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From: "Jean Rice" <>
Subject: [IGW] BRONTE Literary Family of England (Co. Down) - BRANWELL/McCLORY/NICHOLLS/BELL/PRUNTY
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 17:27:05 -0800

BIO: A lovely portrait of the famous English BRONTE sisters, Anne, Emily and Charlotte, was painted by their brother, Patrick Branwell BRONTE and hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of London. Sadly, Branwell felt himself to be failure at painting and writing and took to drink. He declined into alcoholism and narcotics addiction, dying in his early 30s. Deeply shaken by his death, Emily caught a chill walking back across the rain-socked churchyard after the funeral and died three months later. Apparently their father, Patrick, outlived them all.

The Bronte family home is preserved and maintained in England by the Bronte Society. The Parsonage at Haworth, on the moors of West Yorkshire, in now a museum, retaining many of the family possessions.

A family member is curator of the Bronte Homeland Interpretive Centre at the former Drumballyroney church and school house in a quiet corner of Co. Down where the marvelous legacy of this extraordinary family is also being carried out.

The name Bronte, Brunty, Prunty or O'Prunty, in various forms has been associated with that part of Northern Ireland for 200 years. The area of Co. Down that is now known as the Bronte Country lies south of Banbridge. It was here that Patrick Brunty (later Bronte), was born in a stone cottage in Emdale on St. Patrick's Day in 1777. His father, Hugh Brunty, a Protestant whose ancestors emigrated from the south, was a well-known story-teller, a talent inherited by his famous granddaughters. His mother, Eilis McCLORY, a Catholic and a great beauty, eloped with Hugh on the day of her wedding to someone else.

As a boy Patrick was apprenticed to a blacksmith and also toiled in the linen industry. It is said that he spent so much time reading by poor light than his eyesight weakened. Patrick began teaching at Glascar School and, later, at Drumballyroney school a few miles away. A local minister, struck by his talent and knowledge, insisted on sponsoring his education and had him enrolled in St. John's College, Cambridge, England, to study theology. It was at this time Patrick "improved" his name to Bronte, for reasons of social class and to emulate his personal hero, Lord Nelson, the honorary Duke of Bronte, in Sicily. Patrick was ordained and appointed Perpetual Curate at Hartshead in Yorkshire in 1811.

Patrick published some poetry and met Maria BRANWELL at the local Wesleyan School. She was from the craggy Celtic region of Cornwall, the Forgotten Coast, born in 1783 in Penzance. They fell in love, married, and moved to Thornton, West Yorkshire. Maria gave birth to a boy, Patrick Branwell, and five girls. They settled at the top of an exceedingly steep hill, in The Parsonage, between a graveyard and the moors in the remote village of Haworth. It is said that the mother, Maria, died in 1821 crying out until the end for her children. Her two eldest girls, Maria and Elizabeth, died in early childhood allegedly having suffered mistreatment at the hands of the headmaster at their boarding school. Patrick's other girls, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, were taught by their father in the sanctuary of The Parsonage and raised by their Aunt BRANWELL. The girls were provided a wealth of books, magazines and newspapers. Their father, said to be strict and somewhat eccentric, app!
arently would announce the break of day by firing a pistol at Haworth Church steeple.

The sisters explored the silent country of heath and heather with their brother, Branwell, in relative seclusion, later finding brief employment as teachers and governesses. Charlotte was unhappy in the governess role in Brussels, Belgium. The sisters were shy and lonely, relatively poor, and they occupied themselves with music,drawing, reading and writing. n In 1846, under the masculine pen names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, they published a joint volume of poems. Only two copies were sold, but all three sisters soon had their first novels published. Although they eventually achieved literary fame, the Bronte sisters' lives were to be cut short prematurely as they one by one succumbed to tuberculosis.

Emily became an accomplished artist, musician, poet and authoress. She was an expert shot, extremely interested in the weather, and went on long walks with her fierce mastiff, Keeper. She wrote only one novel, "Wuthering Heights, considered to be a masterpiece.

Gentle Anne, the most patient of the sisters, wrote "Agnes Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." Anne was interested in all things religious and was enchanted with the great cathedral in York. Shortly before her death she chose a spot for her own grave at Scarborough, by the sea.

Charlotte spent endless hours writing and painting and found brief happiness with the clergyman, Arthur Bell NICOLLS, marrying "a mere Irishman" over her father's vehement objection. Rev. Arthur Bell NICHOLS had been born in No. Ireland (as had Charlotte's own father) but Arthur was orphaned early and with his brought up and educated by his uncle, Dr. Alan BELL, at the Royal School housed in Cuba Court, Banagher, Co. Offaly. Charlotte went to Ireland for her honeymoon, stopping at the Nicholl's ancestral home, Cuba House. Rev. Nicholls was curate at Haworth but much of his life was spent at Cuba Court, his uncle's home there, and for 40 years he lived at Hill House, Banagher. Charlotte (Mrs. Bell Nicholls), authoress of "Jane Eyre" (1847) wrote shortly before her death, "No kinder, better husband than mine, it seems to me, can there be in the world. I find my husband the tenderest nurse, the kindest support, the best earthly comfort, that ever woman had."

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• [IGW] BRONTE Literary Family of England (Co. Down) - BRANWELL/McCLORY/NICHOLLS/BELL/PRUNTY by "Jean Rice" <>