Brontës (101 page)

So much for egotism!
³⁶

This letter certainly sounds as if Branwell had read Aylott & Jones' reply to Charlotte and the reference to Moxon, whose edition of Wordsworth's poems had been the original model for his sisters' publication, may be more than coincidental.

If Branwell was aware of the publishing plans going on under his nose at the parsonage then one can understand his increasing alienation from his family. Having once been acknowledged as the pre-eminent poet and the unquestioned leader in all their literary endeavours, he was now reduced to such an object of contempt in his sisters' eyes that they do not seem to have even considered asking him to contribute to their volume. There is no better summary of their attitude to him at this time than the reason Charlotte gave for keeping their publishing ventures a secret from him: ‘we could not tell him of our efforts for fear of causing him too deep a pang of remorse for his own time misspent, and talents misapplied'.
³⁷

In fact, Branwell, though still unemployed, was not without occupation. He had been inspired to write a poem on ‘the recent stirring events in India', where the British had nearly been overwhelmed by a Sikh uprising, their commander Sir Robert Sale had been killed and their position only retrieved through the skill of Sir Henry Hardinge. (Curiously enough, the same events inspired Charlotte to make an appropriate adaptation of one of her Angrian poems for publication.) Branwell had intended to set his poem to music and he had in mind one of his favourite tunes, Gluck's ‘Mater divinae gratiae'. Recalling an acquaintance from his days on the railways, Branwell wrote to John Frobisher, the organist of Halifax Parish Church, who was also the leader of the Halifax Quarterly Choral Society. ‘I dare say you have forgotten both myself and a conversation in which, some years ago, I alluded to a favourite air', he began, before suggesting that Frobisher might like to look the lines over and publish them either as ‘Gluck's air adapted to English words by myself' or as his own arrangement. ‘I Only chose Gluck's air as a musical accompaniment to the words', he later told Frobisher, ‘from a love of the mingled majesty and tenderness of the composition, and not at all from any idea that my rhymes were worthy of the great German composer.'
³⁸

Branwell may have followed up his letter with a personal visit to
Frobisher, for he was in Halifax at the beginning of April. ‘I cannot, without a smile at myself, think of my stay for three days in Halifax on a business which need not have occupied three hours', he told Leyland, ‘but in truth when I fall back on myself I suffer so much wretchedness that I cannot withstand any temptations to get out of myself.' Branwell's ‘business' seems to have included a visit to the
Halifax Guardian
offices where, still vainly searching for employment despite his sister's jibes, he placed an advertisement for a situation that would take him abroad.
³⁹

He also handed in a poem, ‘Letter from a Father on Earth to his Child in her Grave', written on 3 April, which the paper duly published on 18 April 1846. On first glance, this appears to be simply another Angrian poem, particularly as it is signed ‘Northangerland' and relates to the death of the writer's daughter. However, unlike all the other Angrian poems Branwell submitted for publication, this one has no precedent dating from the 1830s. It is actually firmly rooted in the present, with topical references to ‘April showers' and to ‘India's wildest wars'. The subject of the poem is treated in a markedly different fashion from the Angrian poems about death: this is no wild lament for the loss of a loved one which leaves the living desolate. Instead, the grief is calm and measured, tempered by the knowledge that death has at least prevented suffering in future life. As in Branwell's recent poems, like ‘Real Rest', it is the living who suffer most. Another curious feature is the frequent and almost irrelevant digression into the author's own feelings.

I write words to thee which thou wilt not read,

For thou wilt slumber on howe'er may bleed

The heart, which many think a worthless stone,

But which oft aches for its beloved one;

Or again:

If, then, thoud'st seen, upon a summer sea

One, once in features, as in blood like thee

On skies of azure blue and waters green

Commingled in the mist of summer's sheen,

Hopelessly gazing – ever hesitating

'Twixt miseries, every hour fresh fears creating

And joys – whate'er they cost – still doubly dear –

Those ‘troubled pleasures soon chastised by fear' –

If thou hadst seen him thou wouldst ne'er believe

That thou hadst yet known what it was to live.
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This sounds remarkably like the genuine voice of Branwell Brontë describing his affair with Mrs Robinson – even to the point of quoting the same line he had used in his account to Grundy – and it is therefore tempting to regard the poem as autobiographical. If this is the case, then here we have further evidence for the existence of Branwell's illegitimate child and an indication of the possible period of her death. The fact that Branwell can have barely known her and was, in any case, far more preoccupied with his enforced separation from Mrs Robinson, perhaps explains the absence of any great feeling of grief.

… thou hadst beauty, innocence and smiles,

And now hast rest from this world's woes and wiles,

While I have a restlessness and worrying care,

So, sure thy lot is brighter – happier – far!

So may it prove – and, though thy ears may never

Hear these words sound beyond Death's darksome river

Not vainly, from the confines of despair

May rise a voice of joy that THOU art freed from care!
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In addition to these poems, Branwell had embarked on a major new project which was instigated by J. B. Leyland. This was intended to be an epic poem relating the history of Morley Hall in Lancashire, which had once belonged to Leyland's ancestors. The two men had made a ‘friendly compact' that Branwell would write the poem and Leyland would model a medallion portrait of his friend. Unfortunately, Branwell seems never to have completed his side of the bargain though he was inordinately proud of Leyland's medallion, which made him look like a Roman emperor.
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Branwell's output over these months suggests that he was certainly capable of contributing to his sisters' little book of poems and their action in excluding him seems rather petty and mean. He could not afford to pay for the publication of his own work because, unlike them, he had no legacy on which to draw.

On 7 May 1846 the first three copies of
Poems
by Currer, Ellis and Acton
Bell arrived at the parsonage. At only 165 pages of text, the little books were even thinner than they had been led to expect and the paper was not the good quality Charlotte had ordered. An errata slip noting four misprints that had slipped through the proofs – all, incidentally, in Charlotte's poems – had had to be included and there were typographical inconsistencies in the contents page. The price, which Charlotte had originally suggested should be five shillings, was set at four shillings and was prominently displayed in gilt letters on the front cover under the title and their names. The thrill of seeing their first book in print must have more than compensated for these minor disappointments. This was no home-made effort like their juvenilia, written by hand and carefully stitched into paper covers, but a properly printed volume, handsomely bound in bottle green cloth with a geometrical design on the front.
⁴³
Here at last was the solid reality resulting from all those years of fevered imagination and frantic scribbling, the culmination of a life's dream.

For Charlotte, however, it was not enough simply to have got into print. What she craved was recognition and the very day that the sisters received their advance copies she wrote to Aylott & Jones requesting them to send copies and advertisements
‘as early as possible'
to ten leading periodicals and newspapers, including, of course,
Blackwood's Magazine.
⁴⁴
‘I should think the success of a work depends more on the notice it receives from periodicals than on the quantity of advertisements', Charlotte told her publishers, and stipulated that they should spend no more than two pounds on advertising. She requested that they would send her copies of any reviews which appeared and only if they were favourable would she consider any further expenditure.
⁴⁵

Charlotte had to curb her impatience for nearly two months before the reviewers at last turned their attention to
Poems
, but in the meantime a catastrophe hit the Brontë household which must have driven all thoughts of literary fame from the sisters' minds. It began with an innocent enough announcement in the local York papers: the Reverend Edmund Robinson of Thorp Green had died on Tuesday, 26 May 1846, at the age of forty-six. ‘He died as he lived', claimed the obituary, ‘in firm & humble trust in his Saviour.'
⁴⁶
It seems likely that Branwell did not see the notice, for on 1 June he wrote a sonnet which he again titled, in Greek lettering, ‘Lydia Gisborne' – Mrs Robinson's maiden name. Ironically, the poem was a calm and reflective piece looking back to his last days at Thorp Green with sorrow rather than hectic grief.

On Ouse's grassy banks – last Whitsuntide,

I sat, with fears and pleasures, in my soul

Commingled, as ‘it roamed without controul',

Oer present hours and through a future wide

Where love, me thought, should keep, my heart beside

Her, whose own prison home I looked upon:

But, as I looked, descended summer's sun,

And did not its descent my hopes deride?

The sky though blue was soon to change to grey –

I, on that day, next year must own no smile –

And as those waves, to Humber far away,

Were gliding – so, though that hour might beguile

My Hopes, they too, to woe's far deeper sea,

Rolled past the shores of Joy's now dim and distant isle.

Beneath the sonnet he sketched himself, a lonely figure with top hat and cane, standing beneath trees on a hill top looking out across the River Ouse and Vale of York towards Thorp Green. In each of the bottom corners he drew a tombstone, one inscribed ‘MEMORIA', memories, and the other ‘EHEU', alas. More significantly, like any young man in love, he had toyed with the name of his beloved, rejecting her current name as if he could pretend that her marriage did not exist and writing in the margin in an idle moment ‘Lydia Gisborne' and, beneath it, ‘Lydia – B—'.
⁴⁷
As he did so he little imagined that his lover's husband was now dead and that it was now possible for Lydia Gisborne/Robinson to become Lydia Brontë.

When the news eventually filtered through to Haworth, Branwell went almost wild with joy at the prospect of a legitimate union with Mrs Robinson. ‘I had reason to hope that ere \very/ long I should be the husband of a Lady whom I loved best in the world', he later told Leyland, ‘and with whom, in more than competence, I might live at leisure to try to make myself a name in the world of posterity, without being pestered by the small but countless botherments, which like mosquitoes sting us in the world of work-day toil.
⁴⁸
To marry the woman he loved and in the process become a gentleman at leisure would, at one stroke, justify all his sufferings and restore him to the good opinion of his family. It was no wonder that he was unable to conceal his glee. Confident that Mrs Robinson loved him as much as he loved her, he waited for her summons to Thorp Green. When
the blow fell, therefore, it hit Branwell all the harder because it was so totally unexpected. Charlotte gave a sardonic account of her brother's troubles to Ellen Nussey.

We – I am sorry to say – have been somewhat more harassed than usual lately – The death of Mr Robinson – which took place about three weeks or a month ago – served Branwell for a pretext to throw all about him into hubbub and confusion with his emotions – &c. &c. Shortly after came news from all hands that Mr Robinson had altered his will before he died and effectually prevented all chance of a marriage between his widow and Branwell by stipulating that she should not have a shilling if she ever ventured to reopen any communication with him – Of course he then became intolerable – to papa he allows rest neither day nor night – and he is continualy screwing money out of him sometimes threatening that he will kill himself if it is withheld from him – He says Mrs R— is now insane – that her mind is a complete wreck – owing to remorse for her conduct towards Mr R— (whose end it appears was hastened by distress of mind) – And grief for having lost him.

I do not know how much to believe of what he says but I fear she is very ill –
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Though Charlotte clearly doubted the truth of Branwell's account, he told the same story consistently to his friends and it seems indisputable that he was merely repeating what he himself had been told by his informants at Thorp Green. Suspicion arises because it was simply not true that Mr Robinson had altered his will to ensure that his widow would get nothing if she ‘reopened communication' with Branwell.

Mr Robinson had indeed made a new will, on 2 January 1846, but it was not because he felt his own death was imminent or because he wanted to prevent his widow remarrying. Branwell's name was not even mentioned. Mr Robinson's purpose was actually to punish his eldest daughter, Lydia, for her rash elopement and marriage to the actor Henry Roxby, by cutting her out of his will. The original intention had been that all three daughters, Lydia, Elizabeth and Mary, should benefit from the £6,000 settled by each side of the family on their parents when they married in 1824. The new will treated Lydia as if she did not exist, dividing the Gisborne settlement equally between Elizabeth and Mary on their mother's death and the Robinson money between Elizabeth and Mary, who were to receive £1,000 each, and Edmund junior who was to receive the remaining £4,000. This
was the only change made to Mr Robinson's will which, as in the earlier versions of 1825 and 1831, left all his property, valued at some £60,000, in trust for his son. Mrs Robinson herself was appointed a trustee and executor of the will and guardian of the children, together with her brothers-in-law, the Venerable Archdeacon Charles Thorpe and the Member of Parliament William Evans, and the family solicitor, Henry Newton. As was usual in financial settlements of this kind, Mrs Robinson was to have an income from the residue of her husband's estate after his debts had been paid off until she died or until she married again. On remarriage she would also cease to be a trustee, executor or guardian.
⁵⁰
Such provisions were perfectly normal in the days before the Married Women's Property Act and were intended to protect the inheritance of a son and heir against the interests of a stepfather. It was not their purpose to prevent a widow remarrying, but this was undoubtedly an interpretation that could be put on them in Mr Robinson's case.