Victorian Musings

Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls and his wife, Charlotte Nicholls (née Bronte) The evils that now and then wring a groan from my heart lie in position not that I am a single  woman and likely to remain a single woman but because I am a lonely woman and likely to be  lonely. But it cannot be helped and therefore imperatively must be borne and borne too with  as few words about it as may be. (Charlotte Bronte written in 1852 before her marriage in 1854) In reading Charlotte Bronte’s letters, my hope is to provide an understanding of who Mrs.Nicholls was as a married woman and vicar’s wife; taking the focus off the author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte.  You see, her letters clearly show a spinster well aware of her duty to care for her aging and ailing father. Especially since by the time of her engagement, she was the sole remaining sibling.  I11 April 1854, in a letter to her dear friend, Ellen Nussey, Dear Ellen, I am engaged. I am still very calm very inexpectant. What I

A house full of history is bound to have secrets... Ponden Hall is a centuries-old house on the Yorkshire moors, a magical place full of stories. It's also where Trudy Heaton grew up. And where she ran away from... Now, after the devastating loss of her husband, she is returning home with her young son, Will, who refuses to believe his father is dead. While Trudy tries to do her best for her son, she must also attempt to build bridges with her eccentric mother. And then there is the Hall itself: fallen into disrepair but generations of lives and loves still echo in its shadows, sometimes even reaching out to the present... At long last, the untold story of the mysterious Mrs Brontë.** They were from different lands, different classes, different worlds almost. The chances of Cornish gentlewoman Maria Branwell even meeting the poor Irish curate Patrick Brontë in Regency England, let alone falling passionately in love, were remote. Yet Maria and Patrick did