UPDATE: I originally attributed this character list to Anne based on the title it's given on the page photographed below. Further research has revealed that it is written on a page of Emily's poetry so I've updated the blog to reflect that. The list was first published in a paper by David Isenberg (see Bibliography) and I've added his analysis to this post.
Anne Brontë wrote several lists of names connected to the imaginary setting of Gondal which she shared with her sister Emily. The first is several place names inserted into a geography textbook, and two of them are lists of personal names on scraps of paper. Then there is another, written by Emily, which looks like borderline gibberish!
Directly transcribed, here's what it says:
Ronald Stwart — 28 June 8th E — 6 — Brown H — Grey E — EN — R and W—7— — 1— — * * Regina 24 April 29th — C —57 — Dark brown H — Grey E — GN — F — 7 — — 1— —
* Marcellus Stwart 21 August 3d B — 511 — light brown H — Grey E — RN — F — 7 — # — 1 — Flora * 17 June 18th B — 56 — Chesnut H — brown E — GN — R and W — # — # — 1 — 8 — Francesca 18 July 20th — V — 56 — light brown H — Grey E — RN — P and W — 7 — 1 — — — 21 aug
I was totally confused when I first saw this in Christine Alexander's edition of selected Brontë juvenilia (see the Bibliography). But cleaning it up and putting each bit of information into a table helped me see the categories listed by Emily:
After each name we have a two-digit number and a date. The latter is most likely a birthday, in which case the first two digits probably refer to character's age or perhaps birth year (e.g. 1828). I think they're unlikely to be birth years, since the Gondal stories take place around the late 1820s and 1830s (e.g. Emily's poem beginning "'O Day! he cannot die" takes place in September 1826 and Anne's poem beginning "The lady of Alzerno’s hall,'" takes place in 1837). So a birth date of 1828 for Ronald St[e]wart would make him a child at most, unlikely to be a noteworthy character. More likely, Emily meant him to be a 28 year old adult. David Isenberg guesses the same, although he doesn't mention the Gondal dates.
After the ages and birthdays there are enigmatic letters, E, C, B, and V. My only guess was zodiac signs since they follow the birth days, C could be Cancer or Capricorn, B could be Bull (Taurus), V could be Virgo. But they don't match up with the sun signs, e.g. Taurus is April 20th to May 20th and neither of the corresponding "B" birthdays lie in that range. Plus the "E" really throws this off, and star signs are really stretching the meagre evidence, so I don't think this guess is correct.
The next column is some more digits. I can't find any sense in treating them as whole numbers and I'm pretty positive that they're heights, i.e. 5'6", 5'7", 5'11" and 6'. This makes a great deal of sense as the shortest characters have female names, Flora and Francesca, while the tallest have male names, Marcellus and Ronald. Additionally, these adult heights support the identification of the previous two-digit numbers as ages. David Isenberg doesn't connect the heights to the characters' sex, but reaches the same conclusion.
Next we have colours followed by H and E. These obviously refer to hair and eye colours. The next column has E, G, or R, each followed by N. Following on from hair and eyes, I think the identity of N is nose. GN could stand for Grecian Nose and RN for Roman Nose. I'm not sure about EN, all I could think of was Eastern Nose, while David Isenberg suggests English Nose which is probably closer to the mark.
The following column is more myserious, with less of a clear pattern. We have two Fs by themselves, and three Ws each with R or P. It's clear that F and W describe separate characteristics, with R or P as variations of W. Of the facial features, we have mouth and ears left, so a good approach would be to find mouth or ear descriptions that fit. My best guess is that the letters describe ear types, possibly: F[lat], R[ound] and W[ide], and P[ointed] and W[ide]. Isenberg suggests these refer to facial complexion: F[air], R[ed] and W[hite], and P[ink] and W[hite], which is just as plausible.
As for the last columns, I can't make much sense of them, it's not even clear if the numbers mean the same thing for each character or if there's any significance to the extra dashes and asterisks. Since Flora and Marcellus St[e]wart are the only names with hashes (or "square constructions" as Isenberg calls them), they may indicate a connection between the two, such as a relationship.
So with all these guesses plugged in and cleaned up, we've gone from gibberish to a pretty straightforward table of characters' appearances:
Even if some of the guesses are off, it's an interesting glimpse into how precisely and systematically Emily had visualised her characters, and we get a tiny window into her creative process.
Bibliography
Christine Alexander (ed.) (2010) The Brontës: Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 494-495
Edward Chitham (ed.) (2021) The Poems of Anne Brontë (2nd edn). Brighton: Edward Everett Root, pp 30-32
Janet Gezari (ed.) (1992) Emily Jane Brontë: The Complete Poems. London: Penguin Books, pp 9-11, 236
David R. Isenberg (1962) A Gondal Fragment. Brontë Society Transactions, 14(2), 24-26