a crucial midwife of his sisters’ imaginations.
Indeed, their love of imaginary worlds may be said to have dated from the day in June 1826 when a set of toy soldiers arrived at the Parsonage for Branwell, a gift from his father, Patrick. The soldiers do not survive, but the children’s accounts of the imaginary worlds they created for them do. In tiny, meticulous handwriting – tiny enough for a toy soldier to read – the siblings took the soldiers off to Africa and the imaginary land of Angria.
Later, Emily and Anne created yet another world that they called Gondal. In the family’s copy of Grammar of General Geography, wedged between entries for Gomera and Gondar, Anne added in her neat handwriting this fictitious land of Gondal, which she described as “a large island in the North Pacific”.
Marooned in their windswept moorland parsonage, the siblings gave full vent to their powerful imaginations and Charlotte and Branwell in particular had ambitions of wider literary success.
Charlotte’s expectations were temporarily dashed when the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, wrote in reply to her letter that “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life”. Branwell’s pompous and long-winded letter to William Wordsworth – “I have lived among secluded hills, where I could neither know what I was or what I could do” – did not elicit a reply. Perhaps the most poignant exhibit is Branwell’s last surviving drawing, entitled A Parody, which shows him being summoned from sleep by Death in the form of a gesturing skeleton.
The Branwell exhibition in the Bonnell Room runs until May, by which time two more phases of refurbishment at the Parsonage Museum will have taken place.
This year the “interpretation and casing” of exhibits in the original rooms of the house have been modernised and new displays reflect the history of Haworth. Later the house will be redecorated in a more authentic way to reflect the early- to mid-19th-century period when the family lived there.
‘‘We’re trying to do some decorative archaeology with English Heritage to produce something with more historical veracity,” says the director of the Parsonage Museum, Andrew McCarthy. “It will be quite a dramatic change.”
After visiting the Parsonage I walked up on the moors behind the house as far as Top Withens, the ruined farmstead said by some to have been the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. From this bleak, haunting spot I looked back over a landscape of bog, bracken and heather, and a deep, dark valley cleft.
The spirit of these literary siblings is captured forever in the scene. After the deaths of Emily and Anne, Charlotte wrote of these moors that Emily’s memory was distilled in the heather and ferns, while “The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look round she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon.” Branwell you may detect in the plangent moaning of the wind. (...)
Don't park at Changegate
If you are going to Haworth by car, do not on any account park in the privately owned Changegate car park at the top of the hill opposite the Edinburgh Woollen Mill. This is the lair of the Ogres of Angria, aka Carstoppers, a car-clamping operation that preys on unsuspecting tourists. I left my car for two minutes to ask directions and was duly snaffled: release fee £75.
Carstoppers’ underhand methods have been well documented in the local press and a Channel 4 documentary, The Yorkshire Clamper, in which their most high-profile victim was the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Dame Betty Boothroyd. Thousands of visitors fall victim each year and this is having a negative impact on the tourist economy of Haworth.
“The company’s activities, especially its aggressive working methods, have been very damaging for both local traders and for the Brontë Parsonage Museum: quite clearly some tourists are staying away because they do not want their cars clamped,” wrote the chairman of the Brontë Society, Richard Wilcocks, on the Brontë Parsonage blog.
The best advice is to avoid parking here. Fifty yards farther on is a left turn for the Brontë Parsonage car park, which is council- run and cheaper in any case. If you do have to park in Changegate, leave someone with the vehicle and with the ignition key while you buy the ticket. Do not leave your car unattended even for a few seconds, and do not accept offers of tickets from departing drivers.

Do bear in mind what he says if you plan on going to Haworth by car!

The Northern Echo talks to casting director Rob Earnshaw, who is organising the castings for Gail Stevens, about the ongoing casting for Wuthering Heights. The article is quite interesting:

CASTING director Rob Earnshaw was pleased to find young hopefuls queuing to audition for the role of young Cathy in the latest screen version of Emily Bronte’s classic Yorkshire story Wuthering Heights.
But his pleasure turned to despair when he studied them. “We are looking for slim, blonde, blue-eyed girls – and these were some of the biggest girls I’ve seen – with brown hair,” he says.
Such are the perils of open casting calls. He’s also seeking someone to play young Heathcliff, the object of Cathy’s desire. Hopefully, by the time auditions reach York tomorrow, those attending will have read the requirements carefully, although people can be blind when potential stardom is at stake.
The thought of yet another film of Bronte’s tale of possessive love against the background of the rugged Yorkshire moors may not appeal to everyone, but these casting calls offer a rare chance for unknowns to grab starring roles.
It’s something that has worked before for Andrea Arnold, who is at the helm of the new Wuthering Heights. Katie Jarvis, the muchpraised star of gritty drama Fish Tank, was discovered by a talent scout who witnessed her arguing with her boyfriend at a railway station and invited her to audition. She was only 18 and had never acted before.
Earnshaw is a former actor from the North- East, whose internet company The Casting Website specialises in locating young actors for television, film and theatre.
He’s organised open casting calls in three Yorkshire locations –York follows similar days in Leeds and Sheffield – for Wuthering Heights casting director Gail Stevens, who worked on the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, to audition local talent.
“I’m a big believer in open casting calls because young people can come and show us what they can do, regardless of previous experience, or their social and ethnic background,” says Earnshaw.
Seeing a lot of people, rather than a select few, gives a better chance of discovering the person you want, he feels.
The role of Cathy has been played by actresses as diverse as Merle Oberon, in the Thirties’ Hollywood version, to French actress Juliette Binoche in a 1992 film. The most recent Cathy was Stockton-born Charlotte Riley, in two-part film shown on ITV last year.
Past Heathcliffs have included former James Bond Timothy Dalton, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy.
Arnold, who took over the Wuthering Heights film after two other directors dropped out, has said that Bronte’s romantic drama is the only book she’d want to film “because of the passionate, impossible love story at its centre and its elements of class divide”.
She’s obviously determined to cast younger actors as the open call is looking for a Cathy and Heathcliff in the 14 to 21 age range.
“Slim, pale and sullen, with a feisty quality about her,” is the description of Cathy. As for Heathcliff, he would be “real, rugged and gritty.
Romany traveller/Italian/Indian or mixed race look”. Both performers should have Yorkshire accents. What’s not required is previous acting experience.
“A lot of people are put off because they think they’re going to have to learn a script on the day, but I want to stress that’s not the case,” says Earnshaw.
“They will chat with the casting director and myself. And if we like the look of them we’ll bring them back in groups for some improvisation, a bit of fun and games.
“It’s not like The X Factor, where you are ripped to shreds if you don’t do well. Basically, they can come along, have a laugh and find out what it’s all about. If they look good on the day we will get a video clip of them, then Andrea will look, and those she likes will be asked back for a recall.”
EARNSHAW, who comes from Newcastle, started out as an actor but quit because, as he puts it, “I was s*** at it”.
“I decided what I wanted to do was help other young actors get into the industry, regardless of their social and ethnic background or where they live in the UK. As we’re an internet-based company, anyone can contact us.” [...]
The risk with open calls, of course, is that the organisers have no idea how many – if any – will turn up. “Sometimes hundreds come, sometimes no one turns up. But we just want to see as many as possible,” says Earnshaw.
■ Arnold’s Wuthering Heights is to begin eight weeks filming on location in Yorkshire, in April.
■ Auditions are being held at the Royal York Hotel, Station Road, York, tomorrow, at 10.30am for 14 to 16-year-olds and at 2.30pm for 17 to 21-year-olds. (Steve Pratt)

One of our readers has written to inquire how come they are looking for blonde-haired girls when Cathy's hair is famously dark. And the truth is, we don't really know, but this article proves that it was no misprint.

A minor piece of news concerning the future adaptation of Jane Eyre comes from 4RFV:

LipSync has also just been awarded the post production for the Ruby Films' production 'Jane Eyre', directed by Cary Fukunaga.

Incidentally we also know the production designer for this production: Will Hughes-Jones.

Publishers Lunch Deluxe has news (good) concerning Syrie James:

Turkish rights to Syrie James's THE LOST MEMOIRS OF JANE AUSTEN and THE SECRET DIARIES OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE, [have been sold] to Alfa, by Dilek Kayi of Kayi Literary Agency.

The Commercial Appeal reviews another book, Bloodroot by Amy Greene, and says that,

It's a tale descended from "Wuthering Heights," in which desire for a person and obsession with a place warp and confound a sensitive nature. (Peggy Burch)

A couple of blog posts: The Eastin Collection reviews Jane Eyre and Lisa Reist...Etcetera writes about 'Brontë v. Austen' and includes a funny cartoon.

Categories: Books, Branwell Brontë, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights