From Haworth Parsonage to the church

Okay, the path to the church did lead past the graveyard, so there was always that Victorian memento mori going on (not that anyone was likely to forget that in Haworth, which had a shockingly low life expectancy compared to similar villages in Yorkshire) but I did think the sign marking where the gate had been was unnecessarily morbid. It could have just stopped with noting that it was the site of the gate used by the Brontë family, and left off the “through which they were carried to their final resting place in the church.”

Inside the church

St Michael and All Angels

The church in Haworth was rebuilt in the late 1800's; only the tower remains from the original medieval church. Patrick Brontë was the minister here for more than 40 years, until his own death in 1861. He outlived all six of his children.

Anne Brontë

Branwell Brontë died in September 1848 and Emily Brontë died less than three months later, both of tuberculosis, aggravated in Branwell's case by alcoholism and opiate addiction. By the following spring, their sister Anne was also dying of tuberculosis.

In one of the episodes that make it difficult to like Charlotte Brontë, she found numerous excuses why Anne's wish for a change of air and a trip to the sea should not happen. She kept saying she wanted to wait until Anne was stronger—In short I wish we could gain time and see how she gets on—while Anne was well aware that time was the one thing she didn't have. Charlotte even instructed her best friend, Ellen Nussey, how to respond when Anne wrote to her asking for her support.

When both Anne's doctor and their father, Patrick Brontë, said that they thought the trip was a good idea, Charlotte was forced to give in. Charlotte and Anne traveled to York with Ellen Nussey on Thursday, May 24, and spent the night there. Before leaving for Scarborough the following day, they stopped in York Minster, which Anne very much wanted to see again. Ellen Nussey wrote that as Anne looked up at the stonework, she said, “If finite power can do this what is the ...” before becoming too emotional to continue.

They arrived in Scarborough on Friday; Anne died on Monday. She's buried in a churchyard there instead of in the family vault in Haworth. I would have liked to visit her grave in Scarborough, but I couldn't face another train ride from York, or the steep climb up to the church on a cliff over the sea, but I did think about her when I was sitting in the Minster on that stifling hot day in York. I was glad that she got to experience that beauty again before she died. I was glad she got to go back to Scarborough, which she had visited many times when she was working as a governess, and had one more donkey cart ride on the beach.

This is the letter Anne wrote to Ellen Nussey on April 5. (Besides being a wonderful example of cross writing, a Victorian method of saving paper, I am amazed by her beautiful handwriting when she was so ill.)

But I have a more serious reason than this for my impatience of delay: the doctors say that change of air or removal to a better climate would hardly ever fail of success in consumptive cases if the remedy were taken in time, but the reason why there are so many disappointments is, that it is generally deferred till it is too late. . . . I have no horror of death: if I thought it inevitable I think I could quietly resign myself to the prospect, in the hope that you, dear Miss Nussy, would give as much of your company as you possibly could to Charlotte and be a sister to her in my stead. But I wish it would please God to spare me not only for Papa’s and Charlotte’s sakes, but because I long to do some good in the world before I leave it. I have many schemes in my head for future practise – humble and limited indeed – but still I should not like them all to come to nothing, and myself to have lived to so little purpose.

She was twenty-nine years old.

The Quire Screen

This is just a section of the screen separating the Nave from the Quire at York Minster. There are statues of fifteen kings of England, from William the Conqueror to Henry VI, on either side of the arch separating the two parts of the church. The statues were carved in the late 1400's by William Hyndeley, except for the statue of Henry VI, which was seen as Lancastrian propaganda during the Wars of the Roses, and was defaced, removed, and untimately replaced in the 19th century.

The statues in this picture depict Henry III, Edwards I, II, and III, Richard II, and Henry IV and V.

The spectrum of decorative art

A few more pictures from York Minster, then it's back where I began, in Haworth.

I like the style contrast between these two features I saw in the Minster. The stained glass window is called the Five Sisters; it was completed in the mid-1200's and is the largest example of medieval grisaille glass in the world. It's impossible to capture the detail in a window like this with a small camera, but rather than the brightly colored saints and religious figures you see in most medieval stained glass, grisaille glass is all grays and greens and features geometric and botanical patterns. It's quite beautiful.

The colorful patterns on the pipes on the right are nineteenth century. These case pipes were silent for more than a hundred years, and just kept for effect—and they are quite effective!—but since the last restoration in 2021, they're playing music again.

St Michael graveyard

I always love old churchyards.

For your safety and comfort

I loved these upholstered cushions for kneeling in the church. So much more comfortable than the barely cushioned wooden kneelers I spent many uncomfortable hours of my childhood on.

Two windows at St Michael

St Michael and All Angels

Back to the Yorkshire Dales.

This 12th century church in the charmingly-named Hubberholme has an All Creatures Great and Small connection—the interior scenes for the wedding of the James Herriott character were filmed here—but it's a beautiful little church well worth a visit even if they'd never managed to squeeze a TV production crew inside it.

The author J.B. Priestley loved Hubberholme, and his ashes are buried in the churchyard.

Looking towards heaven

Just outside the Quire, looking up at the vaulted ceiling underneath the central tower.

I won't be getting my Yorkshire pictures sorted and processed any time soon, but I looked for this one because I remember taking it and thinking, Oh I like this. That ceiling is almost 200 feet high, and looking up at it literally made me giddy. (I started to fix the distortion in the central part of the ceiling, which should be square, but decided to leave it because seemed like the image should be as dizzy as I was.)

The Quire

York Minster

I started to write “I got to York yesterday” then stopped. That can't be right. But yes, I got here yesterday, but for some reason it feels much longer.

It's quite hot, for one thing, and though I was surprised and grateful to find a small portable AC unit and a Dyson fan in my hotel room, they are taking up most of the free floor space in a room that wasn't that big to begin with.

The other nice thing about this hotel is the location—I knew it was close to York Minster, the famous cathedral, but wasn't expecting the impact of having that enormous magnificence in my face every time I stepped outside, grabbing all of my attention the way the AC unit has grabbed all of my hotel room.

I spent some time wandering around there this afternoon, enjoying the relative cool along with the really wonderful architecture, and then went back for Evensong this evening. It wasn't surprising that the service matched the surroundings: exquisite harmonies in a chamber behind the Nave called the Quire (Choir) that's bigger than most churches.

I'd been feeling kind of indifferent about York; it's beautiful, and if the old streets around the Minster have far too many of the dreaded cobblestones, they're charming, and at least there are no hills. But it's very crowded, and very hot, and going anywhere and seeing anything seems to require So Much Effort.

Not the Minster, though. That's worth it.

Saturday reflections

(Posted late because last night I felt like lying flat on my bed and watching television was too exhausting.)

The Church of the Holy Trinity on East 88th Street—not to be confused with Holy Trinity Church a few blocks south—as a winter afternoon slides into twilight.

What this photo lacks is the soundtrack of drip drip drip from snow melting off the eaves, which was an unpleasant reminder of what was going on at that moment in my apartment a few miles away (now apparently resolved, though I still have some painting/repair in my future.) Another blizzard is on the way, with up to two feet of snow expected. Can I just say—Yuck!

All Saints

This 12th century church was around the corner from the inn in Faringdon. I wasn't able to go inside, but I did like that headstone about to topple into the path, and the oddly jaunty pennants over the graveyard.

The church lost its spire to a Royalist cannonball during the English Civil War, and I'm not sure why they haven't built another in the almost 400 years since. Maybe it's just the cachet of being able to say Cromwell did that, as two different residents asked me if I'd seen the church and told me about the cannonball during my brief time walking around the town.

Urban poetry

High Street in Oxford on a sultry summer night.

I had taken the daytime flight to Heathrow, so it was after nine PM when I got to my hotel in Oxford. And it was hot. The temperatures had been in the 90's that day, and my hotel room had one small window and no air conditioning. (It did have two fans, but the sensation of having hot air blasted at me reminded me of South Dakota, and not in a good way.)

I went out for a walk to stretch my legs and after only a couple of blocks I desperately wanted some cold water. But all the shops were closed, and I didn't want to sit in a bar just to drink some fizzy water. This food truck had water, which was cold only in the sense that it was maybe a few degrees cooler than the air, but I was grateful to get it.

Christ Church

I do the walk around Christ Church meadow almost every day, but I'd never actually been inside the college itself. You need a ticket, and they're only released once a week, so I've thought of it as something I'd maybe do sometime. But you can attend services at the cathedral, which is on the main quad of the college, and last Saturday I went to Evensong there.

This is the cathedral entrance from Tom Quad, and the altar inside. Tom Quad is named for Great Tom, the bell in the tower over the entrance to the college. It's the loudest bell in Oxford (I can attest to this) and rings every night at 9:05 pm. Everything at Christ Church is five minutes behind the rest of Oxford, because they still stick to the original Oxford time, which was five minutes behind Greenwich Time. So Evensong began at 6:05.

Evensong

The chapel at Merton was closed for renovations last summer, so I never got to see the interior. It's open again, and I've been inside a few times. Our welcome drinks reception was held in the outer chapel because of rain—there's a wonderful combination of practicality and insouciance—and I've gone to sit there a couple of times just to clear my head.

There are no regular services during the summer, but a choir from Duke University is in Oxford this week and sang Evensong in the chapel today. The music was exquisite; I think I have a small icy fist permanently clenched in my gut these days and this service eased that a little in a way that surprised me.

I also loved that they used actual candles for light, in the stalls and on the two chandeliers. I'd love to go to a service in the winter when it's dark outside and you're listening to the music by the glow of candlelight.

Crucifix

There's no way to capture the scale here, unfortunately, without a lot more time and camera equipment than I had. This crucifix is suspended over the altar, and is six meters high and four meters wide (approximtely 20 by 13 feet.)

Everything in the interior is colossal.

More from São Sebastião Cathedral

This is a very odd building, and I'm not sure whether I like it or not. The four stained glass windows seen from the interior are certainly spectacular (from the exterior you can't even tell that they are windows); they extend more than 200 feet from the floor to the ceiling, where they meet in a skylight shaped like a cross.