trip to Haworth

So yesterday was my trip to Haworth. It was wonderful! The village is absolutely beautiful, very quaint, and the walks were good. I didn't do much walking, as it IS November, after all, and the gound out there was covered with snow, which partially melted during the day and left the dirt trails quite muddy and yucky. But now that I have boots again, I would like to go back sometime and take a REAL walk, out to Top Withens, or Bronte Falls, or even Wycoller Hall (supposedly the real-life model for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre - read about its ghosts).

The village's claim to fame really is the Bronte family -- there's not much else that's ever happened there of interest to anyone outside the village itself -- and they show it! I was so amused by the constant references to the family and their works that I even wrote down a list of them.

• Rochester House


• Bronte Cottage


• Withens Cottage


• Bronte House


• Eyres 'N' Graces (one of my favorites - it was a shop)


• Villette Coffee House


• Ye Olde Bronte Tea Rooms


• Ye Olde Bronte Confectionery and Stationery Shop

There were probably several others that I didn't recognize, as I've never read any of their works outside of Jane Eyre -- a deficiency that I've always intended to remedy and never have yet.

I also was highly entertained by one of the shops on the Main Street (which looks very much as it must have 150 years ago): it was called "The Piano's Not for Sale", and outside the shop was a sign reading:

Dignified Haggling and Virtuoso Piano Playing Allowed

I ate a Yorkshire parkin, a local baked speciality, which was delicious. It was rather like a large, round piece of gingerbread. It filled me up quite nicely, and I was never hungry again until dinner time.

The Bronte Parsonage Museum was also wonderful. It is the original building that the Bronte family lived in while their father was the parson for Haworth parish. Much of the furniture in the house was original, with only a few large items having been reproduced from sketches by the children. This year is the 150th anniversary of Charlotte's marriage to her father's curate, a man named Arthuer Bell Nicholls, and there was a large display in Charlotte's room about their marriage. I hadn't realized until just the last few weeks that she was ever married. I was very interested in their story, and one of my next books will probably be "The Life of Charlotte Bronte" by Elizabeth Gaskell, who was a close friend of Charlotte's during the last few years before Charlotte died. In fact, if I remember rightly, it seems the Gaskell was the one who undertook a bit of match-making with the couple -- but that was after Arthur had already proposed once. It's a long story. Maybe I'll tell it another time.

I took a little walk around the village, about a mile or so to Penistone Hill, and then wandered quite a bit trying to get the right pictures with my camera. It was quite a task -- like chasing the horizon. I kept looking out and thinking, "Oh, that would be a lovely picture, if I could just get in the right position for it." So I would walk a little way trying to find the right position, and by that time it had disappeared -- or rather, shifted, so that I now thought that the scene over there would be a nice photo, and would walk around to try and shoot it. All in all, I had quite a job of it trying to capture the West Yorkshire scenery. I did get one or two good shots, though, which I'll add to my website as soon as I have a little time.

On re-reading this entry, I realize that it sounds unnaturally like Charlotte Bronte's style of writing. I suppose that's what I get for being so preoccupied with her lately -- I just finished Jane Eyre today, yesterday I of course thought a lot about her, and then I've also decided to use an extract from Jane Eyre for one of my papers (the stylistics one, and it's been quite entertaining so far -- have I menetioned before how much I love stylistics?).