“I mun do my own work, and Emily’s, and watch out for Aunt as well,” she complained to Patrick. “And then Aunt comes along behind and undoes all. Yesterday she made off with all my spoons, and I found them in the bread box.”
Patrick patted the old servant on the arm. “Let us be patient,” he counseled. He sympathized with Tabby, for he had several times had to search for the items from his desk after Aunt had “put them in order.” He decided he must add more help in the person of Martha Brown, the fourteen-year-old daughter of John Brown. Martha, a scrawny red-haired girl, proved a willing worker, and the household settled into an uneasy routine.
Then Branwell came home in April, once again in disgrace.
He slumped with his head down on a chair in Patrick’s study while his father sat behind his desk and Weightman stood leaning against the mantel.
“The railroad says I stole money,” Branwell said. Then he looked up, his face stricken. “But I swear I did not. I have many faults, but do you know me to be a thief? Have you ever known me to be greedy for money?”
“I do not know you to be greedy for material gain,” Patrick said, his voice heavy with disappointment. “But I wonder if the need to buy alcohol might qualify as a sort of greed?”
“I swear it’s not true,” Branwell protested. “Except—” He stopped, suddenly ashamed to confide in them.
“Except what?” Weightman prodded.
“I did not steal,” Branwell said. “But I was feeling badly one or two days at work. Perhaps I had too much of something the night before. And I might have been rather sloppy with my figures. I might not have checked them for errors. And so the sums would not be exact.”
Branwell looked from one to another, a woeful expression on his face. Then he said, “It doesn’t matter to you, does it? I’m still a rotter.”
No one spoke for a time. Patrick finally broke the silence. “Your youngest sister toils at a thankless position as a governess, your other sisters are abroad in a foreign land where they barely speak the language, trying to make themselves employable. And you, the only son, cannot hold a position, even for a few months. The railroad paid you a third more than Willie here earns as curate, and yet you tossed it away.”
Branwell sighed. “And now your turn, Willie. You tell me what a thankless bounder I am. Then I shall slink off into my hole.”
“Very well,” Weightman said. “There are ten-year-olds in the mills contributing more to their families than you do now.”
“Oh.” Branwell blinked. “That is cruel.”
“It is the truth.”
Branwell stood shakily and put his hand in his pocket. “Really,” he said, “I can’t think what to do. And now if you’ll excuse me, there is somewhere else I—”
He didn’t finish for Weightman came forward, thrust one hand into Branwell’s pocket, and with the other on Branwell’s shoulder, forced him back onto his chair.
“What?” was all Branwell managed to say, his mouth open.
Weightman uncorked the bottle he had withdrawn, sniffed it, and then stepped to the open window and poured out the contents.
“No!” Branwell cried, and lunged for Weightman, but the curate tossed the bottle out the window and, with both hands on Branwell’s shoulders, forced the smaller man back onto the chair.
Patrick, alarmed, stood and said, “Willie, do you think—”
Weightman ignored him and, with a finger in Branwell’s face, said, “You. You have been spending your time with those friends of yours from Halifax and Bradford, haven’t you? Those failed artists and failed poets and failed geniuses in general?”
“W-well—” Branwell stammered. “Really, you shouldn’t speak of them so, Willie, they liked you well enough when we heard the Ninth together.”
“Willie,” Patrick interrupted again, “what was in the bottle?”
“Laudanum,” Weightman said.
Branwell grew belligerent. “And what if it was?”
“Add it to the prodigious amount of alcohol you consume, and it signifies quite a lot.”
“Byron took laudanum, and Shelley, and Coleridge. All the great writers. I want to be a great writer.” Branwell wrestled himself free from Weightman’s grasp with a burst of energy, turned to his father, and spread his arms. “My God, William Wilberforce took laudanum for a time. The family hero.”
“Wilberforce took laudanum for medicinal purposes,” Weightman said. “Then he had the sense to get himself off it for good.” He put his hand on Branwell’s arm. “And that, my friend, is what you are going to do.”
Branwell shook his arm free. “How do you plan to force me?”
Weightman gripped Branwell’s arm again, stood close, and leaned so that their noses were nearly touching. “Here is what I plan to do. I am going to wear you as close, sir, as a pocket watch upon a chain.”
“But suppose I don’t want—”
“I don’t care what you want,” Weightman interrupted.
“Suppose I run?”
“I can outrun you and you know it.”
“And suppose—suppose I fight?”
Branwell turned suddenly and made a dash for the door. But Weightman was on him before he reached it and, with his arms around the smaller man’s chest, pulled him back into the room. Their momentum caused them to crash against the desk and knock over a lamp, which shattered against the grate of the fireplace. From the kitchen Tabby called, “What on earth!” and Patrick cried out as well, “Branwell, Willie, for God’s sake—”
But Weightman had already subdued Branwell, who sagged against the desk as abruptly as he had fought. “My God, Willie, have mercy. You’ve emptied my bottle and I was already at the edge.” He leaned against Weightman and began to sob. Tabby appeared in the doorway, her apron clutched in her hands.
Weightman looked over his shoulder at Patrick and said, “Does his room have a lock?”
“No,” Patrick said.
“Then I shall have to camp there for a time and guard the door. I’m afraid, sir, you must make my pastoral visits the next few days. Tabby, we shall require a good strong pot of tea from time to time. And broth at first; later something more substantial.”
“Yes, sir,” Tabby said with a curtsy, shocked into formality.
“I fear we’ve left you with a mess,” Weightman added, nodding at the broken glass on the mantel.
“Sir,” Tabby said again, and disappeared to send Martha Brown with a broom and dustpan.
“Now, Branwell,” said Weightman, “we shall go upstairs.” He marched his charge out of the room and up the stairs in the manner of a warden escorting a prisoner.
Branwell remained in his room for three days, in various stages of delirium. He fell often enough into a troubled sleep to allow Weightman to snatch some rest of his own, stretched out across the doorframe with a pillow and a blanket. At other times they wrestled as Weightman sought to keep the frenzied man from escaping.
The worst of the crisis passed and calm descended upon the parsonage. Branwell was obliged to move into the spare room at Cook Gate. He went easily enough, for the ordeal had sapped his energy. Weightman kept Branwell close, as he had promised, whether working upon a sermon or walking Keeper upon the moors. He made an exception only for his parish rounds; then he deposited Branwell in the company of his father.
As the combined effects of laudanum and alcohol wore off, Branwell began to write poetry, surreptitiously at first, bending over a scrap of paper across the desk from Weightman, while the clergyman worked on a sermon. Weightman noticed, but said nothing.
A few weeks later, Weightman and Branwell arrived at the parsonage one morning to find a letter waiting.
“You have mail,” Patrick said, handing over the letter to his son and peering over his spectacles. He was suspicious of letters bearing a Bradford postmark, for he wondered if his son’s friends were plotting some mischief.
Branwell glanced at the handwriting and then broke the seal, saying as he did, “I don’t recogn
ize this script.”
He glanced at the contents and his face flushed as crimson as his hair. He looked up, the paper trembling in his hand. “It’s the Bradford Herald,” he said. “I sent them a poem, and they’re going to publish it.”
“My word!” Patrick exclaimed. “Let me see that.” He held the paper almost to his nose, as he was now forced to do because of his failing sight, and read, “We are pleased to include “The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,” in our number of Thursday next.” This is magnificent! A published author in the family!”
“It’s a sonnet,” Branwell said. “Inspired by the painting by Landseer.”
Weightman stood leaning against the doorframe, his hand to his chin and a smile on his face. When Branwell turned to him, he thrust out his hand in congratulations.
“It’s your doing, Willie,” Branwell said.
“You wrote the poem,” Weightman said. “All you needed was your right mind.”
Branwell looked down at the sheet of paper, folding it carefully as he did so. “I must write my sisters. They will be so happy for me.”
Spring passed into summer. Branwell churned out poems, and began to consider a novel. He worked in his father’s study while the curate went about his parish rounds. But one night before the hearth at Cook Gate when Weightman suggested Branwell might safely move back to the parsonage, Branwell said “No, not yet. Believe it or not, I’m enjoying myself here. It’s like having a brother, and do you know, I always missed that. I believe it is why I was so keen on my Bradford friends.” He looked down at the cup of tea he had been drinking. “I wanted to impress them, you know. Make them think I was someone to reckon with, so they would want to be loyal to me as well.” Branwell had never admitted such a thing to anyone, and only recently to himself. He added, “I don’t feel I need to impress you, Willie. In fact, I assume you are singularly unimpressed, and yet you tolerate me anyway.”
“I suppose I like to be impressed as well as anyone,” Weightman answered. “But what hits the mark for me is a kind and generous heart and a brave soul. One does not compete for those distinctions, one simply lives as well as one can, and that is all that can be asked.”
Weightman smiled as he spoke, but Branwell thought he looked tired. He knew the curate had performed a funeral earlier in the day, and sat in at several sickbeds in the afternoon. When he still seemed weary the next morning, even after a night’s sleep, Branwell decided to watch him more closely. Once as they walked to a farm up Sladen Beck to visit a man who had been injured in an accident, Branwell said, “Do you know, if you grow much thinner, Charlotte and Emily may not recognize you when they return.”
Weightman waved his arm. “My clothes always hang more loosely in summer. I’ll plump up again in the autumn, you’ll see.”
At other times, as summer passed, Branwell thought Weightman grew shorter of temper. Perhaps he is tiring at last of my company, Branwell worried. Perhaps I might well move back to the parsonage and be out of his way.
One morning, on Weightman’s day off, they went grouse hunting. Branwell chattered on about a report in the Leeds Intelligencer of growing industrial unrest in Yorkshire. Although the hardships of winter were over, the market for textiles remained depressed, work was sporadic, and food scarce. The newspaper predicted riots before the end of the summer.
“It’s those damned Chartists,” Branwell complained, after missing a shot with Weightman’s gun. “Putting notions in people’s heads. Well, let them riot. I’d be glad to volunteer with the constabulary and thrash some of the blackguards.”
“Why should they fear you?” Weightman replied, his voice chilly. “They are thrashed every day of their lives.”
Branwell looked at Weightman with a start. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Weightman, “that I would be glad to take you into Gauger’s Croft with me, where you might meet a family of eight or more living in one cellar room in stifling heat because the room beside them is a wool comber’s shop. But I doubt you could stand it for long.”
“Well, of course there is suffering—” Branwell began to protest, but Weightman interrupted.
“Suffering! You know nothing about it.” Weightman’s face was so pale with anger that the natural flush of his cheeks stood out like smudges of a woman’s makeup. “Let me introduce you to another family off West Lane whose twelve-year-old son has no left arm, and no hand on his right. He was pulled into a machine in the Ebor Mill. Ask your friend Hartley Merrall about that.”
Branwell turned. “Of course that’s horrible. But who sends those children into the mill? Their parents, of course. The Merralls are doing nothing more than producing cloth. Is that a sin?”
To Branwell’s surprise, Weightman grabbed the gun out of his hand and said, “Producing cloth from the blood of others is indeed a sin.”
Weightman turned and walked away. When an astonished Branwell ran to catch up, Weightman turned and said, “Leave me alone!” with such vehemence that Branwell felt he’d been slapped in the face. Nor did Weightman return to the Widow Ogden’s until well after midnight, when Branwell was in bed. Branwell could not imagine where the curate might have been.
After a mostly silent breakfast the next morning, he proposed that it would be best if he returned to the parsonage.
“I suppose you are sober enough,” Weightman said shortly.
Branwell took himself off without a word. Later that morning while Weightman was out, saddened by the sudden turn of their friendship, he spoke with his father at the parsonage.
Patrick said, “Willie is under a great deal of strain.”
“He was out late last night.”
“There was a disturbance outside the Bridgehouse Mill. He may have been tending to that.”
“What does a disturbance at the mill have to do with Willie?”
Patrick considered how to answer, for he was worried himself. He had heard rumors of his curate in recent weeks, reports—or insinuations, he considered them, for they came from the mill owners in the congregation—that Weightman had been seen in the poorer districts of Haworth holding conversations of some intensity with men who were considered troublemakers. Patrick tried to ignore the rumors, nor did he wish to say much to his son, whom he considered impractical where such matters were concerned.
Finally he replied, “I believe Willie wished to calm the waters.”
Branwell decided to attempt a rapprochement, for he was truly sorry to be bereft of Weightman’s company. A cousin of the mill-owning Greenwoods, a charming young woman named Isabella, was visiting from York and would be honored at a tea on the coming Sunday afternoon. Because most of the Greenwoods were Baptists and Whigs, Weightman had not before been invited to their parlor, but Branwell made sure of the clergyman’s welcome ahead of time. Then he convinced Weightman to come along. It was an inspired invitation, Branwell considered, for he thought Weightman enjoyed himself.
Hartley Merrall took Branwell aside and asked, “How did you get Saint Francis to attend?”
“Don’t speak so sarcastically, for he’s a capital fellow!” Branwell protested. “And Willie has always had an eye for the ladies.”
Weightman did indeed appear pleased with the lovely golden-haired Isabella Greenwood, who bestowed an inordinate amount of attention upon the young curate. Why not, Branwell thought. Willie is handsome enough, and charming, and would possess financial substance as well if he ever decided to claim it. Weightman clearly enjoyed Isabella’s attention, and ferried cups of punch and plates of biscuits to the chair where she sat. He laughed more often than Branwell had seen him do in weeks.
Then came the publication of another poem by Branwell, this time in the Leeds Intelligencer.
The poem, which Branwell titled “The Afghan War,” was written in response to the terrible events of the spring. The British army in India had invaded Afghanistan in order to establish an outpost and provide a buffer against the Russians to the north. Upon settling in Kabul, the garrison sent fo
r their wives and children and began to establish themselves in residence. But native tribesmen set upon the English settlers and drove them back toward India. Caught in the high passes of the Hindu Kush, some four thousand British soldiers and ten thousand women and children were massacred or carried into slavery, leaving a lone survivor, a physician, to tell the tale. Horror gripped the nation.
After he wrote, Branwell closed his eyes at night with the awful images of terror and bloodshed fixed in his mind. He suffered nightmares. At the same time, he was gratified when the poem was accepted for publication. Ironic, he realized, to have one’s own pride of accomplishment connected to the tragic suffering of others. The plight of the author. He longed to placate his conscience, and did so one night by slipping out to drink with Hartley Merrall at the Black Bull, an event of which Weightman was unaware.
When the poem appeared in the newspaper, Branwell shared it with pride in the study where Weightman met with Patrick to discuss church business.
“A fine tribute,” his father said, handing the newspaper to Weightman. “One cannot begin to comprehend such barbarity.”
Weightman, who continued to look thin and pale, read the poem, holding the newspaper before him for an inordinate amount of time. But Branwell soon forgot his care for his friend’s health when Weightman, still staring at the poem, said, “Yes, barbarous. We do the same thing to people in England, but more slowly and with more refinement.”
Branwell was appalled. “What a horrible thing to say in the face of such wholesale death!”
“Yes,” Weightman murmured. “A horrible thing to say. But isn’t this garrison luckier than some? At least they are memorialized. Unlike the poor sods who wove their uniforms.”
Even Patrick was scandalized. “Willie,” he said, “you are not yourself.”
“No.” Weightman stared at the hearth, empty in the heat of summer. “I am not myself.” He rubbed his forehead, damp with sweat, so that the hair above his forehead stood up, and said, “I am not fit company just now. If we are done, sir?” He looked inquiringly at Patrick.
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