A Son of the Rock

And so via East Lancashire and West Yorkshire to Haworth. We came over the moors from Hebden Bridge through Oxenhope. This was very atmospheric as the mist was rolling around the hilltops, though not as bleak as I had been expecting and very reminiscent of moorland Scotland.

While the town of Haworth is well enough signposted the Brontë Parsonage Museum wasn’t until we had almost passed it. The village from their time we would have completely missed were it not for the museum signpost. The photo is of the original part of the building as it was in the Brontë’s time. An addition to the right was made by a later incumbent who had a sizable income.

The museum society’s web site is here.

The rooms are/were tiny. How they crammed two adults and four children plus servants in there is a miracle. It’s worth a visit on its own and the staff (all volunteers I believe) were very friendly. The talk and more especially the tour outside afterward were very good indeed.

When the Brontës lived there, Haworth was essentially one cobbled street on a steep hill. The old village was more or less shut when we were there, though. I think the shops – almost all Brontë or tourist related – do most of their trade on a weekend.

The church was/is down the hill a wee bit from the parsonage, separated from it by the cemetery but still uphill of the village, though. At that time table top burials (with flat, not upright, gravestones) remained in use in Yorkshire though they’d been phased out elsewhere. Apparently Haworth was the unhealthiest place in England then. The Rev Brontë was never done taking funerals. We were told that there were 42,000 dead in the cemetery – this in a space not much bigger than a penalty area!

The nature and density of the burials meant that the corpses didn’t decompose properly. Sometimes they were dug up and burned to make room for later bodies. When it rained, ground water from the graveyard would drain under the church and rise up through the floor. The smell must have been appalling. This stuff along with raw sewage would also have flowed down the street. What with that and the overcrowding – Haworth was extremely densely populated with loads of mills and such – no wonder the death rate was so high.

The views now are not at all bleak, rather pleasant actually, but it was hopelessly remote in the early nineteenth century and must have seemed like the end of the earth. Modern Haworth lies mainly across the valley from the old village.

There was a nice (twentieth century) park at the bottom of the hill, too.

Head of Zeus, 2023, 309 p. Reviewed for ParSec 9.

The Yorkshire Moors make an ideal setting for tales of the uncanny. A thin place. Remote, wild, desolate, atmospheric, and above all, wuthering. A world beyond the world. It is easy to imagine strange goings on, mysterious creatures, ghosts, hidden menace, inhabiting the landscape. But we don’t have to. The Brontë sisters (well, Emily) already did. And now, so too has Tim Powers in a story whose central focus is on the Brontë family and Emily’s dog, Keeper, but also incorporates the author’s usual injections of weird. In particular here we have boggarts, gytrashes, barguests, (the latter two being essentially the same thing,) werewolves, a temple on the moors to the Roman goddess Minerva, double-bladed knives called dioscuri, an ancient creature with latent potency buried inside Haworth Church under a slab with an Ogham inscription. Not to mention clandestine human organisations known as the Oblique and the Huberti.

The prologue sees Branwell Brontë inveigling Emily and Anne along to a cave where they all leave smears of blood on the rocks. This acts as a primer for the subsequent plot, a debt to be called in. (I note again the prevalence of blood in these sorts of invocation.) Later, in his time in London, Branwell is bitten by a dog and more recently pricked by a dioscuri. Emily too has been bitten, though escaped the knife. But both are marked.

Their father Patrick’s great-grandfather, Hugh Brunty, had been on a boat crossing to Ireland when a child stowaway was found whom the crew said was a devil and wanted to throw overboard. Hugh saved the boy, who received the name Welsh (his believed origin,) and adopted him. Welsh was a spirit and possessed Hugh, and later his son, but in the next generation Patrick’s father resisted possession, and with the help of his dog killed Welsh’s body but not its spirit. When Patrick (now Brontë) came to England the spirit followed him. It is to keep any such demons at bay that Patrick fires his gun at Haworth Church every morning.

Emily’s embroilment comes when, near a ruin called Ponden Kirk, she saves a man named Alcuin Curzon from a werewolf. He is one of the Huberti, working to prevent the Oblique reuniting the two halves of their biune god (one half being Welsh and the other the thing under the slab.) Emily in this tale is the strongest of the Brontë siblings, and along with Keeper, whose ghost doppelgänger manifests itself when times are needful, is instrumental in the resolution.

Powers has form with incorporating literary figures in his work. Previous books of his have featured Lord Byron, the Rossettis, and William Ashbless, a poet of his own invention (with James Blaylock.) How much this convinces may depend on the reader’s knowledge of those characters’ backgrounds but in My Brother’s Keeper there is too little of the Brontës as Brontës. It could of course be argued that in the context of the story Powers had little room for this, but while mention is made of the sisters’ initial book of poetry, the manuscript of Wuthering Heights being at a publisher and Branwell’s tendency to see himself as his fictional creation Northangerland, only once do we see the sisters sit down to write. (Branwell’s attempts to do so are depicted as futile, counterproductive and tainted by possession.) That the sisters’ work exists is, however, essential to the way Powers resolves the story and he gives us a supernatural – and also literal – explanation for the disease then called consumption, which in real life was to take both Emily and Anne.

All that aside; as a fantasy the novel is gripping and very well written, as is customary with Powers. Certainly not a chore to read.

Pedant’s corner:- “an uncharacteristic howel” (howl,) “toward he parsonage” (the parsonage,) “in that that wilderness” (only one ‘that’ required,) “none of the Oblique order were very eager” (none … was eager,) “‘has strived’” (I’m sure Emily Brontë would have said ‘has striven’,) ditto “‘a different route than the one’”  (‘a different route from the one’,) “keeper had laid down beside her” (had lain down,) “off of” (it’s just ‘off’ no ‘of’,) “the paralysis had been had been some consequence” (no need for that second ‘had been’.) “‘Where’s your crows?’” (‘Where are your crows?’,) “straps on this shoulders” (on his shoulders,) specactles (spectacles,) metioned (mentioned,) “and laid down between their boots” (lay down.)

The Story of the Brontës, Penguin, 1986, 409 p including ii p Foreword and ii p Postscript First published 1976.

In her foreword Banks mentioned that when she was approached with the commission to write this book she was daunted – as who would not be given its subject is three of the best-known writers of the nineteenth century, plus their unfortunately less gifted brother? Much of course is known about the Brontë family (and even more written about them) but gaps remain. The fascination they hold for many is such that any exploration of their lives will attract readers eager to glean how such a hotbed of literary invention should arise within one family from a small village in the back of beyond.

So does Dark Quartet illuminate much? A novel is likely to be more accessible than a drier academic piece but has a different purpose and as a novel Dark Quartet suffers from a lack of focus. Here, four main characters are too many, attention to each too diffused.

A lot, especially in the book’s initial stages, is told rather than shown, making any differences between Emily and Charlotte (not so much Anne, as she was younger) haze over. It is only in the latter stages where Emily’s fierce – and thwarted – desire to remain incognito distinguish them. Branwell, praised as he was within the family and over-indulged by his father, did not have the self-possession to rise above that estimation – though surely he secretly must have known, or at least suspected, that his talents were minimal, something which no doubt contributed to his descent into dissolution. It is his learning by accident (for the others had taken pains to keep it from him) that his sisters had attained the validation of publication that precipitates his final crisis. Emily and Anne succumb to consumption, the former by apparently willing it, the latter with forbearance. The unhealthiness at the time of Haworth as a village, the one with the worst death rate in England, the Brontës’ home sited just above the packed cemetery whose decaying contents seeped into its surroundings during any rainfall, running under the church and into the village, goes unremarked here.

Mention is made of the young Brontë siblings’ inventions of imaginary worlds, their notebooks filled with tiny writing, but only on the odd occasion does anyone take to the fabled moors – for inspiration or otherwise. Anne’s (actually not well evidenced) falling in love with her father’s curate Mr Weightman, who was soon to die of cholera, is stated rather than shown but Anne is depicted as being undemonstrative. Similarly Charlotte’s formative sojourn in Brussels at the Pensionnat Heger is treated somewhat cursorily.

As an introduction to the family’s history Dark Quartet is an admirable endeavour but perhaps inevitably it fails to conjure up the inner nature of these remarkable people, fails to render them whole. Maybe the novel as a form needs its authors to have free reign, its characters not to be too slaved to historical individuals, to convince completely. Or is it that in this case the task is simply too great?

Pedant’s corner:- Miss Evans’ (Miss Evans’s,) “one of the Miss Woolers” (one of the Misses Wooler,) whiskey (several times; whisky,) Mr Williams’ (Mr Williams’s,) Mr Nicholls’ (Mr Nicholls’s.)

On Monday myself and the good lady had an emotional day when we said our final goodbye to Eric Brown, Science Fiction writer, crime novelist, devoted husband and father, a dear friend, a gentle man and gentleman.

He had an interesting life which took in his origins in Haworth, Yorkshire, and a sojourn in Australia before returning to his Yorkshire roots then visiting India without first ever having tasted a curry. He soon learned to cook curries from scratch and was a devotee of that food from then on. He also spent some time in Greece. All of these influences fed into his fiction.

After his marriage to Finn they moved to Cambridgeshire before, with their beloved daughter Freya, coming up to Scotland to live in Berwickshire.

I first met Eric at a Science Fiction convention and immediately recognised him as one of nature’s good guys. It wasn’t until the move to Scotland that we were able to have extended conversations with him, though he and I had been emailing each other for a long time. In his emails he frequently would note a particularly good performance by Sons while usually bemoaning how Leeds United had fared. Football, SF and literature (probably in that order) were our perennial talking points, though the conversation would roam far and wide.

He always sought out a good curry house and would be disappointed when the fare wasn’t to his liking. I remember he told us a story about a meal in a curry restaurant in Dunbar where he said to the owner afterwards that it had not been formulated properly – only to receive the reply that that was how their patrons liked it. A year or so later he went to the same establishment to try to obtain for one of his own curries an ingredient which he had run out of. The owner was surprised Eric cooked his own curries and, being short of a chef, immediately offered him a job! Eric refused, no doubt courteously.

Eric sometimes solicited from me my comments on a story or novel he had not yet submitted to a publisher and never moaned at my nit-picking. He also took with very good grace my irritation at the use of the ‘time interval later’ turn of phrase.

(Edited to add: this was such a difficult post to write I knew I would miss out something. I had intended to say that the good lady and myself felt incredibly honoured when Eric dedicated one of his books to us.)

Eric, it was an absolute privilege to know you and call you friend. I still cannot bring myself to believe you have gone and that those emails will no longer drop into my in-box.

Eric Brown: 24/5/1960 – 21/3/2023. Much missed.

This is a post I’ve been dreading.

My dear friend Eric Brown has died.

He had not been well for some time and had borne it with fortitude and good grace (and not a little optimism, or so it seemed when we visited him) but though this outcome was always likely the news nevertheless came as a shock.

A proud Yorkshireman – born and brought up in Haworth – and not shy of living up to the stereotype, Eric was neverthless one of the kindest, friendliest people I have ever met. His writing embodied those attributes and always had a warm, human heart to it but was not appreciated as widely as it ought to have been and never achieved as much success as it deserved.

Among many other things I’ll miss our mutual commiserations about the fortunes of our respective beloved football teams (in his case Leeds United.)

He is a great loss not only to the field of Science Fiction (and with his Langham and Dupré stories to the ‘cosy crime’ genre) and as a friend to the good lady and myself but most of all to his wife Finn and daughter Freya, taken from them far too soon.

Words are not enough.

Eric Brown: 24/5/1960 – 21/3/2023. So it goes.

Canongate Classics, 2005, 178 p plus vi pages introduction by Edwin Morgan. First published 1933.

Another from the list of 100 best Scottish Books. It is best to avoid Edwin Morgan’s introduction, as I did, till after reading the main text.

Despite its first appearance being in the 1930s there is a Victorian quality to this novel; not so much Dickensian as Hardy-like, or, given the author’s interest in those sisters (among other non-fiction works she wrote Haworth Harvest: The Lives of The Brontës) perhaps Brontëesque.

The narrator, Lisbet Lockhart, is one of three sisters, daughters of the manse in a rural parish. Their father is withdrawn and mother unobservant but there is a Nannie who is full of old Scots sayings. It is she who provides the meaning of gowk storm – strictly an unseasonal fall of snow in spring, an occurrence which actually is not too rare in Scotland even now – as, “Something o’ ill chance that micht fa’ to ony o’ us and that willna bide.”

To complete her education Lisbet’s father arranges for her to have Latin lessons with the local dominie, Mr MacDonald, after his normal schoolday is finished. Her eldest sister, Julia, makes excuses to come along with her. The attraction between Julia and MacDonald is kept secret but Mr Lockhart comes across them while they are sheltering from a storm. It is revealed the dominie is a Roman Catholic and the girls’ father hastens to ensure he is removed from his post. Julia is distraught, especially when MacDonald departs the village without a word to her and leaving all his possessions behind. Suddenly he is said to have been doing all manner of uncanny things though nobody had said ill of him till they discovered he was a Catholic. He is later rumoured to have joined a monastery. This part of the book highlights the sectarian prejudices which have blighted Scotland for centuries and have still not died out. For Julia this turns out to be only a passing disappointment as she accepts the proposal of (the much older and widowed) Mr Strathern just over a year later. As Nannie says, if in a later context, “It a’ passes, if ye only bide lang enow.” The focus then shifts to Emily Lockhart and her embroilment with Stephen Wingate, who is already engaged to Emily’s best friend, Christine. This entanglement is not a passing storm and provides the novel’s emotional impact.

The tight viewpoint employed by Morrison means that some of the characters – Wingate, Nicholas Strathern (who almost out of the blue professes a liking for Lisbet and is kissing her a short walk to the gate later,) even Mrs Lockhart – are less fleshed-out than would be ideal. The same cannot be said for the egregious Mr Boyd, the locum for Mr Lockhart when he is taken ill.

Before I read this I also read a prescription for good beginnings of stories one of which was to avoid exposition. “Nothing makes readers close a book faster than a long opening paragraph describing a mountain range.” Both the Prologue of The Gowk Storm and Chapter One of Book One begin with descriptions of landscape. Neither is particularly detrimental to reader engagement. In “classic” books written by Scots and set in Scotland it is rather a feature that a feeling for the landscape, as well as for its inhabitants, pervades them. Here Morrison has Lisbet muse that “Perhaps the shadows of things were like the lives of people…. The changeless thing of which we go so unaware from cradle to grave.” In the novel’s elegiac Epilogue a curlew’s call has “All the world’s sorrow, and all the world’s pain, and none of its regret.”

Not every ill chance fails to bide.

Pedant’s corner:- liteary (literary: this was in the biographical info prior to the title page,) span, Scotch for Scots (this must have been okay in 1933,) a vivid green fungi (did this mean fungi of a vivid green?) before he axed her (the only other time I’ve ever seen “axed” for “asked” is in “urban” speak,) over and river (over the river?) And in the introduction: observent (observant,) unsuitableness (unsuitability surely?)

Gollancz, 1995, 384p

The book is set several generations after the devastating Gene Wars of the late twenty-first century. Varieties exist of humans genetically altered by what Sullivan terms virii (though why “viruses” would not have sufficed is difficult to see.) Unaltered, true humans cannot survive on Earth in the open but are confined to reservations, known as rez. Society is now run by a group of disembodied Heads – known as “the Pickled Brains” – who were found in the ruins of the buildings occupied by Ingenix, the company largely responsible for the Wars.

A series of interplanetary portals has been found at Underkohling, somewhere in the outermost reaches of the Solar System, from some of which no-one returns. The fugitive bosses of Ingenix were thought to have escaped through one of these. When indications show that travel back through this gate may be possible Daire Morales goes to investigate and is drawn through the portal.

On Earth, Jenae Kim, an altermode who has gills and so can breathe underwater – such altermoders can also communicate telepathically with dolphins – is employed by the Heads to help decode the data from the Underkohling gate and is aided by her dolphin pod.

Morales finds a strange world beyond the gate, inhabited by children and adolescents who only have time to reproduce before a “distortion” changes them into something inhuman and inimical. Those who show signs of distorting are driven out before they can inflict damage. The surroundings of this world – the lywyn – are a repository of memory mediated by the “ghosts” of those who have distorted. (Lethe is classical Greek for forgetfulness and was one of the rivers of the underworld.)

Jenae Kim gradually becomes drawn into conflict with the Heads and the threads of the novel draw together with a hijacked expedition to the gate.

This was Sullivan’s first novel and as such it is impressive. The main characters’ motivations are comprehensible and distinct.

There is always a problem in such a scenario with how to depict non-humans in the round. Too often they can be one or two-dimensional at best. Here the altered humans known as One Eyes are not particularly fleshed out – to be fair they are mainly background – but most of the children beyond the gate are merely ciphers while the main agent in this setting, their leader Tsering, has an attribute which is largely due to plot necessity and alters as a due result.

You may recall I had not been overly impressed with Sullivan’s Someone to Watch Over Me. Her last year’s BSFA Award nominee Lightborn was more engaging – and shows an interesting parallel with Lethe as regards motifs – but I still would probably not have bought this but for sighting it in a second hand bookshop (in Haworth.) It is good stuff, though.

During the summer we were in South Queensferry in order to take the boat out to Inchcolm Island.

While there I took a few photos. I hadn’t expected to see a building with Deco styling* but this was on the main street.

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There was also St Mary’s Church, one of the oldest in Scotland.

(I remember remarking about buildings in Haworth, Yorkshire and Inchcolm Abbey that, unusually, they had stone roofs. St Mary’s also has stone roofing, shown to best advantage in the above photo.)

The War Memorial is fixed halfway up the wall of another building – the Jubilee Clock Tower – on the main street.

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A couple more photos of South Queensferry are on my flickr.

*Edited to add: Thanks to a comment I have discovered the Art Deco style building was once a cinema, the Regal.

On our recent trip I seem to have passed through, or close to, a fair few towns in England that have or had teams in the Football League, which gave me some idea of their geographic proximity. Starting with Sheffield, we went on through Derby, bypassed Mansfield, then headed back up to Chesterfield where I photographed the famous crooked spire which lends the nickname Spireites to the local side.

Cheterfield had a large street market on the go the morning we were there. It made the place seem thriving though whether it truly is or not I have no idea.

After that it was up north through Huddersfield and Halifax on our way to Haworth again.

Yet in all these travels I caught sight of not one single football stadium – though I had seen a road sign for Brammall Lane in Sheffield.

The reason for going to Haworth this time was we hadn’t seen as much of it as we would have liked when we were there before.

This certainly wasn’t there in the Bronté’s time. It’s now a stop on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway – one of those preservation railways which reflect the British love of nostalgia but are an important reminder of our industrial heritage.

We didn’t do the Bronté Parsonage this time but explored the old street more. There were more shops open this time including the old style sweetie shop where we bought something called Yorkshire Tablet – as sweet as Orkney Fudge but a bit softer – and had a browse round two second hand bookshops we don’t recall from two years ago. The good lady bought three books and I got a hardback of Tricia Sullivan’s Lethe; goodness knows when I’ll get round to reading it.

The main reason to visit Inchcolm Island is to take a look at the Abbey there. This is apparently the finest surviving Augustinian Abbey in Scotland and is one of Historic Scotland’s properties. Apparently it can be hired for weddings.

This is the Abbey from the pier.

This is the well preserved west side. A stitch of two photos. Note the stone roofing material. I’ve only seen this before in Yorkshire, two years ago when we visited Haworth.

It’s possible to walk round the island a bit up towards where the abandoned WW1 and WW2 gun emplacements are. I got this nice shot of the Abbey through trees from the hill there.

The boat trip allows 1½ hours on the island.

Choose a nice day, though. Barring the roofed bits of the Abbey and the shop there’s precious little cover.