Save Red House

First of all, we would like to bring to your attention a very important post published by the Brontë Parsonage Blog:

Last week, Kirklees Council made public its budget proposals.
In addition to the recently publicised reduction in the opening times of Museums and Galleries across Kirklees, the proposals now include the complete closure of Red House Museum in Gomersal. If these proposals are passed, Red House would be closed in September and the buildings sold - not necessarily as a museum.
Red House was built in 1660 and was the home of the Taylor Family until 1920.  It has important Brontë connections and is now furnished as a home in the 1830s when Charlotte Brontë was a frequent visitor.  Red House, the Taylor family and the Spen Valley area were all featured in Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley.
Also on site are the recreated 1830s gardens, the restored Barn which illustrates the numerous Brontë connections in the area and the renovated Cartsheds which houses the 'Spen Valley Stories' gallery.
Last year the site received almost 30,000 visitors and was recently awarded its second Sandford Award for the quality of its heritage educational services for schools.  The site is an important asset for Kirklees and local businesses as a tourist destination which attracts visitors from all over the world to the area.
Unlike Council Services which can be cut and reinstated in better economic times, if the proposal to close and sell the site were passed an extremely important part of Spen Valley's heritage would be lost forever. Kirkless Council Impact Statement.
Richard Wilcocks writes:
So the Communities and Leisure Service department of Kirklees Council is recommending that the Red House Museum in Gomersal should be closed down in less than nine months. Just like that! Once again, a local authority is calculating that a short-term capital gain and a removal of dedicated museum staff is going to make up for the loss of one of Kirklees’s few tourist attractions, which is much more than a museum and a learning centre. It could be put on a list of national treasures. It is important not only for those dismissed in the official impact statement as ‘Brontë enthusiasts’ (note that these come after the local businesses in the sentence) but for anyone who believes that the most fitting memorial to Mary Taylor, a highly significant historical figure, not only because of her lifelong friendship with Charlotte Brontë, is the museum situated in her house. Perhaps that should be national memorial – let’s move beyond the parochial.
I well remember a book launch of about a decade ago, held in the Red House grounds: Joan Bellamy, who was at the time a member of Brontë Society Council, had just published More Precious than Rubies, a title which has Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Brontë, Strong Minded Woman underneath it. All present were complimentary about Red House, its exhibitions and the expertise to be found within its red-brick walls, and they were not just being polite. It was described as a great aid for those concerned with education – and if proof is needed that the place is still a great aid, look online at this document. Explaining her title, Joan said that it could easily apply to the museum as well, which she greatly admired.
Now the treasure could be sold off – apparently, one quick-off-the-mark developer has already suggested that the seventeenth century building could be converted into very desirable flats, and that a chic little bistro could be put into it as well.
The Council Cabinet are to meet on 7th February.  There is to be no public consultation but they are inviting 'public dialogue'.  The whole set of proposals – including overviews of the council spending and the approach of each directorate – is available on the Council website .
Comments can be made on the website, via a local Councillor or by e-mail to consultation@kirklees.gov.uk
Brontë Society Chair Sally McDonald is busy writing letters about this, and plenty of other people (no, you don’t have to be a Society member) are using their keyboards to send emails. You as well? Letters to newspaper editors, protests to local MPs, messages to local radio and television – you could affect the outcome. The list below is not exhaustive, so please include your own contacts. You don’t have to be resident in Kirklees. Or England.
BBC Look North – christa.ackroyd@bbc.co.uk
Calendar – ITV Yorkshire – calendar@itv.com
Radio Leeds – layla.painter@bbc.co.uk
Yorkshire Post – yp.newsdesk@ypn.co.uk
Yorkshire Evening Post – eped@ypn.co.uk
Huddersfield Daily Examiner – editor@examiner.co.uk
Batley & Birstall News – batleyeditorial@ywng.co.uk
News Editor of Spenborough Guardian – Margaret.heward@ywng.co.uk
Mirfield Reporter – dewsburyeditorial@ywng.co.uk
News Team at Morley Observer – Erica.madelin@ypn.co.uk

Please do as Richard suggests: write letters/emails protesting against it and have anyone in the least interested in preserving history do so as well, be they Brontëites or not. It's not just that they are closing down (and selling!!) one precious museum, it's the fact that once they start doing that you never know when they will stop.

Anyway, onto lighter matters. More reactions to the Jane Eyre Oscar nominations (or lack thereof).

The California Literary Review:

Costume Design I just want Jane Eyre to win, partly because the costumes were excellent and partly because it was shamefully overlooked in the Art Direction category. Its prospects would have been grim up against Harry Potter, but even so… (Brett Harrison Davinger)

StarNews Online's Bookmarks:

Even Charlotte Brontë could walk on the runway, were she still with us. The 2011 version of “Jane Eyre,” starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, is in the running for a Best Costume Oscar. (Ben Steelman)

Nicole Kidman joins Meryl Streep in prasing Mia Wasikowska's Jane. From her Official Website:

I just worked with Mia Wasikowska and she is so so talented. Her performance is Jane Eyre is gorgeous. Xo Nic

Reuters quotes from Andrea Arnold's description of her own take on Wuthering Heights:

Andrea Arnold, the delightfully British director of what she called “the cover band version” of "Wuthering Heights." (Jeremy Walker)

Inquirer Lifestyle has an article on 'a foodie's literary adventures':

“A Brontë Kitchen” by Victoria Wright is probably what one can buy at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, England, but I found it in a used book shop. The Parsonage is where the famous literary sisters—Charlotte, Emily and Anne—lived and wrote their novels, using the moors around their home as their bleak setting. It is in the kitchen where they gathered to write and help out their cook as she prepared their meals.
The recipes, however, were gathered from old cookery books of the time. Of course I had to look for Yorkshire pudding and there it was. The procedure asked the cook to “beat the batter with a wooden spoon until your arm aches” and revealed the secret to a good pudding—“a dash of cold water… will turn to steam and make the pudding rise.” (The Bluecoat Press, 1996) (Micky Fenix)

The Irish Echo interviews a Brontëite, the historian Christine Kinealy:

Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure.
“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë (1847) –  I love the Brontë sisters’ writings. This is a dark, yet smoldering, example of it. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde  (1891) – at his quotable best, but so much more than that. “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” by Robert Tressell (1914) –  almost 100 years later, the political message remains pertinent. (Peter McDermott)

This columnist from KSL is quite the Brontë enthusiast too:

In my adult life, like meeting good friends, I’ve known the joy of reading. “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Jane Eyre” and “The Man Who Listens to Horses.” (Teri Harman)

MSN India looks at the work of Shilpa Gupta:

Gupta, based in Mumbai, is busy preparing for a solo exhibition at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, where she plans to showcase a work titled 'Bell-jar'. This consists of a library of stainless steel books by authors who have written under pseudonyms to either hide their gender as women, like George Elliot and the Brontë sisters, or their religious identity, like Ali and Mino. "It reflects on the idea of hidden authorship and the kind of discrimination that stems from it," says Gupta whose work focuses on the marginal and discriminated sections of society. Her interactive videos, websites, photographs, sound and public performances subversively probe ideas such as desire, religion, and notions of security on the street and on the imagined border. (Georgina Maddox)

The Brooklyn Paper looks at a forthcoming game show on NPR where

Host comedian Ophira Eisenberg tests eager beavers with games such as “Better than Bieber” (contestants fill in the blanks for Justin’s songs) and “Replacement Math” (the total number of Brontë sisters plus the Marx Brothers). (Kate Briquelet)

Which is, of course, quite a tricky question as the actual total number of Brontë sisters would be five but we think in this case they mean only the famous writers, so it's three.

Town Topics mentions the Cathy and Heathcliff image of Dorothy and William Wordsworth created by Frances Wilson in her 2008 biography The Ballad of Dorothy Wilson.

KO Video thinks that this outfit seen on Evanescence's video for My Heart is Broken is

a formal outfit befitting a scene from Wuthering Heights (Mike Petryczkowycz)

Yeah...well... not really.

Les Soeurs Brontë discusses (in French) the film Devotion. Flickr user Inukshuk's images shares a work in progress called Cathy's Path. Wuthering Heights 2011 is reviewed by Media Gulch and Vintagerockchick while Jane Eyre 2011 is the subject on Inside the Secret Window (in Portuguese) and Saucy Salad. Atelier di una lettrice compulsiva (in Italian) writes about the original novel. My Beads...My Art...My Life has put together a Jane Eyre-inspired outfit. Finally, Laura's Reviews interviews Syrie James, author of The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë.