As a gamer with a love of toy soldiers and ImagiNations gaming, I have a lot of time for the Brontes and their intricate fictional Regency and early Victorian worlds of Gondal, Glasstown, Gaaldine and Angria.
If you don’t know them, check out the excellent recent books based on these tiny Bronte manuscripts – Celia Rees’ Glass Town Wars and the graphic novel Glass Town by Isabel Greenberg.
You might also know them through the 1960s children’s fiction book The Return of The Twelves (or Twelve and the Genie) by Pauline Clarke, based on the Bronte children’s original wooden toy soldiers.
The Bronte sisters Emily, Charlotte and Anne and brother Branwell created childhood and teenage imaginary Napoleonic worlds (paracosms) in tiny handwritten books of poetry, prose, drawings and fictional newspaper adverts in the 1830s and 1840s in Yorkshire.
Were the Bronte children some of the first wargamers, ImagiNations gamers and Historical Fantasy RPG players?
I have been playing Bronte inspired ImagiNations games for a number of years now – check out my page for them on my blog here:
That is why I am supporting the campaign by UK libraries and The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth Yorkshire to keep some of these precious manuscripts of the Law Collection in the Honresfield Library in this country and at their birthplace, rather than disappear into private collections after auction.
A small amount has been anonymously diverted from my Man of TIN hobby ‘war chest’ and ImagiNations defence budget towards saving these precious manuscripts.
Go on – dig deep. Surely worth a tenner or more of anyone’s hobby budget?
This is part of our fantasy gaming, wargaming, toy soldier and RPG origins as well as literary heritage to preserve for all, not a privileged few.
One day I look forward to travelling Up North to go and see the Bronte tiny books and manuscripts at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.
* Dear blog friends and readers, please forward and repost / reboot this post this post to others.*
We only have five days left to raise the £25K needed.
Arise, Angria!
Home made Fimo Polymer Clay 54mm figure of an Angrian Infantry Standard bearer with the rising sun flag – Arise Angria!
It has been interesting chatting by email to other gamers like John Patriquin or Alan the Tradgardmastre about Imagi-Nations campaigns as I delve deeper into the involved worlds of the Bronte family’s young fictional countries and characters.
What to keep and what to invent or extrapolate?
In some ways I am finding working inside or through the Bronte fictions are hard work because there is so much detail to them but also much is missing or that only made sense inside their four different imaginations / heads.
I want to steal their fictional geography and fill in the gaps as best I could. Here is my sketch map of a Bronte island country of Gondal, based on Yorkshire:
However I think another solution that I will explore further is to jump forward a decade or generation or two, past all the mess of complicated political and personal relationships of the Bronte characters to the Mid and Late Victorians. The Bronte tales are written in the decade before Queen Victoria was on the throne and into the early years of her reign, roughly 1830s / 1840s.
What would the Bronte countries have made of the expanding British, French and Other European Powers throughout the Victorian era?
Jump forward to the Palmerston forts scares of Napoleon 3rd and the French in the 1850s, along with European Colonial expansion throughout the mid to later nineteenth century.
The Oxford Companion to the Brontes has entries on some of the conflicts before they were born (the Napoleonic Wars) and during their 1830s -1850s lifetime such as the Ashanti Wars, the Crimea and First and Second Afghan War, First Opium War, Russo Turkish War 1828 and Greek war of Independence 1821 – 1828. They would have read about these in the newspapers and journals that their father allowed them to read from a young age.
There were many Wars in the few years after their deaths which give the pattern for what was happening in their late Regency / early Victorian world. The Second Opium War, the Indian Mutiny, American Civil War, Franco-Austrian War are all mentioned in the Oxford Companion to the Bronte chronology and timeline.
There are many other historical events to take into account of the ‘real’ world that formed the backdrop to the Bronte Imagi-Nations or Paracosms of GlassTown, Angria, Gondal and Gaaldine.
There are other world events such as the Irish famine and emigration, the Bronte’s father being Irish, the California Goldrush, along with more Britain based situations 1840s Chartist movement and riots (following on from the 1830s Luddite riots) whilst the late 1840s saw revolution in many European countries. Charlotte Bronte’s novel Shirley covers this industrial revolution and Luddite period.
Victorian era constable faces down a rabble of Airfix Waggon Train folks (Battle of Saxby plans)
The Battles of Saxby
Even the railway boom led to conflict with landowners and aristocrats who did not wish to have the populace on the move and intrusion on their land such as the Battle of Saxby Bridge around Stapleford Park. I’m sure that some of the Glasstown and Angrian aristocracy would have some of the same concerns.
What of the Angria, Gondal and GlassTown involvement with the First and Second World Wars? Who did they side with?
I’m pretty sure that, being set in fictional Central West Africa and the fictional tropical Pacific islands Gondal (North Pacific) and Gaaldine (South Pacific), they would continue to be at risk of being Invaded by or invading “real” countries into the 20th Century such as Britain, German East Africa and Japan. Had the Brontes been alive they would have reflected these real events transformed into their imaginary worlds.
There is also the throwing off the Colonial leash and independence from Empire in the 1950s and 1960s.
I wonder how the Angrian Defence Forces dealt with WW1 colonial campaigns in Africa? Problems with the WW2 Vichy French rulers of Frenchysland off the coast of Angria?
I wonder how the rival provinces and rulers in Gondal or Gaaldine dealt with the Spanish / American colonial conflicts in the 1890s or the Japanese Pacific campaign after 1941?
I can see it now, the Bronte fictional countries but armed with early light tanks, bicycles, biplanes and Machine guns skirmishing in the tropical grassland jungles moors and rivers (fused / mixed with their familiar Yorkshire moors).
Vintage Airfix – Angrian Defence Force late 19th / early 20th Century
Being Imagi-nations, there are no restrictive uniform charts, and there is little or no guidance from the text to such things. This gives lots of freedom to experiment or invent with colour schemes but this is frustrating also. No comfort zone of uniform books or Osprey titles, but lots of period inspiration from them!
I’m trying to loosen my paint schemes on existing 15mm and 54mm figures and ones on the painting tray to make them flexible for real or fictional campaigns. Rebrand them with officers and flags and then campaign away, much as James is doing on the Quantrill’s Toy Soldiers blog.
Some of the Bronte books such as Branwell Bronte’s books edited by Victor Neufeldt are £30+ academic reprints each – in a trilogy – ouch! I have one. The others out of stock / print. Maybe another time.
So I am “making do” with the digest of these stories in the extensive footnotes in cheaper paperback reprints secondhand, including Charlotte Brontes Tales of Angria edited by Heather Glen (Oxford) and the Oxford Companion by Christine Alexander, a useful A to Z of the Brontes lives and works. Helping me puzzle out and fill in my fictional Maps more …
I think if the Brontes had been born a generation or two later, the Bronte sisters and brother would have been part of the H.G.Wells science fiction generation, contemporary with H.G. Wells, Floor Games, Little Wars, matchstick firing guns, Gardens and lead soldiers.
100 plus years later, would the Brontes have been writing fantasy / dungeon / Victorian Science Fiction / Steampunk games and scenarios?
All inspired by Branwell’s original box of toy soldiers …
Zombies, attack helicopters, djinn, Faeries, video games tech, Napoleonic riflemen … what more could you want from a book?
The Bronte sisters and brother wrote some lively but fragmented ImagiNations stories full of battles, conquests, intrigue and romance. A Napoleonic Regency Georgian era Game of Thrones …
One of the problems in using the surviving Bronte fragments of these tiny handwritten books is that they are very disjointed, only some sections have survived and it takes a long while to sort out who is who, with characters with multiple names. Not promising for someone like me who prefers a simple uncomplicated narrative … but Celia Rees pulls this off cleverly in her fast paced historical fantasy adventure story.
Some of my recent Bronte ImagiNations figures repaints from Airfix ACW figures
Celia Rees has written a young adult novel that, using multiple layers of narrative, wraps the broken and fragmented Bronte ImagiNations narrative in with a modern outer story of young techno wizardry and skullduggery.
Tom, a modern teenage boy in a coma, is watched over in hospital by a quiet girl called Lucy. He is projected by a crooked teenage bitcoin tycoon ‘techno wizard’ Milo Mindbender back from a modern teenage world of hospitals, YouTube, hashtags and social media into a painfully real ‘virtual world’ of a Napoleonic battle zone to meet one of the feisty Bronte female warrior characters, Lady AGA or Augusta.
There is a suggestion that Lucy has been reading Wuthering Heights to Tom whilst he is in his coma.
Readers of Sharpe novels would enjoy this opening Napoleonic skirmishing section. There are later on some wild rough Scots, more 45 Jacobite than Napoleonic, from Sneachiesland who turn into Rogue’s Revolutionary Guard, intent on sacking the capital.
“But what if you could actually be inside the game?” argues the villain Mindbender.
How? A secret untested prototype little virtual reality gizmo or gadget called the Echeneis slipped into Tom’s ear is involved, developed for gaming by Mindbender. Unfortunately this is an experimental VR (virtual reality) so intense where you can feel pain, be wounded and potentially die … Game Over for the hashtag #boyinacoma?
The Bronte ImagiNations were inspired by the gift to brother young Branwell Bronte of the Twelves, a dozen wooden Napoleonic soldiers.
Some of the Bronte male characters are borrowed like Percy ‘Rogue’ Duke of Northangerland and his sometime allies or rivals, Lord Charles Wellesley and Douro, both versions of Wellington, along with many minor Bronte characters, are also featured in the peculiar Colonial Tropical Africa / Yorkshire of their Glasstown and Angria ImagiNations.
An epilogue sets out what elements and characters Celia Rees has borrowed from the Bronte family ImagiNations tiny books and the Bronte family’s real lives.
Celia Rees picks up the dystopian, Steampunk elements of the Bronte world and it mixes in well as part of the science fiction or fantasy genre. There are ‘Fairish’ lands and Underground ‘Deeps’ which bring an edge of Tolkien, pursuit by violent desert storm-like Jinn Spirit Winds and a clunky bit of shamanism. Probably a bit of Yorkshire folklore in here too.
No plot spoilers here but expect the unexpected …
There are small skirmishes with raiding parties with a Reiving medieval feel but made up of Napoleonic troops, laying waste to Augusta’s Northern lands on Percy Rogue’s behalf (he of the Byronic black horse, black banners and black locks). These troops are ambushed by the flint tipped arrows of Robin Goodfellow and the Fairish peoples of the Summer Lord. Flint against Flintlock. Interesting gaming scenarios …
The Capital Glass Town or Verdopolis is riven with revolution, political unrest, Luddite riots and demonstrations, bloodily put down in the manner of the Peterloo Massacre and Chartist Unrest of the 1830s (not far from the events of Charlotte Bronte’s lesser known novel Shirley). A guillotine and echoes of the French Revolution appear.
The multiple layers of modern life, video games and suggestions that we are inside the Bronte dreams of ImagiNations fictions are occasionally alluded to by characters as a kind of dream logic or jarring. The neighbouring countries so different from each other? “the different lands take after their founders“.
One character questions: “I sometimes think that none of it is well, real. Glasstown and all of its people, myself included – we’re mere ideas in someone else’s brain. Part of some other creature’s game…”
There is a fair amount of Regency Ball type behaviour in the Royal Court. Not quite Pride and Prejudice but keep a look out for zombies … well, this adds some Gothic elements.
Later on the Tron or Jumanji film elements of falling into and having to play your way out of a video game are developed and we also enter into the mind, imagination or company of a character who may or may not be Emily Bronte. Attack helicopters also make a surprise gaming appearance!
The genesis of this book is discussed by Celia here, with inspiration from an attractive Napoleonic rifleman ceramic statuette
Other similar modern fiction takes on the Bronte Imaginations
An enjoyable and surprising book, much less cluttered and clunky than a lot of the Gondal fan fictions on the internet, which cleverly exploits the gaps and confusions of missing sections of the Bronte’s famous little books.
Jen Burdoo the gamer librarian from the USA introduced me to The Return of the Twelves, an award winning and enjoyable but now forgotten 1963 children’s book by British author Pauline Clarke about the original Twelves, the Bronte toy soldiers that had survived through time, kept alive through the power of the Bronte children’s imagination but lost and forgotten.
Last year also saw the publication of Catherynne M. Valente’s hardback doorstep of a book The Great Glass Town Game which I got stuck on halfway through – another attempt needed to read this Alice and Nonsense style inspired Bronte children fantasy http://www.catherynnemvalente.com. It has mixed reviews, often partly on account of its length https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26810460-the-glass-town-game
Advent Day 13 – post number 300 or 301 – finishing a draft Bronte Gamer Blogpost at last.
The Art of The Brontes is a thick Thames and Hudson by Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, an expensive illustrated book which I thankfully managed to borrow through my local lending library.
It covers every known sketch, painting and doodle by each of the four Bronte children from their youngest childhood drawings to their adult drawings and paintings.
I won’t infringe copyright of paintings or drawings from private or museum collections by featuring them here.
Steel engraving lowered the cost of prints making them more affordable for the likes of the young Bronte sisters.
Tropical Yorkshire in the Pacific?
I thought this might give me a clue to the possible backgrounds, terrain and landscapes for their fictional works of Gondal, Angria and Glasstown, upon which I have based some of my Imagi-Nations game scenarios recently.
Many of their fictional countries in the North and South Pacific or tropical West Africa are a bizarre blend of Yorkshire moors, the fashionable gothic or romantic art of their day with an element of the exotic gleaned from prints and journal illustrations of foreign countries.
I couldn’t quite get this blend of British or Yorkshire Tropical right in my head until I visited some of the sheltered and temperate gardens of Southwest England. Here you can see Victorian houses set in parkland with exotic planting brought back from many foreign countries giving that jungle or Himalayan valley and mountain pass impression. No doubt there must have been such bizarre juxtapositions in Yorkshire big houses that the Bronte family might have known about or visited, being on the edge of gentry as a vicar’s family. These would be big early Victorian houses with their greenhouses, botanic gardens, plant introductions and sheltered walled gardens.
I know this makes this Yorkshire Bronte Tropical fusion sound almost as authentic as filming Carry on Up The Khyber Pass in Britain, with North Wales standing in for the foothills of The Himalayas.
Some of the sketches of landscape appear to be copies of prints, illustrations and drawing exercises as they learnt how to draw in the style of their day.
Bronte Gaming Scenarios
Some of the PECO Landscapes seem very suited to Bronte country and fictional terrain – the mountain scenes or the seaside with ruined castle, for example.
Branwell Bronte, owner of the original twelve soldiers that gave rise to many of the children’s fictional countries and campaigns, wrote and illustrated some interesting early “Battle” books as well with ancient or Napoleonic ‘toy’ soldier drawings.
It has been a few weeks since I ran a solo game bigger than sword fighting and Bartitsu duelling. I feel that I have neglected my Peter Laing figures of late. To be fair I’ve been busy making the fortified Signal Tower as well.
I wanted to get a quick evening game in, based on the Bronte family’s Imagi-Nation of Angria, having read more of Charlotte Bronte’s Tales of Angria and the Oxford Companion to the Brontes. Both these books are slowly helping me work out maps and scenarios based on more of Bronte’s fictional realms or paracosms.
Turn 2 – Angrian 5th Infantry supported by Dragoons cross the river to rescue the waggon from MacTerrorGlen’s Scottish troops. Ashantee bowmen line the rock opposite.
Small Angrian Skirmish Scenario:
By March 1836 – half of Angria is “in possession of our foes”.
During 1835-37 The Second Angrian War, Civil War between Angria and the Verdopolitan Union is happening at the same time as the Ashantee threat.
Early 1836, Angria, Western Central Africa: A group of invading Ashantee bowmen, part of Quashia Qamina’s forces, have discovered an abandoned Angrian supply waggon and remain in ambush on the rocks overlooking the crossing.
They are backed by a small sword and musket group of Sir Jehu MacTerrorGlen’s rampaging Scotsmen and Highland Warriors, led by one Captain Scotte, who are aiming to capture the river crossing and loot the abandoned Angrian supply waggon.
Location: The river crossing eventually feeds into one of the many tributaries of the River Olympia or Calabar, running down to the sea.
This waggon was part of a supply column along one of the many roads to the regional or provincial capital of Adrianoplous, all aid and supplies to The Duke of Zamorna. Zamorna is fighting to protect the Angrian province (that he is named after) against this invasion of Ashantees and MacTerrorGlen’s unruly Scots.
A rebellious and unruly kilted Highland Regiment in Africa? Many of the original settlers of the Bronte’s fictional realm of GlassTown and Angrian area of West Africa were of Scots, Irish and Yorkshire origin.
Coming to recover the waggon of supplies are Angrian forces under the Blood Red banner of the Rising Sun. These include a dismounted group of smart red-coated Angrian “Dragons” or Dragoons, along with some men of the “Fighting Fifth” (or “Filthy Fifth”), the 5th Angrian Infantry Regiment in homespun and motley campaign dress, led by a young Lieutenant called Prunty.
The scruffy nature of the Angrian Regiments on campaign in the ‘East’ in the Angrian Civil War is reminiscent of Confederate Butternut Infantry towards the end of the American Civil War. Their scruffy dress is commented on by one of Charlotte Bronte’s cynical narrators in the smart Regency Colonial society of the cities.
The Angrian dragoons had dismounted, leaving their horses up the valley and with the 5th Angrians in two groups were scouting the river, half their number in reinforcements a mile or two behind.
D6 dice rolls saw these troops delayed arriving, until the 5th and 6th turn in area 5 and 6 on the Angrian baseline.
The turns were short and brutal, mostly involving fast melee, using the Kaptain Kobold modification or d6 dice version of Gerard De Gre’s Lunge Cut and Stop Thrust melee or duelling rules.
1-2 Attacker Hit
3 Both Hit
4 Neither Hit
5-6 Defender Hit
Melees occurred from group stage in adjacent hexes or who have charged into their opponents. The Pell-Mell, Hell for Leather pace of the game meant that there were few casualties from rifle or musket fire, many more from Highland claymore, bayonet, short sword and rifle butt (and no doubt boot and fist).
Turn 1 and 2 saw rapid movement through the cluttered terrain towards the first shots and melees of Turn 3.
Turn 3 saw 9 Angrian troops and 12 of MacTerror Glen’s Scots killed, mostly when the Highland claymore warriors charged the Angrian troops.
At the start of turn 4 (as shown in photo by a d6 Turn Dice) the few Angrian infantry over the bridge are outnumbered by Scots.
By Turn 4, some of the outnumbered Angrian forces on the board retreated to await their reinforcements (D6 dice roll 1-3 Retreat, 4 Stay, 5-6 Advance).
This didn’t stop one party of three Angrian 5th Infantry being surrounded and outnumbered on two sides by Scots around the bridge. Luckily supporting fire from the Angrian command party and standard bearer picked off two further Scots musketeers.
Engaged on both sides by Scots, this small cohort of Angrian 5th Infantry are wiped out.
In Turn 5 the advancing Scots moved into Melee with the Angrian Command and Colours party, leading to a doubly fatal duel between Highland claymore against Angrian officer’s broadsword.
Angrian Officer Lieutenant Prunty charges down the hill to engage with his Highlander enemy in a fatal duel.
Thankfully the rest of the Angrian Dragoons and Fifth Regiment arrived in Turn 5 and 6. Just in the nick of the time …
These Angrian reinforcements pushed back and pursued the last of MacTerrorGlen’s troops and the Scots command party and colours back over the bridge. They made their last stand outside the crossing hut. The Scots colours were lost when the command and colours party decided to fight to the finish (dice roll d6 roll 1-3 surrender, 4 – 6 fight on).
Throughout the early part of the battle, the Ashantee Bowmen on the high ground rocks were out of range and sight of many of the Angrian troops. Overall they played very little part in the whole battle, not even firing many volleys of arrows before they were engulfed in melee. Their officer or chief Khla managed to escape to carry on the invasion with the other invading Ashantees under Quashia Qamina.
Ashantee bowmen move into range of Angrian troops.
At the end, the Angrian Armed Transport Corps hitched the abandoned supply waggon to their horses and slowly dragged this back up the valley to where the dismounted dragoon horses and horse holders would provide further armed escort back to Adrianopolis, Zamorna or Edwardston as needed.
Detail of map of Angria by Christine Alexander (Oxford Campanion to the Brontes)
Discarded weapons and the captured colours of MacTerrorGlen’s Scots are sent back onboard the supply waggon as victory trophies to inspire the flagging Angrian forces.
The remaining two Angrian Dragoons, Angrian standard bearer and drummer remain behind in the bridge crossing hut. Suitably armed with discarded carbines, muskets and ammunition, they make themselves busy fortifying this outpost and guarding the crossing until further Angrian reinforcements arrive. Burying the dead will have to briefly wait, but not too long in these African “Yorkshire Tropic” climes.
The Rising Sun banner of Angria flies victorious over the captured river crossing hut as the surviving Ashantee officer flees on the opposite bank.
Arise Angria! Raise the Blood-Red Banner of the Rising Sun! Huzzah!
Figures and Terrain
All the figures are from the sadly now discontinued Peter Laing range of 15mm figures.
The Ashantee bowmen are from the Ancient Egyptian range (Nubian Archers F452 and their officer F453 Nubian Spearman).
MacTerrorGlen’s rogue Scots troops are from the Peter Laing ECW and ’15-’45 ranges. I especially like his kilted Highlander charging with Claymore (F1006) and small shield but his Highland musketeers ( F1008) are fine figures too. https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/more-peter-laing-scots/
The “Angrian Dragons” are ECW dismounted dragoons firing, F515, one of my favourite Peter Laing figures.
The homespun 5th Angrian Regiment in campaign dress are the ACW butternut infantry advancing F3012, along with the Boer Rifleman advancing at trail F622.
I quickly made and coloured an Angrian flag and added this to one of the Boer figures to make a standard bearer.
The Heroscape hex terrain terrain on my two portable gaming boards tries to create that curious mix of European and African or Yorkshire Tropical that exists in the Bronte’s limited but imaginative view of the world outside their native Haworth and Yorkshire. This was backed by PECO Scene Backgrounds Medium SK 44 Country with River with its great view of mountains and stone bridges over streams and slightly incongruous European stone farm houses, obviously in the Yorkshire / European influenced Angrian settler style.
Pine trees, impassable rocks, a raging stream or river form all part of a rugged and Romantic, almost Gothic landscape of hills, fields and craggy mountainous peaks of how the Bronte children saw Angria (West Africa). This fits well the restricted routes and impassable labyrinths of trees, logs and rocks that suit Donald Featherstone’s original Close Wars rules for forest skirmish that I have tweaked for hex board or garden games. https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/close-little-wars-featherstones-simplest-rules/
The waggon was an underscale diorama piece from the 54mm Safari figures Wild West Settlers Toob. Its eventual escorts were Peter Laing Boer War cavalry M603 or M605 Imperial Yeomanry figure.
Post-mortem:
This was a great fun game for an evening. Using the Gerald De Gre duelling rules in Kaptain Kobold’s simplified dice version for the first time as the Melee section with the rest of the Little Close Wars rules led to quick fast and murderous melees.
The look of the board / game?
I like the portable hex game boards but I would like to flock or sand more of the Heroscape hex pieces, and glue and flock some of the pine tree bases permanently to hex bases.
Part of the early evening was spent tidying up the portable game boards, removing the temporary masking tape letters and grid numbers and sanding the edges before rewriting them in a neater fashion. Eventually I think I will wood stain the outer edges and possibly acrylic paint (sap green) the inner sections of game board that show up as bare wood in the middle and edge. Hopefully they will look less intrusive but still allow each board to be used separately.
Outcome:
A swift outcome of a minor skirmish in the Angrian Civil War, a minor victory in a disastrous campaign.
This campaign led to Angria’s defeat at the Battle of Edwardston 26 June 1836, which saw Zamorna exiled and Angria savagely occupied by Ashantee and MacTerrorGlen’s forces throughout the rest of 1836. Angrian troops fight on in the hills.
Victory does not come until Zamorna returns and leads his forces to victory at the Battles of Leyden, Westwood and Evesham throughout 1837.
Hopefully Charlotte and Branwell Bronte would approve, their imaginary worlds having been sparked by a gift from their father of a box of toy soldiers.
I was intrigued by references to a Bronte regiment called the Bloodhounds.
The Bloodhounds are one of the intriguing Regiments of the Bronte family’s Imagi-Nations and Paracosmic world, a fictional European colonised Regency / 19th Century West Africa known as Glasstown and Angria. The tales were started off amongst the four Bronte children by the gift of wooden toy soldiers from their father Revd. Patrick Bronte.
The Bloodhounds were an Angrian Regiment, first commanded by Colonel Henry Fernando di Enara.
When Enara “the Tiger” became H.F. Etrei or Baron of Etrei (a savanna province of Angria) and the Angrian “Secretary at War” in Verdopolis c. 1839, the commanding officer or Colonel of the Bloodhounds post was taken by Colonel Nicholas Belcastro.
One of its infamous privates is Captain Henry Hastings, formerly national poet and soldier hero of Angria of the 19th Angrian Infantry. Hastings was court-martialled for shooting Colonel Adams, his commanding officer and defecting to Paris and the enemies of Angria, leading an uprising of Revolutionary French troops and Ashantee warriors against his former Angrian home.
Much of the surviving fragments of the Bronte Imagi-Nations stories such as Angria are told through different documents to create a more complex and realistic fiction – fictional or factional sources such as letters, diary entries, different narrators, poems, newspaper reports etc.
What brother Branwell Bronte wrote about Angria and its characters, Charlotte would also respond to or develop in her own writing or counter-writing.
Included amongst these “documents” in Charlotte Bronte’s 1839 Angrian novella Henry Hastings are these official Army type letters or fictional court-martial documents:
Extract (and those below) from ‘Henry Hastings’ in Charlotte Bronte: Tales of Angria (ed. Heather Glen) Penguin Classics, 2006)
Rather than being executed, in view of his previous service, Hastings is encouraged to turn King’s Evidence on his former enemy or rebel colleagues (the King being Zamorna, the King of Angria naturally).
Hastings is expected to inform against other exotically named outlaws and allies of Northangerland such as the Renegade Angrian and leader of French forces Hector Mirabeau Montmorenci, [Lord] George Frederick Caversham and the native tribal Ashantee leader, Quashia Quamina Kashna. Barras, Dupin and Bernadotte are the names of real French Revolutionary figures.
These outlaw forces were present at the Battle of Westwood, 1837, in the Angrian Civial War, by which time Henry Hastings had defected and was fighting for the enemy against Zamorna the King of Angria and Hastings’ former 19th Angrian Regiment, Zamorna’s or the Devil’s Own.
If Hastings informs on his former Angrian renegades and collaborators, the death sentence for treachery, murder and desertion of Henry Hastings will be commuted to being stripped of his rank and transferred from the 19th to the Bloodhounds “under the grinding yoke of Colonel Nicholas Belcastro“.
Rather than the outrage of such military men as his commanding officer Colonel Hartford that Hastings “should have been shot when caught, as you’d shoot a dirty girning wolf”, others officers of the 19th such as Major King take a different view:
Charlotte Bronte is good at reflecting and pondering on the politics and rivalry amongst the army and different political rivals. She would be the only Bronte child to see the chaotic mess of the Crimean War in 1854-55, just before her untimely death.
This court martial document and speech seems realistic enough, especially for a young female writer at the time. Interestingly, as far as I know, unlike Jane Austen with her Royal Navy brothers, Charlotte Bronte and her family did not have close relatives in the army or navy.
Charlotte is also accomplished (almost in modern screenplay fashion) at using different characters for multiple viewpoints of the same situation. Here, Henry Hastings, reviled for killing his superior officer Adams, puts his own case or view of the situation to his sister, Elizabeth Hastings. Elizabeth is the mysterious heroine of the surviving fragments of the Bronte novella Henry Hastings.
Bronte scholars often read these Angrian fragments and ‘ juvenilia’ for insights into how each of the Bronte sisters developed into the a writer of their later, more finished works such as Jane Eyre.
In later more enlightened times, desertion and change of character amongst veterans would be seen as possible Battle Shock, Shell Shock, fatigue or PTSD. Drink also had much to do with Hastings’ fictional downfall, something that sadly affected his co-creator Branwell Bronte in real life.
Interestingly, Branwell Bronte suggests that (his main pseudonym / character persona) Henry Hastings feels that his Commanding Officer of the 19th, Lord Hartford, dislikes and has bullied and blocked his advancement in the past: “My Commander [Hartford] thought it expedient that a farmer’s son [Henry Hastings] should not shame by his advancements the pampered ignorants of Eastern Aristocracy [of Angria].
One intriguing reference to the Bloodhounds we mentioned in our last blogpost:
One of the Angrian’s most infamous infantry regiments are The Bloodhounds (Glen, p. 501) led by the Italian ‘Tiger’ Enara:
“A host of Dark whiskered and bearded warriors such looks of savage and relentless ferocity I never held before …
their great Raven banner bore in silver blazonry the single emphatic syllable. “DEATH” at their head … accompanied by 8 vast liver coloured dew lapped red eyed bloodhounds held in leashes stood the second commander of the Army Colonel Henry Fernando Enara.” (Excerpt from Branwell Bronte, Angria and the Angrians).
Zamorna had some unusual generals including Henri Fernando di Enara, an Italian known as ‘the Tiger’, whom he created Baron of Etrei and Governor of this Angrian savanna province of Etrei. He eventually becomes Angrian Commander in Chief, rather than second in command.
The Brontes refer to Enara’s campaigns against Zamorna’s or Angria’s enemies as a “tiger hunt”, a hunt not of but by ‘The Tiger’ Enara.
This figure with eight bloodhounds on leashes seems more out of a fantasy catalogue than a toy soldier one!
Appropriately Enara has dark brows and dark Italian features and for commander of a regiment with Raven banners, Enara has four raven haired daughters Maria, Gabriella, Giulietta and Francesca.
Another new reference in Charlotte’s novella gives further clues to the Bloodhound’s exotic appearance and uniform:
Hastings’ trail, like all nine days wonders, had sunk into oblivion. Hastings himself was gone to the Devil or to Belcastro, which is the same thing.
He had actually marched bodily out of [the regional capital] Zamorna, in the white trousers, the red sash, the gingham-jacket of a thorough going Bloodhound, as one of a detachment of that illustrious Regiment under the command of Captain Dampier.
To the sound of fife, drum and bugle, the lost desperado had departed, leaving behind the recollection of what he had been, a man: the reality of what he was, a monster.”
(‘Henry Hastings’, Charlotte Bronte: Tales of Angria, edited Heather Glen, p. 286-7).
This exotic sounding uniform sounds a little like the Los Colorados troops in the Osprey uniform books on the colourful troops of the Latin American Wars.
But Gingham? Gingham!
Gingham today sounds more Judy Garland than military garment, but I had a distant memory of a uniform plate of soldiers wearing Gingham.
I found it in Uniforms of the American Civil War by Blandford, another of my childhood library borrowing favourites.
Maybe not surprising as an American Civil War uniform as Gingham cloth was a Wild West staple and probably gave rise to the Gingham checked cowboy shirt. A brief history of Gingham is given here:
Gingham has also appeared recently as a check pattern on Manchester United’s 2012/3 football strip.
Repaired or repainted Britain’s Zoauves (like my one above right with Fimo feet /base) could be a good choice for the Bloodhounds – but painting Gigham in 1:32 / 54mm?
Gingham Zouaves?
The Bloodhounds seem to have had an exotic, almost Zouave-like uniform with sashes and beards.
Gingham could be striped as well as checked – and in a host of colours, red, green, blue. So which colour Gingham to choose for the Bloodhounds?
And which figures and scale will I choose? I have no Peter Laing 15mm zouaves, but Airfix ACW or British Commandos work well in OO/HO for Zouaves. In 40mm or 54mm I may adapt or convert figures from Homecast or Prince August moulds or use some bearded Timpo ACW figures.
Gingham will of course be a challenge, just like tartan, to paint on figures!
Whilst most of Branwell Bronte’s Glasstown and Angrian tales are reprinted in expensive academic volumes, I will have to rely on whatever campaign scenario and uniform clues I can glean from Charlotte’s more easily available and affordable books. I will update or add details as I discover them.
Blogposted by Mark, Mr MIN Man of TIN, April 2017.
The suitably scruffy standard bearer of the “vermined and victorious” Angrian forces in the East, holding its Rising Sun banner.
“What news is stirring in your parts?” I asked.
“Nothing special” was the answer. “Only March has left the Angrians madder than ever.”
“What, they’re fighting still are they?”
“Fighting! Aye and every man amongst them has sworn by his hilts that he’ll continue fighting whilst he has two rags left stitched together upon his back.”
“In that case I should think peace would soon be restored”, said I.
Mr. Saunderson winked. “A very sensible remark”, said he. “Mr. Wellesley senior [Charlotte Bronte’s fictionalised Duke of Wellington] made me the fellow to it last time I saw him”.
“The sinews of war not particularly strong in the East?” I continued.
Mr Saunderson winked again and asked for a pot of porter. I sent for the beverage to the Robin Hood across the way and when it was bought Mr Saunderson, after blowing off the froth, took a deep draught to the health of “the brave and shirtless!” I added in a low voice “to the vermined and victorious!” He heard me and remarked with a grave nod of approbation, “very jocose”.
After soaking a little while, each in silence, Mr. Saunderson spoke again –
Mr. Saunderson did not speak again. He departed like the fantastic creation of a dream. I was called to hear a lesson and when I returned to my desk again, I found the mood which had suggested that allegorical whim was irrevocably gone …
———————————————-
This is not a couple of beer raddled gamers sitting in the pub talking about their fictional campaigns.
This interrupted fictional conversation is a snippet called “My Compliments to the Weather” section 5 from Charlotte Bronte’s The Roe Head Journal. This snippet, on p.168-9, is published in The Brontes – Tales of Glass Town, Angria and Gondal. Selected Writings Oxford, OUP 2010, edited with notes by Bronte scholar Christine Alexander.
As a young student teacher at Roe Head School, miles away from her Haworth parsonage home from 1835-38, Charlotte Bronte was partly exiled through the demands of her teaching work from her full part in the fictional Imagi-Nations that her brother Branwell and sisters Emily and Anne had created together. Her frustration is obvious!
“No more. I have not time to work out the vision. A thousand things were connected with it, a whole country, statesman and kings, a revolution, Thrones and princedoms subverted and reinstated.” Section 3, the Roe Head Journal, Charlotte Bronte.
I like the arch, snarky irreverent tone of Charlotte’s narrators like Charles Townsend casting scorn on the elsewhere heroic struggles of her brother or sisters’ creations, in this case the character Zamorna (also known as King of Angria, Marquis of Douro and fictional son of the Bronte’s fictional Duke of Wellington).
Very helpful annotated 2010 map by Christine Alexander with Angria added from her book (based on map by Branwell)
The Angrian Wars 1831-39
Compiled from notes in Christine Alexanders book (Oxford, 2010) and Heather Glen’s Tales of Angria (Penguin, 2006) further detail of clarification will be added as discovered.
According to Christine Alexander, in 1831 Zamorna was struggling to defeat an Insurrection or the Great Rebellion.
This was caused or led by one of Branwell Bronte’s main characters, the balding former pirate, drover, gambler and serial seducer Northangerland (also known as Alexander Percy, Ellrington or Rogue) that is part of the First Angrian War of March 1831. This flares up again in 1832 by Northangerland’s renewed insurrection or Rebellion in The North (Sneakysland). Northangerland may have been aided at this time by the shadowy figure of Sir Jehu Macterrorglen (formerly cloth trader Jeremiah Simpson).
Zamorna leads a Constitutionalist Army, aided by Fidena, Wellesley and Warner Howard Warner, overthrowing his rival Northangerland’s Republican or French Revolutionary Government in the Glass Town capital Verdopolis.
This revolutionary situation, along with most of the wars, was Branwell’s creation, his earlier chosen characters included a version of Napoleon.
1833/34 The War of Encroachment
In 1833/4 the War of Encroachment saw the Ashantee tribes to the East of Verdopolis attack Verdopolis, Angria and the other allied countries of the Great Glass Town Federation. It is fought mainly in ‘the East’ around the city of Angria and provinces of Northangerland and Zamorna, after whom Zamorna and Northangerland are named Duke and Earl respectively once victorious.
Zamorna and Northangerland have a love-hate relationship throughout the Angrian sagas but during the War of Encroachment are working together against external threats and encroachment.
The Ashantee tribe were joined by Arab Troops from the North (the Sahara desert and Jibell Kimmri or the Mountains of the Moon above Sneakysland and Angria) and the Frenchtroops (from offshore island / colony of Frenchyland) led by a “Napoleon” figure.
The French troops are also led by General Massena, Commander of French Forces against Verdopolis. Massena later returns to campaign with Ardrah and Northangerland against Zamorna.
The Battle of Velino near Freetown was a decisive battle in the War of Encroachment c. November / December 1833. Velino and the Velino Hills was Headquarters for Fidena’s troops during this war. Popular Angrian Field Marshall (and horseman “The Chevalier”) Sir Frederic Lofty, Earl of Arundel (Arundel the Angrian Province) was thought to have died or become missing in action during this battle. His younger brother Macara Lofty adopts his title and becomes active in the Verdopolitan Government under the Reformist Ardrah.
Zamorna was assisted in defeating the Ashantees by Joachim Murat, the flower of French chivalry who was rewarded with a post as an Angrian Minister (named after Napoleon’s cavalry commander).
Zamorna ‘s role in suppressing this invasion led to him being granted in parliament on 9 February 1834 the disputed land to the East of Verdopolis, a new kingdom of Angria where he is to be known as King of Angria.
Angria is eventually formally added as a Kingdom (after parliamentary battles) to the Glass Town Federation, which became known as The Verdopolitan Union.
Percy (or Rogue / Ellrington as he was formerly known) is rewarded for his role in defeating the Ashantee threat. He gets to be known as (the Duke of) Northangerland and is appointed the Angrian Prime Minister under Zamorna as King.
As in Russian novels and literature (War and Peace, Chekhov plays) what gets confusing in the Bronte sagas is the complex relationship between characters and the many names and honorary titles that they acquire over time and to different people.
1835-37 – The Second Angrian War
December 1835 Angria is expelled from the Verdopolitan Union by Ardrah and his Reform Party.
1835 – Northangerland as a Prime Minister is denounced as a traitor and forced to resign his seals of office by Zamorna.
1836. Verdopolitan Union plunged into Civil War! Angria is expelled from the Verdopolitan Union! Zamorna outlawed to his remote Hawkscliffe estate in the Sydenham foothills Northern in Angria! Or outlawed to the Ascension Isles …
By March 1836 – half of Angria is “in possession of our foes”.
Adrianpolis in Angria is invaded by Ashantee Forces under Quashia Qamina, briefly an ally of the Verdopolitan Government ruled by Zamorna’s ally Ardrah and His Reform Ministry.
Arthur, the Marquis of Ardrah and Prince of Parrysland, was a Commander or Admiral in the Verdopolitan Navy. Leader of the Reformist Party in Verdopolis, Ardrah was opposed to Zamorna and the creation of the Kingdom of Angria.
The Marquis of Harlaw, Edward Tut Ross, son of John King of Rossland, is one of Ardrah’s allies against Zamorna in the civil wars. Another of Percy ‘Rogue’ Northangeralnd’s Colonels in the Rebel Army is Arthur O’Connor, former cattle dealer.
Civil war between Angria and the Verdopolitan Union is happening at the same time as the Ashantee threat.
June 1836 – Zamorna is defeated at the Battle ofEdwardston in Angria on the 26 June 1836, leaving his country to be marauded by the victorious Ashantees, Arabs and the Provisional Government of Northangerland.
At Edwardston, Zamorna’s forces are defeated, losing 18,000 men (Captured? Killed? Wounded?) against the assembled forces of MacTerrorGlen, Massena, Quashia’s Ashantees and Lord Jordon / Sheik Medina’s Arabs.
Native Angrian hero, Squire of Ardsley in Angria, George Turner Grey (as described in the novelette The Return of Zamorna) called his tenantry around him after the Battle of Edwardston for a memorable last stand, to the motto “Ardsley to the Van!”
“The Angrian army … ruined, the Angrian nation enslaved and the Angrian King disgraced.” (Five Novelettes)
From June 1836 to September / autumn 1836, Northangerland was in control of the new French style Provisional Government of the Grand Republican Union (formerly the Verdopolitan Union). He has direct control over Angria where his allies (Ashantees,French and Bedouin forces) wreak a reign of terror. The Arab troops are led by Lord Jordon, in Byronic ‘Turkish’ dress and known as Sheik Medina.
Further bickering between Northangerland and Zamorna (now his son-in-law) about family and government seemed to have led to this further Republican rebellion by Northangerland against Zamorna.
July 1836 – Northangerland’s troops storm Rivaulx near Hawkscliffe on the edge of a royal forest, a hunting lodge where some of Zamorna’s family and followers are sheltering. One of Zamorna’s young sons Ernest Fitz-Arthur is captured and killed.
Zamorna has been deposed into exile after The Battle of Edwardston by Northangerland, but is rescued or reinstated by Constitutionalist Forces in December 1836.
August to October 1836 – Constitutionalist allies of the deposed Zamorna fight on, Fidena and Warner Howard Warner fight on in the hills, whilst Angrian Commander in Chief the Italian general Henri Fernando Di Enara ‘The Tiger’ fights on at Fort Gazemba.
Warner Howard Warner, governor of an Angrian province and then Prime Minister of Angria, appears to have waged a guerrilla war with his “blackguards and boors” in the Yorkshire Moor-like Olympian Hills of Angria, in support of Zamorna. He rallies the “War worn” troops of Angria to avenge Zamorna’s dead son Ernst Fitz-Arthur.
The Constitutional Forces of the former Verdopolitan Government (under Wellington and Fidena) eventually retake Verdopolis where Northangerland had his capital in December 1836.
Zamorna returns from exile in December 1836.
January to June 1837 – Northangerland’s retreating allies are routed by forces loyal to Zamorna. The Revolutionary troops of Northangerland that invaded Angria were routed at the Battle of Leyden near Alnwick in Angria and at the Battle of Westwood.
1837 – the Battle of Leyden. Zamorna and his troops won a victory over the Ashantee forces of Quashia, Montmorenci, MacTerrorGlen’s troops and the Arab troops of Lord Jordon / Sheik Medina. The battle is fought around the Village of Leyden near Alnwick in Angria.
Branwell Bronte’s narrator figure Captain Henry Hastings (Angrian soldier, poet and historian) has deserted from Zamorna’s own 19th Regiment (“The Devil’s Own”) and is now fighting against Zamorna.
General Lord Edward Hartford and Captain Sir William Percy (an officer in the Angrian 10th Hussars ) fought on Zamorna’s side against Northangerland. Sir William Percy is Northangerland’s disowned second son.
Zamorna’s enemy Lord Jordan (Sheik Medina) is killed in the battle.
1837 – The Battle of Westwood – Zamorna and troops rout Northangerland’s army of Montmorenci and MacTerrorGlen’s troops.
In the muddled chronology of Angria and its Civil Wars, this may be situation that Saunderson (Fidena) and the Narrator may be discusssing in the exceprt above, round about March 1837, according to Heather Glen.
One of the Angrian’s most infamous infantry regiments are The Bloodhounds (Glen, p. 501) led by the Italian ‘Tiger’ Enara.
“A host of Dark whiskered and bearded warriors such looks of savage and relentless ferocity I never held before … their great Raven banner bore in silver blazonry the single emphatic syllable. “DEATH” at their head … accompanied by 8 vast liver coloured dew lapped red eyed bloodhounds held in leashes stood the second commander of their Army Colonel Henry Fernando Enara. (Branwell Bronte, Angria and the Angrians)
Zamorna had some unusual generals including Henri Fernando di Enara, an Italian known as ‘the Tiger’, whom he created Baron of Etrei and Governor of this Angrian savanna province of Etrei. Other generals include Sir John Kirkwall and Frederic Lord Lofty.
Gazemba, June 1837 – The troops are reviewed before the final Battle of Evesham by Zamorna at Gazemba, a frontier town (population 59,000) in the desert on the East bank of the Calabar River. The Calabar river also links back to his capital Adrianpolis and Fort Adrian his mansion / fortified castle on its east Bank. The Calabar River has its source in burning and desolate and hostile African desert. Gazemba was the centre of Zamorna’s operations against the Ashantees.
Zamorna finally achieve peace using Angrian troops to defeat Northangerland and his retreating Allies during the ‘Campaign for the West’ at the Battle of Evesham, 30 June 1837 on the banks of the Angrian River of Cirhala.
Led by General Thornton and Zamorna, Angrian troops and their allies retake Evesham, despite the town being fortified by Northangerland’s Revolutionary troops.
General Wilson / Wilkin Thornton, an Angrian farmer with a strong Yorkshire accent, became Commander in Chief of the Angrian Army. He was an ally of Zamorna, related through his marriage to Julia Wellesley, Zamorna’s cousin.
Northangerland is exiled to Monkeysland. For a while …
1838 – Angria is at peace, Zamorna’s enemies scattered. Northangerland returns to his country seat and third wife.
1839 – January / February – disgraced soldier Captain Henry Hastings makes an attempt on Zamorna’s life, having drunkenly already killed his superior officer and deserted to the enemy in Paris.
21-23 February 1839 – Zamorna and Northangerland are publicly reunited at his Zamorna Palace in Adrianoplos in Angria, despite angry crowds who blockade the place when they discover Northangerland is there.
This timeline was pieced together from the notes in Christine Alexander’s and Heather Glen’s editions of the Bronte’s early works.
Gaming possibilities
Plenty of imaginative gaming scenarios should present themselves, based on the Angrian and Glass Town sagas of a mixed Colonial Central West Africa / European fusion, along with the North and South Pacific islands of Gondal and Gaaldine.
They were written by the Bronte family at a time (1820s – 1850s) of European Insurrection, nation building and independence, Latin American revolution, industrial revolution, strange alliances, Civil Wars and colonial expansion and exploration. This was the post-Napoleonic background that the Brontes were growing up in and reading about in journals and newspapers.
Post-Napoleonic Peninsula and Waterloo veterans as elders / generals
North African troops and desert arabs, led by a Byronic European in Turkish dress,
French colonial troops, African Ashantee warriors, insurgent and guerrilla forces.
Charlotte’s quick character sketch of Saunderson
Mr. Saunderson is later revealed to be John Sneachie, Duke of Fidena, speaking under an assumed name of “John of The Highlands”, Sneachisland or Sneakysland being one of the Glass Town Federation Imagi-Nations to the North West of Angria. It is the equivalent to the Scottish Highlands, albeit laid by Branwell and Charlotte Bronte over a fictional map of Central West Africa!
Many of the early settlers into this fictional colony are from Scotland and Yorkshire.
Saunderson is a dark haired, brooding character, with cane, black neckerchief and wearing a “blue surtout and Jane trousers” a Regency Trench Coat or Greatcoat with twill cotton trousers, or Jeans, according to The OED and Christine Alexander. How dashingly military today it still feels buying cavalry twill trousers, rather than jeans.
The narrator or the I is Charlotte Bronte and / or one of her many personas, her irreverent Angrian Narrator Charles Townsend.
Hopefully the bizarre tropical fusion of Africa with the Scottish Highland aspects of The Bronte Imagi- Nation settlers, the characters of Sanderson, MacTerrorGlen and such will allow kilted Scottish Highlander type troops to be used in gaming scenarios, albeit possibly in tropical dress. Scottish New Zealand troops and militia memorably wore of fashioned kilts for bush fighting and River wading during the later Maori Wars.
There is even the rogue Scotsman, MacTerrorGlen, leader of a drunken Scots brigade and leader of the Verdopolitan Reform Army fighting with Ardrah and the Ashantees against Zamorna’s and the Angrians. Known as Sir Jehu MacTerrorGlen (a reinvention of himself from his other life, as a roguish linen trader Jeremiah Simpson). After the defeat at the battle of Evesham, MacTerrorGlen is hunted down by Captain William Percy and the Angrian Government Police.
Having recently acquired several other Bronte books, including the encyclopaedic The Oxford Companion to The Brontes and Heather Glen’s edited edition of Charlotte Bronte’s Tales of Angria, there looks to be plenty more details of places, characters and events to flesh out the maps and timeline for future gaming scenarios.
Branwell Bronte’s Map of Glass Town (British Library / Museum)
I am still slowly piecing together the complex history of four sibling’s imaginary lands and islands.
Glass Town Federation with Angria added by Christine Alexander – really a map of West Africa. Map from
Christine Alexander the Bronte scholar has imaginatively sketched in where the kingdom of Angria should be, seen here in close up:
Informative Key to Christine Alexander’s enhanced map of Angria and Glass Town from her Oxford University Press edition of the The Brontes: Tales of Glass Town, Angria and Gondal (OUP 2010)
There is no map by the Bronte family for the Gondal sagas, set partly on Gondal, a fictional island in the North Pacific which seems to be based largely on Yorkshire. So I drew a rough outline one.more detail will be required for when I set some skirmish gaming scenarios there.
My Map of Gondal. Rough sketch from my notebook of a map of the Four Kingdoms of Gondal, using a Yorkshire map and the colonial habit of adding ‘New’ to familiar place names back home.
So that is where the map is roughly based on the four North, East, South and West Ridings of Yorkshire.
The Bronte sagas are rather lush and overblown, a bit Gothic and tediously muddled in parts. After all it is their Juvenilia. Some of their adult novels have survived better (Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre etc) with their Byronic brooding charcters, mad wives from slave islands in the attic, gothic houses, etc. All quite difficult to take seriously though. At least Jane Austen took the mickey in Northanger Abbey out of the fashion for Gothic novels and the products of a fevered girlish or literary imagination.
I have changed my view of Jane Austen and the Brontes since reading more about the historic events and Georgian / Regency social background in Jenny Uglow’s In These Times that I mentioned in a recent blogpost https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/in-these-times/
I like the fact that it was a box of wooden soldiers that kick started the Bronte sagas.
Often seen as early science fiction or RPG material, a paracosm or alternate world, if the Bronte family had been born at the end of 19th Century and played with tin or lead soldiers then I’m sure it would have been more Floor Games and Little Wars … like another famous science fiction author, H.G. Wells.
Arise Angria! The Rising Sun banner of Angria.
There is a charm in the Mad Geography of inventing tropical pacific or African coastlines and islands but making them all moodily, ruggedly, mistily like the wild Yorkshire landscape that the girls knew.
In the next week or so I hope to post a potted history of each of the Bronte’s Imagi-nations.
I find the Bronte juvenile sagas and poems hard going because they were never published in their lifetimes, never edited and probably never meant to be read outside the family. Lots of events and character detail is implied, not stated or written down. The tiny books were split up and sold off by dealers. Usually scholars look at them for clues to the origin of their published novels and characters.
For the Gondal and Gaaldine sagas, the prose stories by Emily and Anne seem to have vanished and only really Emily’s poems to and from different characters remain. I think the longest surviving sister Charlotte may have destroyed the most Gothic / romantic sections with multiple partners, affairs and children out of wedlock parts of them.
Gondal is set on a North Pacific island of four kingdoms. The other island Created by Emily and Anne Bronte is Gaaldine. Gaaldine is a South Pacific island or islands of six kingdoms, settled and interfered with by the ruling families, royalists and revolutionaries of Gondal, and presumably the original natives. I have not yet drawn the Gaaldine map.
For the GlassTown and Angria saga more prose remains, based loosely on a map of West Africa but with European offshore islands and Regency / Naplenoic era heroes. I have been skim reading some of the prose surviving sections for geographical clues to places to enrich the map, jumble of characters etc.
Troubled brother Branwell Bronte had more violent revolutionary and military storylines, often ones that had to be altered or revised by his sister Charlotte when he killed off characters whilst the sisters were away at work or school. Emily and Anne got fed up and invented Gondal and Gaaldine as their own kingdoms.
I like the Prisoner of Zenda type Ruritanian or even Fredonian aspects of the sagas.
Confused?
If it all gets too complex I will fast forward the nations through to the mid to late Nineteenth century when the established characters have largely died off or been deposed.
Lots of Royalists and revolutionaries abound, as befits the Bronte family growing up in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and new European nations forming and being fractured by revolutionary times throughout their lifetime. These were the times the Bronte family were born into and wrote through and into the late 1840s.
A pile of Zulus and natives ready for the painting table …
Recently I have been experimenting with using Revell Gloss Acrylic paints as they are not as smelly as the Matt Humbrol or Airfix enamels that I used in the past.
Just one whiff of enamel paint brings back happy memories of childhood and teenage years busily painting in a tiny fume filled room.
A spot of gloss painting is a change from several post Christmas weeks of “F and B”, Flocking and Basing (or rebasing) vintage Airfix and Peter Laing figures.
I am finding it difficult to get a dark brown gloss Revell acrylic for painting savage natives defending their tribal lands against imperialist aggressors.
Whilst I have been doing this, several interesting batches of Zulus have popped up in wargames blogs.
My fierce but motley playbashed bunch of Britain’s natives have been slowly collected together over several months from job-lot, damaged, scrap or for repair lead hollowcast figures bought mostly through EBay. Such damaged figures have little value to collectors. So it doesn’t really matter if I repaint or repurpose them.
Original paint play bashed or palely repainted, ready for the brown gloss paint.
I bought some Humbrol Gloss Brown Number 10 and used this only very briefly on a couple of figures before I got fed up of the fumes … not very family friendly! Next time I will paint with these enamel paints outdoors or with doors and all the windows open.
The end gloss results look promising already, even before gloss varnish, and suitably toy soldier like.
Shield designs aside, a suitable weapon such as a spear needs to be added to the hand. I have tried filing and adding a wire spear but on first attempt it did not stick.
These chunky Zulu figures are second grade Britain’s figures that were sold in A Series sets or singly. The fragile knobkerry on each of these figures is usually found broken, the original is shown in Andrew Rose’s excellent The Collector’s Guide to Toy Soldiers (Salamander 1985/97).
Zulus with arms – Detail from Page 89 of Andrew Rose’s The Collector’s Guide to Toy Soldiers (Salamander, 1997)
Andrew Rose’s book also shows various arm versions of the Britain’s classic running Zulus of Africa Set 147, 1906 to 1959 and another version of the set into the final Britain’s lead year of 1966.
Handy to see these more slender Zulu figures as shortly before Christmas I bought a Britain’s Zulus “jigsaw puzzle” in the form of a job-lot of bashed legs, bodies and bases. This should keep me busy fixing throughout the year. Recast Britain’s type arms with spears or even rifles can be sourced from firms like Dorset Model Soldiers.
A Britain’s Zulu “jigsaw puzzle” ready for repair and repaint.
Interestingly these loincloths on these jigsaw Zulus seem to have been painted by their owners in stripes and spots for a more tribal animal skin look.
Spotty or striped loincloths added by owners? on these Britain’s Zulus.
Britain’s used to indicate ‘native’ or ‘non-uniform’ troops by using at random three basic colours of yellow, red and blue for clothing – “The loincloths were painted in three different colour schemes, as Britain’s always did for native troops or irregulars who might not be expected to wear uniform.” (Page 107, Britain’s Toy Soldiers 1893 -1932 by James Opie, published by Victor Gollancz, London, 1985)
Rough repair and rebasing using polymer clay (Fimo / Sculpey) of a Britain’s running Zulu and (left) Crescent Zulu A162, a former Reka product.
Not sure whether to preserve (if I can) the strange ‘Black and White Minstrel’ style extraordinary face painting on some of these Britain’s Zulus.
Not sure yet what to do with the shield designs as I don’t really intend these to be Zulus, rather more Generican Natives or Ashantee tribes.
Ashantees?
In the Bronte juvenilia of Glasstown and Angria, these tribes are the savage Ashantees.
The Bronte family juvenilia stories feature various tribal forces such as generic ‘Arabs’ or also Ashantee warriors, for their map of their Glasstown Confederacy and Angria ‘Imagi-Nations’ was based on West Africa, the natives based on early 19th Century journals and prints (pictured in the blogpost shown below)
The Ashantees are led against Angria by the fictional Quashia Quamina Kashna, son of the equally exotically named King Sai Too Too Quamina.
Quashia was adopted as a baby by the Bronte’s fictional Duke Of Wellington and a rivalry grows up between Quashia and his stepbrother Zamorna, Wellesley’s eldest son who becomes King Of Angria.
Quashia and several Western characters successively invade Angria including Branwell Bronte’s fictional alter ego ‘Northangerland’, Ardrah (who opposes the creation of Angria by Zamorna) and MacTerrorglen.
Confused? So am I, still slowly figuring out the complex and intricate Game of Thrones style cast of characters and events created over many years by the young Bronte sisters and their brother Branwell. If it proves too difficult to create scenarios, I may keep the places but fast forward the Bronte “Imagi-Nations” a few decades clear of the Bronte’s main fictional characters that populate their Gondal, Angria and Glasstown sagas.
Stranger than fiction?
This fictional story of Quashia is not that dissimilar to true stories of how native princes were assimilated, educated or westernised such as Alamayu, the son of Theodore, King of Abyssinia (buried in 1879 at Windsor Castle Chapel and commemorated on a plaque by Queen Victoria). Alamayu was captured in the Magdala Campaign of 1867-68.
The Magdala campaign in what is now modern day Ethiopia is described in fascinating detail in Ian Hernon’s Britain’s Forgotten Wars: Colonial Campaigns of the Nineteenth Century (Sutton, 2003), republished as a compilation of a trilogy of Hernon’s books. You may have also read this as the first part of the trilogy previously published by Ian Hernon as ‘Massacre and Retribution’ (Sutton, 1998).
So the Bronte juvenile stories, albeit fictional, are not much stranger than some real life Nineteenth Century events.
The Bronte family Gondal stories (devised by Emily and Anne) are based on North and South Pacific islands (mixed with a bit of Yorkshire for good measure!) so the islands of Gondal (North Pacific) and Gaaldine (South Pacific) no doubt have their own tribes.
Ashanti Chieftain c.1819 Wikipedia source
Ashanti warrior c. 1824 Wikipedia source
Illustrations from the Ashanti Empire Wikipedia entry show left an Ashanti warrior and right one with a simple musket and powder horn.
Plenty of scope for many interesting scenarios. That’s why I’m keeping the figures “Generic” rather than “Zulu”.
Still lots of lovely repair and repainting work to do … I will post photos of the finished results.
Man of Tin blog 