‘With love to all, — Believe me, dear Branwell, to remain your affectionate sister,
Charlotte.’
‘As to you I find the most to say’ is significant. And to Branwell, Charlotte refers again and again in most affectionate terms in many a later letter. It is to her enthusiasm, indeed that we largely owe the extravagant estimate of Branwell’s ability which has found so abundant expression in books on the Brontës.
Branwell has himself been made the hero of at least three biographies. Mr. Francis Grundy has no importance for our day other than that he prints certain letters from Branwell in his autobiography. Miss Mary F. Robinson, whatever distinction may pertain to her verse, should never have attempted a biography of Emily Brontë. Her book is mainly of significance because, appearing in a series of Eminent Women, it served to emphasise the growing opinion that Emily, as well as Charlotte, had a place among the great writers of her day. Miss Robinson added nothing to our knowledge of Emily Brontë, and her book devoted inordinate space to the shortcomings of Branwell, concerning which she had no new information.
Mr. Leyland’s book is professedly a biography of Branwell, and is, indeed, a valuable storehouse of facts. It might have had more success had it been written with greater brightness and verve. As it stands, it is a dull book, readable only by the Brontë enthusiast. Mr. Leyland has no literary perception, and in his eagerness to show that Branwell was a genius, prints numerous letters and poems which sufficiently demonstrate that he was not.
Charlotte never hesitated in the earlier years to praise her brother as the genius of the family. We all know how eagerly the girls in any home circle are ready to acknowledge and accept as signs of original power the most impudent witticisms of a fairly clever brother. The Brontë household was not exceptionally constituted in this respect. It is evident that the boy grew up with talent of a kind. He could certainly draw with more idea of perspective than his sisters, and one or two portraits by him are not wanting in merit. But there is no evidence of any special writing faculty, and the words ‘genius’ and ‘brilliant’ which have been freely applied to him are entirely misplaced. Branwell was thirty-one years of age when he died, and it was only during the last year or two of his life that opium and alcohol had made him intellectually hopeless. Yet, unless we accept the preposterous statement that he wrote Wuthering Heights, he would seem to have composed nothing which gives him the slightest claim to the most inconsiderable niche in the temple of literature.
Branwell appears to have worked side by side with his sisters in the early years, and innumerable volumes of the ‘little writing’ bearing his signature have come into my hands. Verdopolis, the imaginary city of his sisters’ early stories, plays a considerable part in Branwell’s. Real Life in Verdopolis bears date 1833. The Battle of Washington is evidently a still more childish effusion. Caractacus is dated 1830, and the poems and tiny romances continue steadily on through the years until they finally stop short in 1837 — when Branwell is twenty years old — with a story entitled Percy. By the light of subsequent events it is interesting to note that a manuscript of 1830 bears the title of The Liar Detected.
It would be unfair to take these crude productions of Branwell Brontë’s boyhood as implying that he had no possibilities in him of anything better, but judging from the fact that his letters, as a man of eight and twenty, are as undistinguished as his sister’s are noteworthy at a like age, we might well dismiss Branwell Brontë once and for all, were not some epitome of his life indispensable in an account of the Brontë circle.
Branwell was born at Thornton in 1817. When the family removed to Haworth he studied at the Grammar School, although, doubtless, he owed most of his earlier tuition to his father. When school days were over it was decided that he should be an artist. To a certain William Robinson, of Leeds, he was indebted for his first lessons. Mrs. Gaskell describes a life-size drawing of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne which Branwell painted about this period. The huge canvas stood for many years at the top of the staircase at the parsonage. In 1835 Branwell went up to London with a view to becoming a pupil at the Royal Academy Art Schools. The reason for his almost immediate reappearance at Haworth has never been explained. Probably he wasted his money and his father refused supplies. He had certainly been sufficiently in earnest at the start, judging from this letter, of which I find a draft among his papers.
TO THE SECRETARY, ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS
‘Sir, — Having an earnest desire to enter as probationary student in the Royal Academy, but not being possessed of information as to the means of obtaining my desire, I presume to request from you, as Secretary to the Institution, an answer to the questions —
‘Where am I to present my drawings?
‘At what time?
and especially,
‘Can I do it in August or September?
— Your obedient servant,
Branwell Brontë.’
In 1836 we find him as ‘brother’ of the ‘Lodge of the Three Graces’ at Haworth. In the following year he is practising as an artist in Bradford, and painting a number of portraits of the townsfolk. At this same period he wrote to Wordsworth, sending verses, which he was at the time producing with due regularity. In January 1840 Branwell became tutor in the family of Mr. Postlethwaite at Broughton-in-Furness. It was from that place that he wrote the incoherent and silly letter which has been more than once printed, and which merely serves to show that then, as always, he had an ill-regulated mind. It was from Broughton-in-Furness also that he addresses Hartley Coleridge, and the letters are worth printing if only on account of the similar destiny of the two men.
TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE
‘Broughton-in-Furness,
‘Lancashire, April 20th, 1840.
‘Sir, — It is with much reluctance that I venture to request, for the perusal of the following lines, a portion of the time of one upon whom I can have no claim, and should not dare to intrude, but I do not, personally, know a man on whom to rely for an answer to the questions I shall put, and I could not resist my longing to ask a man from whose judgment there would be little hope of appeal.
‘Since my childhood I have been wont to devote the hours I could spare from other and very different employments to efforts at literary composition, always keeping the results to myself, nor have they in more than two or three instances been seen by any other. But I am about to enter active life, and prudence tells me not to waste the time which must make my independence; yet, sir, I like writing too well to fling aside the practice of it without an effort to ascertain whether I could turn it to account, not in wholly maintaining myself, but in aiding my maintenance, for I do not sigh after fame, and am not ignorant of the folly or the fate of those who, without ability, would depend for their lives upon their pens; but I seek to know, and venture, though with shame, to ask from one whose word I must respect: whether, by periodical or other writing, I could please myself with writing, and make it subservient to living.
‘I would not, with this view, have troubled you with a composition in verse, but any piece I have in prose would too greatly trespass upon your patience, which, I fear, if you look over the verse, will be more than sufficiently tried.
‘I feel the egotism of my language, but I have none, sir, in my heart, for I feel beyond all encouragement from myself, and I hope for none from you.
‘Should you give any opinion upon what I send, it will, however condemnatory, be most gratefully received by, — Sir, your most humble servant,
‘P. B. Brontë.
‘P.S. — The first piece is only the sequel of one striving to depict the fall from unguided passion into neglect, despair, and death. It ought to show an hour too near those of pleasure for repentance, and too near death for hope. The translations are two out of many made from Horace, and given to assist an answer to the question — would it be possible to obtain remuneration for translations for such as those from that or any other classic author?’
Branwell would appear to have g
one over to Ambleside to see Hartley Coleridge, if we may judge by that next letter, written from Haworth upon his return.
TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE
‘Haworth, June 27th, 1840.
‘Sir, — You will, perhaps, have forgotten me, but it will be long before I forget my first conversation with a man of real intellect, in my first visit to the classic lakes of Westmoreland.
‘During the delightful day which I had the honour of spending with you at Ambleside, I received permission to transmit to you, as soon as finished, the first book of a translation of Horace, in order that, after a glance over it, you might tell me whether it was worth further notice or better fit for the fire.
‘I have — I fear most negligently, and amid other very different employments — striven to translate two books, the first of which I have presumed to send to you. And will you, sir, stretch your past kindness by telling me whether I should amend and pursue the work or let it rest in peace?
‘Great corrections I feel it wants, but till I feel that the work might benefit me, I have no heart to make them; yet if your judgment prove in any way favourable, I will re-write the whole, without sparing labour to reach perfection.
‘I dared not have attempted Horace but that I saw the utter worthlessness of all former translations, and thought that a better one, by whomsoever executed, might meet with some little encouragement. I long to clear up my doubts by the judgment of one whose opinion I should revere, and — but I suppose I am dreaming — one to whom I should be proud indeed to inscribe anything of mine which any publisher would look at, unless, as is likely enough, the work would disgrace the name as much as the name would honour the work.
‘Amount of remuneration I should not look to — as anything would be everything — and whatever it might be, let me say that my bones would have no rest unless by written agreement a division should be made of the profits (little or much) between myself and him through whom alone I could hope to obtain a hearing with that formidable personage, a London bookseller.
‘Excuse my unintelligibility, haste, and appearance of presumption, and — Believe me to be, sir, your most humble and grateful servant,
‘P. B. Brontë.
‘If anything in this note should displease you, lay it, sir, to the account of inexperience and not impudence.’
In October 1840, we find Branwell clerk-in-charge at the Station of Sowerby Bridge on the Leeds and Manchester Railway, and the following year at Luddenden Foot, where Mr. Grundy, the railway engineer, became acquainted with him, and commenced the correspondence contained in Pictures of the Past.
I have in my possession a small memorandum book, evidently used by Branwell when engaged as a railway clerk. There are notes in it upon the then existing railways, demonstrating that he was trying to prime himself with the requisite facts and statistics for a career of that kind. But side by side with these are verses upon ‘Lord Nelson,’ ‘Robert Burns,’ and kindred themes, with such estimable sentiments as this: —
‘Then England’s love and England’s tongue
And England’s heart shall reverence long
The wisdom deep, the courage strong,
Of English Johnson’s name.’
Altogether a literary atmosphere had been kindled for the boy had he had the slightest strength of character to go with it. The railway company, however, were soon tired of his vagaries, and in the beginning of 1842 he returns to the Haworth parsonage. The following letter to his friend Mr. Grundy is of biographical interest.
TO FRANCIS H. GRUNDY
‘October 25th, 1842.
‘My dear Sir, — There is no misunderstanding. I have had a long attendance at the death-bed of the Rev. Mr. Weightman, one of my dearest friends, and now I am attending at the deathbed of my aunt, who has been for twenty years as my mother. I expect her to die in a few hours.
‘As my sisters are far from home, I have had much on my mind, and these things must serve as an apology for what was never intended as neglect of your friendship to us.
‘I had meant not only to have written to you, but to the Rev. James Martineau, gratefully and sincerely acknowledging the receipt of his most kindly and truthful criticism — at least in advice, though too generous far in praise; but one sad ceremony must, I fear, be gone through first. Give my most sincere respects to Mr. Stephenson, and excuse this scrawl — my eyes are too dim with sorrow to see well. — Believe me, your not very happy but obliged friend and servant,
‘P. B. Brontë.’
A week later he writes to the same friend: —
‘I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood. I have suffered much sorrow since I last saw you at Haworth.’
Charlotte and Anne, it will be remembered, were at this time on their way home from Brussels, and Anne had to seek relief from her governess bonds at Mrs. Robinson’s. Branwell would seem to have returned with Anne to Thorp Green, as tutor to Mr. Robinson’s son. He commenced his duties in December 1842.
It would not be rash to assume — although it is only an assumption — that Branwell took to opium soon after he entered upon his duties at Thorp Green. I have already said something of the trouble which befel Mrs. Gaskell in accepting the statements of Charlotte Brontë, and — after Charlotte’s death — of her friends, to the effect that Branwell became the prey of a designing woman, who promised to marry him when her husband — a venerable clergyman — should be dead. The story has been told too often. Branwell was dismissed, and returned to the parsonage to rave about his wrongs. If Mr. Robinson should die, the widow had promised to marry him, he assured his friends. Mr. Robinson did die (May 26, 1846), and then Branwell insisted that by his will he had prohibited his wife from marrying, under penalties of forfeiting the estate. A copy of the document is in my possession:
The eleventh day of September 1846 the Will of the Reverend Edmund Robinson, late of Thorp Green, in the Parish of Little Ouseburn, in the County of York, Clerk, deceased, was proved in the Prerogative Court of York by the oaths of Lydia Robinson, Widow, his Relict; the Venerable Charles Thorp and Henry Newton, the Executors, to whom administration was granted.
Needless to say, the will, a lengthy document, put no restraint whatever upon the actions of Mrs. Robinson. Upon the publication of Mrs. Gaskell’s Life she was eager to clear her character in the law-courts, but was dissuaded therefrom by friends, who pointed out that a withdrawal of the obnoxious paragraphs in succeeding editions of the Memoir, and the publication of a letter in the Times, would sufficiently meet the case.
Here is the letter from the advertisement pages of the Times.
‘8 Bedford Row,
‘London, May 26th, 1857.
‘Dear Sirs, — As solicitor for and on behalf of the Rev. W. Gaskell and of Mrs. Gaskell, his wife, the latter of whom is authoress of the Life of Charlotte Brontë, I am instructed to retract every statement contained in that work which imputes to a widowed lady, referred to, but not named therein, any breach of her conjugal, of her maternal, or of her social duties, and more especially of the statement contained in chapter 13 of the first volume, and in chapter 2 of the second volume, which imputes to the lady in question a guilty intercourse with the late Branwell Brontë. All those statements were made upon information which at the time Mrs. Gaskell believed to be well founded, but which, upon investigation, with the additional evidence furnished to me by you, I have ascertained not to be trustworthy. I am therefore authorised not only to retract the statements in question, but to express the deep regret of Mrs. Gaskell that she should have been led to make them. — I am, dear sirs, yours truly,
‘William Shaen.
‘Messrs. Newton & Robinson, Solicitors, York.’
A certain ‘Note’ in the Athenæum a few days later is not without interest now.
‘We are sorry to be called upon to return to Mrs
. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, but we must do so, since the book has gone forth with our recommendation. Praise, it is needless to point out, implied trust in the biographer as an accurate collector of facts. This, we regret to state, Mrs. Gaskell proves not to have been. To the gossip which for weeks past has been seething and circulating in the London coteries, we gave small heed; but the Times advertises a legal apology, made on behalf of Mrs. Gaskell, withdrawing the statements put forth in her book respecting the cause of Mr. Branwell Brontë’s wreck and ruin. These Mrs. Gaskell’s lawyer is now fain to confess his client advanced on insufficient testimony. The telling of an episodical and gratuitous tale so dismal as concerns the dead, so damaging to the living, could only be excused by the story of sin being severely, strictly true; and every one will have cause to regret that due caution was not used to test representations not, it seems, to be justified. It is in the interest of Letters that biographers should be deterred from rushing into print with mere impressions in place of proofs, however eager and sincere those impressions may be. They may be slanders, and as such they may sting cruelly. Meanwhile the Life of Charlotte Brontë must undergo modification ere it can be further circulated.’
Meanwhile let us return to Branwell Brontë’s life as it is contained in his sister’s correspondence.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘January 3rd, 1846.
Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Page 491