I have been
fascinated with the three Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily, and Anne – ever
since I first read Jane Eyre in my
high school days. Even then, my
voracious appetite led me to read all of their novels. When I started an English degree in order to
do graduate work, the first class was in the summer before the full semester
started. The second class I took was on
British Women Writers. The class was
intense. We read everything by the
Brontës, along with all of Jane Austen, George Elliot, and Elizabeth
Gaskill. This reading regimen exactly
fulfilled all I had hoped for in my new adventure. When I saw a review of a Brontë biography by
Deborah Lutz, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects I
put everything else I was reading aside.
Deborah is a Professor of English at Long Island University, and she
lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has
written several books on the Victorian period.
Each of the nine
chapters delves into the personal lives of the three sisters by way of
examining a variety of objects they used every day. The chapters include “Tiny Books” – my
favorite – “Keeper, Grasper, and Other Family Animals,” and “The Alchemy of
Desks.” Along with detailed descriptions
in the nine chapters, is an array of photographs of the objects.
Charlotte |
In the “Preface,”
Lutz writes, “The Brontës scribbled, doodled, and inscribed in their books –
stuck plants, drawings, visiting cards in them – making their presence
manifest. Some of these well-used
volumes transmitted even more than evidence of reading; they had a certain
secret to them, which seemed to my nose, a fleshy smell. I was lucky to be able to touch (often
without gloves), turn over, bring close, and even sniff the things I handled in
libraries and museums” (Preface xxii).
Few things give me more pleasure than opening a new book and drinking in
the wonderful aroma of paper and ink. In
the “Tiny Books” chapter, Lutz adds, “The Brontës felt an intimacy with these
closely handled books, made by their own limbs and clothed with materials
familiar from the kitchen or the parlor.
This closeness of the body and the book was an ordinary feature of daily
life in the nineteenth century, a relationship no longer obvious today”
(23). I blame e-readers for the loss of
the tactile sensations when holding a finely made new book.
Emily |
Anne |
In the chapter on
“Family Animals,” Lutz explains, ‘For Emily, animals weren’t pets so much as
they were family” (105). I can visualize
Emily talking to her beloved Keeper as he cocks his head to one side, as our
beloved Lab often does. The chapter has
a drawing which “Emily immortalized [Keeper] in an expressive pencil portrait
she did in January 1834” (115). This
pencil drawing is included, along with the color pictures of his collar and a
watercolor, also by Emily, of Keeper without his collar.
Deborah Lutz has
written a warm, lovely, and informative look into the secret lives of Anne,
Emily, and Charlotte Brontë. The Brontës Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine
Objects is a delicious and wonderful trip to Haworth Parsonage in the
middle of the 19th century.
Take a walk on the Yorkshire moors and feel their presence.
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