Branwell Brontë has unfairly gone down in history as a drunken drug-taker says an author who has researched his life.
This year marks 200 since Branwell’s birth in 1817 and Calderdale writer Alan Titterington says Branwell was a highly talented man who brought out the creativity in his famous sisters.
He said: “Usually in the shadow of his more famous literary sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, Branwell is increasingly recognised as a major driving influence of their creativity from childhood.
“Remembered more for a dissolute life of alcohol and opium abuse, he was nevertheless the first to be published (poetry in the Halifax Guardian) and his achievements were less than his sisters not just because he lacked their application but because of the sheer diversity of his talents. It was also Branwell that encouraged his sisters to write novels rather than the less profitable poetry.”
Alan says Branwell was poet, portrait painter, church organist, Greek classicist and in possession of an unusual skill to write in both Greek and Latin simultaneously using both hands for which he won bets in pubs around Halifax, including the since-demolished Talbot public house in the adjacent Woolshops, frequented by Piece Hall traders and visitors alike on market days.
Branwell recorded a friendship with businessman John Titterington in his Luddenden diaries, painted portraits of him and his wife Mary and visited his friend on market days at the Halifax Piece Hall where John and his father Eli and his brothers traded from room 63 in the Rustick gallery.
Thomas Titterington, John’s grandfather, an original tenant at the Piece Hall, opened his room for business at 43 Rustick on the very first day of trading at the market on January 1, 1779. Blondin’s Ice Cream Parlour now occupies this space.
In honour of both Branwell’s birthday celebrations and specifically in memory of the original Piece Hall tenant Thomas Titterington, his great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughters Niamh, Erin and Ruby Titterington have been invited to open trading on October 7 by ringing the Piece Hall bell at 10am.
The girls’ grandfather Alan has re-imagined events from 1848 in his novel St John in the Wilderness which includes capturing the essential flavour of the times on trading days at the Piece Hall as well as Branwell and the Brontë family. The eponymous John of the title, disinherited by his own father, goes on to be incarcerated in the debtors’ prison at the notorious York Castle from where he relates the story of his eventful life.
Number 63 Rustick is today trading as Spogs and Spices
St John in the Wilderness by Alan Titterington is available from Amazon in paperback, hardcover or ebook or can be ordered from W H Smith, Waterstones and leading booksellers as well as being on the shelves of all local libraries.
