Perhaps surprisingly, Charlotte does not seem to have reacted to Branwell’s perversion of her favourite character. Similarly, she seems to have been quite happy to sit back and let him dictate the course of events in the Glasstown kingdoms. In October, while she made a number of false starts on new stories which she eventually grouped together and called ‘Arthuriana: or Odds and Ends’, he began a new story, ‘The Politics of Verdopolis’.103 Despite its title, the book was largely taken up with introducing a new heroine, Mary Percy, the proud and haughty, beautiful and intellectual seventeen-year-old daughter of Viscount Ellrington by his first wife, Mary Henrietta, who had died at the age of twenty-one. The rest of the story, inspired by the agitation throughout the United Kingdom in the build-up to and in the wake of the Reform Bill of 1832, is taken up with the dissolution of the Glasstown Parliament and the subsequent general election. There are lively scenes depicting the preparation for the campaign and the hustings, which must reflect Branwell’s personal experience of electioneering the previous year. Despite its beautiful heroine, who was to become a leading figure in future juvenilia, the story is far removed from the exotic locations and magical interventionism of Charlotte’s Glasstown. For the first time the location is typically English: Percy Hall is an ancient country house, set in oak woodlands and deer-filled parklands, rather than the almost oriental splendour of Verdopolis. Branwell’s evocative description of the place, which Charlotte found inspirational,104 was to set a new tone of realism in the juvenilia which removed it one stage further from its original African concept.
This approach was consolidated in the next two books Branwell wrote. Five days after finishing ‘Politics in Verdopolis’, he began ‘An Historical Narrative of the “War of Enroachment”’, which was followed immediately by ‘An Historical Narrative of the War of Aggression’.105 Between them, these two stories turned the world of the Glasstown Confederacy upside down, threatening its very existence by the invasion of highly trained French armies rather than native Ashantees. In its defence, the Verdopolitans march out to the eastern city of Angria, with its villages of Zamorna and Northangerland. Continuing the theme he had begun in ‘Politics in Verdopolis’, Branwell gave Angria an English, even specifically Yorkshire setting. The Angrians are depicted as stubborn and unhelpful provincials, epitomized by their leader Warner Howard Warner who lives in a thinly disguised Haworth (Howard), ‘a wild villiage seated amid barren uncultivated Hills’.106 Despite the mutiny led by Ellrington and Douro and overwhelming numbers of French opposing them, the Glasstown army wins a famous victory at the Heights of Velino. Even at such a glorious moment, Branwell cannot resist a dig at his sister. Lord Lofty is killed in the battle leading a gallant charge against the enemy in an effort to wipe out the stains ‘so needlessly stuck to his character from the ridiculous transactions mentioned in a manner so lively in “Arthuriana” by Lord Chas Wellesly’.107 The military coup which puts Ellrington and the Marquis of Douro in total control of the government of Verdopolis, as well as its armies, is followed up by a second great victory ‘on the feilds of Zamorna and Northangerland’ which decided ‘the fate of all Africa’.108 On this auspicious note Branwell ended his last story of the year 1833. The victory had indeed decided not only the fate of all Africa but also the future course of the juvenilia. The focus of interest would now move on from the exotic and Babylonic city of Glasstown to the more prosaic and provincial world.
Chapter Eight
ANGRIANS ARISE!
The increasing amount of time spent in writing at the parsonage did not go unnoticed. Patrick could not be unaware that his children were spending many hours poring over their manuscripts but when he saw the minute cramped hand in which they were writing he was deeply concerned. His children’s eyesight would be strained, their posture ruined and, perhaps more importantly, there was something obsessively and unhealthily secret about the sheer volume of diminutive writing. He clearly knew at least something of its nature, for he observed to Mrs Gaskell that as the children grew older ‘their compositions and plots were more matur’d, and had less of romance and more of taste, and judgement’.1 Wisely, Patrick made no attempt to put a stop to the writing but he did encourage them to channel their energies into less secretive projects. At Christmas 1833, he presented Charlotte with a manuscript notebook in which he had written on the top of the first page, ‘1833. All that is written in this book, must be in a good, plain and legible hand. PB.’ Charlotte made an effort to please her father by copying into it a series of long poems on heroic subjects which were unconnected with the imaginary worlds and therefore fit for public consumption. The first, ‘Richard Coeur de Lion & Blondel’, was written on 27 December 1833, the second, ‘Death of Darius Codomanus’, on 2 May 1834 and the third, ‘Saul’, on 7 October 1834.2 She added only two more poems during the course of the next year, so Patrick’s attempt to give a less introverted direction to his daughter’s writing failed miserably.
Charlotte was far too absorbed in the delicious prospects held out by the creation of a new kingdom of Angria to allow herself to be deflected from writing about the imaginary worlds for long. The marquis and Ellrington had both been rewarded for their services in defeating the French: taking their titles from the site of their great victory in Angria, the marquis had become Duke of Zamorna, Ellrington the Earl of Northangerland. This was not enough to satisfy the ambition of either man, however, and Zamorna now demanded that the huge, fertile but thinly populated eastern province of Angria should be ceded to him unconditionally and that he should be allowed to rule it as its monarch. In a great speech to the Assembly, Branwell had Northangerland support Zamorna’s claim:
My Lords Can the workman mean his master harm when after having done that Masters Bidding he comes to receive his rightful wages … how can Arthur Wellesly mean the country Harm when after having caste himself as a sheild before his country in her hour of peril he but – the hour of defeat averted – turns round to beg from her one kiss of love and gratitude … My lords you believe that the Duke of Zamorna has done you service you believe that he deserves reward for that service you believe that he is the son of a King and that thus he is qualified to receive a Kingdom and as in this case these are the only
Despite the Earl of St Clair’s claim that the proposal was putting ‘a premium upon insubordination rebellion and immorality’ and despite a foolishly arrogant and tactless speech from Zamorna himself,4 Northangerland’s oratory won the day. Zamorna was created King of Angria, though the new kingdom was to remain part of the Glasstown union.
While Branwell advanced the political career of the newly avaricious Zamorna, Charlotte decided to develop his personal life. It was quite clear from the profound changes that had taken place in his own character that Zamorna had outgrown his child-bride, Marian Hume, whose sweet innocence was entirely out of place in the brave new world of Angria. Charlotte therefore disposed of her, writing her last will and testament on 5 January 1834 and having her die of a broken heart caused by her husband’s neglect. Free now to marry a woman of more spirit and better suited to his new character, Charlotte married him to Branwell’s new creation, Mary Percy, daughter of Northangerland. Branwell had originally intended her for one of his politicians, the slippery Sir Robert Pelham, but for once Charlotte took the initiative, hijacked his heroine and married her off before her brother could object.5 The marriage was to be fundamental to the future development of the juvenilia as Mary, beloved by both Zamorna and Northangerland, became a pawn in, and victim of, their ever-deepening rivalry.
Not content with simply providing Zamorna with a new wife, Charlotte gave him an increasingly complex and immoral love-life, reflecting the twist Branwell had given to his character and political career. He acquires a bastard child, an evil and misshapen dwarf called Finic, by a Negress with whom he had an adulterous affair when he was eighteen. A first wife, Helen Victorine, is revealed, by whom he has
a son of doubtful legitimacy: like her successor, Marian Hume, Helen Victorine was neglected by her husband and died of a broken heart.6 It is also announced that Zamorna transferred his attentions to Mary Percy while Marian was still alive and that he actually courted her in his wife’s presence. Within three months of his marriage to Mary he was already blatantly flirting with other women. There is even a suggestion that Mina Laury, his first love who has become the nurse of his children by previous marriages and affairs, is being kept as his mistress in the seclusion of Grassmere Manor.7 No doubt Zamorna’s exotic and Byronic style of life was a powerful antidote to the enforced piety and chaste normality of life at Haworth Parsonage.
Similarly, the idea of depicting real life in Haworth as she knew it had no attraction for Charlotte. In ‘High Life in Verdopolis’, written between 20 February and 20 March 1834, she opened her story with a defence of her love of the aristocratic way of life:
I like high life, I like its manners, its splendors, its luxuries, the beings which move in its enchanted sphere. I like to consider the habits of those beings, their way of thinking, speaking acting. Let fools talk about the artificial, voluptuous, idle existences spun out by Dukes, Lords Lad
If Charlotte was unwilling to leave the glittering social world she had created in Verdopolis for the bleaker provincialism of Angria, Branwell had no such reluctance. He countered her obsession with the higher echelons of society by introducing the more familiar and mundane world of the woollen industry to the juvenilia. Mills had always been present on the Verdopolitan scene, but ‘The Wool is Rising’, which Branwell completed on his seventeenth birthday, was the first story to chart the rise of a mill owner and be set, in part at least, in the counting house of a mill. Edward Percy is the eldest son of Northangerland by his second wife Mary Henrietta. He and his younger brother, William, were supposed to have been killed at birth on Northangerland’s orders but, for reasons best known to himself, had been preserved by Sdeath. Left to their own devices, they had lived in abject poverty until the driving ambition of Edward had set them up as working wool-combers. Such was his success in the trade that he soon became a mill owner, employing workmen in his mills and his brother and a clerk in the counting house and earning himself a fortune. His business methods were as underhand as his father’s political machinations, but the profits enabled him to buy land in Adrianopolis, the new city Zamorna was building as his capital in Angria, and to set up mills in the kingdom. Having made his fortune he becomes a member of the Verdopolitan Parliament as a member of the Angrian party and sets up in grand style at Edwardston Hall in Angria. In sharp contrast to Charlotte’s effete and wordy lovers, Edward Percy is both passionate and decisive: his successful wooing of the princess, Maria Sneachie, is almost brutal in its directness and he has no qualms about clasping his lover in his arms and ‘imprinting on her lips one ardent kiss’.9
The scenes in the counting house, in which Edward Percy bullies his ‘spirited but weak’ brother and his ‘grovelling’ clerk, who are respectively reading a novel and Wesley’s hymns instead of working at their ledgers, were later to be lifted by Charlotte to form the opening chapters of her first novel, The Professor.10 Her conversion to the less glamorous world of her own experience was some way off, however, and her next venture, ‘The Spell’, was a violent reaction against Branwell’s attempts to tone down her extravagances. The story is a reversion to the old world of magic, omens and mysterious strangers. Zamorna nearly dies as the result of a curse put on him at birth and it is revealed that he has an identical twin brother, Valdacella, who is really responsible for all the arbitrary and cruel deeds and the sudden change in character of Charlotte’s great hero. Here again, the influence of James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner is very evident, the devil-like figure of Valdacella assuming Zamorna’s persona.
their past lives are inextricably interwoven, the achievements of one cannot now be distinguished from the achievements of the other, their writings, their military actions their political manoeuvres, are all blended, all twisted into the same cord, a cord which none but themselves can unravel & which they will not.
If the story set out to restore Zamorna back to his former good character and extricate him from all the consequences of his pride and ambition by attributing them to his twin, it failed. Branwell had pushed the story on too far and Charlotte was too completely seduced by Zamorna’s Byronic incarnation to allow him to revert to his former self. As Charlotte ruefully acknowledged in a tail-piece to the story:
If the young King of Angria has no alter Ego he ought to have such a convenient representative, For no single man having one corporeal & one spiritual nature … should in right reason & in the ordinance [of] common sense & decency, speak & act in that capricious, double-dealing, unfathomable, incomprehensible, torturing, Sphinx-like manner which he constantly assumes for reasons known only to himself.11
If Charlotte rather regretted the way Zamorna was turning out, Branwell had no such doubts about Northangerland. During the spring of 1834 he wrote the first volume of ‘The Life of feild Marshal the Right Honourable Alexander Percy. Earl of Northangerland’ under the alias of John Bud. The story developed Northangerland’s descent from the Northumbrian Percy family which Charlotte had first outlined some six months previously in ‘The Green Dwarf’. His father, a crude, violent and dissipated man, sold his family estates to gratify his profligate habits, fled to Ireland after fighting a duel and carrying off a lady and ended up in Africa attempting to escape justice.
the birth of Northangerland was marked by a rough and stormy day. certai[nly th]eir appeared no prodigy either on heaven or earth. But clouds and wind and rain beat rou[nd th]e ancient Hall when its Young lord
The young Alexander Percy has a powerful mind and quickly masters Greek, Latin, modern languages and mathematics; when he is sent to St Patrick’s College on the Philosopher’s Isle, he applies himself so single-mindedly to his studies that he becomes Senior Wrangler. Already he has proved himself to be driven by that ambition which will not permit him to be anything but the first in everything he does. In addition to his intellectual gifts, Percy is extraordinarily sensitive to music, bursting into tears as a child when he hears an Italian flute player and seeing visions of angels when he plays on the organ. Pious in the extreme, he spends hours reading his Bible and questions his tutor, John Bud, endlessly: ‘Mr Bud where shall we go when we die’, ‘What are our spirits like Sir’, ‘Why doesnt the judgement day come now when men are so wicked’. As a result of this ‘overmuch unassisted thinking of an
Percy’s atheism, which had gradually become more explicit in the juvenilia, is one of the few indications of rebellion among the Brontë children against the religious atmosphere in which they were brought up. It is often cited as proof that Branwell himself was an atheist, but this is no more true than to suggest that Charlotte’s obsession with the adulterous affairs of her hero is an indication that she indulged in liaisons with married men.14 In both cases, the attraction of such piquantly shocking characteristics in their creations was that they were so alien to the conventionality of life at the parsonage.
On the other hand, the juvenilia also provided a useful outlet for Branwell’s deepening sense of disgust at religious hypocrisy. Interestingly, he seems to depict this as being almost exclusively the preserve of those outside the Established Church, in particular the inspirational sects. In ‘An Historical Narrative of the War o
f Aggression’, he had made Percy himself deliver an ironical impromptu prayer, aided by his wicked confederates, Sdeath and Montmorenci. Kneeling beside a chair, his eyes raised to heaven, his hands clasped, ‘a heavenly pensiveness’ diffused over his countenance, he prays:
Oh – may we be saved. – may we all be saved. (Sdeath – may we be saved). Saved to life everlasting saved to ever lasting life. (Mont. just so) Oh Grace. – Ohy Grace. come down upon us (S. come) (Mont, come) … oh. save us. save thy lambs save thy sheep. save thy lambs (Thornton. ‘It would be better If he told you how to save your Hams’)15
Timothy Steaton, too, the clerk in ‘The Wool is Rising’, conceals his villainy under a cloak of pretended piety.
while thanking the Lord for his abundant loving kindness a light as that which fell upon Saul of Tarshish broke in upon my mind. I bethought me at a venture upon the Lost Sheep of the house of Israel and I said to my soul Truely it hath pleased the Lord to send rain upon the earth whereby perchance many of his creatures have been delectated and many damaged
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