Renowned author and Brontë historian, Nick Holland, delves into the profound adoration the Bronte sisters held for feline companions, unearthing evidence within their artwork and literary masterpieces.
One thing that unites readers of You Cat magazine is our shared love of cats and kittens. Modern technology has made it easier than ever to get a daily cat fix, but a love of cats is as old as mankind itself. Some of our greatest historic and literary figures have been cat lovers and owners, including perhaps the most remarkable literary family of them all: the Brontës.
Between 1814 and 1820, Patrick and Maria Brontë had six children. The two eldest daughters Maria and Elizabeth died tragically while still at school, and the only son Branwell became the black sheep of the family after succumbing to drink and drug addictions, but it is their three youngest daughters who brought the family lasting fame: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë.
Daughters of a Church of England curate, they were brought up in a bleak, draughty parsonage building in Haworth - a moorside village at the northwest tip of what is now West Yorkshire. These lower middle-class children had relatively little formal education and were all incredibly shy (Emily Brontë especially so; it was reported that she would often stand silent in the company of visitors, and Charlotte Brontë once hid behind curtains in the home of fellow author Elizabeth Gaskell when a surprise guest arrived), and yet they wrote some of the greatest novels of all time.
Charlotte’s ‘Jane Eyre’ and Emily’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ are loved the world over, and Anne’s ‘The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall’ is acknowledged as one of the first feminist novels, and is as relevant as ever. Their books will always fascinate readers, but their life story is just as fascinating. Just how did three sisters from an otherwise non-descript background end up writing works of genius, and what more could they have achieved if they hadn’t all succumbed to tuberculosis in their twenties and thirties? In many ways they seem a unique, almost otherworldly, family, and yet they had one trait we can all empathise with: they absolutely loved animals.
The letters and diary papers the Brontës left behind name a succession of pets large and small who passed through Haworth Parsonage: from dogs Keeper, Grasper and Flossy to canary Little Dick, geese Adelaide and Victoria, and Nero, a hawk that Emily Brontë found injured and nursed back to health. Cats also held a particular place in their affection
