Branwell's room

This installation, showing how Branwell's room might have looked in the 1830's when he was pursuing his art and writing, was produced by the production designer for the Sally Wainwright Brontë film To Walk Invisible.

One of the frequent criticisms of that film was that there was too much Branwell in it. Which I think is a fair comment—at times, it does feel as if you have to peek behind all the Branwell drama in the foreground to catch a glimpse of what his sisters were doing. But that's what it's like with an addict in the family; I know from sad experience how they act as a kind of black hole sucking all the life and energy around them into the vortex of their own endless neediness.

The story that Branwell set off for London to enroll in the Royal Academy of Art, spent all of his money getting drunk and then returned home claiming that he had been robbed, may not be true, but it is not implausible. He was a talented artist and writer (Charlotte cribbed part of her first novel The Professor from one of the Angrian stories Branwell wrote) but not as talented as he believed himself to be. He tried to make a living as a portrait painter in Bradford, but there were too many better painters in the area for him to succeed. He worked for a time at an isolated railway station but was fired, and then lost the job Anne got for him as tutor to the eldest son in the family where she had been a governess for several years after having an affair with his employer's wife (costing Anne her job as well—she felt she had no choice but to resign.)

But even before the horrors of the last few years of his life, the frequent raging arguments begging money from Patrick so he could buy gin, passing out and setting his bedclothes on fire so that Patrick was forced to sleep with him every night, there was the anger and resentment his sisters must have felt at seeing the opportunities and privilege he had enjoyed as the only son squandered. And knowing they could never rely on him if their father died and they lost their home.

After the book of poems they published anonymously only sold two copies, they turned to writing novels. It was as much a practical decision as an artistic one, if not exactly a guarantee of success. Their only other option was being teachers or governesses, and both Charlotte and Emily had already failed to make a success at that. But it turned out that writing novels was something they were very, very good at.

The children's study

(That's how the servants referred to it.) This overgrown closet was their playroom, where they invented their famous imaginary kingdoms, inspired by a box of toy soldiers bought as a gift for Branwell. They play-acted stories, and wrote tiny, hand-sewn books and literary journals, complete with advertisements, about their characters.

Originally all four worked together on one group of stories, about a city called Glass Town, but Anne and Emily broke away to create their own country, Gondal, while Glass Town became Angria and belonged to Charlotte and Branwell. Some of the Angria writings survive, but there are only a few poems about Gondal (although some of Wuthering Heights may have started as Gondal stories.)

Even in their mid-twenties, Emily and Anne were still pretending to be their Gondal characters. In her diary paper after she and Anne took a brief trip to York, Emily doesn't mention anything they saw, only that “during our excursion we were Ronald Macelgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosobelle Esraldan, Ella and Julian Egramont Catherine Navarre and Cordelia Firzaphnold escaping from the Palaces of Instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans.”

The kitchen

Mr Brontë's successor, John Wade, made extensive changes to the parsonage, adding an extension and moving the kitchen (apparently he didn't understand that the building was a future shrine to the previous inhabitants) so this isn't the kitchen the Brontës used, although the furniture, dishes, and utensils here did belong to the family.

The Reverend Brontë's study

Both Anne and Emily played the piano—Emily in particular was a skilled musician—but Charlotte had been discouraged from learning because of her extreme nearsightedness.

A few years after Anne's death, Patrick had the piano moved upstairs to one of the bedrooms, possibly so he no longer had to look at an instrument that no longer had anyone to play it.

The dining room

This is what I most wanted to see at the parsonage: the room, and the table, where those seven novels were written. (This is near the front entrance, and I would have come back to spend more time there, but I didn't realize that for crowd control reasons, the museum has one-way traffic. You look at the dining room, kitchen, and study on the first floor, then it's up the stairs to see the bedrooms and exhibits on the second floor. You go down by a different staircase and exit through the gift shop.)

The medallion above the sofa is a portrait of Branwell Brontë by his friend J. B. Leyland. Emily Brontë is believed to have died on that sofa, after refusing to see any doctors until a few hours before she died.

When Charlotte Brontë's friend and first biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell, visited the parsonage in 1853, she could hear Charlotte walking in the dining room below her bedroom at night. One of the servants, Martha Brown, told her how the three sisters had spent evenings walking around the table, reading from and discussing their writing, late into the night. “Miss Emily walked as long as she could, and when she died Miss Anne and Miss Brontë took it up - and now my heart aches to hear Miss Brontë walking, walking on alone.”.

I've written that I often find Charlotte Brontë difficult to like, but it's impossible not to feel enormous sympathy for her.

The Parsonage

I'd seen many pictures of it, so I wasn't surprised by how very ordinary a building it is. The stone buildings on the main street of Haworth look more like what you'd expect the birthplace of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre to resemble, instead of this staid, square 18th century Georgian.

More of the churchyard

I'm not usually creeped out by graveyards, but I admit that knowing the history makes this cemetery seem very creepy indeed.

And the wind didn't help, blasting through the trees and around the gravestones, freezing my hands like Cathy's ghost in Wuthering Heights, even though it was rather warm the days I was in Haworth.

The churchyard

This is very different from the one the Brontës knew, and that's a good thing. Patrick Brontë had fought for many years to improve sanitation in Haworth; in 1838 the average age of death was 19 years, as bad as the worst slums in London. The local property owners fought him for years because they didn't want to pay higher taxes for improvements, but in 1850 the national Board of Health finally sent an inspector, Benjamin Herschel Babbage. His report found that in addition to a shocking shortage of toilets—69 for 2500 people—and the resulting overflow of sewage, the village's water was also being polluted by the graveyard. It sat uphill from the village, and material from decomposing bodies ran directly into the water supply. There were annual outbreaks of typhoid, as well as cholera and dysentery. (Ironically, this wasn't an issue at the parsonage; it was on the other side of the churchyard from the village, and had its own well. Unfortunately, clean water didn't protect them from tuberculosis.)

After the Babbage report, headstones which had previously been laid flat on the ground, preventing natural decomposition from taking place, were pulled upright. Trees were also planted then—there were no trees when the Brontës lived there—so their roots could help purify the contaminated soil.

Landscape minus wind farm

This landscape is actually still inside Haworth, so wouldn't be affected by the proposed energy park. It's another view from the footpath behind the parsonage, and the field beyond.

I limped very slowly across the first part of that field, which probably amused the sheep—if they bothered to notice that I was there.

Wuthering Wind Farm

I can attest that the winds around Haworth are indeed wuthering, and I'm sure they're even more enthusiastic out on the moors. But although I'm a big supporter of green energy, I can understand the opposition to this project, which would create an energy park with 34 wind turbines on the moors outside Haworth, visible from the traditional hikes to Top Withens, possibly an inspiration for the house in Wuthering Heights.

The supporters say that the tourists will still come, they'll just see a few wind turbines along with the landscape. And the opponents say, Do you even hear yourself?

Away from Main Street

My lack of mobility meant that I couldn't really see the countryside away from the village—I would have loved to do the hike to the Brontë falls—but in such a small village I didn't have to walk very far to feel I was officially on the outskirts of town.

More Main Street

I loved this steep stony street, with the old buildings and the view of the moors beyond. But looking at these pictures does give me an awful sense-memory of standing awkwardly on the cobblestones trying to balance myself with my cane before hobbling on down the street. I'm focusing instead on a different memory, of sitting in a cafe across from the Black Bull eating a really delicious scone with some coffee.