Bronte versus Brontë

It began in January 2024, when I wanted to see the memorial to the authors of masterpieces such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I was researching a new book with my co-author Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. I am also a lifelong journalist and now editor of The Brontë Society Gazette.  

I crossed the ancient flagstones where Emily and Charlotte walked with their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, in early 1842. The sisters were enjoying a little sightseeing on their way to Brussels, where they hoped to improve their French in an ultimately doomed plan to open a school in Yorkshire. Anne Brontë was also enduring a grueling life as a governess near York. As the anonymous daughters of a country curate, the fire of their imaginations was yet to set the literary world alight.  

When I reached Poets’ Corner, I looked for the elegant little tablet paid for by the Brontë Society and installed in October 1939. That’s when I saw that all three sisters were called ‘Bronte,’ not ‘Brontë.’ The names of the famous writers were misspelled.

Shocked and puzzled, I made an appointment with Dr Tony Trowles, Librarian and Head of the Abbey Collection, to research the tablet in the muniments. I found the letter from Donald Hopewell, then President of the Brontë Society, to the Very Reverend Paul de Labilliere, then Dean of Westminster Abbey. Mr Hopewell set out the wording for the Brontë inscription with each surname bearing its diaeresis (dots) over the final letter. 

What had happened to the spelling between this letter in May 1939 and the installation of the tablet? Further investigation showed Sir Charles Peers, Surveyor of the Fabric at the Abbey, and sculptor Laurence A. Turner, who carved the tablet, using either ‘Bronte’ or ‘Bronté’ in their correspondence. Minutes of an earlier Chapter meeting in April 1938 regarding the memorial also say ‘Bronte.’ 

I brought the mystery to Dr Trowles’ attention, and he could find no further clues in the case of the missing dots. A fellow stickler for spelling, he agreed the sisters should have their correct names on their memorial and offered to broach the subject with the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, Dean of Westminster, before I made a request for the error to be rectified. When I wrote to the Dean the following day, I was delighted to receive an equally immediate and sympathetic response. He took the matter to the Westminster Abbey Fabric Commission and contacted me in March to say the work to add the diaereses had been given the go ahead. I duly shared the good news in my editor’s letter to Brontë Society members in the Gazette. 

So why was ‘Brontë’ incorrectly carved three times in 1939? And why was I the first person to object, more than eight decades later? 

The sisters’ signatures are preserved on their letters, little books and diary papers in the Brontë Collection. The name has adorned countless copies of their novels and poetry, published from after their deaths to the present day. ‘Brontë’ is an unusual name, but not an obscure one. It is among the most famous and enduring in literature. The Times used the correct spelling when thundering its approval of the memorial in 1939. Yet somewhere along the line the people making the tablet lost sight of the brief. 

The name began evolving from ‘Brunty’ or ‘Prunty’ when Patrick arrived at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1802 from Ulster. His gentrification of his name could have been inspired by Horatio Nelson, the Duke of Bronte. Or it could be that as a classics scholar, he took a shine to the Greek word for ‘thunder.’ It may have gained its final iteration with the diaeresis, to indicate two syllables, when Patrick’s poems were published before his children were born. That is another story, and not the one I’m concerned with here. I’m not worried about the name of the father and grandfather of Charlotte, Emily and Anne. This is not about the men – it’s about the women. Their name was Brontë. 

So, who dropped the dots? The simple answer is, we don’t know how the diaereses disappeared during their journey from Mr Hopewell’s pen to the discussions of Sir Charles and Mr Turner. Who was carelessly rewriting history in 1939? It hardly matters now. When I highlighted the problem, I was met with only courtesy and co-operation from Dr Trowles and the Dean in the here and now. This was a Brontë story with a happy and timely ending in 2024. 

When pondering the puzzle, though, I cannot ignore the context. When the tablet was installed, Britain had just gone to war with Nazi Germany. As the Abbey authorities scrambled to evacuate its treasures, then recover from the Blitz in 1941, spelling mistakes were the least of anyone’s worries.

But why was it never highlighted until I happened along? Again, it’s baffling. I’ve looked for evidence of anyone else pointing out the obvious in peacetime and cannot find a scrap. I can only reflect on the eventual ceremony for the memorial in 1947, after the war. Were Brontë Society members in their best hats and suits too overawed to mention it? Who would pipe up, ‘You missed a bit’? (Well, I would have, obviously, but I have a deference deficiency.) 

I love a mystery from history and maybe one day I’ll solve it. For now, it’s enough to see the Brontë Society instructions followed, quite literally, to the letter, and to have played a part in honouring the names of the fellow Yorkshirewomen I admire beyond measure. 

Ellen Nussey, steadfast friend of the Brontë sisters, once described the sombre sound that punctuated their lives. She wrote: ‘… as you issued from the Parsonage gate, you looked upon the Stone-cutter’s chipping shed which was piled with slabs ready for use, and to the ear there was the incessant sound of the chip, chip, of the recording chisel as it graved in the In Memoriams of the departed.’  

Now the recording chisel has returned, to carve the overdue final marks to the immortal names of Charlotte, Emily and Anne at Westminster Abbey.  ‘Brontë’ is now, finally and forever, set in stone.