For about a decade, I’ve suffered from persistent, sometimes-debilitating insomnia. After many years of strategies, drugs, tinctures, doctors, therapists, etc., I have found a method that (mostly) works to help me sleep. Each night, I’ll read for a bit, then recline on my couch, cuddle up with my dog, put a boring British docuseries on extremely low volume in an otherwise dark room, and watch it until I fall asleep. Then, at some point during the night, I stumble into my bedroom and continue to sleep for whatever hours remain.
Before you start sending me your recipe for homemade sleepytime tea or evangelizing about CBD oil or telling me screens/blue light are disruptive to sleep, allow me to save you the trouble. I’ve tried ALL. THE. THINGS. For me, the bit of nonfiction reading + boring British TV + cozy dog system works as well or better than cognitive behavioral therapy, sleep medications, hypnosis, meditation, strict sleep hygiene, or any of the myriad other remedies I’ve experimented with.
I prefer to read nonfiction before bed, since even cozy fiction tends to engage my writer brain and ramp up my imagination (and my anxiety, if the main character is imperiled).
Here’s where we get to the rabies and canal boats.
One night, I picked up the book I’d been reading—Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, which I will grant you, may not be a common choice for a relaxing bedtime read. I personally enjoy knowing that the subtypes of rabies are called “paralytic” and “furious,” due to the predominant symptoms they produce, and that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Louis Pasteur. Seriously, raise a glass of bacteria-free milk to that guy. What a mensch.
But back to the blog post. The section I read that night discussed rabies subplots in Charlotte Brontë’s novels, wherein the disease serves as a metaphor for various human anxieties about the natural and social worlds. I dimly registered the footnotes, which contained a quote from a woman named Ann Dinsdale, the principal curator of the Brontë Parsonage, former residence of the famous sisters and their less-famous brother.
I closed the rabies book and flipped on one of my favorite fall-asleep docuseries: the program Great Canal Journeys, in which a pair of adorable elderly British thespians (you’ll recognize them if you’ve watched as much Britbox as I have) tootle around Europe’s canal system in a narrowboat, having extremely low-stakes adventures.
In one such episode, hosts Prunella and Tim visit Haworth, a quaint hilltop village in Yorkshire. There, they tour the Brontë Parsonage. Low and freaking behold: they are given a personal tour by none other than Ann Dinsdale.
Twice in the space of an hour, I encountered the curator of a small English house museum—while I was at home in Virginia and decidedly NOT doing any Brontë-related research whatsoever.
The next time a reader complains that a coincidence in one of my books is unrealistic, I will point them to this blog post, or to one I wrote years ago about LBJ’s dog meeting Colonel Sanders.
Full disclosure: I don’t like any of the Brontë’s books, not Jane Eyre, not Wuthering Heights, not the other one that the other sister whose name I can never remember wrote. (Even fuller disclosure: I never read that one by the other sister). However, the Ann Dinsdale Singularity struck me as so delightfully uncanny that I immediately dashed off an email to the museum telling them all about it.
Here’s their reply:
Good morning Mindy,
Thank you for your email and for sharing this anecdote. Our senior curator Ann Dinsdale is often involved with many projects at once, and it’s wonderful to hear how you encountered her work twice in one hour!
We look forward to welcoming you to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in the future.
So, dear reader, I took them at their word. My husband and I made a special detour to Haworth when we were in the area.
Sadly, Ann Dinsdale wasn’t there the day we visited, but we did get to see a handwritten manuscript of Wuthering Heights. The original manuscript’s disappearance is shrouded in mystery, but in 2017 the museum launched a project to have visitors copy out the entire book, one line at a time.
The first entry– “I have just returned from a visit to my landlord” — was written by… Ann Dinsdale.
