A Strange Occurrence at the Parsonage

Smithsonian Magazine features an early story by Charlotte Brontë: 'A Strange Occurrence at the Parsonage', the manuscript of which is kept at at Harvard University’s Houghton Library.

Source 
(Note that Charlotte herself misspelt Haworth as Howarth)

Bound in faded purple leather, the minuscule object made the book cart look absurdly unnecessary. At just 9.5 centimeters long and 4 centimeters wide, the manuscript fit in the palm of my hand. But nestled inside was a treasure rare enough to take any literature lover’s breath away: a single page covered in the microscopic handwriting of a 14-year-old Charlotte Brontë. [...]

Titled “A Strange Occurrence at the Parsonage,” it tells an eerie story, detailing the teenage Brontë’s recollections of the night of June 22, 1830, when she crossed paths with something unsettlingly close to the supernatural. Aside from a few brief mentions in Brontë biographies, the manuscript hasn’t garnered too much attention. I came across it quite by chance in the online catalog of rare manuscripts at Harvard, where I study English literature. When I saw the title, I was so intrigued that I decided I had to see it in person.

The incident in question was strange but true. On that early summer night, Brontë was sitting in the kitchen of Haworth Parsonage, her family’s home in West Yorkshire, England. Her father, Patrick Brontë, was the parson of the local parish. But he “was very ill, confined to his bed and so weak that he could not rise without assistance,” as the author writes. (An inflammation of the lungs would keep Patrick in bed for a total of three weeks in June and July of that year.)

“Suddenly,” Brontë continues, “we heard a knock at the door.” Tabitha “Tabby” Aykroyd, the family servant, “rose and opened it. An old man appeared, standing without.”

Brontë records the exchange between the servant and the old man in dialogue form. The stranger asked to see Patrick, but after he was informed that the parson was ill in bed, the encounter took an unsettling turn. The visitor came, he claimed, with a message for the parson from God himself:

The Lord, he desires me to say that the bridegroom is coming and that he must prepare to meet him; that the cords are about to be loosed and the golden bowl broken; the pitcher broken at the fountain and the wheel stopped at the cistern.

Appropriately enough, these cryptic words quoted a Bible verse. Taken from Ecclesiastes, the passage comes at a moment when King Solomon of Israel is giving advice to a young man about how to live and die. The images of shattered objects convey the irrevocability of death, as Solomon implores his companion to remember God “before the silver cord is broken.” Apparently, the stranger at Haworth Parsonage had come to tell Patrick that he was going to die.

The man’s words—also drawn from the Book of Matthew, which states that “The bridegroom was a long time in coming”—evidently unnerved young Brontë, much as she tried to resist believing his prophecy.

“Though I am fully persuaded that he was some fanatical enthusiast, well-meaning perhaps but utterly ignorant of true piety, yet I could not forbear weeping at his words, spoken so unexpectedly at that particular period,” she concludes at the bottom of the tiny page. [...]

The stranger, moreover, turned out to be a local farmer who would later be consigned to an asylum. “A Strange Occurrence” may not have turned out to be a real encounter with the paranormal, but it provides evidence of a side of Brontë that even her most avid readers rarely see or notice—one fit for a season of spooky tales. From a young age, Brontë had an affinity for the supernatural. What’s more, her attraction to the strange and horrific was an early vehicle for her love of storytelling. (V.M. Braganza)

The article goes to to contextualise Charlotte's interest in the supernatural and it makes for quite an interesting read.

The Harvard Crimson lists 'Five Centuries of Haunting Reads by, for, and about Stubborn Women'.

“Frankenstein” is pre-Victorian. Must-read Victorian Era works of women’s Gothic fiction: “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë, and “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë. (Vivienne N. Germain)

Times Now News lists the 'Top 10 Must-Read Classics and Why They Still Matter'.

9. Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëThe passionate and tragic love story between Catherine and Heathcliff unfolds amidst the moors of England. Brontë's dark tale of love and revenge explores the depths of human emotions, from unbridled passion to deep-seated resentment. The narrative raises questions about the nature of love and its power to uplift and destroy. (Girish Shukla)

Locus reviews Starling House by Alix E. Harrow.

Alix E. Harrow is also acutely aware of the traditions behind Starling House, as evidenced by her epigraph from Wuthering Heights and a few passages – including the opening line – that sound like they might have come from du Maurier’s Rebecca. (Gary K. Wolf)

Wealth of Geeks ranks Orson Welles's best films and Jane Eyre makes it to #14.

14. Jane Eyre (1943)

When his RKO contract expired and he was free to work for other studios, Welles took the opportunity to play Edward Rochester in an adaptation of Charlotte Brönte’s (sic) Jane Eyre, as it would earn money for his own projects. Director Robert Stevenson mounts a handsome version of the novel from a script he wrote with Brave New World author Aldous Huxley and Welles’s one-time collaborator John Houseman. Stevenson emphasizes the gothic elements of the tale, which matches Welles’s smoldering take on Rochester’s romance with Joan Fontaine’s Jane. (Joe George)

Film School Rejects discusses 'The Evolution of ‘Dracula’ Performances'.

As [actor Frank] Langella mentioned in an interview with the New York Times in 1977: “I see the play as a love story with Dracula very much in love with Lucy. So I insisted on no fangs, no red eyes, no hollow cheeks. He is not a ghoul, not a ghost. I saw him more as a Byronic hero.” This choice to play Dracula as a brooding Gothic character like Heathcliffe [sic] in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights gives us a far more seductive impression than what Lugosi created. (Jacob Trussell)

Autostraddle has an article on 'Work and Class in “The Haunting of Bly Manor”'.

The governess often spent the evenings alone and she was sometimes expected to use the schoolroom as her sitting room. Life could feel very lonely: 19 year old Edith Gates, a governess in Reading in the 1870s, confides to her diary how homesick she feels. 30 years earlier Charlotte Brontë tried to avoid going into her employers’ sitting room in the evenings because she found it awkward to make conversation with people she didn’t know very well.” – Kathryn Hughes, author of The Victorian Governess (Nico Hall)

Muse interviews spoken word artist Toria Garbutt and asks her about her work in the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Could you talk a bit about your work at the Brontë Parsonage Museum over the years?

I love the Brontë Parsonage. I was the poet in residence there after Simon Armitage. They commissioned me to create a new piece of work about addiction, drawing comparisons between my sister and Bramwell [sic] Bronte. It was made into a film. When she died, I made the decision not to release it, and they respected that. (Alexandra Pullen)