Unlike Anne, Branwell was not troubled with an excess of diffidence. Being naturally of an amiable and sociable disposition, he soon formed acquaintances in the neighbourhood of his sojourn, and among them was Dr. — — , physician to the family in which he was a tutor. Besides, being possessed of a fund of anecdote, combined with an entertaining manner of relating stories, that alone made him excellent company, Branwell was found to be a thorough musician, for he had further cultivated this taste and acquired considerable skill in performance.
Six months soon passed away, and Branwell and Anne once more made the parsonage at Haworth happy with their presence. One of Branwell’s first impulses, after his welcome at home, was to visit his friends at Halifax; where, on this occasion, he had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Grundy. On the return of himself and his sister to their duties, there is no doubt that he continued the exertions he had made to conduct himself with such prudent diligence and self-possession as to ingratiate himself into the good favour of the family with whom he resided.
Charlotte was in the Rue d’Isabelle as English teacher; where, having gained a familiarity with the French language, though growing home-sick and not well, she resolved to remain till the end of the year; and, if possible, to acquire a knowledge of German.
It was at the beginning of August, as the vacances approached, that Charlotte became dispirited. The prospect of five weeks of loneliness in a deserted house, in a foreign city, was more than she could bear: the last English friend was leaving Brussels: she would have no one to whom she could turn her thoughts. ‘I forewarn you, I am in low spirits,’ she writes, — ‘that earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment.’ For the first time in her life she really dreaded the vacation; ‘Alas,’ she says, ‘I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart; and I do so wish to go home. Is not this childish?’ Yet she was bravely resolved, despite her weakness, to bear up, to stay; but for Charlotte Brontë, as for Lucy Snowe, those September days were days of suffering. Once, a little later, her resolution failed her. She was alone, on some holiday; the other inmates had gone to visit their friends in the city; Charlotte had none there now. She was solitary, and felt herself neglected by Madame Héger; she could bear it no longer, so she went to madame herself and told her she could not stay; but Monsieur Héger, hearing of it, with characteristic vehemence, pronounced his decision that she should not leave, and she remained.
Mrs. Gaskell describes her suffering from depression of mind, arising from ill-health, in her second year at Brussels, in gloomy terms, and this seems, indeed, to be the main point she is aiming to illustrate. She says: ‘There were causes for distress and anxiety in the news from home, particularly as regarded Branwell. In the dead of the night, lying awake at the end of the long deserted dormitory, in the vast and silent house, every fear respecting those whom she loved, and who were so far off in another country, became a terrible reality, oppressing her and choking up the very life-blood in her heart. Those nights were times of sick, dreary, wakeful misery, precursors of many such in after years.’ Mr. T. Wemyss Reid, in his monograph on Charlotte, has very properly taken exception to the manner in which Mrs. Gaskell has laid stress upon and exaggerated the occasional depression from which Charlotte suffered; and, certainly, there is nothing to show, in any of her letters from Brussels, that there was cause for anxiety on Branwell’s account. On the contrary, there is very good evidence that nothing of the kind interfered with his sister’s peace. Charlotte left Brussels at the end of the year 1843, and arrived at Haworth on the 2nd of January, 1844. Branwell and Anne were also at home for the Christmas holidays, and Charlotte wrote to her friend ‘E’ in these words: ‘Anne and Branwell have just left us to return to — — ; they are both wonderfully valued in their situations.’
It was known, then, that Branwell had given satisfaction to his employers, and the happiness at this reunion of the family would have been complete had it not been for one circumstance. Charlotte’s friends were now expecting that she would commence a school. She desired it, she says, above all things. She had sufficient money for the undertaking, and hoped she had some qualifications for success. Yet she could not then enter upon it. ‘You will ask me, why?’ she writes. ‘It is on papa’s account; he is now, as you know, getting old, and it grieves me to tell you that he is losing his sight. I have felt for some months that I ought not to be away from him; and I feel now it would be too selfish to leave him (at least so long as Branwell and Anne are absent) in order to pursue selfish interests of my own.’ She appears, from an observation in one of her letters, written some time after the date at which we have arrived, to have regretted having gone to Brussels a second time. She says, ‘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 years of happiness and peace of mind.’ While Charlotte was still at Brussels she heard that some of her friends thought that the ‘époux of Mademoiselle Brontë’ must be on the Continent, since she had declined a situation of £50 a year in England, and accepted one at £16, and returned to Belgium. This she appears, in a letter to one of them, to deny; though, whether with the intention of piquing her friend, or avoiding the question, is not distinct. Mr. Reid believes that, in this second sojourn at Brussels, Charlotte Brontë passed through an experience of the heart which proved the turning-point of her life, and made her what she was; and that it was not the subsequent misfortunes of her brother, as Mrs. Gaskell asks us to believe, that destroyed the happiness of her existence.
In the middle of March, when the sisters had finished ‘shirt-making for the absent Branwell,’ Charlotte took a holiday to visit her friend, by which her health was improved. On her return she found Mr. Brontë and Emily well, and a letter from Branwell, intimating that he and Anne were pretty well, too.
Branwell visited Halifax on the 4th of July of this year. His health at that time was not so good as formerly, and his sisters noticed that he was excitable. Till within two or three months of his leaving Luddenden Foot, when he had attained his twenty-fifth year, though not strong, he had enjoyed good health, his spirits having almost always been good. In his youth, unlike Charlotte, he had had no experience of severe mental depression, no deep suffering from religious melancholy. It was only when he turned to reflection that he became serious, and that his thoughts were shaded with the sadness evinced in some of his early poems. Now, however, his nerve-force was less certain; and, being more easily excited, that exuberance of spirit and that elasticity of mind which had distinguished him showed symptoms of decay. It was not to be expected that he should retain his more youthful characteristics through life: and Charlotte has told us, about this time, that something within herself, which used to be enthusiasm, was tamed down and broken; she longed for an active stake in life. As she was unable to leave home, she endeavoured to open a School at Haworth Parsonage. Could she have obtained the promise of pupils, she proposed to build a wing to the house; but, after meeting with more or less encouragement, she found that it was quite impossible to induce anyone by preference to send children to a place so much exposed to wind and weather. The sisters were not sorry they had tried; and, it has been unjustifiably suggested, did not regret too much, that they had failed, because they had fears and apprehensions respecting Branwell, and thought that the place that might be his abode could scarcely be fitted for the home of the children of strangers. Branwell and Anne were at home again for the Christmas of 1844, and they returned to their duties early in the following January. In the course of that month Charlotte writes,
‘Branwell has been quieter and less irritable, on the whole, than he was in the summer.’
At this time there was no fear of his leaving his employment, and no fear that he would be dismissed from it; but a certain excitability and fitfulness of manner, a disposition to pass suddenly from gaiety to moody disquietude, which Anne had observed in her brother, had attracted, a
lso, as has been seen, the serious attention of the other sisters, who were alarmed by it, and wondered greatly what the cause might be. And, indeed, a change had been coming over Branwell, for six months or more, a change which in the beginning had scarcely been understood by himself. A new feeling had impressed itself upon his heart that he had never experienced before, and against which he strove in vain. Branwell, in fact, who had never yet loved beyond the confines of his own home, had conceived an infatuated admiration for the wife of his employer, which afterwards, with his warm feelings, became a deep affection, and finally developed into a fierce and over-mastering passion. The lady who had dazzled and confused his understanding, as will presently appear, was unaware of the effect she had thus produced on the heart of the tutor, and he began to mistake her kindly, condescending manners for a return of his affection, an illusion which, as the sequel will show, he nursed to the very end of his life. Under this peculiar aberration of his mind, he cherished the hope that, as his employer was in feeble health, he might ere long be in a position to marry the widow, whom he believed to have already bestowed her affections upon him; when, being in easy circumstances, and possessed, as he termed it, of ‘the priceless affluence of enduring peace,’ he should be abler as he often declared, undisturbed by the usual perturbations of literary life, to make sure progress, and win for himself a name among the best authors of the day.
But at this period of his life Branwell is not known to have written much verse, his mind being otherwise occupied. The two following beautiful sonnets, however, are from his pen, dated May, 1845, and are, together, entitled:
THE EMIGRANT.
‘When sink from sight the landmarks of our home,
And, — all the bitterness of farewells o’er, —
We yield our spirit unto ocean’s foam,
And in the new-born life which lies before,
On far Columbian or Australian shore,
Strive to exchange time past for time to come:
How melancholy, then, if morn restore —
(Less welcome than the night’s forgetful gloom)
Old England’s blue hills to our sight again,
When we, our thoughts seemed weaning from her sky, —
That pang which wakes the almost silenced pain!
Thus, when the sick man lies, resigned to die,
A well-loved voice, a well-remembered strain,
Lets Time break harshly in upon Eternity.
When, after his long day, consumed in toil,
‘Neath the scarce welcome shade of unknown trees,
Upturning thanklessly a foreign soil,
The lonely exile seeks his evening ease, —
‘Tis not those tropic woods his spirit sees;
Nor calms, to him, that heaven, this world’s turmoil;
Nor cools his burning brow that spicy breeze.
Ah no! the gusty clouds of England’s isle
Bring music wafted on their stormy wind,
And on its verdant meads, night’s shadows lower,
While “Auld Lang Syne” the darkness calls to mind.
Thus, when the demon Thirst, beneath his power
The wanderer bows, — to feverish sleep consigned,
He hears the rushing rill, and feels the cooling shower.’
While Branwell’s mind was rendered bright by the sunny hopes of a happy future, he was enabled to write with pathos, coherency, and beauty, as is shown in the foregoing sonnets. But it was his misfortune that his mind was hung too finely upon the balance, and that, as the phantasy of his affections grew upon him, he became, as will hereafter be demonstrated, the victim of an ‘overheated and discursive imagination,’ and at last ‘betrayed that monomaniac tendency’ which Lucy Snowe says she ‘has ever thought the most unfortunate with which man or woman can be cursed.’ He became, in fact, almost as soon as the new passion had taken full possession of his heart, a miserable victim to that morbid tendency of the mind which, in far lesser degree, characterized his sister Charlotte, and of which she seems to have lived in occasional dread. It may be noted that when Lucy Snowe is seeking wildly the letter, which has been stolen away from her, she accuses herself of monomania. These mental perturbations grew upon Branwell day by day.
Time passed on; and, when he had been with his employer some two years and a half, during the concluding portion of which the control he had exercised over himself was giving way, he began to exhibit the strange irregularities of his disposition, and the irresistible fervour of his long-suppressed and feverish passion. Great patience and forbearance were exercised towards him by the lady of the house; and her sincere regard for the feelings of his family forbade her, on the first blush of the affair, to be the means of his dismissal from his employment. He was not, indeed, dismissed until the step became an absolute necessity. The banishment from his post was not, however, long delayed, for Branwell had lost his former self-control; and his imprudence overcame the reluctance of the lady, who at length made known to her husband, while Branwell was absent at home, on his holiday, in the July of 1845, what his conduct had been. A letter was at once sent to him by his employer, conveying the intimation of his dismissal.
We have been told much in Charlotte Brontë’s letters to her friend ‘E,’ and in the works of Mrs. Gaskell and other writers, concerning this event, which laid prostrate the hopes of Branwell, that requires both comment and correction. We have already seen to what a low state of mind and body Branwell was for a time reduced by his dismissal from Luddenden Foot; but his condition in both was as that of sound health, compared with his utter prostration on his expulsion from his last employment, — a condition which renders any adequate description impossible. He had, indeed, been supremely happy. For him, the sun of prosperity had shone with unsullied splendour, and the rivers of hope had flowed with music richer and deeper than any of earth. The roses that bloomed in the paradise of his fervid imagination, were brighter — and, as he thought, far more lasting — than those, far-famed, of Suristan, and the green pastures of his hopeful aspirations were more fertile and fragrant than he had ever thought possible to him in the years gone by. But, suddenly, the paradise which his poetic and imaginative spirit had created, was changed, without a moment’s warning, to a region of sleepless nights and wretched days, — ‘eleven continuous nights of sleepless horror’ he afterwards speaks of, — where his mind, dismayed and incoherent, reeled and shook in agony intense and ungovernable.
The distress of the Brontë family on this reverse of Branwell’s prospects can scarcely be conceived in its entirety. So deeply agonizing was the then state of his affairs, that they could think of nothing else; and, in their sorrow, had no heart to contemplate the future. It was under the immediate influence of this misery that Anne Brontë wrote her pathetic poem, ‘Domestic Peace,’ in which she deplores the changed conditions of the family. Charlotte had just returned home from a visit to her friend, and found her brother in the condition I have described. Thus she speaks of it, under the date of July the 31st, 1845: ‘It was ten o’clock at night when I got home. I found Branwell ill. He is so very often, owing to his own fault. I was not therefore shocked at first. But when Anne informed me of the immediate cause of his present illness I was very greatly shocked. He had last Thursday received a note from Mr. — — , sternly dismissing him…. We have had sad work with him since. He thought of nothing but stunning or drowning his distressed mind. No one in the house could have rest, and at last we have been obliged to send him from home for a week with some one to look after him. He has written to me this morning, and expresses some sense of contrition for his frantic folly. He promises amendment on his return, but so long as he remains at home I scarce dare hope for peace in the house. We must all, I fear, prepare for a season of distress and disquietude. I cannot now ask Miss — — or anyone else.’
Branwell’s distress had proved so really acute at the disgrace which had befallen him that Mr. Brontë, becoming alarmed for the consequences, decided to send his so
n away to new scenes in the hope of diverting his mind from the subject. That this was, to some extent, successful is evident from Branwell’s letter to his sister, in which his natural feelings and repentant disposition found expression. Branwell had remembered his former visit to Liverpool, and selected that place on this occasion, and sailed thence to the coast of Wales. The sad feelings that impressed him on the voyage were afterwards expressed in verse.
CHAPTER IV.
‘BRANWELL’S FALL,’ AS SET FORTH IN THE BIOGRAPHIES OF HIS SISTERS.
Branwell after his Disappointment — Parallel for his State of Mind in that of Lady Byron — Mrs. Gaskell’s Misconceptions — True State of the Case — Charlotte Illustrates it in her Poem of ‘Preference’ — She alludes to Branwell’s Condition in ‘The Professor’ — Mrs. Gaskell Compelled to Omit her Account in the Later Editions of her Work — Branwell’s Prostration and Ill-health at the Time.
After the first shock to his feelings had been sustained, and, by its own intensity, toned down to less oppressive anguish and pain, a strange calm succeeded in Branwell, more agonizing and appalling to his friends than the stormy ebullitions which had preceded it. There is evidence that his family at this time misunderstood the actual state of his mind, and that their very anxiety about him caused them — but more especially Charlotte — to regard his acts, irresponsible though they might be, as inveterate offences and habitual sins. It has indeed been said by some that Charlotte did not afterwards speak to him for the space of two years.
The reproaches of his sister were probably as unwise as they were passionate, unmeasured, and, in outward semblance, unfeeling; yet they were censures pronounced in momentary anger, utterances of the deep affection she had for her brother, and of sincere sorrow for his unhappy, hopeless, and insane passion. But Branwell’s friends and acquaintances saw clearly that on one subject, and one only, his mind had given way; and that was in his conception of the undoubted love which the lady of his heart bore him. They also saw, notwithstanding this morbid perversion of the ordinary powers of his mind in one particular illusion, that he was not affected in his faculty of reasoning correctly and consistently on all other subjects. They knew, if the Brontë family did not, that Branwell’s mind, naturally morbid and depressed, had been unhinged by the sudden and unexpected ruin of his hopes; and that his heart and his intellect had been so far bruised and wounded, that for many of the acts done, and the things said, under the abiding grief which followed it, he was irresponsible. This will shortly appear.
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