The Madwoman Upstairs

by Catherine Lowell

  I introduced myself. “Samantha Whipple.”

  He fixed his dark eyes full upon me. There was an unceremonious directness to his face that I recognized from somewhere—where?

  “You look like your father,” he said, impassive. “Same veins in your eyes.”

  Up close, I could see the fragile wrinkles around Sir John’s brow, left over from years of frowning. I waited; he waited. Both of us, I imagined, were expecting my father to materialize as a ghost in between us.

  I said, “How are you?”

  “Let’s step outside.”

  It was late afternoon, and the sky was an even shade of white. Sir John walked in the detached way of someone who was accustomed to having students trail behind him. His body was frail and seemed much older up close than it had from a distance. When we reached the steps of the Ashmolean, he stopped, turned, and looked my way. I’d never thought I would fear a man’s brain more than I feared Orville’s, but here was a man whose intellect was even sharper—sharper because I was not yet sure of its full scope, and everything looming and undefined seemed terrifying.

  Dad used to tell me that Sir John’s main faults included not knowing how to read, and not knowing how to think. He credited him with being the least imaginative man he knew. I wondered, now, if Dad had been wrong. Sir John was unfortunately the more respectable scholar of the two of them. Dad wrote the occasional “academic” article here and there, but he had never bothered to go to college and had spent the majority of his time reading and writing fiction in his hovel of a study. Sir John, meanwhile, had spent his career accumulating academic degrees, developing well-articulated theories with the support of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the world.

  Sir John turned to me. “I tried to contact you, over the years.”

  “I know.”

  “You did not respond.”

  “I know.”

  My breath quickened. I would have liked to tell him that I’d been rude mostly out of sheer awkwardness, not spite, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. He must have been expecting some kind of adult who was used to handling conflict. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I was aware of inexperience clinging to me like a strange film on my skin. I felt guilty and embarrassed, and I did not want to be here.

  He glared at me coolly. “Do you know who Patrick Brontë is, Miss Whipple?”

  The question took me by surprise. I said, “Of course.”

  Patrick Brontë, the father of the Brontë sisters, received so little attention from the public that people tended to forget he even existed. He outlived all of his children, reaching the ripe old age of eighty-four. No one gave him much thought. It’s uncanny, the way old men have a habit of becoming invisible even when they’re the only ones left in the room.

  “I imagine you do,” said Sir John. “Patrick Brontë was a secluded writer, diseased by selfishness and the delusions of his own fame, whose literary pretensions prevented him from confronting his staggering mediocrity.”

  I swallowed. “Sure.”

  “He homeschooled the Brontë children, denying them both proper education and any friends, and as a result he turned them into social pariahs. When all of his offspring eventually died, it was he who helped resurrect them, fabricating a myth around their lives, and engineering their immortality. He saved all of their notes, their journals and books, locking them away or distributing them to select relatives. Patrick Brontë, in other words, was in the business of making and propagating mysteries. Does this sound familiar to you?”

  The heat rose to my cheeks. “I don’t answer rhetorical questions, sir.”

  Sir John’s stare intensified. His eyes were cold, bright blue gems.

  I added, “Maybe Patrick Brontë was just a private person.”

  “Or maybe he was an exceptional businessman.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I have been tracking Patrick Brontë’s possessions for years,” he said, “using old letters and biographies to piece together what once existed in the Brontë estate. And this book still only includes half of what I believe there was. The majority of the Brontë possessions were passed down through Patrick Brontë’s side of the family—which, as you know, led to your father—and now, I suppose, you. Patrick Brontë left the general public the banal half of the Brontë estate: the spoons and the plants and the scribbles. What he kept tightly wound within the family were the artifacts that he thought were most personal, and therefore the most valuable.”

  “Monetarily valuable?”

  My cheeks reddened. Maybe monetarily was not a word. Sir John glanced at his watch and let out a slow breath. Students were not supposed to waste his time.

  “Did your father ever tell you how we met?” he asked, impatient. His voice was sharp and did not belong to the old body he inhabited.

  “No, he did not.”

  “Many years ago, I made a discovery that changed my life. I was conducting a research project on Elizabeth Gaskell at the time. You know Mrs. Gaskell, of course?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Brontës’ contemporary and Charlotte’s biographer.”

  “Right.”

  “I had spent months identifying her surviving descendants. My research brought me to a Mr. Edward Elmes, a barrister in London, who was the great-grandson of Gaskell’s second cousin. I paid Edward a visit. Can you imagine what I found hanging in his living room?”

  “Was it Elizabeth Gaskell?” I asked.

  “It was an original Anne Brontë watercolor, resting above the fireplace. You can only imagine my astonishment. I had studied the Brontë art for years, and yet here was a drawing I had never seen before. It was informal and half-finished—not signed and presumably not anything Anne ever intended to show to anyone. Edward Elmes clearly did not know what it was or what it was worth. I was stunned. At the time, I had assumed all the remaining Brontë artifacts had been discovered. I wrote to your father and introduced myself, explaining that I had found something of great importance regarding his family. I assumed that two men of above-average intelligence would work together amicably, and do this discovery justice.”

  A pause. He was growing angry—I could tell by the way his upper lip twitched.

  “A few weeks later, Tristan flew to England,” he said. “The watercolor was on my desk when he arrived.”

  “You stole it from the poor old man?”

  He ignored me. “When your father arrived, I presented my discovery. I shared my theories, and explained why those particular brushstrokes must be Anne’s. I believe your father agreed.”

  He cracked a knuckle. It was very un-English.

  “And?” I prodded.

  “We had a brief conversation, and then your father fell silent. All he did was listen. He stood, then sat, then stood. He walked to the table. He walked away from the table. He asked for a drink, which he did not consume. Then he walked out of my office and I never saw him again. He refused to acknowledge any of my future attempts at communication. I have never met anyone as offensive or as off-putting as your father in my life.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “What he did not realize, of course, was that his silence achieved the exact opposite of what he anticipated. Our meeting convinced me that there must be a world of Brontë artifacts that the surviving family had painstakingly hidden from the public. As the days and weeks passed, I found that I could think of nothing else. Within a month, I had taken a leave of absence and begun a new search, tracking every letter written by the Brontës, their friends, their families, their extended families, their descended families. I was astonished by the references I found in the letters—mentions of a gold brooch given to Anne by her late mother, an ivory quill Branwell used to write, a draft of a second unfinished novel written by Charlotte. Did you know Charlotte had another unfinished novel? Where is it, Samantha?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “If I might ask, what are you hoping those objects will bring you? I’m not sure ho
w much you’ll be able to glean from a quill.”

  “A deeper understanding of their novels, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Anne’s undiscovered watercolor helps explain, to some degree, why all the Brontë protagonists were painters and not writers. The easel was the Brontës’ first outlet for their creativity, allowing them to express what they may not have been able to put into print. This painting tells us that when the Brontës painted from their own imaginations, they kept it to themselves.”

  “Sure.”

  He gave me a cool smile. “You’re feigning disinterest but I can see that you will think of nothing else for days.”

  “No.”

  “No?” He gave me the condescending look that you might use upon a small, pouting child.

  “My father wouldn’t have cared for some old quills or sketches,” I said, breathing quickly. “He cared about two things in life: the novels, and that I learned how to read them. You and he were searching for different things.”

  “I see you do not know your father as well as you think you do.”

  It was a low blow, only because it was actually one of my deepest fears. I was blushing and I’m sure Sir John could tell. His cool, practiced glare wouldn’t leave my face. He was the seasoned killer whale, waiting for the young penguin to slip on the ice and fall into his jaws.

  “You know, I think you glossed over some parts of your story,” I said. “Like what you really said to my dad to make him walk out.”

  “Your father felt threatened,” he said simply. “I had the power to expose the private world he had built around his family.”

  “In your search for these ‘missing artifacts,’ then, did you actually find anything?”

  Here, his smile finally fell. He cleared his throat. “Very little.”

  “I see,” I said. “Is that the ‘very little’ that’s in your book?”

  Sir John’s eyes flashed. “Don’t be smart.”

  “I never know what people mean when they say that.”

  He stood up straighter. For a moment, I thought he might reach for a pair of spotless white gloves and strike me. “Had your father worked with me, we could have found everything.”

  “It’s hard, though, to find imaginary things.”

  “Watch your tongue.”

  I shut up. I knew I was being reckless, but I couldn’t let Sir John be right. It was a cheap trick to speak ill of a man who was not alive to defend himself. We were silent for a few moments, during which Sir John turned to look out at the horizon. He was shaking his head slightly, as if couldn’t fathom the number of idiots born in America. I wondered if he had any kids himself. The answer must have been no. Fathers tend to know when tempers are born of anger, and when they are born of fear.

  “I should get going,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

  It wasn’t getting late.

  “You should learn to trust me,” he said, wrapping his scarf a bit tighter around his neck. “There is no other soul alive who knows more about your relatives than I do. I imagine I can solve more than a few mysteries for you.”

  I paused. “What does that mean?”

  He looked my way. “Are you sure there isn’t something you’d like to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing you’d like to get off your chest?”

  I paused. I thought back to the copy of Jane Eyre in my bedroom. An unpleasant suspicion resurfaced. This man was, unfortunately, one of the last living threads connecting me to my father. Could Sir John be the person who had left me his books? No. And yet . . . he looked so classically suspicious, just standing there, that I was quite sure I had found the culprit.

  I said, “Out of curiosity, why do you ask?”

  Sir John didn’t say anything, and in that one lack of response, it seemed likely—beyond all probable doubt—that he was a key suspect in the delivery of both Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre. I stared at him with narrowed eyes and waited, hoping I might receive my answer via osmosis.

  “I see,” I said.

  “You see what?”

  “Is it you?”

  “Pardon?”

  I came out with it: “Why are books being delivered to my doorstep?”

  His face changed. For the first time, he looked surprised. I had my answer before he even opened his mouth: no, no—he didn’t know anything. I was wrong. He knew nothing, the same way I knew nothing. We waited in silence. Oops.

  “You are receiving books, Miss Whipple?”

  I faltered. “No. Yes. That is—just a few.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Jane Eyre. Agnes Grey. The usual.”

  Sir John asked, “The original manuscripts?”

  “No. The Penguin editions.”

  He frowned. “Did they belong to your father?”

  I didn’t respond, which, of course, was all the answer he needed. This was not going as planned. I could feel the power draining out of me. There was a sudden fire in Sir John’s cold eyes that startled me. No wonder my father hadn’t liked him.

  “Well now,” he said. “I’m glad you told me. Who left them for you?”

  I waited. “You did?”

  For the first time today, he was flushed. I watched him pull out a pen and business card from his pocket, and scratch something down.

  “I would like to see these books,” he said. “You must tell me when the next one arrives. Here is my personal e-mail.”

  “There won’t be another book.”

  He scoffed. “No one would think to give someone Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey and exclude Wuthering Heights. They’re a set. And when the next book arrives, I imagine that you will need my help to figure out what they all mean.”

  “I can read on my own, thank you very much.”

  “Your father apparently thought otherwise.”

  My cheeks reddened. Sir John gave me an unkind smile.

  “Don’t you feel foolish?” I said, in what I hoped was a jab. “Going on a treasure hunt at your age?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he handed me his business card. I shut my mouth because deep down, I knew that he was right. I did need help. There were two planes of understanding in this world; he was on the highest, and I was on the lowest. This, I suppose, was the problem with office hours: students were allowed to appreciate the brain in front of them, but at the end of the day, they were never granted full access to it. It was the welfare state of intelligence.

  As a farewell, Sir John extended a hand. I took it, and he pressed a cold, loose handshake onto my fingers. Somewhere, I knew, I had felt that handshake before.

  That weekend, I read Sir John’s awful little book, cover to cover. As I had anticipated, I had never seen a single one of his so-called missing artifacts floating around my father’s house in Boston. After ten years of hunting for relics, was this the best a knight could do? Despite his stated motive of better understanding the Brontës, I had a feeling that this entire book was a personal grudge first disguised then sanctioned by academia.

  There was one particular part of his book, however, that piqued my interest. All of the Brontë objects that my father supposedly owned had been painted, written, worn, or used by Anne during her stint at Thorp Green. On paper, Thorp Green was simply the name of the estate where Anne Brontë had spent five years working as a governess. In reality, it represented the most turbulent and transformative period of Anne’s life. She had left the parsonage as a normal woman, and returned home five years later as a disgruntled writer. That same year, she, Emily, and Charlotte began their literary careers in earnest. Coincidence? Not likely. Something happened at Thorp Green to inspire three of the most important novels of their time.

  That Sunday, I stepped inside the Old College Library. It consisted of dimly lit corridors and small study rooms lined with old books. I found the one I was looking for—The Big Book of Brontës—and took it with me to the Catherine Howard Room. There was only one other student inside. He ha
d Irrepressible Boils of the Sixteenth Century in front of him but was gazing into the distance, immobile, as though something was happening to his spleen and he couldn’t quite decide what it was. I took a seat. All I could hear was the mysterious sounds of a toilet flushing—mysterious because I had never once found a restroom in this building. I opened The Big Book of Brontës. If I remembered correctly, chapter ten would be dedicated to the Thorp Green Years: 1840–1845.

  For better or for worse, thanks to my months of infatuated study as a teenager, Thorp Green was as real to me as anything I knew in this world. I could still see the old plants I had envisioned in the dusty foyer; I could hear the doors opening onto the toes of eavesdropping servants. I knew Thorp Green’s inhabitants like my own friends. Mr. Robinson, the head of the house, would have been a portly, bad-breathed ex-crook with a pinky ring and a closely cropped mustache. His name was Edmund but he would really look like Vinny from Staten Island. His wife, Lydia, would have been a frail creature with eyes like a bat’s who believed most things were très middle-class. The two of them—Edmund and the bat—would have four, angular-faced children.

  What the world knew was this: Anne Brontë arrived in May of 1840. She left in 1845, leaving an unsettling radio silence in between. The only thing anyone knew was that the entire experience left Anne “sick of mankind and their disgusting ways.” One hypothesis for What Happened At Thorp Green was easy to find in history books, and it concerned Branwell Brontë. In 1842, Anne persuaded her employers to hire her brother as an art teacher to young Edmund Robinson. (Really, I had a feeling that Anne just wanted to rein in her brother’s sexual carte blanche—and what better way to induce celibacy than to become a male governess?) The results of Anne’s act of charity were catastrophic. Branwell quickly set his eyes upon Mrs. Robinson—twenty years his senior, and the wife of mafia-man Edmund. One thing led to another, and before long, Branwell Brontë initiated a nineteenth-century version of The Graduate.

  It was high scandal. Mrs. Robinson was the wife of a wealthy landowner; Branwell was a blossoming alcoholic with a dead-end job, massive debt, and no friends. The affair ruined the promise of a smooth career for his poor sister; Anne was now forced to confront, as she put it, the “very unpleasant and undreamt of experience of human nature.” In 1845, Edmund Robinson discovered the affair, kicked Branwell out of the house, and threatened to shoot him. The lovesick puppy returned home, flopped on his bed, and eventually drank himself to death at the ripe age of thirty-one.