Gone to the heather – As we gear back up to our ‘new normal’ things are really busy right now, so as the jobs stack up and the ‘to-do list’ lengthens I’m trying to remember to incorporate Emily Bronte’s fantastic habit into my own daily routine and you should too!
When all the duties and chores got a bit much, she’d take herself off to the place she loved best – the moors to re-charge herself and seek inspiration. She’d ‘gone to the heather’. Here’s Charlotte’s quote about Emily’s habit, it explains, beautifully, just why it was so important to Emily and shows us how important it is to us today.
So get out there and go to the heather – wherever yours is….
“My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty.”
Hello again, yes it’s definately been a while since I last blogged – over a year!
I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to get to do this for such a long time. We got embroiled in a serious amount of family stuff. My parents health, which is tricky at best, really went off-the-boil, big style and we needed to actively intervene to help them get to a better place (no, I did not bump my parents off). We helped them move to a lovely retirement flat, where they now have the daily support they need and are much nearer to us and their grandchildren – all good.
It did take a heroic physical and mental effort on the part of the whole family to achieve this. We sorted through the entire contents of my mum & dads home, where they’d accumulated nearly 40 years-worth of stuff – which was very exciting! We found a mumified dead mouse, 12 axes (yes really!), 3 microwaves (also yes, three – who needs three?!) and an actual mountain of interesting things. Not a suprise, as my parents are pretty intersting people: my dad used to keep his biscuit stash in his wellies!
Whilst embarking on the mamouth house sorting I did channel the brilliant Marie Condo and used her mindset (keep what you love, everything else can go) and many of her tips and techniques to scale the 5 bedroom house into a 2 bedroom flat. If, as we were, you’re faced with a seemingly ungovernable home environment, then I really recommend that you check out her book – it really did help us. In any case, we did get them downsized, removed the axes and excessive microwaves and into a comfortable & safe new home, so good job (she pats herself on the back).
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Now, I have some time to enjoy doing a bit of blogging, creating, walking, and exploring again, so you’ll be hearing from me a bit more often. I might even make some time to clear out my own clutter now!
Give your wardrobe a quick and easy halloween upgrade with our fab vintage jet and cat earrings and if you fancy something different we’ve got bats, origami cats and ravens some come and take a look!
Jade is a naturally occuring mineral most often found in shades of Green, but it can also be found in Browns, Oranges, White, Cream and Pink. It can be carved and polished to a very smooth finish, lending itself perfectly to jewellery making. Jade features strongly in Asian art, but also appears in many other cultures and locations, including South America, Canada and New Zealand.
Jade can refer to two different types of mineral: nephrite, a silicate of calcium and magnesium, or jadeite, a silicate of sodium and aluminum.
Nephrite Jade was first used during Neolithic times, in China, for utilitarian and ceremonial items. It came from the now-depleted deposits in the Ningshao area in the Yangtze River Delta and Dushan Jade was being mined as early as 6000 BC.
Jade was used to create many objects, from decorative housewares to jade burial suits. Jade has been considered to be the “imperial gem”, from the earliest Chinese dynasties to the present day. In Lantian, Shaanxi white and greenish nephrite jade is found in small quarries and as pebbles and boulders in the rivers. The river jade collection is concentrated in the Yarkand, the White Jade (Yurungkash) and Black Jade (Karakash) Rivers. On the southern part of the Silk Road, annual payments consisting of the most precious white jade were made to the Chinese Imperial court. They were worked into valuable objects d’art by skilled artisans. Jade became a favourite material for the crafting of Chinese scholars’ objects, such as rests for calligraphy brushes, as well as the mouthpieces of some opium pipes, due to the belief that breathing through jade would bestow long life.
Jadeite, in vivid emerald-green, pink, lavender, orange and brown was imported from Burma to China after about 1800. The bright green jade became known as Feicui (翡翠) or Kingfisher (feathers) Jade. It quickly became almost as popular as nephrite and a favorite of the nouveau riche, while scholars still preferred nephrite (white jade, or Khotan), which they felt symbolised noblemen.
The Chinese character 玉 (yù) is used to denote the several types of stone known in English as “jade” and because of the value added culturally to jades throughout Chinese history, the word has also come to refer more generally to precious or ornamental stones and is very common in more symbolic usage as in phrases.
In the history of the art of the Chinese empire, jade has had a special significance, comparable with that of gold and diamonds. Jade was used for the finest objects, including grave furnishings for high-ranking members of the imperial family. Today, due to it’s cultutal significance and the rising middle class in China, the value of jade and it’s popularity has increased greatly, with the finest jade, seeing a tenfold increase in value making it a popular choice for collectors across the world.
It’s Anne’s 200th birthday this year and to celebrate her and her life I wanted to look a little closer at her and how we view her.
The portrayal and our understanding of the Bronte Sisters has had many incarnations and has changed dramatically over the years. It’s always interesting to look at this, as it reveals other facets of their complex personalities, offering us another tantalising glimpse of who they really were.
The sisters have been variously portrayed as the scourge of decent society, the lonely gentle geniuses, victims of a hard, cruel and isolated environment. There are so many words that have been used to describe them and it’s all too easy to accept a one-dimensional view of them. They are long gone and as we view them through the lens of our current 21st century view-point we can easily mistake our contemporary impressions and influences that colour our view of them, for the actuality of their existence and who they were. This is especially true of Anne, we know relatively little of her and she’s often been portrayed as the quiet, weak sister.
She was born in Thornton West Yorkshire on 17th January 1820, the youngest of the Bronte children. Within a year the family had de-camped from Thornton to Haworth where Anne’s dad Patrick had been offered a parish to watch over and reasonable sized home for his growing family. Within a few months of arriving in Haworth, Maria Bronte; Anne’s mum had died, leaving Patrick to raise their six children alone.
Anne has often been described as gentle and sometimes referred to as weak, however, I really feel that she was so much more that this and her perceived weakness comes, in part, from her position as the youngest of the family. I also feel that looking at the events of her life and her writing she was really very strong and self-sufficient.
It’s documented that Anne was the only Bronte sibling that had no memory of their mother and so from the very start, that fact set her apart from the rest of her sisters and brother. When Patrick Bronte finally decided to send his daughters to school, it was decided the Anne was still too young to go, so she stayed at home, alone in a house full of adults.
Only to be re-joined by her two eldest sisters when they returned home from school to die of Consumption, which they did in rapid succession. One can only imagine how traumatic these events must have been for young Anne and how self-reliant she must have had to be, whilst all attention was focused on her two dying sisters. We know that Helen Burns in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was based on their eldest sister Maria and it is to be wondered if the Helen’s death scene described in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was a result of Anne’s description of their sister’s deaths. A few days later her next two sisters Charlotte and Emily returned home, as the school closed due to the outbrake of Consumption. Anne must have lived in fear that they too would die. They did not succumb to Consumption, during childhood, but these events must have given Anne nerves of steel and a very solid sense of self-reliance.
It is very clear from the writing of the Bronte Sisters that the idea of becoming a governess was a terrible nightmare to them, but it was Anne who went and found herself a position as a governess to the Ingams at Blake house. Her letters show that it was indeed a nightmare; she was homesick and felt out of place and it is understood that several episodes in Jane Eyre; where John Reed throws a book at Jane and when the Ingrams discuss how they mistreated their governesses came from Anne’s actual experiences as a governess that she related to Charlotte. Despite the horrors, and the loss of her post at Blake House, she endured and was determined to help support her family financially. She found another post at Thorpe Green Hall, staying for over 5 years – refusing to give up and return home.
She even managed to get a place for her brother Branwell, who had a very sketchy professional history. This was no mean feat for a lowly governess and she was clearly aware that bringing her brother into her place of work, was a risk, yet she bravely stepped up.
Anne’s worries regarding her brother’s behaviour were well founded, but she kept going, as a governess, through the subsequent scandal as Branwell & Mrs Robinson proceeded to have an affair. She was revolted by their behaviour and had to put up with the humiliation of household servants, locals and friends gossiping, and she did. She only left her position when the Mr Robinson dismissed her and Branwell, after he found out about the affair. Throughout, she had shown remarkable strength of purpose and resilience – it wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.
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Anne wrote her novel Agnes Grey, a largely autobiorgaphical account of the life of a governesss. She also wrote poems on the subject of love and loss which are ascribed to her (as believed unrequited) feeling for Willie Weightman, her father’s curate. Willie died of Cholera and her writing shows that Anne felt his loss deeply, but again her strength of character is evident as she kept to her purpose and plans regardless of suffering and how hard she found it.
In the following years Branwell met with further disappointments in his professional and love lives and he fell into alcoholism and Laudanum addiction. As his physical and mental health declined, Anne stoically nursed him, watching him waste away as he purged and ranted – not a task for the faint hearted.
After the loss of Branwell, Anne wrote her novel: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, It’s the story of Helen Graham, abused by her alcoholic husband, Arthur Huntingdon, she runs away. She meets Gilbert Markham and falls in love with him, but they are unable to marry. Anne’s depiction of Arthur’s decline was based on Branwell’s death. Anne’s story speaks clearly of the unfairness faced by abused wives, it is an unflinching depiction of alcoholism, she refused to romanticise what happened to her brother. Helen Graham is a clear-thinking, strong woman and Anne creates a narrative about the choices that the men in her story faced and how they handled them, which even today feels relevant – none of her sister’s Byronic heroes for Anne, just real men with real demons and choices.
Despite bravely facing more loss and heart-ache when Emily died shortly after, Anne also had great joy in her love of the seaside. Right until the very end of her short life, Anne retained her strength of character. As her health declined, Anne decided that she wanted to spend some of her little time left at the Yorkshire Coast. Charlotte and her farther both felt that Anne was too weak to travel and along with Ellen Nussey tried to pursued her that her plan was a bad one, but they failed. Anne, strong and independent as ever, carried her point and with Charlotte to help her, she travelled to her beloved Scarborough, where she died a few days later. Again showing her brave spirit, she remained unafraid of death to the end.
I feel that when we look at Anne, we have to accept that she was a multi-facetted, complex individual and far more so that then labels that have been applied to her would leads us to believe. She was gentle and quiet, but she was also clear-sighted, brave, persuasive, smart, resilient and really, really, strong.
It remains only to say that; Anne was an amazing woman and she left an incredidble legacy. The best way to honour her and her birthday is to read her wonderful writing, so let’s do just that!
Gone to the heather 