Brontës
Page 31
If the stories had a great deal in common, they were also used to score points against their respective authors. In ‘The Foundling’ Edward Sydney makes a great maiden speech in Parliament against Ellrington and succeeds in defeating his motion against the government: Branwell responds by having ‘that hat[e]ful spider Sydny’ soundly drubbed in a speech by Montmorenci, Ellrington’s ally, which accuses him of being unfit for office.82 Charlotte makes Zenobia bewail the fact that she ever married Ellrington and declare that she married him solely in a fit of pique at the marquis whom she truly loves. Branwell gets his own back by having the marquis become well and truly embroiled in all the disreputable activities of the Elysium Society: ‘till I read this admirable work’, responded Charlotte as Charles Wellesley, ‘I was ignorant to what a hopeless depth he had sunk in the black gulphs of sin & dissipation’.83
The interchange of characters and ideas and the interweaving of often complex story-lines demanded a close partnership between brother and sister. Although they did not necessarily discuss their plots beforehand, they were quick to respond to developments in each other’s writing. The very act of writing thus became a sort of game in which each attempted to outdo or outmanoeuvre the other. As soon as one story ended, another began, so that they constantly had some writing on hand. No writings by Emily and Anne exist from this period. It is possible that they were as deeply absorbed in the imaginary worlds as their older siblings, but this seems unlikely. A thundering editorial in Branwell’s ‘Monthly Intelligencer’, written between March and April of this year, suggests that the fourteen- and thirteen-year-old girls had ‘absconded’ from Glasstown, leaving the fate of their characters in Charlotte and Branwell’s hands.
A Few words to The Cheif Genii
When a Parent leaves his Childern young and inexperienced, and without a cause absconds, never more troubling himself about them those Childern according to received notions among men if they by good fortune should happen to survive this neglect and become of repute in society are by no means bound to believe that he has done
A child of the G—ii84
This suggests that the foundation of the kingdom of Angria gave Emily and Anne an excuse to break away and establish their own independent world of Gondal, though there are no specific references to it until November of the following year. It seems unlikely that they had simply abandoned Glasstown and given up writing altogether.
Charlotte and Branwell’s absorption in the affairs of Glasstown was of necessity put aside for a few weeks in the summer. At long last Charlotte was able to return the kindness she had been shown at The Rydings the previous autumn and invite Ellen to stay at the parsonage. In July 1833, Ellen paid her first visit to Haworth and, though recorded many years later, we have her own detailed account of her impressions of the Brontës and their home. This is the first comprehensive description of the family on record.
From the very start, Ellen stood in awe of Patrick. At fifty-six and with his hair already snow white, he must have seemed very old to his sixteen-year-old visitor: she politely described him as looking ‘very venerable’ and his old-fashioned manner and mode of speech as having a ‘tone of high-bred courtesy’. She clearly did not believe in his poor state of health, regarding him as a hypochondriac and the enormous white silk cravat which he wound round his throat to protect him from bronchial complaints as an eccentric affectation. His habit of sleeping with a loaded pistol to hand, which he discharged from his bedroom window each morning, filled her with alarm; the ‘strange stories’ told to him by some of his oldest parishioners, which he recounted to his family, were ‘full of grim humour & interest’ to them but made Ellen ‘shiver and shrink from hearing’.85
Aunt Branwell, who was a year older than Patrick, Ellen also found something of a curiosity, describing her as ‘a very small antiquated little lady’, wearing silk dresses, huge old-fashioned caps and a false hair-piece – a row of ‘light auburn curls’ – on her forehead. She had ‘a horror’ of the Yorkshire climate and amused Ellen by clicking about inside the parsonage wearing pattens, normally only worn outside, to protect her feet from the cold stone floors.
She talked a great deal of her younger days, the gaities of her native town, Penzance in Cornwall, the soft warm climate &c She very probably had been a belle among her acquaintance,/ the social life of her younger days she appeared to recall with regret
The thoroughly modern Ellen was shocked when Aunt Branwell teasingly offered her a pinch of snuff from her pretty gold snuffbox, this being a habit that had died out among gentlewomen in the early years of the century. She was still responsible for Anne’s lessons and sewing, though Emily had begun to have the disposal of her own time.86
Even Tabby, ‘the faithful trustworthy old servant’, was, according to Ellen, ‘very quaint in appearance’. She was also extremely active, and still regarded it as her duty to accompany her ‘childer’ when they walked any distance from home if Branwell was unavailable as an escort. Intensely loyal to the Brontës, she always rebuffed the curious enquiries from the Haworth people who wished to know if they were not ‘fearfully larn’d’, refused to indulge in gossip and went off in a huff to recount the story to her charges.87
With the younger generation, Ellen had more empathy. Emily, now fifteen, had a ‘lithesome graceful figure’ and was the tallest in the house after her father.
her hair which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte’s was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes, kind
Anne, dear gentle Anne, was quite different in appearance to the others. She was her Aunt’s favorite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown and
Anne’s hair was actually darker than Ellen remembered: a little plait, cut off and carefully preserved by Patrick on 22 May 1833, suggests that it had deepened to a rich brown with a hint of auburn, though it remained fairer than her sisters’.89
Of Branwell, whose later career rendered him unmentionable in Ellen’s eyes, she had nothing to say, except that he studied regularly with his father and was already learning to paint in oils because, even at this early date, all the family expected him to have a distinguished career as an artist.90 From other sources at the time, however, we learn that he was small for his age but good-looking, with his father’s aquiline nose and a high forehead. Afflicted with his sisters’ poor eyesight, he was obliged to wear glasses and he wore his hair, which was the reddest in the family, rather long in what he considered an artistic fashion. With somewhat untypical self-deprecating humour, Branwell caricatured himself as a colour grinder to the great Verdopolitan portrait painter, Sir Edward de Lisle, in one of his stories of the following year.
This grinder was straightway contradicted or confused by a
Like his hero, Viscount Ellrington, Branwell was an int
ellectual with an extensive knowledge of the classics and a passion for music. Unlike his hero, he was excitable and emotional and unable to conceal his feelings.
It must have been about this time that Branwell went to Keighley Feast with his friend Michael Merrall, son of a local mill owner. The town was crowded with stalls, booths and sideshows which were lit up as evening fell. Branwell was in such a state of excitement that he was barely able to control himself and insisted on seeing and trying everything. When he and Merrall went on one of the fairground rocking boats, however, he was so overwrought that each time the boat plunged downwards, he screamed ‘Oh! my nerves! my nerves! Oh! my nerves!’ Later, as the friends made their way on foot back to Haworth, they wrestled with each other and Branwell lost his glasses, resulting in a sleepless night as he worried about having to confess to his father how he had lost them. Fortunately for him, the confession was avoided as Merrall found the glasses, undamaged, the next morning and returned them to Branwell without his father being any the wiser.92
Branwell was also apparently involved in a village boxing club which met in an upper room of one of the public houses. No doubt part of the attraction of ‘the noble art’ was that it asserted Branwell’s masculinity in a house full of girls. On the other hand, he was also following in the footsteps of his much admired Lord Byron and even Blackwood’s Magazine, which had formed so many of his other tastes, dedicated articles to the subject on a regular basis. Branwell’s new interest was carried over into his writing; about this time both Ellrington and the Marquis of Douro take up pugilism in the halls of the Elysium Society.93
Odd references indicate the daily routine of life at the parsonage at this time. Breakfast – at least for Emily and Anne – was oatmeal porridge – a somewhat surprising choice to the fastidious Ellen. A portion of this meal was always reserved by them for the dog, Grasper, which appears to have been a terrier of some kind. In the afternoons the young people would walk out on the moors if the weather was favourable. Emily – her reserve temporarily forgotten – Anne and Branwell would go ahead, fording the streams and placing stepping-stones for Charlotte and Ellen who followed in their wake. Emily and Anne’s favourite walk was along Sladen Beck to a place where several springs converged on the stream: with typical hyperbole, which suggests it may have played a role in their fictional writing, they called it ‘The Meeting of the Waters’. It was here that Emily, ‘half reclining on a slab of stone played like a young child with the tad-poles in the water, making them swim about, and then/ fell to moralising on the big and the little, the brave and cowardly as she chased them about/ with her hand’. The adults spent the afternoon more sedately, Aunt Branwell reading aloud to Patrick and arguing the issues with him. Sometimes the discussions would continue throughout tea, which the family all took together, and Ellen observed, with some admiration, that Aunt Branwell would tilt her arguments against Patrick ‘without fear’. The household assembled once again at eight o’clock for family worship and then at nine Patrick retired to bed, pausing only to tell his ‘children’ not to stay up too late and to wind the grandfather clock halfway up the stairs.94
The sole exception to this daily routine was the now customary annual ritual of inviting the Sunday school teachers to tea, which Ellen witnessed for the first time. Her genteel manners were shocked by the way these robust factory girls called their employers by their Christian names and, much to the amusement of the Brontës, she suggested that they should be taught a more respectful form of address. ‘Vain attempt!’ was Emily’s typically laconic response. Ellen had her revenge, however, when the girls undertook to initiate the Brontë sisters into playing some games. ‘The Brontë faces were worth anything as a study’, she gleefully reported, ‘they had such a puzzled, amused, submissive expression, intently anxious though, to give pleasure and gratify others.’95
Ellen Nussey’s description of the parsonage suggests that it was an austere and comfortless home: the Brontës’ lack of money meant that the furnishings were ‘scant and bare’ and she implied that because Patrick was ‘remarkably independent of the luxuries and comforts of life’ he chose to impose this on his children. Though by comparison with Ellen’s own, much wealthier home the parsonage appeared sparsely furnished and unfashionable, it was nothing like as austere as she suggests. The son of the Haworth tailor, who had been sent to do some work at the parsonage, was fascinated by the pictures in the study; noticing his interest, Patrick took him round and explained the various subjects depicted. These included black-and-white engravings of a number of dramatic pictures by John Martin, the celebrated allegorical painter of biblical scenes. The tailor’s son mentioned ‘The Last Judgement’ and ‘The Plains of Heaven’, and the 1861 bill of sale for the parsonage lists ‘The Deluge’, ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ and ‘Joshua commanding the Sun to Stand’. There may also have been an engraving of Martin’s ‘Queen Esther’, as the thirteen-year-old Branwell copied the picture in December 1830. In addition, there were at least three other framed engravings, ‘St Paul preaching at Athens’, ‘The Resurrection announced to the Apostles’ and ‘The Passage of the Red Sea’, and two oil paintings, ‘Bolton Abbey’ and ‘Kirkstall Abbey’, the last two of which were also copied by Charlotte.96 The presence of so many pictures in a financially hard-pressed household is an indication of the importance the Brontës attached to art.
Towards the end of Ellen’s visit, there was a clubbing together of pocket money to secure an excursion to Bolton Abbey. Branwell procured a phaeton to convey the little party of young people and they set off from the parsonage at between five and six in the morning. Though this was his first trip to Bolton Abbey, ‘Branwell seemed to know every inch of the way, could tell the names of the hills that would be driven over, or walked over, their exact height above the sea, the views to be seen, and the places to be passed through.’ The only pall on the occasion was the mortification which the Brontës felt when their ‘shabby-looking conveyance’ was regarded with disdain by the hotel attendants at the Devonshire Arms where they breakfasted. No doubt this was not helped by Ellen’s family arriving in ‘a handsome carriage-and-pair’ to take her home. The two parties had a pleasant walk in the abbey grounds, Emily and Anne barely speaking, except to each other, but Branwell, who was ‘in a phrensy of pleasure’, talking ‘fast and brilliantly’ and amusing everyone. ‘He had any amount of poetry ready for quotation, and this day he was well off in an appreciative audience whenever he chose to recite’, Ellen explained, adding, somewhat grudgingly, ‘it was one of the things he did well’.97
Ellen’s visit to Haworth had lasted only a fortnight, but she won the hearts of all at the parsonage, as Charlotte was delighted to tell her:
Were I to tell you of the impression you have made on every one here you would accuse me of flattery. Papa and Aunt are continually adducing you as an example for me to shape my actions and behaviour by, Emily & Anne say ‘they never saw any one they liked so well as Miss Nussey’ and Tabby whom you have absolutely fascinated talks a great deal more nonsense about your Ladyship than I chuse to repeat98
The only incident of note, Charlotte reported, in the two months since her visit was that Emily had been very ill with what was described as ‘erysipelas’, or red and painful inflammation of the arm, resulting in severe bilious attacks and a general weakness. Her arm eventually had to be cut to remove the infection.99 Though it is pure speculation, it is tempting to identify this ‘illness’ with the incident Charlotte described to Mrs Gaskell and put into her novel Shirley. Emily, whose love of animals was always stronger than any concern for her own wellbeing, had seen a dog running past the parsonage with its head lolling and its tongue hanging out. Thinking only to relieve it, she went out to give it a drink of water, only to have it snap at her and draw blood. Well aware of the dangers if the dog was rabid and had infected her, Emily went straight into the kitchen and, taking one of Tabby’s red-hot irons from the fire, cauterized the wound herself. The bite and the cauterization could well h
ave caused the inflammation and consequent biliousness which the doctor and her family diagnosed as erysipelas; her own powerful imagination, alive to the horrors of rabies, may have contributed to her general weakness. With characteristic fortitude, Emily told no one of the incident until all danger of infection was past, fearing that her family might over-react and make an intolerable fuss over her.100
As usual, Charlotte’s letter to Ellen made no reference to the important developments which were taking place in the Glasstown stories. One of the most significant was Branwell’s rapid erosion of the Marquis of Douro’s clean-cut, romantic image in the second half of 1833. This had remained relatively unchanged since Charlotte had described him in December 1829:
In appearance he strongly resembles his noble mother. He has the same tall, slender shape, the same fine and slightly Roman nose. His eyes, however, are large and brown like his father’s, and his hair is dark auburn, curly and glossy, much like what his father’s was when he was young His character also resembles the Duchess’s, mild and humane but very courageous, grateful for any favour that is done and ready to forgive injuries, kind to others and disinterested in himself. His mind is of the highest order, elegant and cultivated. His genius is lofty and soaring, but he delights to dwell among pensive thoughts and ideas rather than to roam in the bright regions of fancy.101
Branwell made the marquis plunge into the dissipation of the Elysium Society where, presiding in the absence of Ellrington, he is an enthusiastic participant in the gambling, card playing, drinking and fighting. This was only the beginning of his fall from grace. In November, Branwell wrote a story describing Napoleon’s invasion of Glasstown from Frenchysland. The marquis, like Ellrington, is appointed one of the leaders of the Verdopolitan army. Instead of setting his former example of moral rectitude and inspiring his troops in their fight against overwhelming odds, the marquis imperils the whole enterprise by leading a mutiny when some of his men are disciplined. Even more seriously, when the ministry refuse to allow the army to consolidate its success in battle against the French by raising more money, men and arms, the marquis and Ellrington lead a military coup, execute the Prime Minister, Earl St Clair, and set up a ruling Council of Six.102 The Machiavellian Ellrington is, of course, manoeuvring behind the scenes and is the prime instigator of the coup, but he prefers to remain an éminence grise while the marquis enjoys the limelight. In the space of three books and six months, therefore, Branwell turned his sister’s effete and lovelorn hero into a hardened soldier, a proud, overbearing and ruthless tyrant.