Birthday Special: The legacy of Emily Bronte, the recluse writer

Lyn Pykett, in her eponymous book Emily Bronte (1989) mentions a John Greenwood who wrote a diary about life in Hawthorn. Greenwood tells that once Keeper was attacked by another dog; and on

being informed, Emily rushed with a bottle of pepper to the battle scene. He tells “She never spoke a word, nor appeared at a loss what to do, but rushed at once into the kitchen, took the

pepper box, and away into the lane, where she found the two savage brutes each holding the other by the throat…while several other animals who thought themselves men, where standing looking

like cowards…watching this fragile creature spring upon the beasts – seizing Keeper round the neck with one arm, while with the other she dredges well their noses with pepper, and separating

them by force of great will…”

It is said that Keeper went into mourning after her death and for the three years of his life after her, he was like his own ghost. Animals were so important to Emily, or so it is believed,

that biographers often tapped into the portraits of the two dogs – Ginger and Keeper, and the cat Flossie. Today, if you go to Hawthorn, a tourist guide would tell you that the cat lurking

around is descended from Flossie and the dog barking on the street is a kin of Keeper.

Now, let us turn to the Birthday Papers. It was a pact between Emily and Anne that they would write diaries commencing at Emily’s birthday, every four years. The previous diary would be read

after four years too. So these diaries were written in 1834, 1837, 1841, and 1845. The first two are co-authored, the latter two are by Emily, and she didn’t live to see 1849 for the next

edition. The 1841 papers talk about the desire to set up a school of their own, and by 1845 in the next set of papers the idea is abandoned and instead Emily has invested in shares of a

railway company for financial security of the sisters who lost their mother at a very tender age.

Another very interesting feature of the Birthday Papers is the world of Gondal. It was an island conjured in the sisters’ imagination and they built up the characters of this fantasy

throughout their lives. The Gondal characters appear in each of the Birthday Papers, and Emily also wrote poems about them. In the 1845, Anne reports in her papers that Emily is writing the

history of Emperor Julius. Had Emily completed the work, who knows – that work may have been more in vogue than Shakespeare’s play  Julius Caesar.