Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle Part 11

'C. B.'

'The Holyes,' it is perhaps hardly necessary to add, is Charlotte's irreverent appellation for the curates--Mr. Smith and Mr. Grant.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'BRUSSELS, _October_ 13_th_, 1843.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I was glad to receive your last letter; but when I read it, its contents gave me some pain. It was melancholy indeed that so soon after the death of a sister you should be called from a distant county by the news of the severe illness of a brother, and, after your return home, your sister Ann should fall ill too. Mary Dixon informs me your brother is scarcely expected to recover--is this true? I hope not, for his sake and yours. His loss would indeed be a blow--a blow which I hope Providence may avert. Do not, my dear Ellen, fail to write to me soon of affairs at Brookroyd. I cannot fail to be anxious on the subject, your family being amongst the oldest and kindest friends I have. I trust this season of affliction will soon pa.s.s. It has been a long one.

'C. B.'

TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTE

'BRUSSELS, _December_ 19_th_, 1843.

'DEAR E. J.,--I have taken my determination. I hope to be at home the day after New Year's Day. I have told Mme. Heger. But in order to come home I shall be obliged to draw on my cash for another 5 pounds. I have only 3 pounds at present, and as there are several little things I should like to buy before I leave Brussels--which you know cannot be got as well in England--3 pounds would not suffice.

Low spirits have afflicted me much lately, but I hope all will be well when I get home--above all, if I find papa and you and B. and A.

well. I am not ill in body. It is only the mind which is a trifle shaken--for want of comfort.

'I shall try to cheer up now.--Good-bye.

'C. B.'

CHAPTER V: PATRICK BRANWELL BRONTE

The younger Patrick Bronte was always known by his mother's family name of Branwell. The name derived from the patron Saint of Ireland, with which the enthusiastic Celt, Romanist and Protestant alike, delights to disfigure his male child, was speedily banished from the Yorkshire Parsonage. Branwell was a year younger than Charlotte, and it is clear that she and her brother were 'chums,' in the same way as Emily and Anne were 'chums,' in the earlier years, before Charlotte made other friends.

Even until two or three years from Branwell's death, we find Charlotte writing to him with genuine sisterly affection, and, indeed, the only two family letters addressed to Branwell which are extant are from her. One of them, written from Brussels, I have printed elsewhere. The other, written from Roe Head, when Charlotte, aged sixteen, was at school there, was partly published by Mrs. Gaskell, but may as well be given here, copied direct from the original.

[Picture: Patrick Branwell Bronte]

TO BRANWELL BRONTE

'ROE HEAD, _May_ 17_th_, 1832.

'DEAR BRANWELL,--As usual I address my weekly letter to you, because to you I find the most to say. I feel exceedingly anxious to know how and in what state you arrived at home after your long and (I should think) very fatiguing journey. I could perceive when you arrived at Roe Head that you were very much tired, though you refused to acknowledge it. After you were gone, many questions and subjects of conversation recurred to me which I had intended to mention to you, but quite forgot them in the agitation which I felt at the totally unexpected pleasure of seeing you. Lately I had begun to think that I had lost all the interest which I used formerly to take in politics, but the extreme pleasure I felt at the news of the Reform Bill's being thrown out by the House of Lords, and of the expulsion or resignation of Earl Grey, etc., etc., convinced me that I have not as yet lost _all_ my penchant for politics. I am extremely glad that aunt has consented to take in _Fraser's Magazine_, for though I know from your description of its general contents it will be rather uninteresting when compared with _Blackwood_, still it will be better than remaining the whole year without being able to obtain a sight of any periodical publication whatever; and such would a.s.suredly be our case, as in the little wild, moorland village where we reside, there would be no possibility of borrowing or obtaining a work of that description from a circulating library. I hope with you that the present delightful weather may contribute to the perfect restoration of our dear papa's health, and that it may give aunt pleasant reminiscences of the salubrious climate of her native place.

'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 Brontes.

Branwell has himself been made the hero of at least three biographies.

{121} 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 Bronte. 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 Bronte, and her book devoted inordinate s.p.a.ce 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 Bronte 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 Bronte household was not exceptionally const.i.tuted 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 ent.i.tled _Percy_. By the light of subsequent events it is interesting to note that a ma.n.u.script of 1830 bears the t.i.tle of _The Liar Detected_.

It would be unfair to take these crude productions of Branwell Bronte'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 Bronte once and for all, were not some epitome of his life indispensable in an account of the Bronte 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. {123} 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 Inst.i.tution, 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 BRONTE.'

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_ 20_th_, 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 trespa.s.s 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. BRONTE.

'_P.S._--The first piece is only the sequel of one striving to depict the fall from unguided pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sist an answer to the question--would it be possible to obtain remuneration for translations for such as those from that or any other cla.s.sic author?'

Branwell would appear to have gone over to Ambleside to see Hartley Coleridge, if we may judge by that next letter, written from Haworth upon his return.