from:
THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE
13 NOVEMBER 1993
Serious Brontë scholars shop at Bourne’s of Burnley, an establishment
famous for its hats. Bourne’s was opened in the Twenties – at the
same time as the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. But forget Haworth,
with all its literary archives and treasures. You can learn more while purchasing
a hat or a sequinned gown from Audrey Hall, the proprietress of Bourne’s,
than you’ll ever unearth in some dusty library.
It is remarkable that Mrs Hall has time to sell hats. A Conservative councillor for years, governor of several schools and the first woman chairperson of the local parish council, these days she is besieged by scholars coming to consult her and rummage through sacks of Brontëana. Not only can Audrey Hall often provide the missing link in some tricky aspect of the Brontë story; she is the last link. Her ancestors knew the Brontës. After an hour spent in her company, you feel you know them too.
It was a tiny, sepia photograph of a hatless lady that I had come to Burnley to see, an item that has sent shock waves through the Brontë world. For years, Audrey Hall has said that this is a portrait of Charlotte Brontë, only the second known to exist. The other – unearthed about a decade ago in the vaults of the National Portrait Gallery – shows a younger, prettier woman. Experts decided that that picture had been taken on Charlotte’s honeymoon in 1854, only months before she died. If they accept Mrs Hall’s picture, they must admit they were wrong. On looks alone, it is clear that their picture would have to have been taken a lot earlier, in the late 1840’s. Many Brontë lovers are reluctant to accept the new picture. The face is large-featured and square – not how they would like to see their heroine. I’ve heard it described by one irate male fan as resembling a pantomime dame. Nevertheless, Audrey Hall has researched her photograph so thoroughly that many eminent scholars now support her findings. Last month, reports from forensic laboratories used by the CID delivered their verdict: the picture that Mrs Hall has carried round in her handbag for the past six years is of Charlotte Brontë.
Audrey Hall admits it is not a face you would put on a tea towel. The famous painting of Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond is much more marketable. Flattering and feminine, it was commissioned by her publishers and designed to sell books.
Mrs Hall’s photograph belonged originally to Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontë’s great friend and the principal source of information for Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). Mrs Gaskell and Ellen Nussey appear to have conspired: while Mrs Gaskell politely glossed over her heroine’s appearance and used the Richmond painting as her frontispiece, Ellen Nussey held back photographs in her possession. Perhaps nothing more than kindness towards a dead friend motivated the pair. Nonetheless, they both benefited greatly from the Brontë industry. The Charlotte they purveyed to the Victorian public – and her romantic portrait – has sold well ever since.
You have only to look at the photographs to see why they were suppressed. Between sitting for two portraits (at the ages of about 32 and 38, by Mrs Hall’s reckoning), Charlotte Brontë lost what looks she’d had. She had also lost her brother and two sisters, and suffered the second great unrequited love of her life, for George Smith, her publisher. She had settled for a last-minute marriage to her father’s taciturn curate. These tragedies had taken their toll.
Mrs Hall is unperturbed by the upset she has caused. Unlike the rest of us, she grew up knowing the truth. Her family always said how ugly Charlotte Brontë was and, as for the virulent resistance Audrey Hall has encountered, she has been snubbed before:
“A teacher at school once started talking about the Brontës. I put my hand in the air and leapt up and down, ‘Please, Miss, my family knew the Brontës,’ she said. ‘Sit down, you rude child! Everyone round here knew the Brontës,’”
It is not surprising that Mrs Hall’s connections arouse envy in others. None of the Brontës had children and, to my knowledge, no one has ever claimed there to be any illegitimate offspring, even for the decadent Branwell. Direct descendancy being out of the question, Audrey Hall has the next best thing: Ellen Nussey, Charlotte Brontës best friend, and the recipient of hundreds of Charlotte’s elegantly penned letters. The Nussey family were inter-related with the Cookes and the Taylors, two great mill-owning families from whom Audrey is herself descended. They all lived in the Birstall area, a few miles east of Haworth, and Audrey’s family would have met Charlotte Brontë when she stayed with Ellen Nussey. Rather daringly, I mentioned controversial claims of a lesbian affair between Charlotte and Ellen. Audrey dismissed this right away. “There’s no evidence at all – my family would have known.”
Ellen Nussey’s granny was a Popperwell, Audrey’s family had married into the Popperwells. Audrey’s Auntie Violet could remember going to tea with the Nusseys and hearing about the Brontës. She was given a toy that Charlotte had owned – a shuttle on a string – to play with. Violet’s father was a founder-member of the Brontë Society. These links allow Mrs Hall privileged access to the details of Brontë lives.
Many Brontë scholars, for instance, have been puzzled as to why Charlotte went to Brussels to learn French and there suffered the first of her unrequited passions, for M Héger, her married teacher and the basis of two of her four novels (Villette and The Professor). Audrey Hall has the answer. Her ancestors had strong commercial links with Brussels, which gave Charlotte an introduction to French-speaking society. Peabody Cooke, Audrey’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, who came from Kidderminster, went to Belgium to learn to make Brussels carpet and married a nun. This caused such a scandal in Kidderminster that his family gave him money to leave.. He moved to Birstall, where be built a mill. Peabody’s son, Samuel Cooke, was the model for Robert Moore in Charlotte’s novel, Shirley, set around Birstall. Robert’s fictional mother was a Belgian nun. “Charlotte used all sorts of scandals from my family in her books. But they loved her for it – we’ve always been able to laugh at ourselves.”
“The Cookes were gentry,” said Mrs Hall, “a cadet line that had some connection with Charles I and Nell Gwyn. The mill was in our family till 1928. The Cookes married into the Firth family – Firth carpets – then the Firth family married into the Asquiths. So there you’ve got the link with Attlee, the prime minister.”
Audrey Hall claims an alarmingly wide catchment of distinguished connections, and when I remarked on this, she widened it further. She showed me a friendly note Winston Churchill had sent to an uncle, thanking him for a birthday card. It was written on D-Day. And a letter from Garibaldi – the Taylors sold carpet to his troops.
If Audrey’s ancestors were instrumental in bringing about Charlotte Brontë’s Brussels novels, they had a direct hand too in the writing of Wuthering Heights. Peabody Cooke was a bit of a dandy – his dancing parties were the talk of Birstall – and he was used by Emily Brontë has the model for Edgar Linton. One of the Cooke children had dark curly hair. He looked like a gypsy and everyone said Peabody must have brought him back from somewhere – like Heathcliff. Ellen Nussey was a constant visitor to Haworth, one of the few people Emily tolerated because Ellen let Emily’s dogs sit in her lap. “Ellen was a lovely person. A real gossip. She would have told the Brontës all the goings-on in my family. Emily got her characters’ names from my family – the Hindleys and Zillahs and Josephs. Those weren’t Haworth names.”
Audrey’s maiden name was Taylor. Her great-grandfather Taylor studied divinity in Bradford at the same time Branwell was there, unsuccessfully painting. When Taylor moved to Ulverston, near Barrow-in-Furness, Branwell followed, as tutor to the Popplethwaite family. “Grandfather Taylor would never have the name of Branwell mentioned in the house. We don’t know what he did, but it must have been awful. Very embarrassing for a Minister who’d got him the job. The only Brontë they really liked was Charlotte. Anne’s been underestimated though – she was the most normal, the only one who could hold down a job.”
If this sounds a little Thatcherite, it is hardly surprising. The proprietress of Bourne’s of Burnley has met Baroness Thatcher three times, and written an article on her clothes for Lancashire Life. A photograph of Audrey Hall with John Major hands in pride of place on the wall. “Such a nice, honest man. He could do with buying a few more suits, though.”
The picture of Charlotte will be something for Audrey’s descendants to inherit. I wondered if she had inherited other Brontë items, apart from the photograph. “The plate you’ve got your biscuit on – there are some like that in a case at Haworth. Then there’s a painting of a dog. We’re pretty sure it’s a Brontë picture. It’s rough – the Brontë’s weren’t great artists. Why did my family, who owned lots of fine paintings, keep it? You can see it’s the same style as Charlotte’s painting of Anne’s spaniel, Flossie. My family all went to Ellen Nussey’s house sale. She’d fallen out with her family and left her money to the church. My great-grandmother’s cousin, Mrs Needham, who knew Charlotte as a little girl, knew Ellen well and went to the sale. She was a great collector, and knew what to buy.”
When Mrs Needham died in the Fifties (aged 100), her property passed to her daughter, a nun who worked in India. The nun eventually came home, and when she died, in 1987, there was another big house sale. Audrey Hall stepped in. “I knew there were Brontë items at the sale, but my mother was dying at the time. All I could do was alert the Parsonage at Haworth – they bought a few bits. Everything belonged to the Catholic Church, since it had been the property of a nun, but I rang up and asked if there were any family papers. A few weeks later, seven suitcases and some sacks turned up. I came home one evening and the family had laid a paperchase up the drive and into the house – that’s what they thought of it all. We didn’t have the space – I had to get rid of things. It was a terrible job. The first suitcases were very boring, the nun’s papers. Then, I opened an envelope and in it was this hair. I thought ‘Urghh, the nun’s hair!’ and threw it straight on the fire. When I read the envelope, there was a note saying it was Anne Brontë’s hair – Charlotte had given it to Ellen when Anne died. The three of them were together in Scarborough, you see. There was so much stuff. There was this picture of an eagle-type bird, I don’t like birds, so that went in the bin. It was almost certainly a drawing by Emily, because of a note with it.”
I choked on my Brontë biscuit. Not Hero, Emily Brontë’s pet hawk?
“Who knows? It’s gone now. But then I found all these photographs of Ellen Nussey, and by this time I was in touch with John Nussey, Ellen’s great nephew, and he came over to see them. The moment he saw this photograph he said, “That’s not Ellen, perhaps it’s Charlotte.” John Nussey knew Ellen Nussey better than anyone. He died last year. I wish he could have read the forensic report – he was right, you see.
“Now, I’ll let you into a secret. I was up at Haworth on Tuesday, going through the Needham papers there. There was this photograph of a woman – a curious, snipped thing. I knew at once what it was.”
Audrey Hall thrust a tatty scrapbook into my lap. “See how everything is snipped out with nail scissors – that’s Ellen Nussey’s scrapbook. Look at this print of Ambleside given to Charlotte by Harriet Martineau – that’s Harriet’s signature, see. Dear, it’s all got a bit crinkled since I looked at it last …”
“It’s got damp.”
“This new photograph of Charlotte was snipped, just the same.”
“Audrey, are you telling me – I came to Burnley to talk about the second photograph of Charlotte Brontë – and now you’re saying there’s a third?”
“I only unearthed it on Tuesday. I’ve a lot of research to do yet, and I’m a thorough woman when I get going. We’ve always had two photographs of Charlottes’ husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, taken on their honeymoon. It stands to reason Charlotte would also have had two pictures taken. Now I think we’ve got them both. Have another biscuit, you look as though you need one.”
Alas for Emily Brontë’s pet hawk, Hero. Charlotte Brontë’s own hero, Napoleon, might not, one feels, have been so dismissive of a nation of shopkeepers if he had met Audrey Hall.
*
As a direct result of this article by Charlotte Cory in the Independent, November 1993, a BBC Bookmark film was made during the summer of 1994 about Audrey Hall's photograph and her quest to prove it was truly a portrait of Charlotte Bronte. This film aired in April 1995 and there were various sequences of correspondence and articles in the press associated with this, as follows:
Private Eye: EYE TV: Charlotte Brontë Unmasked (BBC2)
Sometimes the shenanigans surrounding the making of a television programme offer such strong entertainment value one can’t help wondering why the producer didn’t just dump the main feature and get on with making a behind-the-scenes documentary instead.
Such was the case with BBC2’s film about Charlotte Brontë which, after two troubled years in gestation, finally reached the screen last Saturday evening. At times the whole production threatened to topple over into low farce.
At the height of the controversy over the film, a bootleg copy of taped telephone conversations in which the producer, Daisy Goodwin, made unflattering remarks about the chairman of the Brontë Society and other members of the Bookmark team was doing the rounds at Television Centre, provoking much outraged amusement. In one riotous set piece, shortly before Christmas, a posse of Brontë Society council members marched on Wood Lane, declaring that they might only represent a small provincial literary society but this didn’t mean they weren’t prepared to take on the mighty corporation - in court if necessary – if their anxieties about the film weren’t resolved.
Daisy Goodwin has a patchy track record at the BBC where her high-handed ways and grand manner have won her few allies. For a time she depended on the patronage of Nigel Williams while he was editor of Bookmark. Goodwin, as she never tires of telling people, was the model for the character of Maisie Goodwill – described as the proud possessor of “the biggest jacksie in SW19” in Williams’s 1993 novel, East of Wimbledon.
By the time Williams moved to Omnibus, Goodwin had cleverly shored up her position by telling the Guardian that her new boss, Kim Evans, was the best thing ever to happen to BBC music and arts. At present, as executive producer of Bookworm, the BBC’s last ditch attempt at a populist books programme, Goodwin is riding high. Poll findings may tell Alan Yentob that book lovers are dissatisfied with it, but the fact that the programme has retained a reasonable share of the Antiques Roadshow Sunday teatime audience makes it, in the controller’s eyes at least, a success.
The idea for a film about Charlotte Brontë, with Goodwin at the helm, was originally suggested to Bookmark editor Roland Keating by fey, thirtysomething biographer Mark Bostridge. Keating took some persuasion, but eventually gave the project the green light. Naturally the chummy old school tie helped him reach a decision. He, Bostridge and Goodwin were all at Westminster School in the 70s and form part of the so-called “Westminster Mafia” in BBC Arts.
Faber novelist Charlotte Cory was employed as presenter. Before long, however, the film had left in its wake a trail of bruised egos and hurt feelings. Goodwin who likes to think of herself as an auteur, resented Bostridge’s position as the main Brontë authority on the film and went to extraordinary lengths to exclude him.
As for Cory, the year-long experience of working with Goodwin was, as she told the Sunday Times, “so extraordinary and vile it defies belief.” Half way through filming, without consulting anyone, Goodwin decided the film was not going to be about Charlotte Brontë but would instead be called “Brontë Business”, concentrating on what she saw as the exploitation by the Brontë Society of the Brontë heritage. Cory was to be the agent provocateur in confrontations with the society staged for the cameras. When Cory protested that this was not the programme for which she had been contracted, Goodwin resorted first to bullying tactics and then, when Cory demanded that she return to the original synopsis, marginalised her completely. Finally, when the society got wind of Goodwin’s plans, she was forced to revert to the original idea.
A film, initially budgeted at a modest £60,000 had by now soared to almost twice that figure (a situation not improved by Goodwin’s decision to cut short expensive filming days at Haworth in order to join her close friend, the Huddersfield poet Simon Armitage, on the fast train back to London).
The finished programme was received with consternation by BBC executives. The research was out-dated (the hoary old myth about Charlotte destroying the sequel to Wuthering Heights was resurrected and passed off as a dazzling new discovery); there wasn’t one memorable shot in the entire 50 minutes and the whole film wobbled around unconvincingly, unable to find a focus. When one reads Goodwin telling Time Out that the Brontë cult is “like another James Dean scenario”, it’s tempting to conclude that she was in over her head from the outset.
‘Booknark’
Several letters regarding this appeared in the correspondence pages of the
next edition of Private Eye including:
LETTERS :Wuthering arts
Sir,
Good to see that, at a time when the PANORAMA debate is grabbing the headlines
on most media pages, the EYE is maintaining its coverage of arts television.
However, I would like to correct some of the inaccuracies in your piece about
CHARLOTTE BRONTË UNMASKED. The “posse” of Brontë Society
council members who marched on Wood Lane was in fact a duo who came for an amicable
meeting. The film did not go over its budget, nor were any filming days cut
short. Charlotte Cory was not employed as a presenter, but as a contributor.
The BOOKWORM magazine programme had the highest average viewing figure of any
arts programme on television last year and the audience research was very positive.
The alleged “Westminster School Mafia” in the BBC’s music
and arts department is a fantasy. It consists of two people in a department
of over 200.
Yours faithfully
KIM EVANS
Head of Music and Arts, BBC Television
There was also a Diary feature in the Sunday Times:
SUNDAY TIMES (April 2nd 1995): Arts DIARY
Last night’s Bookmark documentary, detailing tensions between Charlotte
and Emily Brontë, earned advance press coverage by suggesting that the
former destroyed a second novel by the latter (quite a PR coup this, as the
claim had already appeared last year in Juliet Barker’s biography of the
Brontë family, and was duly reported in reviews). But just as intriguing
is the relationship between the programme’s producer, the Bookworm supremo
Daisy Goodwin, and Faber novelist Charlotte Cory, who apparently provided the
inspiration for the film via an article about a newly discovered photo which
may or may not depict her namesake. Initially contracted in 1993 as the documentary’s
“presenter”, Cory underwent a year-long experience she describes
as “so extraordinary and vile it defies belief”; steadily marginalised
as Goodwin’s plans evolved, she now resents the way her ideas were allegedly
“taken from me” by Goodwin and her Bookmark colleagues – dubbed
by Cory “the Westminster [School] mafia”. Goodwin, however, is less
than abashed: “I wanted to make a film about Charlotte Brontë and
she wanted to make a film about Charlotte Cory. I know which Charlotte I am
more interested in.” Ouch.
For OTHER related Bronte articles by Charlotte Cory see: index