The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte

by James Tully

  He told Father that it was because Mr Robinson had found out that he was carrying on with Mrs Robinson, but Father took that with a pinch of salt for he knew Master Branwell’s nature and said to us that he had never even been seen with a woman other than his sisters.

  I never did know how Father found out the truth. He had Freemason friends all over, and so it may have come from one of them but, on the other hand, Master Branwell often told him secrets when they were drinking together. All I do know is that I heard Father telling Mother that Master Branwell had been sacked because of something to do with the Robinson boy, and that Miss Anne had resigned from her job because of what had been going on.

  Certainly Miss Anne was quieter than ever once her brother was back, and Miss Charlotte would have nothing to do with him at all, even though it was said that she had always been closer to him than the others when they were children. Only Miss Emily seemed to have any time for him, and it was her who cared for him when his health failed after he came home. She told me that he was quite ill, and I know from what I overheard that he went night after night without any sleep at all, which I can now understand if he was worried about the truth of why he had lost his job coming out.

  Mr Brontë was more than bothered about him, and one night he sent me with a message to Father to come to the Parsonage. To this day I do not know of all that passed between them, but the upshot was that Father was asked to go with Master Branwell on a holiday in the hope that a change of air and everything else would help him to get better.

  I was there when Father told Mother what was to take place. She sniffed, and then said sharply that that was like asking a fox to look after a lamb but, at the end of July as I recall it, off they went to Liverpool and North Wales. To tell the truth, Master Branwell did seem a little better when they came back, but any good that the time away may have done was soon lost because I know from Father and what I saw that he straightaway took to drinking even more, and that he was dosing himself with laudanum.

  Even so, I noticed that when he was forced to be sober because of lack of money he was scribbling away in some old exercise books from the Sunday School. It was in no sense a surprise to me therefore when Miss Emily told me that he had had some poems printed in the Halifax Guardian, especially after I had seen her rewriting what he had set down so that folk could read it. Then – in September I think it was – he told Father that he had finished the first part of a three-parts book but, shortly after, he said that he had given up the idea.

  Instead he went on in his same old ways for nearly a year. He was very often so drunk that he did not know what he was doing, and acted so silly, but at the end of May, 1846, things took a strong turn for the worse.

  Mr Robinson died on the 26th and a few days later his widow sent her coachman to Haworth with a message for Master Branwell. He was not at the Parsonage at the time and so the coachman was directed to the Black Bull as being the most likely place to find him. Sure enough, there he was, and several villagers witnessed what happened next.

  From all accounts, the envelope was handed to Master Branwell who opened it and read the letter inside. Then he seemed to have a seizure and became almost as a person possessed, rolling on the floor and making terrible noises. Father was called from his yard, but it was ages before he could calm Master Branwell and try to find out what was up with him.

  Master Branwell would not let Father see the letter, but he told him that it said that Mrs Robinson would get nothing from what her husband had left if she had anything more to do with him. The story was that Mr Robinson had added that wording to his Will and so Mrs Robinson had told Master Branwell that she would never see him again. Weeping, Master Branwell raged to Father that Mr Robinson’s Trustees hated him, and that one had said that if he ever saw Master Branwell he would shoot him.

  It was not until many years later, when Mr Nicholls told me the full story, that I found out that there never was any such wording in Mr Robinson’s Will, and that Master Branwell had made up the tale to hide what the letter really said.

  Seemingly, and in spite of the story that Master Branwell put about, he had been sacked for misbehaving with young Edmund Robinson and matters came to a head following the time when the Robinsons went on holiday leaving Master Branwell in charge of the lad.

  The boy must have said something when he finally joined his parents at Scarborough, or else it must have been evident that something was amiss, because a doctor was called in and he questioned Edmund closely. Then, on that very day, Mr Robinson wrote the letter ending his job to Master Branwell, who was given no chance to speak up for himself nor sought one.

  It would seem that the sacking and the fear of what had really happened becoming known came as a terrible shock to Master Branwell. He dreaded his family and friends learning the truth, and that is why he made up the tale about Mrs Robinson. The whole business sent him to pieces completely, and he sank into a long bout of drunkenness during which he told the truth to Father.

  I never learned all the ins and outs of it, but I know that Master Branwell was very down at the time, and he told Father that he felt a total failure. He had no money; his family and most of his friends would have nothing to do with him; he was not able to find any work and his state of mind did not permit him to carry on with his writings. It seemed to him that he had nothing to lose and so he wrote to the Robinsons saying that he would make the whole scandal common knowledge were he not paid to keep silent.

  I cannot imagine what Mr Robinson must have thought when he first read that letter, but after thinking about it he must have been fearful of everyone knowing what had happened. As Mr Nicholls pointed out to me many years later, even if young Edmund had been an innocent victim in whatever took place there would have been a blight on his future, but had he been a willing partner . . . well it was all too awful to think about.

  Be that as it may, the upshot was that from then on, and with only one short break, I know now that Master Branwell got regular payments of 20 pounds from the Robinsons’ doctor, Dr Crosby, for the rest of his life.

  The short break in the payments came after Mr Robinson’s death, when his widow had to explain them to the Trustees of his Will. According to Master Branwell, they were powerful people who surrounded Mrs Robinson and hated him like Hell, and it seems that they were filled with horror when they found out the facts. Mrs Robinson was told that Master Branwell’s bluff should be called, and that the payments would cease forthwith, and he was told of that in the letter delivered by the coachman.

  Once I knew all that, I could understand why Master Branwell had gone into such a fit in the Black Bull, and I saw that it was a tantrum made up of anger and hopelessness – anger because of the actual message, and hopelessness because he was always being beset by folk that he owed money to and he had great need of that from Dr Crosby.

  For days he just laid on his bed, and I was not allowed into the room to clean or tidy it. He never went out and, on the rare times when he came down for something to eat, he just bolted his food and left. It was evident to us all that he was thinking about something important but, of course, we did not know what it was.

  After a time, and with money that he got from his father and friends, and from somewhere else that I shall write about later, he began to go out again. His manner was not the same though and he seemed Hell-bent on making away with himself. Father said that he was drinking more, and I began to find no end of laudanum bottles under his bed. As for his bedding, it was an absolute disgrace, and after Miss Aykroyd complained it was Miss Emily who took over the washing of his linen and the making of the bed.

  Things went from bad to worse, and at the end of 1846 there was a shameful day when the Sheriff’s Officer called at the Parsonage and told Master Branwell, within the hearing of us all, that he must either pay his debts or go to prison.

  Then, almost overnight, he was more cheerful and his usual self. At the time none of us could understand what had wrought the change, but Father and his o
ther friends knew and, in the end, I also learned what had happened.

  It would seem that his very bad need for money finally decided Master Branwell to start his blackmail again. He went to see Dr Crosby and said that if the payments were not restarted the whole terrible story about him and Edmund would come out. Dr Crosby then met the Trustees, and made them see that Master Branwell meant what he had said. He was backed up by Mrs Robinson who, by then, was thinking not only of her son but that her chances of getting wed again would be harmed if the scandal came out.

  In the end the Trustees were made to see that they would have to agree to Master Branwell’s demands and, in June, 1846, he had a very careful letter from Dr Crosby saying that the payments would be restarted.

  I always felt very sorry for Master Branwell. He painted some lovely pictures, and I used to love hearing him play the organ in the Church. Not only that, but folk said that his poems were every bit as good as his sisters’. He was always a gentleman towards me, and at times he could be very funny – sometimes having us all in fits in the kitchen. Father said that nobody could tell a tale like him, and folk always sought him out, especially in the Black Bull and other public houses. Had he been reared in a normal family, and with a mother’s love, it is likely that he would now have more fame and respect than his sisters.

  Be that as it may, in writing so much about Master Branwell I have gone ahead of myself and now I should really go back to 1845, when all the family was at home for the first time in years.

  [] So there the Brontës were, in this year of 1845, all at home again and all, in their own eyes at least, failures. None of them had any idea what to do next, and certainly the village in which they lived was hardly likely to present any inviting opportunities.

  In the nineteenth century, Haworth was a particularly squalid and disease-ridden place, which drew attention even in an era when unsanitary conditions were regarded as normal. It was a remote place, and life was hard.

  The Parsonage was a rectangular stone house which stood at the top of the long, and steeply ascending, cobbled main street. It faced east, and was exposed to the gales which often pounded that part of the country. The front door was opposite the western door of the church, which was about a hundred yards away. On three sides of the house was the overcrowded graveyard, which must have presented an awesome spectacle to the children when they were young.

  Behind the Parsonage, the windswept moors sloped upwards to the horizon. They were attractive during the summer, but in the winter they presented a particularly bleak appearance.

  The interior of the house was equally cold and dreary, even in good weather. It was stone-paved, damp, with few floor coverings. There was no indoor sanitation, and the only drinking water came from a polluted well.

  At that time there were only four proper rooms on each floor. On the ground floor, to the left of the front door, was the sitting room behind which was a storeroom. To the right was Mr Brontë’s study, with the kitchen at the rear.

  Upstairs there were four bedrooms, and a small box room which was above the downstairs passage. That tiny room, which measured only 9 feet by 7½, had originally been designated as the children’s ‘study’ – a rather grandiose title for such a cheerless little den which had no fireplace and faced east, overlooking the graveyard. It was now Emily’s bedroom, in which she had to make do on a camp bed.

  There was little comfort, and no privacy. That had not mattered overmuch when they were young, but must have been irksome in that year of 1845 during which Charlotte was twenty-nine, Emily twenty-seven, Anne twenty-five and Branwell twenty-eight. Their father was sixty-eight, and nearly blind. Branwell was drinking to excess, taking drugs and gambling.

  There is strong evidence to suggest that Branwell behaved improperly towards, or with, the thirteen-year-old Edmund Robinson. That tends to be supported by Anne who wrote: ‘During my stay I have had some very unpleasant and undreamt of experiences of human nature.’ An affaire between a man and a woman, even an adulterous one, was hardly in the category of ‘undreamt of experiences’ nor, one would think, would it have been considered, as she also put it, ‘bad beyond expression’. It is virtually certain that the main reason for Anne’s resignation was her knowledge of Branwell’s misconduct with young Edmund.

  It is significant that Charlotte was totally unforgiving.

  For most of his life Branwell had been closer to Charlotte than to his other sisters, and she had thought highly of him. In the years immediately prior to 1845, however, she had become more and more disenchanted with her brother, and the Thorp Green Hall business was the final straw. After that she did not speak to him for weeks on end, and then only if there was no way of avoiding it. That hurt him bitterly, especially as he probably knew or guessed what she was writing about him to Ellen Nussey.

  On 31 July 1845, for instance, she told her friend: ‘I found Branwell ill: he is so very often owing to his own fault.’ On 18 August: ‘My hopes are low indeed about Branwell – I sometimes fear he will never be fit for much – his bad habits seem more deeply rooted than I thought . . .’ On 4 November: ‘I wish I could say one word to you in his favour, but I cannot, therefore I will hold my tongue.’

  Charlotte had absolutely no time for him, and did not, at that time, care who knew it. There was no question of loyalty to her brother, nor of keeping his problems within the family. That must have had an adverse effect on how people treated him, but in the event it was a self-defeating exercise, because the more he was shunned and denied employment the more he drank.

  It was only after his death that Charlotte came to realize that he might not have continued his life of dissipation had she not been so harsh with him, and if she and her sisters had taken him into their confidence more fully. She was to feel guilty about her treatment of him for the rest of her life.

  Charlotte herself was doing virtually nothing in 1845. She was still distraught at being parted from M. Héger. Her long-suppressed sexual passions had been aroused in Brussels, and she could not come to terms with her celibacy. She did not like Haworth, or the local people, and felt that her world had now come to an end. Day after day she hoped desperately to receive a letter from her former lover, but she suffered constant disappointment.

  I suspect that she also felt rather lonely, and somewhat estranged from the rest of the family. Earlier in their lives the four children had tended to separate into two couples, Charlotte and Branwell, and Emily and Anne. Now, however, she was disenchanted with her brother and, following Anne’s return, her sisters had taken up where they left off. Charlotte was therefore a rather solitary being in her own home, and was becoming increasingly anxious to do something with her life.

  For her part, and quite to the contrary, Emily was more than contented with her lot. Being at home, and near to her beloved moors, was all that she really asked from life, but, between her domestic chores, she was now writing poetry as well as revising and sorting some of her previous works. How she felt as a woman we can but guess. Generally she is regarded as having been more domesticated than her sisters, and there had never been even a hint of a romance. Branwell was the only man whom she had known really well, and he was not a very good example of the species. She knew that her sisters had fallen in love, and she must have experienced sexual stirrings herself. Her poetry from this period reveals a sublimated passionate nature, and is quite different from her earlier love poems. However, any yearnings which she may have felt were concealed from the world by a no-nonsense facade.

  As for Anne, she had qualities which were seldom revealed – especially at home. In 1845, after returning from Thorp Green Hall, she was merely living her life quietly, but she was a keen observer of people and events. I have often wondered what went on in that quiet little mind. She must certainly have regretted leaving some of the advantages of working for the Robinsons because, although the Parsonage was home, it must have seemed very drab and squalid after five years in a mansion.

  One can but imagine what th
e atmosphere in the house was like at that time. What a mixture of emotions, mostly repressed, in which fact and fantasy merged and four breasts held secret, and sometimes passionate, longings for they really knew not what.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I will write upon him my new name.’

  Revelation 3:12

  Looking back over all those years it seems to me now that, her concern for Master Branwell apart, Miss Emily was the only one in the Parsonage who was happy in 1845. For strange to say, although she was contented and placid by nature, that Summer she was in love for the very first time. Even stranger to tell, she had fallen in love with Mr Nicholls, and she believed that her love was returned. I had noticed that she never made any remark when Miss Charlotte was going on about Mr Nicholls, but I did not find that at all out of place for that was her way. Later, though, I began to think that there might be another reason for her silence because word was getting about that she had been seen on the moors in company with her father’s curate.

  As soon as I heard that I began to keep my eyes open for signs of anything passing between them, and I found that there was indeed something in the gossip. I would see Mr Nicholls start off up to the moors from our house and then, a little later, Miss Emily would leave the Parsonage. They never took the same paths, nor did they ever come back together, but, even without taking any mind of what else some of the villagers said they had seen, I had but to look at Miss Emily’s face when she came back to know that there was something in what was being said.

  The talk got to such a pitch that Father took me to one side and asked me what I knew. Well, that made me very ill at ease for I thought much of Miss Emily and did not wish to say anything that might harm her, but also I did not wish to lie to Father. I felt myself going redder and redder as I dithered about what to say and in the end he let me be, but I knew that I had given him an answer by my manner.