Ireland has a number of important well-known Brontë links, which Paul and I have visited over the years during our annual holidays:
• the Reverend Patrick Brontë was born and raised in County Down (Northern Ireland) and so was Arthur Bell Nicholls;
• Arthur Bell Nicholls moved to Banagher at a young age to live with his uncle and aunt in Cuba House, which was a school then;
• Charlotte and Arthur had their honeymoon in Ireland – they visited Dublin (where Arthur studied at Trinity College), Banagher (where part of Arhtur’s family lived), Kilkee (where they spent some happy days), the Gap of Dunloe (where Charlotte fell off a horse), Killarney, Glengariff, Cork;
• Arthur went back to Banagher after the death of Charlotte and her father and married one of his cousins, Mary Anna Bell; he died and was buried there.
There are also some lesser-known Brontë links which I also have followed during our holidays in Ireland (in Connemara and related to Arthur’s cousin Harriette Lucinda Bell). Harriette and her husband John Evans Adamson lived in Kill House on the Sky Road in Clifden. This house has always fascinated me since I read the book “Mr Charlotte Brontë – the life of Arthur Bell Nicholls” written by Alan H. Adamson (a relative of Arthur). We traced the location of this house back in 2015 and this is what I wrote in my blog report about it:
When reading the story about Arthur Bell Nicholls’ life I discovered where he came from and where he spent his life after returning to Ireland. I came across a few other places that needed further investigation. One of them was Kill House near Clifden in the Connemara. This is the house where Arthur’s cousin, Harriette Bell lived with her husband and six of their seven children. Harriette was the cousin Arthur proposed to in 1851 and who declined his proposal.
My husband and I became intrigued with this house. We had been looking at the internet and found a vague location near the Sky Road (Clifden). We knew the area quite well and have been driving around on the Sky Road peninsula many times, but we could not figure out where the house would be situated.
This year, armed with a google map (very vague) and an old picture of the house, we went back to the Sky Road peninsula to have a better look. We were driving very slowly so as to have a good look at all the “big” houses we passed. We took all possible byways and turned corners on very narrow roads. Driving a van on those narrow Irish roads is not an easy thing to do, believe me!
Finally, I thought I saw a house in the far distance that looked like a house similar to the one in the picture. We took the byway, which led us to a peninsula off the Sky Road peninsula, and arrived in a “village” (which we later found out to be Cill). We recognized the place, we had been there many years ago to try and find a B&B with angling facilities, where some Belgian anglers had been staying. The house that I had seen in the distance was near that B&B, up the hill. Great was my joy when we arrived and it matched exactly the picture that I had in my hand. The sign next to the gate confirmed this. We had found “Kille House”! I was over the moon.
Since then, Brontë things have exploded in Ireland! There is an annual Banagher Brontë event (this year in August) and other events organised by the Banagher Brontë group (check their website!), there is an annual Kilkee Brontë festival (this year in September), and there are lots of other interesting activities organised or planned, such as talks and lectures on the Brontës. Through all these events strong friendships have been developed between members of the various Brontë groups and organisers in Ireland and beyond (the Thornton Brontë birthplace, the Northern Irish Brontë group, the Brussels Brontë Group, the Brontë Parsonage, …). This really is a wonderful thing!
We were leaving for our holidays in Ireland at the end of August, and sadly just missed the Banagher Brontë event. But we were still on a Brontë trail as our first stop was Carrigaholt, near Kilkee on the west coast of Ireland, and we certainly planned to visit Kilkee again. I learned about the Kilkee Brontë festival which was to be held mid-September, and I was lucky to meet Jenny Bassett who was organising the whole event. The day we met it was raining cats and dogs, and under the pouring rain we took a picture of the site of the hotel (with plaque) where Charlotte and Arthur stayed during their honeymoon. We quickly moved to the Diamond Rock café with beautiful views over the bay (where it was also dry and warm) for a coffee and a chat.
Jenny was very busy with the organisation of the festival, and I was grateful that she could spend some time with me. We talked all things Brontë: she explained the full programme of the festival, which seemed very interesting, she talked about Charlotte and her honeymoon in Kilkee, we talked about the Brontë novels in general and our favourite ones, and about the many books on the Brontë Irish link. Time really flies when you are having fun! And when we left, the sky had cleared up as well. There are always four seasons in one day in Ireland😉
By the time the Kilkee festival was organized, we had left the area and were up in the north of Ireland, so I was sorry that I could not attend the festival.
Our second stop on the holidays was in the Connemara. We had two Brontë missions to accomplish there:
• First I was going to locate the grave of John Evans Adamson, husband of Arthur’s cousin Harriette Lucinda Bell, who lived in Kill House as mentioned above. I learned that he was buried in a graveyard in Clifden.
• Secondly, I was meeting the author Michael O’Dowd and his wife, Christine, to talk about his latest book “Charlotte Brontë – a medical casebook.” I had met them already last year, when he had published his book about Charlotte and Arthur’s honeymoon in Ireland (“Charlotte Brontë - An Irish Odyssey”) which is one of my favourite books on the Irish honeymoon.
The first mission was accomplished again on a rainy day. We located the church with the graveyard in the centre of Clifden: Christ Church (Anglican). It was not a very big graveyard, so it was not too difficult to locate the grave itself. Only John Evans Adamson is buried here, not his wife Harriette. I still have to do more research about where she is buried. The headstone was erected by friends. There is no mention of his wife or children. The inscription on the headstone was not very clear but it reads as follows:
To the
Memory of
John Evans Adamson of Kill
Second son of the late
Revd. A.S. Adamson, A.M.
Rector of Timahoe,
and Vicar of Grangegorman, Dublin;
and great grand-son of
John Evans, Fifth Lord Carbery,
Died 5th October 1869, aged 47 years.
This memorial is erected by
his friends and brother settlers,
in testimony of their sincere
Affection and high esteem,
and as a tribute to his many
Excellent and sterling qualities
Manifested during a residence of
Twenty seven years in this remote locality
"The blood of Jesus Christ
cleanseth from all sin"
The book is about Charlotte’s final illness and death with certified cause: phthisis, better known as tuberculosis. In many Brontë biographies, however, the idea has been launched that she died of complications of early pregnancy. Michael (who is a retired consultant obstetrician, gynaecologist and an esteemed medical historian – so he knows what he is talking about!) found various theories about the cause of death of Charlotte in his research and wanted to investigate further, on the basis of facts and historical knowledge and documents of the time.
Based on his extensive research he arrived at some alternative theories about the cause of Charlotte’s death. The chapters that I have read are really convincing as he explained Charlotte’s thorough knowledge of medicine, the various types of tuberculosis/consumption, the word “sickness” used in Charlotte’s letters in the context of the time, Charlotte’s symptoms as described by her, the diagnosis of pregnancy in the 19th century, and what Charlotte’s symptoms could have meant. Michael left it to the readers to make their own conclusions. His aim was to present the medical facts and the historical knowledge. From what I have read so far, I am convinced he is right in his thinking that Charlotte may not have been pregnant at all.
Apart from the chat about his fascinating new book, we also had a pleasant talk about other things Irish whilst having a nice meal as well. He will be having an online talk soon about “birthing the Brontës” organised by the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton, and I hope he can also join us in a Brussels Brontë Group event in the future.
During the rest of my holidays there were no more missions set to fulfill, although Brontë was not completely gone. While Paul was out fishing, I also did a lot of reading. This year there were two Irish books on my reading list, which surprisingly turned out to have a Brontë link. “The Lost Bookshop” by Evie Woods was all about the search for the lost manuscript of Emily Brontë’s second novel – fiction of course, but a very good read!
“The Hidden Girl” by Lucinda Riley was set for a great part in Oxenhope/Leeming which was the place where we stayed in June during the BBG weekend, and Haworth (and the Brontës) is mentioned several times. Coincidence? This was a nice and unexpected surprise …
It just proves that the Brontës can be found everywhere, also in Ireland and in Irish books!
To summarize our holidays in Ireland: we had lovely meetings with lovely people, we had rain and shine and everything in between, we walked in fairy land and hugged some incredible trees, Paul caught his first shark (after 35 years of trying – don’t worry the shark went back in the water, we did not eat it!) and so much more.
Happy days…..😊
Marina Saegerman
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