Southey advised the Bronte's to stick to cooking and darning.

 

The Bronte sisters

I visited the Bronte Parsonage in Howarth many years ago and St Peter's Church, at Hartshead, where Patrick Bronte, had once been the Minister.

There are no known photographs of the Bronte sisters that can be verified, but there are picture portraits and descriptions of them. The author Elizabeth Gaskell met Charlotte Bronte when she was 34 years old and Charlotte stayed with her at her home in Plymouth Grove, Manchester, on three occasions. I think she also knew the other two sisters. Charlotte was under five-foot-tall, very shy, and Mrs Gaskell said she had teeth missing. I read somewhere that one of the sisters stayed with Mrs Gaskell, possibly Emily, and had hit Mrs Gaskell's dog with her fist and had knocked the dog out, because it had soiled the laundry. On another occasion, Charlotte fled from a room at Plymouth Grove, because she was far too shy to meet a stranger who was visiting the house. Their father, Patrick Bronte, came to Manchester with Charlotte for an eye operation, and stayed at what became the Salutation pub near Manchester Polytechnic.

Before embarking on a writing career, the sisters had sent copies of their work to the poet Robert Southey, who advised them to stick to cooking and darning. Thankfully, they ignored his advice. All three of those sisters are better known today than he is.

Anne, Emily and Charlotte, were all ripped off by publisher's who made a lot more money from their literary efforts than they ever did. Charlotte Bronte's second novel, Shirley, is about the Luddites and is based on the attack on Cartwright's, Rawfolds Mill, near Cleckheaton in April 1812.

When I visited the area some years ago, the Shears Inn at Liversedge, a meeting place for Luddites, was still open as a pub. The landlord of the pub, Andrew Mitchell, had wanted to demolish the pub which dates from 1773 and replace it with four houses because he said the pub wasn't a viable business. This was opposed by some on Kirklees council who said the building was a spectacularly important piece of local history. The building is still functioning as a pub today.