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 beautiful example of cross writing, a Victorian method of saving paper, I am so 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.

Bolton Castle

Here's a look at the castle itself. I keep getting the name wrong—it's Bolton Castle, but the nearby village is called Castle Bolton, which just sounds more impressive to me.

It's still owned by the descendants of the 1st Baron Scrope, who built the castle in the late 1300's. (Bolton comes from the name of the surrounding area; the village that is now called Castle Bolton was originally just Bolton.)

More green Yorkshire

Views from Bolton Castle, in the Yorkshire Dales.

A view in the Dales

I'd overlooked this picture—taken at the highest point in the Yorkshire Dales, looking over the landscape.

What shocks me now looking at it is how green Yorkshire was. So very different from the sere, drought-ridden south.

York streets

Two other street scenes near the Minster. Less touristed, but the medieval is always a presence.

The non-Potter Shambles

There are actually only a few Harry Potter-oriented businesses on the street, and it is authentically medieval, with some of the buildings dating from the 14th century. It was once known as the Great Flesh Shambles (shambles meaning stall or bench) because it was where all the butchers had their businesses. The jettied floors overhanging the street kept it cool and shady, better for keeping the meat fresh.

The Society of Alchemists

I avoided The Shop That Must Not Be Named and The Potions Cauldron, but did go into this shop, thinking I might find a suitably New Age-y gift for a friend of mine. It seemed more Halloween than New Age, with skull candles and jars of sweets with ghoulish names, but I did like the giant dragon guarding the door.

More Shambles reflections

Just because there isn't any real connection between the Shambles and Diagon Alley is no reason not to sell all the Harry Potter merchandise you can. There are at least two Harry Potter stores in Oxford and tourists can't even visit most of the locations where scenes were filmed.

Saturday reflections

A shop window in the Shambles, a medieval street in York that was reportedly the inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter, although J.K. Rowling said she'd never been there.

Anyway, it looks like it could have been.

Stonehenge in black and white, plus clouds

Last year's sky with all those clouds works much better in black and white than this year's cloudless blue skies.