Pen Browning: Son of The Pied Piper!

'Pen' Robert Barrett Browning

Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning (1849-1912) the only son of married poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning was born in Florence, Italy at their home Casa Guidi on March 9, 1849. This was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's fourth pregnancy after suffering three miscarriages. She attributed this successful pregnancy to the fact that she stopped using laudanum prescribed for her illness. Undiagnosed during her lifetime with such symptoms and complaints as: body weakness, heart palpatations, cannot handle heat and cold and general exhaustion. Today she would be diagnosed with (HKPP) known as hypokalemic periodic paralysis. A muscle disorder where potassium becomes trapped in muscle cells causing blood levels of potassium to fall. 

Pen and Elizabeth Barrett Browning by 

Fratelli D' Alessandri

19 June 1860

She said of her son, "he's so fat and rosy and strong that almost I am sceptical of his being my child."

Named after his father, "Wiedeman" was their sons paternal grandmother's maiden name. If only she'd known of her grandsons birth. Although the baby was born one week prior to her death, word did not reach her in time. This was something that plagued Robert Browning terribly. The Browning's named their son in part in her memory. Baby Barrett Browning was nicknamed 'Pen' which I incorrectly assumed was related to poetry. 

Once again according to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 

"The baby tried pronouncing 'Wiedeman which came out sounding like 'Penini' or 'Pen'."  

The name stuck with him throughout his life.

Pen was educated at home, traveling with family between France and England but staying mainly between Florence, Siena, and Rome, Italy. His mother exposed him to various types of art and dressed him in a rather androgynous style until he was at least ten years old. Victorians dressed their boys in velvet, lace, with hair in long curls but usually not after the age of five years old. The Tennyson's did the same with their two sons going against convention. Robert Browning disagreed with this style and after Elizabeth died in 1861, when Pen was twelve years old, he was taken for a haircut and dressed in proper boys clothing. 

Pen Browning wearing a kit second to left with John Everett Millais standing profile

his wife Effie and daughter seated below

September\October 1873.

After the death of Robert's beloved wife and because of the enormous depth of his grief, he and Pen returned to London. He said staying in Italy was too painful without her.  Although Pen entered Christ Church College, Oxford, he didn't pass his exams. He seemed not to possess his parents drive. He lacked ambition and purpose until a friend of his parents; Pre-Raphaelite painter, John Everett Millais told him that he had a talent for sculpture and painting. Afterwards, Pen went on to study in Paris with Auguste Rodin and in Antwerp, Belgium with Jean-Arnold Heyermans. 

Pen painting mid 1885

He never became part of the British art establishment because he enjoyed painting voluptuous female nudes on very large canvases which offended the sensibilities of the prudish Victorians. 

Pen and wife, Fannie wedding day 

October 4, 1887

Boarding a train to start their honeymoon

Pen married the daughter of a wealthy metal merchant, Fannie Coddington (1853-1935) on October 4, 1887. They lived together in Italy at Palazzo Rezzonico on the grand canal in Venice for two years until the death of his father, Robert Browning in 1889. Sadly, their marriage was no love story. After Fannie found out about her husband's mistress, they led separate lives but never divorced. The marriage was childless. He gave up his career as an artist and continued to paint for the pure love of it. He painted three portaits of his poet father as well as landscape paintings. Oddly enough, his female nude paintings have never turned up anywhere. 

Sarianna Browning, 1900

Age 86

Pen Browning remained loyal to the old servants who cared for him as a child as well as looking after his Aunt Sarianna Browning. They all lived with him in Asolo, Italy where he lived out his remaining days. He passed away of a heart attack on July 8, 1912. He was buried in the local cemetery. Leaving no will or descendants, his estranged wife, Fannie Browning along with sixteen Barrett cousins, on his mother's side claimed his estate which was not left in good order.  The rest of his possessions were sold at auction during a six day sale at Sotheby's in London in 1913. Fannie then had her estranged husband's body removed from the cemetery in Asolo, Italy, and reburied in the new Protestant cemetery in Florence, Italy, next to his mother and poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Sadly, husband Robert Browning is buried in Westminster Abbey. Fannie Browning is buried in England.

Lewis Carroll visits The Tennyson's at Farringford for World Photography Day!

Farringford from the Field by Charles Dodgson, 1864.

This photograph is my favorite and my choice for World Photography Day. Thank goodness Lewis Carroll was a photographer as well as author. During his visit to the Isle of Wight in August 1864, he managed to capture Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson with his wife Emily Tennyson. They are together at the rear side of their home, Farringford.  If you crop the photograph and make it of just them together, you will notice Emily sitting in her push chair SMILING at her husband while Alfred talks to her. I wonder if he could've been holding a book of poetry and reading to her as he was known to do according to Emily's journals?

Charlotte Bronte diary entry, "a day's weary wandering"

It is the still small voice alone that comes to me at eventide, that which like a breeze with a voice in it [comes] over the deeply blue hills & out of the now leafless forests & from the cities on distant river banks of a far & bright continent. It is that which wakes my spirit & engrosses all my living feelings, all my energies which are not merely mechanical, & like Haworth & home, wakes sensations which lie dormant elsewhere.

This is my favorite of Charlotte's diary entries. Written on 4, February, 1836, from Roe Head school, in Mirfield, at the age of nineteen just two months shy of her twentieth birthday and eleven years before the publication of Jane Eyre.

I find it to be one of her most telling and evocative pieces shedding some light onto her inspiration towards her writing process. She writes upon reflection to begin with then towards the end switches to voyeur as she narrates a very erotic imaginative juvenalia writing scene.

Formerly Roe Head School, Mirfield

Well, here I am at Roe-Head. It is seven o’clock at night, the young ladies are all at their lessons, the school-room is quiet, the fire is low, a stormy day is at this moment passing off in a murmuring and bleak night. I now assume my own thoughts; my mind relaxes from the stretch on which it has been for the last twelve hours & falls back onto the rest which no-body in this house knows of but myself.

I now, after a day’s weary wandering, return to the ark which for me floats alone on the face of this world’s desolate & boundless deluge. It is strange. I cannot get used to the ongoings that surround me. I fulfil my duties strictly & well, yet, so to speak, if the illustration be not profane, as God was not in the wind, nor the fire, nor the earth-quake, so neither is my heart in the task, the theme or the exercise. It is the still small voice alone that comes to me at eventide, that which like a breeze with a voice in it [comes] over the deeply blue hills & out of the now leafless forests & from the cities on distant river banks of a far & bright continent. It is that which wakes my spirit & engrosses all my living feelings, all my energies which are not merely mechanical, & like Haworth & home, wakes sensations which lie dormant elsewhere.

Last night I did indeed lean upon the thunder-wakening wings of such a stormy blast as I have seldom heard blow, & it whirled me away like heath in the wilderness for five seconds of ecstasy, and as I sat by myself in the dining-room while all the rest were at tea the trance seemed to descend on a sudden, & verily this foot trod the war-shaken shores of the Calabar & these eyes saw the defiled & violated Adrianopolis shedding its lights on the river from lattices whence the invader looked out & was not darkened.

I went through a trodden garden whose groves were crushed down. I ascended a great terrace, the marble surface of which shone wet with rain where it was not darkened by the mounds of dead leaves which were now showered on & now swept off by the vast & broken boughs which swung in the wind above them.

Up I went to the wall of the palace to the line of latticed arches which shimmered in light, passing along quick as thought, I glanced at what the internal glare revealed through the crystal. There was a room lined with mirrors & with lamps on tripods, & very darkened, & splendid couches & carpets & large half lucid vases white as snow, thickly embossed with whiter mouldings, & one large picture in a frame of massive beauty representing a young man whose gorgeous & shining locks seemed as if they would wave on the breath & whose eyes were half hid by the hand carved in ivory that shaded them & supported the awful looking coron[al?] head—a solitary picture, too great to admit of a companion—a likeness to be remembered full of beauty, not displayed, for it seemed as if the form had been copied so often in all imposing attitudes, that at length the painter, satiated with its luxuriant perfection, had resolved to conceal half & make the imperial Giant bend & hide under his cloudlike tresses, the radiance he was grown tired of gazing on.

Often had I seen this room before and felt, as I looked at it, the simple and exceeding magnificence of its single picture, its five colossal cups of sculptured marble, its soft carpets of most deep and brilliant hues, & its mirrors, broad, lofty, & liquidly clear. I had seen it in the stillness of evening when the lamps so quietly & steadily burnt in the tranquil air, & when their rays fell upon but one living figure, a young lady who generally at that time appeared sitting on a low sofa, a book in her hand, her head bent over it as she read, her light brown hair dropping in loose & unwaving curls, her dress falling to the floor as she sat in sweeping folds of silk. All stirless about her except her heart, softly beating under her satin bodice & all silent except her regular and very gentle respiration.

The haughty sadness of grandeur beamed out of her intent fixed hazel eye, & though so young, I always felt as if I dared not have spoken to her for my life, how lovely were the lines of her small & rosy mouth, but how very proud her white brow, spacious & wreathed with ringlets, & her neck, which, though so slender, had the superb curve of a queen’s about the snowy throat. I knew why she chose to be alone at that hour, & why she kept that shadow in the golden frame to gaze on her, & why she turned sometimes to her mirrors & looked to see if her loveliness & her adornments were quite perfect.

However this night she was not visible—no—but neither was her bower void. The red ray of the fire flashed upon a table covered with wine flasks, some drained and some brimming with the crimson juice. The cushions of a voluptuous ottoman which had often supported her slight, fine form were crushed by a dark bulk flung upon them in drunken prostration. Aye, where she had lain imperially robed and decked with pearls, every waft of her garments as she moved diffusing perfume, her beauty slumbering & still glowing as dreams of him for whom she kept herself in such hallowed & shrine-like separation wandered over her soul, on her own silken couch, a swarth & sinewy moor intoxicated to ferocious insensibility had stretched his athletic limbs, weary with wassail and stupefied with drunken sleep.

I knew it to be Quashia himself, and well could I guess why he had chosen the queen of Angria’s sanctuary for the scene of his solitary revelling. While he was full before my eyes, lying in his black dress on the disordered couch, his sable hair dishevelled on his forehead, his tusk-like teeth glancing vindictively through his parted lips, his brown complexion flushed with wine, & his broad chest heaving wildly as the breath issued in spurts from his distended nostrils, while I watched the fluttering of his white shirt ruffles starting through the more than half-unbuttoned waistcoat, & beheld the expression of his Arabian countenance savagely exulting even in sleep, Quashia triumphant Lord in the halls of Zamorna! in the bower of Zamorna’s lady! while this apparition was before me, the dining-room door opened and Miss W[ooler] came in with a plate of butter in her hand. “A very stormy night my dear!” said she. “It is ma’am,” said I.

Review: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

When Cora Seaborne’s brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at nineteen, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive eleven-year old son, Francis, and the boy’s nanny, Martha, her fiercely protective friend.

While admiring the sites, Cora learns of an intriguing rumor that has arisen further up the estuary, of a fearsome creature said to roam the marshes claiming human lives. After nearly 300 years, the mythical Essex Serpent is said to have returned, taking the life of a young man on New Year’s Eve. A keen amateur naturalist with no patience for religion or superstition, Cora is immediately enthralled, and certain that what the local people think is a magical sea beast may be a previously undiscovered species. Eager to investigate, she is introduced to local vicar William Ransome. Will, too, is suspicious of the rumors. But unlike Cora, this man of faith is convinced the rumors are caused by moral panic, a flight from true belief.

These seeming opposites who agree on nothing soon find themselves inexorably drawn together and torn apart—an intense relationship that will change both of their lives in ways entirely unexpected.

"In the darkness he grows afraid. There's something there, he feels it, biding its time-implacable, monstrous, born in water, always with an eye cocked in his direction. Out he looks to the black Blackwater and there it is again- something clearing the surface then subsiding - yes, all along its been there, waiting, and at last its found him out. "  (New Years Eve, The Essex Serpent)

This is a story of science and religion juxtaposed against Victorian societal norms of the day where the  presence of Gothic darkness and malicious intent prevails. What happens in a sleepy, Essex village when, Cora Seaborne, a quiet science loving spinster arrives to research the 300 year old myth of a death seeking serpent? Does such a beast really exist? 

 Who knew she would be courted by the cold and violent vicar , Will Ransome. Their marriage was volatile to say the least; they were such opposites until Cora meets Luke. He shares her curious spirit but all is not as it seems in the parish village of Aldwinter. If only she knew what she was about to unleash and its wrath would know no bounds.

Sarah Perry writes unlike anyone else. Her writing, phrasing and descriptions are so incredibly beautiful it was as if Wilkie Collins and Daphne du Maurier had a child. Sarah Perry is a wordsmith and I am her captive. Nobody rescue me I am happy living within the pages of her dark, Gothic environments. 

'A Parody' By Branwell Bronte

A Parody by Branwell Bronte

Manuscript/Artwork/Image

1848

@The Bronte Society

Bronte Parsonage Museum (shelfmark B28)

"Jack Shaw the guardsman and Jack painter of norfolk,"

question - "the half minute time is up, so come to the scratch; won't you?"

answer  - "Blast your eyes,  it's no use, for I cannot come!"

I find Branwell's  sketch a fascinating glimpse into his mind, humor and psyche.

Here we have a young man in bed quite sickly but just look at those muscular arms!

The death skeleton hand on nose or face mocking almost. I mean, its a parody Branwell writes so how seriously do we look at his drawing? 

Branwell drew this the year he died but what was his message? 

I just wanted to share this drawing because it casts so many thoughts of a young, talented man gone too soon.

To read my older article about Branwell Bronte

Review: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland

The most enchanting debut novel of 2018, this is an irresistible, deeply moving and romantic story of a young girl, daughter of an abusive father, who has to learn the hard way that she can break the patterns of the past, live on her own terms and find her own strength.

An enchanting and captivating novel, about how our untold stories haunt us - and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak.

Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family's story. In her early twenties, Alice's life is thrown into upheaval again when she suffers devastating betrayal and loss. Desperate to outrun grief, Alice flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. In this otherworldly landscape Alice thinks she has found solace, until she meets a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man.

Spanning two decades, set between sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart follows Alice's unforgettable journey, as she learns that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.

"One hot afternoon in the kitchen at home, Alice had sat at her mother's feet reading a book of fairytales while Agnes made dinner. Fairytales taught her that when it came to family, things weren't always as they seemed. Kings and queens lost their children like they were odd socks, not finding them again until they grew very old, if they ever found them at all. Mothers could die, fathers could disappear, and seven brothers could turn into seven swans. To Alice, family was one of the most curious stories of all. Overhead, the powdery flour her mother was sifting drifted down onto the pages of Alice's open book. She'd caught her mother's eye. Mama, where's the rest of our family?

Agnes dropped to her knees, holding her finger over  Alice's lips. Her eyes darted past Alice toward the lounge room where Clem snored softly. It's just us three, Bun, she said. It always has been. Okay?"

What is your saving grace when you are a married woman being beaten by your husband? What do you do when you have a nine year old daughter, Alice and another on the way?  When the sound of the car engine outside your home makes you shake, his footsteps, his eyes, his scent; everything about him terrifies you but you are keeping a family secret, one that will devastate those you love. So, out of protective duty and love you stay knowing that you will not live much longer.

For Agnes Hart, her only solace comes when tending her garden. It comes when teaching her nine year old daughter, Alice about flowers i.e. planting them and understanding their symbolism., meaning and hidden secret language.

Immediately, I was drawn to the language of flowers. Being a lover of how the Victorians used it to communicate secretly. However, author,  Holly Ringland does something completely different. Not only do the flowers tell a story, hold a family secret but they keep a mother-daughter bond steadfast, even beyond the grave.

I know what it feels like emotionally and physically to lose your mother at a very young age. I understand nine year old Alice's behavior in the way she never leaves her mother's side, the way her eyes follow her everywhere, the ache to want to protect her and save her knowing you can 't. Then for Alice it becomes a lifelong journey of finding herself, while possibly making some of her mother's mistakes. When Alice meets her grandmother she finds a family home, Thornfield and more flowers that become her family.
I really became fascinated with the Thornfield /June chapters that became vital in Alice's story. I could identify with a grandmother stepping in to help raise Alice as well. Holly Ringland has created such complex characters of substance while bringing their scars to the surface making it impossible for me to completely hate Clem or June later on. I found myself longing to stop by Thornfield for some home cooking and flower lessons. I wanted to pull up a chair, pet the dog, chat with the female flowers too!

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a complex family saga unlike any I've read before. I was proud of the woman Alice Hart became; although, I wanted to shake her by the shoulders when she met Dylan.

I can't wait for Holly Ringland's next novel. Her writing is beautiful. She writes a complete story that isn't wrapped up with a pretty bow at the end and I'm relieved for it.

















     

Upcoming Exhibition: 'Beyond Ophelia' - A Celebration of Lizzie Siddal, Artist and Poet

I am here to help spread the exciting news of an upcoming exhibition in the United Kingdom about the art works of Elizabeth Siddal known as Lizzie Siddal. Anyone who loves the Pre-Raphaelites will instantly know who she was.  

How I wish I could go but I am in the United States. As always, I have the best and most loyal friends and followers here. I ask you if anyone attends this coming March and would like to send me jpg images, any written materials as well, I would be most grateful.  

Found below are text and image taken from the National Trust page. Also, linked below.

Lovers Listening to Music by Elizabeth Siddal, pen and ink drawing, 1854

'Beyond Ophelia' - A Celebration of Lizzie Siddal, Artist and Poet

Wightwick Manor, National Trust

1st March- 24th December 2018

Only the second solo exhibition of her artwork, this exhibition at Wightwick Manor reinstates Lizzie Siddal as an important and influential artist and poet.

A professional member of the Pre-Raphaelite artistic circle, she is, however, remembered today mainly as the model for the iconic Millais painting, Ophelia, and as wife and muse of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

‘Beyond Ophelia’ examines Siddal’s style; subject matter; depiction of women; her influence on other artists; and the prejudice she faced as a professional female artist in the patriarchal Victorian art world.

In 1961, Lady Rosalie Mander, an art historian and biographer of the Pre-Raphaelites, and her husband Sir Geoffrey Mander, bought a large collection of Lizzie Siddal artworks at auction for Wightwick Manor. Wightwick’s collection of 12 Siddal artworks, along with loans of other drawings previously owned by the Manders’, are bought back together in this exhibition for the first time.

For more information on the upcoming exhibition,  National Trust UK

Thank you and Farewell

This will be my last and final blog post. Due to my work schedule and private life,
I sadly must bring this blog to a close.

It is not a decision I've made lightly, but it is necessary for the time being.

I will still write my book reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.

An incredible thank you to every single person for your years of loyalty
and steadfastness. I've had the very best time imaginable.
I've met the most gracious and wonderful friends as a result of starting this site
many years ago.

I will keep the website up just no more posts.

Kimberly Eve

A Review: Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense by Jenny Uglow

Edward Lear lived a vivid, fascinating, energetic life, but confessed, 'I hardly enjoy any one thing on earth while it is present.' He was a man in a hurry, 'running about on railroads' from London to country estates and boarding steamships to Italy, Corfu, India and Palestine. He is still loved for his 'nonsenses', from startling, joyous limericks to great love songs like 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat' and 'The Dong with a Luminous Nose', and he is famous, too, for his brilliant natural history paintings, landscapes and travel writing. But although Lear belongs solidly in the age of Darwin and Dickens - he gave Queen Victoria drawing lessons, and his many friends included Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelite painters - his genius for the absurd and his dazzling word-play make him a very modern spirit. He speaks to us today.

Lear was a man of great simplicity and charm: children adored him, yet his humour masked epilepsy, depression and loneliness. Jenny Uglow's beautifully illustrated biography, full of the colour of the age, brings us his swooping moods, passionate friendships and restless travels/ Above all it shows how this uniquely gifted man lived all his life on the boundaries of rules and structures, disciplines and desires - an exile of the heart.  

Published October 5th 2017 by Faber & Faber

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• ISBN-10: 0571269540
• ISBN-13: 978-0571269549

'But stay here I won't, to be demoralised by years of mud & fog & gnats and rheumatism & small beer & stupid boors and coalfires and chloramorbusses and income taxes and Calvinists and steel forks and midnight atmospheres all the year round - I have had enough of it, & forthwith I am growing moustaches in sign of going elsewhere'. (Edward Lear)

Illustration for More Nonsense by Edward Lear

I found myself enjoying the company of Mr. Lear while getting to know him in Jenny Uglow's exquisite biography. He suffered from epilepsy and spoke with a lisp. He was always well aware of what he considered to be his shortcomings. He knew he was not an attractive looking man, plain, stout and attracted to men! Now, during the nineteenth-century, nobody came out and verbally said 'gay' or 'homosexual' his family and close friends in his inner circle knew of his 'male crushes' but it seemed to be unspoken.  

While reading Mr. Lear's diary and correspondence excerpts, that appeared within chapters throughout this book, I got the sense he led a life of chosen isolation as a way of protecting himself from pain and outside intrusions. His humour was wonderful. He sometimes made me belly laugh because he was quite funny and silly which I always appreciate. However, I couldn't shake this overwhelming undercurrent of sadness about him that resonated off the pages. For instance, he knew he 'needed to get a wife' but fear would stop him from proposing. He was afraid of passing on his epilepsy to any children that might be born. Also, it would've been a marriage of convenience and he would have kept up his 'male' relationships no doubt. Nevertheless, he never proposed to any female friends even though there were several opportunities. 

Beachy Head by Edward Lear

Edward Lear led a life of movement and momentum. He was a naturally gifted landscape artist. He loved nature and traveled throughout Europe,always keeping a diary, usually traveling with male friends: Alfred Tennyson and Frank Lushington (Lear's unreciprocated male crush).  I loved the travel chapters and the friendship chapters. He knew many 'now famous' British authors and artists of the day. The chapters covering Tennyson, Lushington, and his nonsense writings are some of my favorites. 

The Owl and the Pussycat

Edward Lear made a small living from his paintings he sold to galleries, sometimes contributions from friends. His nonsense limericks and poems were published in A Book of Nonsense that had three editions and sold 4,000 copies during his lifetime. Interestingly enough, he never became friends with another nonsense writer of the day Lewis Carroll. They knew of each other and had mutual friends but never met each other. Lewis Carroll is mentioned in a few chapters as well. There was a sweet story of how Edward Lear wrote his most famous poem, The Owl and the Pussycat for a little girl who was the daughter of friends of his. Lear would show up for dinner with friends become bored with the discussion of the news or politics and end up chatting to their sons and or daughters. After a brief chat with one little girl, Lear went home and wrote this story about interspecies relationships! It is a love poem you know! 

To purchase Mr. Lear by Jenny Uglow  Amazon UK

To purchase in the United States (it is not published in the U.S. yet but you can Pre-order),

Amazon

A Halloween Post: My thoughts on A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf!

I have been reading my way through the novels of Virginia Woolf. Now with Halloween upon us tomorrow, I thought about a ghost story of a different kind...

What if you lived in an old house that you loved and knew was haunted? Not sure who the ghost was or why it stayed in your house? Perhaps, your life triggered a memory for that ghost. What do you mean ghosts don't exist? Oh, yes they do!  They watch us; they see and hear us all the time. They appear to us via sound, imagery and smell but you must remain aware and open minded to experience their visitations.

“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here tool” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered. “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”

As I said, A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf is not a novel or a novella even it is one of her short stories published in a collection called Monday and Tuesday in 1921.  It is only a few pages in length. I am deeply touched by this short story. At the heart of it, is love. Love experienced between a man and woman, a married couple, who lived in the house before the author's current occupant; the female married protagonist.  The ghostly couple had the best-married years of life here together and have left their hearts here together along with their unforgotten treasured memories. The love between the current couple spurs their ghostly visitations and Virginia Woolf's conversations between the ghostly couple are just beautiful.

“Here we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning—” “Silver between the trees—” “Upstairs—” “In the garden—” “When summer came—” “In winter snowtime—” The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

In this very short tale, any reader would be touched by the deep sentimentality and heartbreaking honestly of the true connection between man and woman (in this case) and the blessing of a happy life together. One which abides through the ages.

Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf with their dog Pinka

The Last Bronte: The Intimate Memoir of Arthur Bell Nicholls by S.R. Whitehead: A Review

He was Mr Brontë's right hand man and Charlotte's husband.

He fell in love with two sisters and revered a third while, to the troubled brother, he tried to be a friend. Arthur Bell Nicholls was the intimate witness to all the triumphs and tragedies of the Brontës' adult lives and The Last Brontë is his testament.

Paperback, First, 328 pages

Published September 5th 2017 by Ashmount Press

ISBN13 9780955283

536

I always struggle with my reviews. I want to always be fair and I try to remain open minded. Especially, when it comes to real figures such as The Bronte Sisters, their masterpieces, and of course, Mr. Nicholls.  I am a very strong admirer of Charlotte Bronte for as much of a strong-willed, opinionated woman as we can gather she was from her letters.  I have not researched into A.B. Nicholls life, so I don't know lf his letters survive.  The Last Bronte by S.R. Whitehead is a novel and he does wonderfully bring Arthur Bell Nicholls to life. His staunch religious beliefs, his working for Mr. Bronte, his friendships with all three sisters all found within these pages. It was interesting and very refreshing to read the male perspective for a change.  I enjoyed the novel very much and the author has a  lovely writing style. However, I was disappointed not to find a bibliography list, there was no notes section whatsoever, either. These two would have been very helpful for readers. Since there are lots of religious prayers cited within conversations between Nicholls and Bronte members. Also, the letters between Charlotte Bronte and Mr. Nicholls were wonderful to read but it started me thinking as to whether or not any of his letters survived? It would have been so nice to have a bibliography or notes section to flip back to. 

Arthur Bell Nicholls study as it looks today 

The Bronte Parsonage Museum

The Bronte Society

One of the facts we know about Arthur Bell Nicholls was he was the husband of Charlotte Bronte. Sadly, they were only together for nine months when she died early in her pregnancy. S.R. Whitehead, author, created a very interesting story line between Anne Bronte and Nicholls. In the novel, he falls for Anne romantically but he marries Charlotte for reasons I thought were a bit sad really. I don't want to ruin anything for readers but the marriage between Charlotte and Arthur doesn't happen until late in the novel and well let's just say if Anne Bronte is your favorite you will be very happy!