Alive And Unwell In Haworth

The Brontës are alive and unwell in Haworth
Tourist trappings cannot stifle the vivid sense of their writing life to be found here

Article by Sam Jordison
"Last week, I visited Haworth and the town was bathed in sunshine. There were birds singing. Red, white and blue bunting strung across the steep cobbled main street fluttered in the warm breeze. People sat out on the street drinking Timothy Taylor's Landlord bitter and smiling. It was disconcerting. The town has always existed in my head under lowering skies and buffeted by howling winds and misery. All this summery comfort confounded my expectations.

But then again, that disjunction was probably fitting. This is a place where reality and fiction have had an uneasy relationship for almost 200 years. It's been subject to that curious form of literary tourism that seeks to find a concrete source for imaginary locations ever since it was discovered that the Bell brothers were really the Brontë sisters and that they'd churned out their lovelorn epics in the local parsonage.

I can't fully account for the urge that makes us want to find a real place that might have been – for instance – Wuthering Heights. That refusal to accept it was just make-believe has sent generations of schoolchildren (and me) sniggering over Penistone Hill and up on towards Dick Delf Hill to look at the ruins of Top Withens farm – on the off-chance that they might once have provided the inspiration. Maybe it's because we find it impossible to believe someone could actually invent such a haunting location. Maybe we want to drink from the same fountain of inspiration as Brontë. Maybe we're just a little weird.

Certainly, there's something odd about the fact that the main industry in Haworth depends upon a family whose last productive scion (Charlotte) died in 1855. Where every other street and building bears their stamp: Heathcliff Mews, The Brontë Bridge, Brontë Cottage B&B, the beautiful (but sadly now derelict) Brontë cinema, the Branwell tea rooms (also defunct). Seemingly the only places that aren't named after the family or their works are those that were built before 1855. But nearly all of these bear plaques noting their association. The apothecary where bad brother Branwell bought his laudanum. The Black Bull where he drank away his best years. The school where Charlotte taught. The church where their father preached. And, of course, The Parsonage where they all lived.

Inside this famous house, the Brontë pilgrimage starts to make more sense. Barthes might not like it, but here the writers come alive. The brooding atmosphere of their books is explained. The misery takes on palpable dimensions. The first thing that you notice about the house is that it's dominated by the graveyard of the next-door church. The east and south faces of the house both look out on grim ranks of slabs, monuments and grey crosses. This takes on yet more significance when you learn that in the first half of the 19th century the average life expectancy in Haworth was 25.8. Funerals were therefore monotonously regular occurrences and the graveyard was so overfilled with fresh bodies that their seepage poisoned the local water supply … in turn creating more bodies.

So it would be surprising if sickness and mortality weren't in the sisters' minds as they sat writing together in a small room looking out over the flowers in the small parsonage garden and the larger crop of death beyond. But this room is also redolent of the joy of creation. A small table they all three shared is still there and it's fun to think of them working at it, getting their papers all mixed up, annoying each other with interruptions, sharing pots of ink and getting up to pace in front of the hearth, discuss a scene, talk about dreams of publication … It's quietly inspiring and – dare I say it? – life-affirming. Or at least, it is until you read the notice over the small blue sofa at the back of the room, and you learn that this is where Emily Brontë died, maintaining until almost the very end that she wasn't actually ill.

Such highs and lows continue throughout the house. Branwell's precocious 13-year-old paintings. His eerie cartoons of the death coming to get him aged just 31. Charlotte's fat first editions. Her brief letters apologising for how the recent deaths of all her siblings have made her a poor correspondent. Miniature books, readable only with magnifying glasses stitched together by the girls in childhood. Funeral cards.

Even in the sunshine, and amongst coach-loads of tourists, it's a moving experience. Small wonder that so many people continue to visit."