Brontes and Houses

We left Ambleside and traveled through beautiful Yorkshire to the Haworth Parsonage, home of the Bronte sisters. The house was lovely, the surrounding graveyard even lovelier. The best part of the house was an exhibition on the myths that have arisen due to the exaggerations of Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte. The Brontes did not lived isolated on a moor, but just on the edge of an industrial village. The sisters' father and brother were also not quite as wicked as the biography would have us believe. Gaskell just seems to have taken a special liscence with the facts and embellished some things until they got out of proportion and turned to falsehoods.

After getting lunch in the village we continued going south. We stopped at the great house of Chatsworth, a house on which Jane Austen based the fictional estate of Pemberley. The interiors of the house we in fact used for Pemberley in the more recent Keira Knightley film of Pride and Prejudice. The most memorable room they used was the sculpture room. They have even kept the bust of Mr. Darcy carved for the movie in the room. Needless to say, many girls were having fun taking pictures with him. The only thing I regret about the visit was the lack of time we had. We did the tour, were rushed at the end, and then had to pile into the coach without having anytime to explore the grounds.