Branwell's landlord and other news

A reader has written to the Halifax Courier praising We Are Three Sisters, recalling an actual 'anecdote' of Branwell's and adding a very nice contemporary touch to it:

I wish to add to the praise heaped upon Northern Broadsides’ recent performance of Blake Morrison’s “We are Three Sisters” directed by Barry Rutter.
Although not intended to replicate a particular time in the lives of the Brontë family, the casting and characterisation seemed almost faultless, and the whole play was superb.
The threat of the Sheriff’s officer arriving at the door, to demand payment of Branwell’s debts, could so easily have represented the visit of a man from Halifax.
This embarrassing moment took place in December 1846 when the landlord of Halifax’s “Old Cock,” Thomas Watson Nicholson (1807-78), sent the sheriff’s officer over to Haworth with a summons demanding that Branwell’s outstanding drinking bill with him be settled.
Then on July 22, 1848, Branwell’s father, the Rev Patrick Brontë, received a letter from the same Mr. Nicholson, threatening another summons if the young man’s debts were not paid immediately.
On the first occasion, it seems the ‘three sisters’ settled the bill out of their own pockets.
Recently, I was granted the privilege of looking around the more obscure parts of the “Old Cock.” Under the rafters in the attic storey, I noted a name scrawled on a panel, apparently in charcoal, “Nicholson/” Possibly this was inscribed personally by the landlord who was there 1840-50, to whom Branwell Brontë was at one time indebted.
How appropriate was the launch of this professional play here, in the 200th anniversary year of the earliest publication by a Brontë. For Rev. Patrick’s “Cottage Poems” was printed in Halifax in 1811.
David C Glover

Don't forget there's a special offer on the script of We Are Three Sisters for BrontëBlog readers!

Twitch Film reviews Jane Eyre 2011 as seen at the Sitges Film Festival:

The film is extremely precise, with every shot, every sofa, every curtain perfectly aligned. Jane and Rochester stand out, as they accommodate this precision, but are obviously not at home in it. The score adds the melodrama to their unvoiced emotions, which can frequently find no other outlet. Wasikowska is quite a revelation; her Jane might be seen as plain, but Wasikowska plays her with quiet hunger, which she keeps contained only until provoked by extraordinary love. I would still argue that Fassbender is far too good-looking for Rochester (who is supposed to be very physically unattractive), but he matches Wasikowska's quiet passion, making their passion and compatibility obvious and inevitable to the audience (if not to the other characters.) Although the actual character of Mrs. Rochester makes only a brief appearance, her presence is felt as a corporeal haunting that forces itself into the air as Fukunaga takes the audience through corridors of cold stone and literal and metaphorical fires of rage. She is as important as the other characters, and Fukunaga is sure that even her invisible appearances have the desired effect.
Fukunaga films this Yorkshire landscape with the same frankness of the characters. When the sun shines, it is beautiful, and when there is a storm, it is brutal. No attempt is made to gloss the scenery nor make it an unreal nightmare. Like the characters, it is real in beauty and brutality. By keeping the story to its essence, and stepping back when necessary to allow his actors the freedom to explore the characters (as oppose to throwing them too quickly into the melodrama, a fault of many a director of period films,) Fukunaga has made a very contemporary and yet quietly pure adaptation. (Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg)

El café del periodista and Cine Crítico (both in Spanish) also review the film briefly as part of a Sitges Film Festival round-up. Cine Fantástico shares some pictures showing Cary Fukunaga's attendance.

And Geeks of Doom alerts us to the fact that

Source Code, Your Highness, Jane Eyre, and Rango are part of Amazon’s Instant Video movie rental deals for this weekend. Rent these titles for only $1.99 each and you’ll have access to the movie for 24-48 hours once the rental is activated. You can visit the main sale page — $1.99 Weekend Special: Top Movie Rentals for $1.99 — to access the aforementioned rentals, along with a few other titles (Empress Eve)

Anne Rice has been part of the Cheltenham Literary Festival and displayed her Brontëiteness according to This Is Gloucestershire:

Despite being a highly accomplished author Anne is keen to cite the influence of Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters on her and she was not ashamed to admit re-reading their books and continuing to take lessons from them. (Robin Barker)

The Norwich Evening News 24 talk to Northern Ballet's artistic director David Nixon, who speaks about the inspiration behind their new production Cleopatra:

What is the inspiration behind it?
The inspiration, oddly enough, was the revival of Wuthering Heights in 2009, because Claude Michel and I decided that we needed an extra scene in the ballet for Heathcliff. With re-writing part of the music and the new cast and the way the company is now six years later, the ballet took off far more intensely and powerfully than it had the first time. Claude Michel was very inspired by this, and so immediately we started talking about the next pro-ject and I said, you know, Cleopatra’s still there. Two weeks later I got a phone call saying “Could you please come over and listen to some music I’ve written?” It was incredible. It was imaginative and sensual and moving and captured the humanity of the characters. Sometimes with people like Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, or any of these phenomenal people, we forget that they are also human and are capable of emotions. I felt in the music he wrote even the naivety of Cleopatra. (Simon Parkin)

The Yorkshire Post has an article on the Haworth Couldn't Wear Less initiative:

Glen Miller, leader of Bradford Council Conservative Group, and Peter Hill, former Lord Mayor of Bradford, have joined other community figures in the project to raise money for St Michael and All Angels’ Church in Haworth.
Inspired by the Rylstone Women’s Institute original, which led to the hit film Calendar Girls, residents of Haworth and the Worth Valley are hoping the sales will contribute towards the £1.25m cost of repairs at the church, where the sermons were once delivered by the Rev Patrick Brontë.
After initial concerns about whether a naked calendar was an appropriate way to raise funds for a church, so many volunteers came forward that organisers have decided to publish two versions, one for women and one for men. There is understood to be some rivalry between the sexes about which will prove the more alluring.
The men’s line-up also includes John Huxley, chairman of Haworth Parish Council, who is pictured on the cover alongside Coun Miller and Mr Hill in the village stocks. The retired officer has not been named but is someone organisers say many in Haworth “will certainly recognise”.
The women’s cover features Nikki Carroll of Firths Boutique in Main Street, Haworth, wearing less than the mannikin she is dressing in the shop window.
The calendars are available in shops in Haworth or can be ordered online at www.haworthcalendar.co.uk.

The Millions discusses bad bookshops:

I live in a suburb of Dublin where the only bookshop within any kind of plausible walking distance is a small and frankly feeble set-up on the second floor of a grim 1970s-era shopping center, above a large supermarket. It’s flanked by two equally moribund concerns, a small record store and a travel agent, thereby forming the centerpiece of a sad triptych of retail obsolescence. It’s one of those places that makes you wonder how it manages to survive at all. It has a rack of greeting cards, carries a small selection of stationery sundries, and its “Mind, Body and Soul” section — mostly books on stuff like dream interpretation and angel husbandry — is slightly larger than its Classics section, which is really just a couple of desultory shelves with a few Dickenses and Austens and maybe a Brontë or two. It’s not a good bookshop, in other words. It is, in fact, a pretty terrible bookshop. (Mark O'Connell)

The Guardian suspects that England football manager Fabio Capello

speaks better English than he is letting on. Indeed if some of this newspaper's fine investigative journalists were to bend themselves to the task they might catch him at home reading Emily Brontë and watching documentaries on BBC4. (Martin Kelner)

Jane Eyre 2011 is reviewed by Flaming Culture, Av en annen verden (in Norwegian) and La Vie avec Petits Fours (in Dutch) while Écran de Projections reviews Jane Eyre 1973 in French. Petra Rhodin writes in Swedish about Wuthering Heights 1978.