The Life of Charlotte Bronte
“64) Tabby: Tabitha Aykroyd (the name had various spellings) served the Brontës from her mid-fifties until her death in 1855. For Gaskell, and perhaps for Brontë as well, she embodied England’s folkloric past and Yorkshire superstition. Bessie in Jane Eyre and Martha in Shirley share some of Tabby’s qualities. Aykroyd was a Methodist and a class leader at her chapel.2 (p. 69) “We then chose who should be chief men in our islands”: The Brontë children’s choice of heroes evidences their Toryism an...d the degree to which the periodicals their father received informed their worldview. Branwell selects the fictional John Bull, Englishness personified, and the poet Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). Emily chooses literary men: novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), and John Gibson Lockhart (1794—1854), contributor to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and later editor of the Quarterly Review. Charlotte picks the Duke of Wellington (see note 3, below), and Christopher North, the fictional persona adopted by John Wilson, editor of Blackwood’s.MoreLess
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