Pard-Spirit; A Study of Branwell Brontë by Mr Myerburg

Thanks to East Sussex County Council

Title: Pard-Spirit; A Study of Branwell Brontë

Author: Mr Myerburg (aka Mr Mybug)

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons 

If you have read Cold Comfort Farm, you probably remember “something nasty in the woodshed”; the cows, Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless; and Adam clettering the dishes with a useless piece of twig. And hands up who remembers the sukebind?

But do you remember Mr Mybug who is keeping himself busy writing a book about Branwell Brontë? His theory is that Branwell was actually responsible for all the books we usually believe to have been written by his sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne. ‘There isn’t an intelligent person today in Europe who really believes Emily wrote the [Wuthering] Heights’, says Mr Mybug. In fact, this theory was by no means new when Cold Comfort Farm was written in 1932 and was first proposed in a book published in 1879 (or so I read in a serious-looking blog). 

I must say, I think pard-spirit is an absolutely dire way to refer to anyone. Especially someone you are apparently writing about with admiration. What does it even mean? Something to do with leopards?

Also featured are two books Flora Poste turns to when she in need of advice: The Higher Common Sense (an indispensable philosophical handbook) and The Pensées by the Abbé Fausse-Maigre (translated by HB Mainwaring). ‘Never confront an enemy at the end of a journey, unless it happens to be his journey,’ counsels the Abbé.

When I first read Cold Comfort Farm I had a vague idea it was meant to be funny, but no clue at all that it was a parody of the doom laden rural novels so popular in the early 20th century. I still haven’t read any of that style of books and probably won’t bother. There really are too many books to be read. But The Sweat and the Furrow by Silas Weekley might qualify.

And another thing: who calls their daughters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and names their son Branwell? 

See also Wuthering Heights…here.

Thanks to the National Trust