Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

a favorite place of the Brontës, due to Anne and Branwell’s visits during their time at Thorp Green. Mrs Robinson subscribed to a circulating library there, and it seems likely that during their time of favor in the household they visited the city frequently with the family. Anne bought books and music there, and Branwell established a connection with Henry Bellaby, who ran the library and bookshop and published the Yorkshire Gazette , which printed Branwell’s poems. No doubt during those visits Anne conceived her great love of the Minster, which led, after her resignation from Thorp Green, to a short expedition she and Emily paid to York in June–July 1845 – “our first long journey by ourselves together” as Emily rather touchingly calls it. Later Charlotte, Ellen Nussey, and Anne broke their journey there on the way to Anne’s chosen dying-place of Scarborough. Charlotte in her cash-book identifies things to be bought there as “Bonnet. Corsets, Stockings black silk. Dress. Gloves. Ribbon for neck” but commented in a letter to Ellen what a “dreary mockery” talk of such purchases seemed (12 & 14 May 1849?). Anne’s pleasure at seeing the Minster again is movingly recorded by Ellen. York was also visited by Patrick for the York Assizes, where the Beaver forgery case was tried in March 1843, and where Branwell would have been taken to jail if his debts had not been settled in 1846. ... log in or subscribe to read full text