Brontës (106 page)

Branwell's habit of mixing verse and sketches was becoming more pronounced as he slipped further into alcoholic excess. Some of his letters to Leyland at this time are virtually incomprehensible as he flits from topic to topic, illustrating his witticisms with appropriate little pen and ink sketches.

Constant and unavoidable depression of mind and body sadly shackle me in even trying to go on with any mental effort which might rescue me from the fate of a dry toast soaked six hours in a glass of cold water, and intended to be given to an old Maid's squeamish Cat.

Is there really such a thing as the ‘Risus Sardonicus' – the Sardonic laugh.? Did a man ever laugh the morning he was \to be/ hanged –?
¹⁹

The drinking could not go on, however, if only because Branwell could not finance what had now become a habit. Even his friends and the
accommodating landlords of what he called ‘the ensnaring town of Halifax'
²⁰
could not supply him with drinks for nothing or on credit for ever and in the end there had to be a reckoning. It came at the beginning of December as Charlotte reported with heavy sarcasm to Ellen, who was staying with her brother Joshua at Oundle.

You say I am ‘to tell you plenty'. What would you have me to say – nothing happens at Haworth – nothing at least of a pleasant kind – one little incident indeed occurred about a week ago to sting us to life – but if it gives no more pleasure for you to hear than it did for us to witness – you will scarcely thank me for adverting to it –

It was merely the arrival of a Sheriff's Officer on a visit to Branwell – inviting him either to pay his debts or to take a trip to York – Of course his debts had to be paid – it is not agreeable to lose money time after time in this way but it is ten times worse – to witness the shabbiness of his behaviour on such occasions – But where is the use of dwelling on this subject – it will make him no better.
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Charlotte's bitterness was, for once, entirely understandable, though one gets the impression that she thought a spell in the debtor's prison at York might be just what Branwell needed to bring him back to his senses. That was a public humiliation which the parson and his family could not afford, however often they had to bail out the errant black sheep.

Certainly Charlotte was right to think that Branwell could not now reform. Within a few weeks of the visit from the Sheriff's Officer, Branwell was already expressing concern about his unpaid bills at the Old Cock in Halifax and mysteriously promising that ‘the moment that I recieve my outlaid cash, or any sum which may fall into my hands through the hands of one whom I may never see again, I shall settle it'.
²²
The undoubted inference of this remark is that Branwell had applied directly or indirectly to Mrs Robinson for financial aid. This is borne out by a long and rambling letter to Leyland written in the new year of 1847.

This last week an honest and kindly friend has warned me that concealed hopes about one lady \should/ be given up let the effort to do so cost what it may. He is the Family medical attendant, and was commanded by Mr Evans M.P for North Derbyshire to return me, unopened, a letter which I addressed to Throp [sic] Green and which the Lady was not permitted to see.
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It surely cannot be coincidence that Dr Crosby's letter was followed almost immediately by one from Ann Marshall; it appears that Mrs Robinson was making doubly sure that Branwell heard what she wanted him to hear and that he was kept away from her by fair means or foul. The receipt of Ann Marshall's letter, while he was actually writing to Leyland, was enough to tip Branwell over from bitter self-pity into hysteria: even his handwriting changes dramatically from his usual neat, rounded script to an increasingly untidy and illegible scribble.

I have recieved to day, since I began my scrawl – a note from her maid Miss Ann Marshall and I
know
from it that she has been terrified by vows which she was forced to swear to, on her husband's deathbed, (with every addition of terror which the ghastly dying eye could inflict upon a keenly sensitive and almost
worried
woman's mind) a complete severance from him in whom lay her whole hearts feelings – When that husband was scarce cold in his grave her relations, who controlled the whole property overwhelmed her with their tongues, and I am
quite
conscious
that she has succumbed in terror, to what they have said.
²⁴

It is a measure of how well Mrs Robinson knew Branwell that – even at second-hand – she was able to manipulate him so completely. Once more she had been able to avert the possible disaster which his unsolicited letter might have provoked by playing her role as the put-upon widow, distracted by grief and conscience. The least she could do in such circumstances was secretly to send money to her former lover and it seems that this was one occasion on which Branwell received, through Dr Crosby's hands, the sum of twenty pounds.
²⁵

The realization now finally dawned on Branwell that whatever hopes he might have clung to regarding Mrs Robinson, their separation was final and irrevocable. He had to face some unpleasant home truths.

I have been in truth too much petted through life, and in my last situation I was so much master, and gave myself so much up to enjoyment that now when the cloud of ill health and adversity has come upon me it will be a disheartning job to work myself up again through a new lifes battle, from the position of five years ago to which I have been compelled to retreat with heavy loss and no gain. My army stands now where it did then, but mourning the slaughter of Youth, Health, Hope and both mental and physical elasticity.

The last two losses are indeed important to one who once built his hopes of
rising in the world on the possession of them. Noble writings, works of art, music or poetry now instead of rousing my imagination, cause a whirlwind of blighting Sorrow that sweeps over my mind with unspeakable dreariness, and if I sit down and try to write all ideas that used to come clothed in sunlight now press round me in funeral black; for really every pleasureable excitement that I used to know has changed to insipidity or pain.

I shall never be able to realize the too sanguine hopes of my friends, for at 28 I am a thouroghly old man – mentally and bodily – Far more so indeed than I am willing to express …

I used to think that if I could have for a week the free range of the British Museum – the Library included – I could feel as though I were placed for seven days in paradise, but now really, dear Sir, my eyes would roam over the Elgin marbles, the Egyptian saloon and the most treasured volumes like the eyes of a dead cod fish.

My rude rough aquaintances here ascribe my unhappiness solely to causes produced by my sometimes irregular life, because they have known no other pains than those resulting from excess or want of ready cash – They do not know that I would rather want a shirt than want a springy mind, and that my total want of happiness, were I to step into York Minster now, would be far, far worse than their want of an hundred pounds when they might happen to need it; and that if a dozen glasses or a bottle of wine drives off their cares, such cures only make me outwardly passable in company but never drive off mine.

He summed up his despair in haunting words that could well serve as an epitaph for his last two years of life.

I
know
, only that it is time for me to be something when I am nothing. That my father cannot have long to live, and that when he dies my evening, which is already twilight, will become night – That I shall then have a constitution still so strong that it will keep me years in torture and despair when I should every hour pray that I might die.
²⁶

Armed with Mrs Robinson's money and desperate to escape the censorious atmosphere of the parsonage, Branwell set about the wilful destruction of his bodily health in the inns of Haworth and Halifax. Though he believed that, like Northangerland, his constitution could withstand any excess, the onset of dependence on alcohol and opiates signalled his slow decline into terminal illness.

Forced to watch Branwell slipping into the abyss created by his inability to control himself, Charlotte fought even harder against her own propensity to excessive emotion and self-indulgence. She recognized also that his depression, like hers, was as much a physical as a mental illness; however, as she told Mary Taylor, knowing the cause did not remove the feeling.
²⁷
In the face of her rebellious spirit, she clung to the two rocks of duty and conscience. Obliged to turn down an offer from Ellen Nussey to set up a school together, she explained:

if I
could
leave home Ellen – I should not be at Haworth now – I know life is passing away and I am doing nothing – earning nothing a very bitter knowledge it is at moments – but I see no way out of the mist – More than one very favourable opportunity has now offered which I have been obliged to put aside – probably when I am free to leave home I shall neither be able to find place nor employment – perhaps too I shall be quite past the prime of life – my faculties will be rusted – and my few acquirements in a great measure forgotten – These ideas sting me keenly sometimes – but whenever I consult my Conscience it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home – and bitter are its upbraidings when I yield to an eager desire for release – I returned to Brussels after Aunt's death against my conscience – prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse – I was punished for my selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than two year[s] of happiness and peace of mind – I could hardly expect success if I were to err again in the same way –

Echoing her brother's words a few months later, in a way that confirms the affinity they had shared since childhood, she told Ellen:

I shall be 31 next birthday – My Youth is gone like a dream – and very little use have I ever made of it – What have I done these last thirty years —? Precious little –
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The weather, which had been unusually mild all year, turned savage at its close. Writing to Ellen on 13 December 1846, Charlotte complained:

the cold here is dreadful I do not remember such a series of North-Pole-days – England might really have taken a slide up into the Arctic Zone – the sky looks like ice – the earth is frozen, the wind is as keen as a two-edged blade – I cannot keep myself warm –
²⁹

A consequence of the change in the weather was that all the Brontës caught severe colds and coughs, deteriorating in Patrick's case into influenza and Anne's into asthma. Unaware that this was merely a poignant foretaste of what was to come, Charlotte sympathetically described Anne's sufferings:

she had two nights last week when her cough and difficulty of breathing were painful indeed to hear and witness and must have been most distressing to suffer – she bore it as she does all affliction – without one complaint – only sighing now and then when nearly worn out – she has an extraordinary heroism of endurance. I admire but I certainly could not imitate her.
³⁰

In Haworth, too, there was great hardship. Wages had been low all year in consequence of the depression in trade and yet the price of bread and potatoes, the staple diet of the poor, was unusually high. By August, the powerloom workers and wool-combers of the district were coming out on strike but, as demand was so low, the manufacturers were able to hold out for over three months. The long and bitter strike was only brought to a close at the end of November through the mediation of Frederick Greenwood of Rishworth Hall and, even then, the wool-combers were obliged to continue supplying at their old prices with only the promise of an increase in the new year if there was a general improvement in trade. The consequences of the strike – in which Patrick is said to have supported the men against their masters
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– were manifold: in Haworth and Stanbury a Wool-combers' Protective Society was formed to give the cottage industry a united front in its dealings with the manufacturers, and there was a revival of agitation for a Ten Hours Bill and a repeal of the Corn Laws, with public meetings addressed by Richard Oastler in Keighley and petitions to Parliament.
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Of the greatest consequence for the Brontës, however, was a general decline in health caused by the poverty of the mill-hands and wool-combers, the poor quality of their home and working conditions and the high price of provisions. Such was the concern in Keighley about the rising mortality rates that, after much lobbying by John Milligan, the surgeon, supported by the local wool-combers, the rector and his curate began an investigation into the sanitary conditions of the town. It seems likely, now that his sight was restored and given his interest in medical matters, his concern for the poor and his friendship with the pioneering surgeon, that Patrick attended Milligan's three lectures to the Keighley Mechanics'
Institute in February and March 1847 on the subject of public health and sanitary conditions in large towns. Among other startling statistics, Milligan revealed that the average age at death in Keighley varied considerably according to class and occupation, rising from a mere nineteen for wool-combers to thirty-eight for widows and spinsters. It was a symptom of the times that an effort to raise a public subscription for the distressed poor in Keighley failed because it was generally felt that relief should be given from public rates and not private charity.
³³

The restoration of Patrick's sight had given him a new lease of life, though he declined to attend a farewell tea in Bradford for Dr Scoresby, whose ill health had compelled him to resign. The new vicar, John Burnett, was to be a less abrasive and controversial figure but, on the other hand, he did not have his predecessor's energy and commitment to reform. A bad cold prevented him reading himself in and officially taking up office for over a month.
³⁴
Perhaps for this reason, when Scoresby's plan for the division of the parish finally obtained Parliamentary approval and Oxenhope became a separate parish in its own right, it was Archdeacon Musgrove from Halifax who preached at the opening service held in the newly built National School and not the Reverend John Burnett. Patrick himself came the following week to preach the afternoon service in support of his former curate, Joseph Grant, now the incumbent of the new parish.
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