Brontës
Page 30
Blesser of Mortals! Glorious guide
Nor turning ever from thy course aside
Eternal Pilot while time passes by
While Earthly Guides decay and die
Thou holdst thy throne
Fixed and alone
In the vast concave of the nightly sky58
In August Branwell also completed the final three volumes of his ‘Letters from an Englishman‘. After the rebellion, James Bellingham continued his sightseeing trip to Sneaky’s Glasstown in the company of the Marquis of Douro, his brother Charles Wellesley and Young Soult. For a second time, the party was caught up in Rogue’s machinations: they heard one of his rabble-rousing speeches fomenting revolt against the aristocrats, were captured by his newly raised army and forced to witness his taking and burning of the city of Fidena. Branwell’s juvenilia is usually (and unfairly) characterized as an endless description of campaign and battle but even at this early date, when he was more interested in warfare for its own sake, all the elements of his later work are present. Rogue is not simply a general but a demagogue whose political ambition is far more important than any military manoeuvring. The crux of the fifth volume is not the burning of Fidena but the desertion of his commander, O’Connor, which imperils the success of the siege. The theme of the sixth volume is the rivalry between Highlanders and Lowlanders in Rogue’s army which leads to in-fighting and ultimately causes the defeat of the rebels and Rogue’s own execution by the kings of the Glasstown states. Defiant to the end, dressed in black and with a countenance pale as death, Rogue faces the firing squad and orders them to fire in ‘a firm clear but sepulchral tone’.59
The death of what was fast becoming his favourite character seems to have put rather a damper on Branwell’s writing for the time being and, like his sister, he appears to have temporarily lost his enthusiasm for Glasstown. Charlotte had other excitements to distract her. At the end of September, only three months after leaving school, she was invited to stay for a fortnight at The Rydings with Ellen Nussey, her older sister Mercy, and their mother. Escorted by Branwell, Charlotte travelled the twenty-odd miles to Birstall in a two-wheeled gig – a rather more refined mode of transport than the covered cart which had taken her to Roe Head. The battlemented old house and its beautiful grounds sent Branwell into ecstasies and he returned reluctantly to Haworth, telling his sister that he ‘was leaving her in Paradise and if she were not intensely happy she never would be!’ Charlotte’s extreme shyness, which manifested itself most of all on formal occasions, made her a difficult guest. On one occasion, she trembled and nearly burst into tears when led into dinner by a stranger but, on the whole, the visit was a great success. The two girls were allowed to retreat to the garden away from the daily round of visitors and the time passed pleasantly enough.60
In the middle of October, Branwell returned to fetch Charlotte home again. Laden with apples, sent by Ellen for her sisters, she received a rapturous welcome, as if, she told Ellen, she had been away for more than a year rather than just a fortnight. The two friends had agreed to write alternately once a month and, at Charlotte’s insistence, to continue their correspondence in French. Ellen, lacking Charlotte’s single-minded pursuit of self-improvement, lost her nerve and so the good intentions did not outlast Charlotte’s first letter after her return home.61 In the school-marmish tone she often adopted towards Ellen in the early days of their correspondence, Charlotte wrote in the new year of 1833:
The first day of January always presents to my mind a train of very solemn and important reflections and a question more easily asked than answered frequently occurs viz: How have I improved the past year and with [what] good intentions do I view the dawn of its successor? these my dearest Ellen are weighty considerations which (young as we are) neither you nor I can too deeply or too seriously ponder. I am sorry your too great diffidence arising I think from the want of sufficient confidence in your own capabilities prevented you from writing to me in French as I think the attempt would have materially contributed to your improvement in that language.
Ellen’s refusal to write in French was perhaps wise, given Charlotte’s reaction to her effort at literary criticism of Walter Scott’s novel Kenilworth. ‘I was exceedingly amused at the characteristic and naïve manner in which you expressed your detestation of Varney’s character, so much so indeed that I could not forbear laughing aloud.’62 Though she might mock Ellen’s prosaic inability to appreciate the arts, she felt humbled by her friend’s willingness to conform to social pressures and to submit patiently to duty. Six months later, Charlotte wrote to Ellen lamenting the difference in their characters and her own inability to maintain that single-minded pursuit of self-improvement which had so marked her progress at Roe Head:
unhappily all the good thoughts that enter m[y mind] evaporate almost before I have had time [to] ascertain their existence, every right resolution
The reason for this sudden remorse was that Charlotte had been lured back into the Glasstown fold and was now deeply immersed in writing about the fictional world. Her determination to devote her free time to study had been gradually worn away over the first few months of 1833.
Branwell had no such sense of conflict. After a five-month silence – which may again be due simply to lost manuscripts – he had launched back into Glasstown with one of his most ambitious projects to date. Between 30 January and 8 February 1833, he resurrected (without explanation) his hero, Alexander Rogue, and wrote his first full-scale story about him. Finally abandoning the miniature books in which he had written earlier, he adopted a much larger format which he had used only once before but which he was to use consistently from now on. The story, ‘The Pirate’, was written in a booklet 114mm by 185mm, which was at least four times larger than previous books.64 As he still adopted the minuscule script of the earlier stories, the whole scale of the project was much more ambitious than all his earlier works except ‘The History of the Young Men’.
‘The Pirate’ marks the first serious attempt in the Brontë juvenilia to develop the role of one particular figure. Rogue was not one of the original Twelves, but his character had been delineated by Charlotte as early as December 1829.
Rogue is about 47 years of age. He is very tall, rather spare. His countenance is handsome, except that there is something very startling in his fierce, grey eyes and formidable forehead. His manner is rather polished and gentlemanly, but his mind is deceitful, bloody and cruel. His walk (in which he much prides himself) is stately and soldier-like, and he fancies that it greatly resembles that of the Duke of Wellington. He dances well and plays cards admirably, being skilled in all the sleight-of-hand blackleg tricks of the gaming table. And, to crown all, he is excessively vain of this (what he terms) accomplishment.65
Despite being a ‘celebrated character’ in 1829, Rogue merited only the briefest of passing mentions until, during Charlotte’s absence at school, Branwell had turned him into the political demagogue and revolutionary whose exploits had been observed in ‘Letters from an Englishman’. In ‘The Pirate’ Branwell adopted his same English narrator, the merchant James Bellingham,66 and described how Rogue had turned pirate, preying on the shipping of both Napoleon and Wellington and, in the process, attacking some of Bellingham’s own vessels. The spoils he had disposed of through his company, Rogue, Sdeath and Co., and by this means financed his extravagant lifestyle in Verdopolis. For the first time the portrait of Rogue is fleshed out. He still has the same tall, thin and erect bearing and the handsome face wears the same cynical sneering expression which had marked him out in ‘Letters from an Englishman. Now, however, he is portrayed as a heavy drinker, sinking prodigious amounts of raw brandy and wine, and also, more shockingly, the suggestion of atheism hangs about him.
I say sir Im as near foundering as Life can be be [sic] I say Im a Perfect wreck why (
n’t keep body and soul together if it wasnt for this Body and soul did I say. fool who in the name of nonsense ever heard of two thing[s] seperating that were never together?67
In ‘The Pirate’ Branwell was able to give full vent to his fascination with this increasingly satanic character, who was modelled on Lord Byron’s Conrad, Walter Scott’s Richard Varney and Milton’s Lucifer. The story also introduces the symbiotic relationship between Rogue and his evil genius, Robert Patrick Sdeath, which draws heavily on the story of Robert Wringhim and his association with the devil in James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner.68 In creating a real and complex character out of Rogue, Branwell had found a counterbalance to Charlotte’s fixation with her hero, Arthur Wellesley, the Marquis of Douro. Middle-aged, debauched, cruel, evil and an inciter of popular revolt, he is the antithesis of the young, handsome, high-minded, romantic and aristocratic marquis. The conflict between them, which was to shape much of the future writing of both Charlotte and Branwell, is already foreshadowed in ‘The Pirate’. At the end of the story, Rogue suddenly and unexpectedly marries Lady Zenobia Ellrington, the magnificent Italian blue-stocking whom Charlotte had invented as a rival to Marian Hume for the Marquis of Douro’s affections.69
The few fragments Charlotte wrote in the spring of 1833 suggest she was at least thinking about the development of the Glasstown stories at this time. Branwell’s creation of Rogue had clearly intrigued her. One of her fragments was a poem, ‘Lord Ronan’, which depicted Rogue on his deathbed reluctantly having to fulfil his pact with the devil and surrender his soul to him.70 Fascinated as she was by the emergence of this new character, Charlotte could not allow Rogue to be placed centre stage at the expense of her own Marquis of Douro. The old childhood rivalry between brother and sister reasserted itself and her response was to restore the marquis to his dominant role in Glasstown in a story of comparable length to ‘The Pirate’.
‘Something About Arthur’, which she finished on 1 May, is a curious, disjointed piece written under her favourite pseudonym of Lord Charles Wellesley, the malicious brother of her hero. Surprisingly, in view of their respective reputations, it is Charlotte, not Branwell, who in this tale introduces the first fully developed picture of low life in Verdopolis. For six months Charles Wellesley’s only companions had been ‘Tavern Keepers, poachers, park-breakers, Highwaymen, murderers, the Flashmen about Town, &c &c my only places of Resort pothouses, the Rend[e]zvous of Robbers & the open fields’. The story is full of heavy-drinking ‘rare lads’, racy slang and incidents of casual cruelty, which form a long and incongruous introduction to the main theme, the fifteen-year-old Arthur Wellesley’s love affair with a peasant girl, Mina Laury, who is discovered to be the daughter of his own childhood nurse.71
In writing about the Marquis of Douro’s first love affair, before his meeting with and marriage to Marian Hume, the seventeen-year-old Charlotte had found the one great subject which was to dominate her subsequent juvenilia and even her published novels. Like any teenage girl, Charlotte had a romantic concept of love which had been fostered by her addiction to the novels of Walter Scott. The development of a love affair between the marquis and Mina Laury, which almost seems to have been an afterthought in ‘Something About Arthur’, touched a chord in Charlotte’s nature. The story itself suddenly takes life: it also sparked off a whole series of increasingly long and complex stories about the triumph of love over apparently insuperable difficulties. For the next two years Charlotte would be constantly employed on the romantic affairs of the Glasstowners. As soon as one story ended, she began another.
Her heroes and heroines are invariably extraordinarily beautiful. The men are tall, usually fair and have effeminate features. The women are either dark, bold, dashing beauties with voluptuous figures or small, delicate, golden-haired and virginal young girls. Charlotte seized every opportunity in her writing to linger lovingly over descriptions of the physical beauty and splendid dress of her characters, particularly her heroines. The future creator of small, plain Jane Eyre, who was herself described as ‘very ugly’ to her face by Mary Taylor, was still spellbound by matchless figures and features. Apart from one or two female characters, such as Lily Hart, whose beauty, in true fairytale fashion, makes her worthy of elevation to the higher echelons of society, Charlotte’s heroes and heroines are also invariably aristocratic. Cold, proud and haughty to those beneath them, they also exhibit the ‘aristocratic’ qualities of nobility, courage and enthusiasm.72 It is a curious contradiction that these passionate creatures, capable of enduring and overcoming every sort of obstacle to union with their loved ones, are completely sexless. We know they are in love because we are told they are, but there is no real attempt to describe the attraction or to develop it. There is no lingéring over love scenes, which are limited to declarations of undying love, an occasional chaste kiss on the hand and an even more infrequent ‘fervent embrace’. Clearly it is the romance of the situation rather than the nature of the love itself which attracts Charlotte’s attention. It is equally clear from the naivety of the relationships that Charlotte’s knowledge of the grand passion was entirely formed from books.
Charlotte’s love stories reflect her immaturity in other ways. She had never lost her childhood addiction to mystery and the magical and supernatural. This now found a new outlet in the creation of dashing young men of seemingly obscure origins who, like Arthurian knights, have to prove their aristocratic origins before they can marry the beautiful and spirited heroines. Edward Sydney, son of the Duke of York, is introduced as a foundling child, the Earl of St Clair woos the Lady Emily as plain Mr Leslie and Lily Hart is secretly married to her Mr Seymour for three years before she discovers that he is really John, Duke of Fidena and heir to Sneakysland.73 The revelations of true identity are often made through magical means. The foundling Edward Sydney, for example, is guided by mysterious apparitions and supernatural voices to the Philosopher’s Isle where Byron’s magician, Manfred, reveals that he is none other than the long-lost son of Frederick, Duke of York. Similarly, a vision of the drowned figure of her fiancé, Henry Percy, allows Marian Hume to put aside her scruples about his disappearance and marry the Marquis of Douro.74
Though Branwell was impressed enough with the introduction of affairs of the heart to create his own pairs of lovers,75 he firmly rejected the magical element which Charlotte introduced so often to resolve her stories. Since adopting Rogue as his chief character, his interest was firmly in the sphere of human motivation and actions and their consequences. The Genii had only been mentioned once in his writings since the summer of 1832 whereas they were still playing a significant interventionary role in Charlotte’s stories a year later.76 Similarly, though he willingly accepted all her new characters, he took some delight in knocking all the romance out of them and putting them firmly into the real world. Her dashing and lovesick heroes, Edward Sydney and Earl St Clair, for instance, become in Branwell’s stories cynical and self-seeking leaders of the powerful Aristocratic Party opposed to the Democrats.77
In the old tit-for-tat which had been a feature of their childhood writings before Charlotte went away to school, she responded by bringing the romantic touch to Branwell’s arch-demagogue, Alexander Rogue himself. In ‘The Pirate’ and ‘Real Life in Verdopolis’, a story written in the summer of 1833, Branwell had made the revolutionary a former buccaneer and a robber baron with a hideout in the hills.78 Charlotte explained that Rogue had been driven to this life of crime by sixteen years spent in exile from Glasstown, a punishment which was imposed on him for attempting to secure the execution of the Earl of St Clair for treason. He had also been forced to adopt Alexander Rogue as his pseudonym: ‘Few now can recognize in that seditious demagogue that worn-out & faded debauchee Alexander Rogue Viscount Ellrington, the once brilliant & handsome young soldier Colonel Augustus Percy.’ His rivalry with the Marquis of Douro she also extended to cover their respective wives: Zenobia, the wife from whom Rogue has derived his new title, is increasingly depict
ed as being still in love with the marquis, while Ellrington himself has designs on the marchioness.79
How close the partnership between brother and sister was at this time is illustrated by two stories which they wrote contemporaneously: Charlotte’s ‘The Foundling’, written between 31 May and 27 June 1833, and Branwell’s more ambitious two-volume story ‘Real Life in Verdopolis’, begun in May and finished in September of the same year.80 Each story introduces a new young and bold outsider to the Verdopolitan scene, Edward Sydney and Viscount Castlereagh, who align themselves with the Marquis of Douro and Viscount Ellrington respectively. Both Sydney and Castlereagh fall in love with and eventually marry, after many trials of their devotion, a Julia who has almost been forced into a marriage with a rival lover against her will. In ‘The Foundling’, the Glasstowners riot and attack the Tower of All Nations, thinking that their leader, Ellrington, is imprisoned there and similarly, Ellrington himself in ‘Real Life in Verdopolis’ leads a popular attack on the prison in Glasstown to release some of his fellow conspirators who might betray his secrets.
Both stories also introduce a new and sinister element in Glasstown life, a secret society. Charlotte’s was based on the Philosopher’s Isle, where the nobles of Glasstown were sent for their education; under the instruction of Manfred the magician, the students learnt the secrets of life and death but were sworn not to misuse the knowledge. Branwell’s, typically, is not concerned with magic but with politics. Castlereagh is ritually initiated into the society, which is called the Paradise of Souls or the Elysium, and swears never to divulge its secrets: he is then free to join in its activities which, for the moment, consist chiefly of gambling, drinking and fighting. Ellrington is the President, the Marquis of Douro its Vice-President. Interestingly, these accounts of secret societies coincide with the revival of a masonic society, the Lodge of the Three Graces, in Haworth. At the very time Branwell was writing about the Elysium Society, his father was preaching a sermon to the masons of the surrounding area who had gathered in Haworth to celebrate the opening of the lodge’s first private meeting rooms.81