Brontës (98 page)

Despite any influence his father may have had with the board, Branwell's prospective employers were clearly unimpressed with the fact that he had
lost his previous post on the railways for failing to keep proper accounts. As Charlotte remarked bitterly to Ellen:

the place (a Secretaryship to a Railroad Committee) is given to another person Branwell still remains at home and while he is here – you shall not come – I am more confirmed in that resolution the more I know of him – I wish I could say one word to you in his favour – but I cannot – therefore I will hold my tongue.
¹⁰⁵

In fact, had Branwell secured the position, he would not have held it for long. The proposal to build the railway coincided with the ‘Railway Panic' when large numbers of schemes folded and investors lost heavily in the process: the plan was abandoned and Haworth had to wait another twenty-two years for its rail link.

This failure does not seem to have deterred Branwell, for he continued to badger Francis Grundy with requests for employment on the railways and even considered the possibility of going to the Continent when he saw no openings in Britain. In the meantime, he busied himself with acting as a go-between for his old friend J.B. Leyland, and John Brown, the latter being responsible for lettering and erecting a memorial in Haworth Church to Joseph Midgeley of Oldfield which Leyland had carved.
¹⁰⁶
The renewal of this particular friendship led to a revival of Branwell's spirits; though still harping upon his disappointment, his letters became increasingly chatty and irreverent in tone and were frequently illustrated with hastily sketched and wittily captioned vignettes.

More importantly, Leyland encouraged him to take up his writing again in earnest. Branwell had two new poems published in the
Halifax Guardian
in the early winter of 1845, both of them inspired by the abrupt ending of his liaison with Mrs Robinson. The first of these, ‘Real Rest', published on 8 November, pictures a corpse floating on the water and envies its peace in death.

I have an outward frame unlike to thine,

Warm with young life – not cold in death's decline;

An eye that sees the sunny light of heaven –

A heart by pleasure thrilled – by anguish riven –

But in exchange for thy untroubled calm,

Thy gift of cold oblivions healing balm,

I'd give my youth – my health – my life to come, And share thy slumbers in thy ocean tomb.
¹⁰⁷

The second, ‘Penmaenmawr', which was published on 20 December, was much more overt in its references to Mrs Robinson – intentionally so, as Branwell told Leyland in a covering letter enclosing a copy of the poem.

I ought to tell you why I wish anything of so personal a nature to appear in print.

I have no other way, not pregnant with danger, of communicating with one whom I cannot help loving. Printed lines with my usual signature ‘Northangerland' would excite no suspicion … I sent through a private channel one letter of comfort in her great and agonizing present afflictions, but I recalled it through dread of the consequences of a discovery.

Though written in November, the poem harked back to his voyage on the steamer from Liverpool along the coast of North Wales. ‘These lines only have one merit', he told Leyland,

– that of really expressing my feelings while sailing under the Welsh mountain – When the band on board the steamer struck up ‘Ye banks and braes' – and God knows that, for many different reasons, those feelings were far enough from pleasure.
¹⁰⁸

Had Branwell seriously intended Mrs Robinson to see the poem he would surely have submitted it to the
Yorkshire Gazette
, which he knew the family read, but this was possibly too great a risk. Even if Henry Bellerby had been willing to print a poem by the recently disgraced and dismissed Robinson tutor, anyone at Thorp Green familiar with Branwell's poetic aspirations would have recognized his Northangerland pseudonym. While Branwell may have fondly believed Mr Robinson was ignorant of his pen name, the poem contained lines which would undoubtedly have raised his former employer's suspicions.

I knew a flower whose leaves were meant to bloom

Till Death should snatch it to adorn the tomb,

Now, blanching 'neath the blight of hopeless grief

With never blooming and yet living leaf;

A flower on which my mind would wish to shine,

If but one beam could break from mind like mine:

I had an ear which could on accents dwell

That might as well say ‘perish' as ‘farewell' –

An eye which saw, far off, a tender form

Beaten, unsheltered, by affliction's storm –

An arm – a lip – that trembled to embrace

My Angel's gentle breast and sorrowing face –

A mind that clung to Ouse's fertile side

While tossing – objectless – on Menai's tide!
¹⁰⁹

If Mrs Robinson did get to see the
Halifax Guardian
, then these lines must have caused her great alarm. While it might be amusing to have a young man writing her ardent love poetry in private, it was a different thing to have him blazoning his passion across the pages of the local newspapers in progressively more indiscreet verse. It is therefore a matter for speculation whether the sums of money which Mrs Robinson sent Branwell over the next few years were an attempt to buy his silence and persuade him not to publish further poems which might lead to a public discovery of their affair. Certainly it is the case that this was the last of Branwell's published poems to have any bearing on his relationship with Mrs Robinson.

The measured tones and carefully worked lines of ‘Penmaenmawr' are in stark contrast to the hastily scribbled verses Branwell had poured out in the first frantic reaction to his dismissal. Even so, the poem ends with a plea for peace of mind that was still proving elusive.

Oh soul! that draw'st yon mighty hill and me

Into communion of vague unity,

Tell me, can I obtain the stony brow

That fronts the storm, as much unbroken now

As when it once upheld the fortress proud,

Now gone, like its own morning cap of cloud?

Its breast is stone. Can I have one of steel,

T'endure – inflict – defend – yet never feel?

It stood as firm when haughty Edward's word

Gave hill and dale to England's fire and sword,

As when white sails and steam-smoke tracked the sea,

And all the world breathed peace, but waves and me.

Let me, like it, arise o'er mortal care;

All evils bear, yet never know despair;

Unshrinking face the griefs I now deplore,

And stand, through storm and shine, like moveless

PENMAENMAWR.
¹¹⁰

In addition to his efforts for the
Halifax Guardian
, Branwell even seems to have contemplated yet another assault on
Blackwood's Magazine
, sending Leyland a copy of his lines for his prior approval.
¹¹¹

Branwell had not merely occupied himself with poetry, but had also embarked on a major new project. Just as he had always done, from the days of their childhood when he had been the innovator in their juvenile writings to the publishing of his poetry in more recent years, Branwell was the first member of his family to tread a new path, in seeing the potential of the novel as a marketable commodity and setting about writing one for publication. He explained the inception of his book to Leyland.

I have, since I saw you at Halifax, devoted my hours of time snatched from downright illness, to the composition of a three volume Novel – one volume of which is completed – and along with the two forthcoming ones, has been really the result of half a dozen by past years of thoughts about, and experience in, this crooked path of life.

I felt that I must rouse myself to attempt some-thing while roasting daily and nightly over a slow fire – to wile away my torment and I knew that in the present state of the publishing and reading world a Novel is the most saleable article so that where ten pounds would be offered for a work the production of which would require the utmost stretch of a man's intellect – two hundred pounds would be a refused offer for three volumes whose composition would require the smoking of a cigar and the humming of a tune.

My Novel is the result of years of thought and if it gives a vivid picture of human feelings for good and evil – veiled by the cloak of deceit which must enwrap man and woman – If it records as faithfully as the pages that unveil man's heart in Hamlet or Lear the conflicting feelings and clashing pursuits in our uncertain path through life I shall be as much gratified (and as much astonished) as I should be if in betting that I could jump over the Mersey I jumped over the Irish Sea. It would not be more pleasant to light on Dublin instead of Birkenhead than to leap from the present bathos of fictitious literature on to the firmly fixed rock honourd by the foot of a Smollet or Feilding.

That jump I expect to take when I can model a rival to your noble Theseus
who haunted my dreams when I slept after seeing him – but meanwhile I can try my utmost to rouse from almost killing cares, and that alone will be its own reward.
¹¹²

Branwell's ‘Novel' was indeed the result of years of thought, for it appears that it was a reworking of an Angrian story he had written as early as December 1837. His choice of this particular story and his treatment of it were obviously influenced by his affair with Mrs Robinson. The story was that of Maria, the beautiful wife of the dissolute William Thurston, and her seduction by Alexander Percy, Earl of Northangerland.

In the original, Maria was drawn to Percy's romantic character, ‘that strange union … of debauched profligacy and impassioned feeling and restless ambition, and which then was but beginning to be overclouded by his after embittered melancholy' and her interest was stimulated by ‘the story of his life, its ceaseless wanderings and rumoured crimes'. In common with Percy's other conquests she is already half in love with him before she meets him and is a ready and willing victim; Percy wins her over simply because he is Percy and irresistible to women.
¹¹³
In the new version, which Branwell titled ‘And the Weary are at Rest', Maria Thurston is a virtuous woman driven into Percy's arms, despite herself, because she is a neglected wife who longs for love.

Mrs Maria Thurston had known enough of Sorrow, and God had intended her to both know and feel enough of love. She had before her a man capable of exciting every feeling that a woman can know – She had, as the possesor of her own person, a man, if I can write him down as such, who could not gain more than momentarily – her feelings, and who never could fill them at all. She had lost thoughts of him \except/ in her ideas of dread of him and so many years had elapsed since he had bestowed on her even one moment of, I fear, selfish fondness, that the rem\em/brance of her bridal days caused the astonishment which one feels when thinking that ones childhood took for truth the gibberish of a nursery tale.
¹¹⁴

Maria Thurston had thus become a portrait of Mrs Robinson, who had herself attracted Branwell's sympathy by her claims of marital neglect. Maria is pious, like Mrs Robinson, and is thus deeply torn by the conflict of her faith and her illicit love. When she finally succumbs to Percy's attentions she falls weeping to her knees and offers a ‘scarcely coherent prayer':

O God forgive me if thou can'st! I do not know how much I have angered thee – I do not know whether or not I sin in daring to pray to thee – I only know that I cannot help myself, that I am going whither my every feeling leads me, and that, come what may, into thy hands I must fall. The world will now judge ill of me – My sisterhood will shun me – snares will surround me – my life will be endangered, a long dark future may be preparing for me and Hell itself may rise to meet me at my coming; But how can I shake off what my heart clings to? How can I vow to thee that I will forget him who seems all I have hoped for and never have obtained? How can I return to silent submission under heartless tyranny and keep any promise to hate the name of love?
¹¹⁵

Though Maria Thurston had become Mrs Robinson, Percy did not become Branwell Brontë, except in so far as he embodied all Branwell's wish-fulfilment. They shared a love of intellectual pursuits, music and poetry, a bravado, passion and natural eloquence, but there was always a naivety about Branwell which was not reflected in the cynical and manipulative Percy, who was effortlessly master of every situation.

Writing his novel had at least the benefit of employing Branwell's time and deflecting his mind from his emotional problems. Though it remained unfinished, the simple act of creativity was a comfort. His career and his personal life lay in ruins; literature was now his only resource.

Chapter Seventeen

THE BOOK OF RHYMES