Brontës
Page 39
It is next to impossible to discover what Branwell was doing during these two years. He was certainly of an age to be earning his own living and it is doubtful whether Patrick would have allowed him to sit around at home without at least ensuring that he was preparing himself for gainful employment.
It seems likely that Branwell spent the time trying to establish himself as a professional painter. Excluding those of his sisters, there are only nineteen extant oil portraits known to be by Branwell. Roughly half are of people whose associations were with Haworth, rather than Bradford, where he later set up a studio. All except one are undated, but it seems likely that they belong to these two years which Branwell spent at home, having completed his lessons with William Robinson.77 With Charlotte and Anne away at Roe Head it was more practical for him to appropriate a bedroom as his studio.
The people he painted were, as one might expect, the well-to-do men of the area: William Thomas, the brandy merchant of Haworth, Henry Foster, the mill owner of Denholme, and James Fletcher, a mill owner from Skipton. Other portraits of less substantial men, John Brown, the Haworth sexton, his brother, William Brown, and Thomas Parker, the well-known Haworth tenor, may have been simply presents to friends or commissions from the Three Graces Lodge, with which the Browns were associated, and one of the Haworth Music societies. All the portraits are almost identical in style and pose, half-length and either full face or turned slightly to the right, with an indeterminate background. The only strikingly different detail is in the portrait of Thomas Parker, who holds a violin as a symbol of his musical profession. The only woman Branwell is known to have painted at this period was Maria Ingham, sister of George Taylor of Stanbury, one of the Haworth church trustees. Though Branwell’s male sitters show the expected diversity of appearance, it is interesting that this portrait bears a remarkable likeness to those Branwell had painted of his sisters. Indeed, it could almost be mistaken for the ‘Pillar Portrait’ of Anne, which suggests that it is too easy to read into the ‘sad, earnest, shadowed faces’ of the Brontës those mysterious portents of early death which Mrs Gaskell was so convinced she saw.78
Whatever Branwell was actually doing during the years 1836 and 1837, he had plenty of free time to devote to his writing. Angrian stories simply poured out of him without interruption. In the spring of 1836, continuing the theme he had launched the previous winter, he plunged Africa into civil war. Secretly aided by Northangerland, who was playing his usual double game, the Verdopolitan Reform Ministry invaded Angria, placed its people under martial law, quartered its murderous French, Ashantee and Bedouin allies on them and began a reign of terror. When its leader, the Marquis of Ardrah, refused to withdraw or restore its legislature and king, the Marquis of Fidena and the Duke of Wellington rallied to Zamorna and declared war on the Reform Ministry.79 Despite the warlike setting, Branwell was clearly more interested in the political developments of this period. He reports at length, for instance, the angry debates in the Verdopolitan Parliament over the expulsion of Angria from the Verdopolitan Union, reproducing characteristic speeches and revealing a detailed knowledge of Parliamentary procedure which owed much to his reading of the political sections of the newspapers. Similarly, the dramatic arrest in the Verdopolitan Parliament of the Angrian Members who refused to resign their seats was inspired by Charles I’s arrest of five members of his Parliament in 1642.80
Charlotte, back at school again, was simply a passive spectator in these events. Branwell had always been the one to force the pace and dominate the storyline but, with their partnership weakened by separation, she could not influence the developments taking place. Indeed, she had little time or opportunity to do so. One evening, shortly after her return, she snatched a few moments to muse on her position:
Well here I am at Roe-Head., it is seven o’clock at night the young ladies are all at their lessons the school-room is quiet the fire is low, a stormy day is at this moment passing off in a murmuring and bleak night. I now resume my own thoughts my mind relaxes from the stretch on which it has been for the last twelve hours & falls back onto the rest which no-body in this house knows of but myself. I now after a day’s weary wandering return to the ark which for me floats alone on the face of this world’s desolate & boundless deluge[.] it is strange. I cannot get used
The constant interruptions gave Charlotte no opportunity to ‘play out’ her fantasies and she had to be content with sketching the odd vignette of Angrian scenes or scenery. A few days later, on 4 February 1836, for example, she wrote:
Now as I have a little bit of time there being no French lessons this afternoon I should like to write something. I can’t enter into any continued narrative my mind is not settled enough for that but if I could call up some slight & pleasant sketch, I would amuse myself by jotting it down –82
Having been deprived of the indulgence of anything more than the odd Angrian scene during the term, Charlotte flung herself wholeheartedly into Branwell’s scenario on her return for the Easter holidays. Now that there was nothing to impede her she could write a good long story and, for the first time since October 1834,83 she sat down to compose a whole volume. Whether it was the sheer excitement of having the unaccustomed freedom to write or a feeling of being overwhelmed by the pace of events dictated by Branwell in her absence, Charlotte found it difficult to choose a subject. The beginning of her story, ‘Passing Events’, is a kaleidoscope of changing scenes and moods as she sought to establish a theme out of the many that presented themselves. Several pages into the book, she apologized:
Reader, as yet I have written nothing/, I would fain fall into some regular strain of composition, but I cannot, my mind is like a prism full of coulours but not of forms. A thousand tints are there brilliant & varied & if they would resolve into the shade of some flower or bird or gem, I could
Eventually, the book resolved itself into three separate vignettes based on Mina Laury, Mary Percy and Charles Townshend, encompassing an irrelevant and viciously sardonic portrayal of a Wesleyan Methodist meeting in the ‘Slugg Street’ Chapel. The unlearned and extravagantly self-abasing style of the Methodist preachers obviously caused amusement in the parson’s household. Charlotte’s Mr Bromley addresses his congregation:
‘Filthy rags are we, potsherds were with the leper has scraped himself, bowls of the putrid blood of the sacrifices, sweepings of the courts of thy temple Straws of the dunghill, refuse of the Kennel, Thieves murderers, slanderers, false-swearers.’ Amen, Amen! groaned every hearer from his inmost soul85
As usual, the immediate inspiration for this sketch was Branwell who
, at exactly the same time, was engaged in writing an equally virulent skit in which Alexander Percy adopts the role of ‘Mr Ashworth’, a hypocritical Methodist preacher. This role had been foreshadowed two years earlier, when Percy had broken out in a ranting religious speech which was observed with deepest cynicism by his friends.86 Now, for the first time, he explicitly impersonates a Methodist preacher but his sermon is a terrible inversion of the real message of the Gospel. He urges his congregation to pray for their own damnation as this will be proof to God that they are humbled and therefore, paradoxically, deserve salvation.
I hate you all I Hate you as filthy and Abominable Sinners – as such I abhor you. but there is a Hope of your Salvation and while that hope lasts I will strive to make it a certainty – So start not when I now tell you to fly from salvation Such doctrine has not been preached before but I said The whole world had been D[am]ned till now – the whole world has been preached to therefore
The argument was certainly logical, but it should not be seen as an exposition of Branwell’s own views. The sermon was entirely in keeping with the misanthropic and whimsical character of Northangerland, who was to adopt the role of Mr Ashworth at other points in his career, as, for instance, when he urgently needed to raise cash or simply when the whim took him.
It is a measure of the difference in their styles and purposes in writing that Charlotte’s sketch is simply a sharply observed and sardonic description of a Methodist meeting while Branwell’s equally jaundiced account has an important purpose: as ‘Mr Ashworth’, Northangerland is able to give a new twist to his demagogic skills to whip up anti-government sentiment and obtain the ruin of the people he professes to support.
It is not surprising to find the children of the parsonage mocking the Dissenters who flourished in their father’s parish. What is surprising is that their sarcasm was aimed specifically at the Methodists, rather than the Baptists and stricter sects who were a thorn in Patrick’s flesh. The Methodists had always been Patrick’s most reliable allies and reasonable opponents and Maria and Elizabeth Branwell, their own mother and aunt, had even been brought up as Wesleyan Methodists, though both had become members of the Church of England. For the young Brontës, however, Methodism was equated with hypocrisy and from this period on the Methodists frequently appear in their writings as figures of either contempt or fun.88
Charlotte’s first foray into religious criticism – or rather, criticism of the practitioners of religion – coincided with a spiritual crisis of her own. The conflict between her sense of what she ought to be and her knowledge of what she actually was had become acutely painful to her. ‘Duty’ and ‘Necessity’ demanded that she should commit all her energies to teaching the young girls in her care and earning her own living. This, with her usual sense of commitment, she had determined to do and she flung herself into her duties with an excess of zeal that troubled Miss Wooler. Invitations to spend Saturday and Sunday with the Nusseys or the Taylors, which would have provided a welcome relief from the monotony of school routine, were turned down by Charlotte on the grounds that allowing herself a holiday was a dereliction of her duty. Occasionally, Miss Wooler would positively compel her to go. At the end of May, for instance, Charlotte wrote to Ellen:
You are far too kind and frequent in your invitations. You puzzle me I hardly know how to refuse and it is still more embarrassing to accept. At any rate I cannot come this week for we are in the very thickest melée of the Repetitions. I was hearing the terrible fifth section when your note arrived. But Miss Wooler says I must go to Gomersall next Friday as she promised for me on WhitSunday; and on Sunday Morning I will join you at Church if it be convenient and stay at Rydings till Monday Morning. There’s a free and easy proposal— — — — Miss Wooler has driven me to it, she says her character is implicated!89
Mary Taylor also observed that Charlotte ‘seemed to have no interest or pleasure beyond the feeling of duty’ and it was clear to all her friends that she was making herself ill with her insistence on performing her duties to the letter.90
Even the summer holidays offered no respite from the deepening mood of gloom which gradually enveloped Charlotte at Roe Head. School broke up on 17 June but the pleasure of going straight to Haworth was deferred by an invitation to spend a week at Huddersfield Vicarage. As unwelcome as it was unexpected, Charlotte attempted to cut short the visit to a weekend, using the excuse that ‘papa I fear will scarcely be willing to dispense with us longer at home even though we should be staying with so valued a friend as yourself’.91 Unfortunately, Patrick did not take the same view and wrote to Mrs Franks countermanding his daughter’s arrangements:
I esteem it, as a high privilege, that they should be under your roof, for a time – where, I am sure, they will see, and hear nothing, but what, under Providence, must necessarily tend, to their best interest, in both the worlds –92
The visit, which took up the whole of the first week of the vacation, was not a great success. The eldest child, John Firth Franks, recollected that Charlotte never spoke to him during the whole time she was there though Anne brought toys to him in the nursery.93 The sisters arrived at the vicarage to find Charlotte’s old school-fellow, Amelia Walker, and her family, waiting there to receive them. ‘They were monstrously gracious,’ Charlotte sourly remarked to Ellen,
Amelia almost enthusiastic in her professions of friendship!! She is taller, thinner, paler and more delicate looking than she used to be – very pretty still, very lady-like and polished, but spoilt utterly spoilt by the most hideous affectation94
The Walkers also pressed an invitation on the reluctant Brontës, who duly travelled over to Lascelles Hall the following Tuesday. There, Charlotte was grudgingly forced to admit, they had ‘on the whole a very pleasant day’. Amelia, dispensed from having to earn a living by her family fortune, again attracted Charlotte’s jaundiced comment.
Miss Amelia changed her character every half hour. now she assumed the sweet sentimentalist, now the reckless rattler. Sometimes the question was ‘Shall I look prettiest lofty?’ and again ‘Would not tender familiarity suit me better?’ At one moment she affected to inquire after her old school-acquaintance the next she was detailing anecdotes of High Life.95
One can only guess at the relief Charlotte and Anne felt when they were finally released from social duty and allowed to come home. Not only was the family complete again, but the old playing partnerships could be reestablished.
For once, Haworth and the restoration to her family failed to cure Charlotte’s growing disillusionment with the general tenor of her life. The contrast between her own existence, toiling in the schoolroom at the beck and call of Miss Wooler and her girls, with that of Branwell and Emily, living at home and having their time at their own disposal, must have struck her forcibly. From the sheer volume of his output it is clear that Branwell had a great deal of spare time and energy. Not for him the snatched moments of solitude and the feverish scribbling of Angrian fragments; nor, most painfully, the sense of frustration and guilt which built up when imagination could not be indulged.
Emily too, released from the bondage of school life, was deep in the throes of Gondal composition. Though no Gondal prose tales are extant, some of her poems of this period are preserved, written in her minuscule print on tiny scraps of paper. They are the earliest of her fictional writings in existence and reveal a mind that, in stark contrast to her elder sister’s, was calm and content. She had already established the pattern of her future work, taking her inspiration from the beauties of nature or even simple contemplation of the weather before progressing to Gondal scenes and characters. The earliest recorded poem, probably written earlier that year, is typical.
Cold clear and blue t
he morning heaven
Expands its arch on high
Cold clear and blue Lake Wernas water
Reflects that winters sky
The moon has set but Venus shines
A silent silvery star96
Such tranquil moments were out of Charlotte’s reach. Lacking both the incentive and the energy to write, she made only the feeblest of efforts to retain her hold on Angria. On her return from Huddersfield Vicarage, she began a prose tale, drawing on Branwell’s newspaper reports about the cataclysmic events of the last few months. Either the subject failed to interest her or, more likely, the recent pace of events in Africa left her slightly bemused. The story remained unfinished and this fragment and a single Angrian poem were all she produced throughout the whole five weeks of her vacation.97 This was despite the fact that Branwell had placed her own hero, Zamorna, in the worst crisis of his career. The Verdopolitan Reform Ministry which had invaded Angria had been overthrown by a popular revolution led by the old arch-demagogue himself, Northangerland, who had established himself at the head of a Provisional Government. Zamorna had been defeated at the battle of Edwardston, captured and exiled in the company of Sdeath by Northangerland; in a scene reminiscent of Shakespeare, his eldest son Edward had also been captured, blinded and put to death. All Angria was at last completely under Northangerland’s sway and he ruled with a reign of terror, supported by the Ashantee, French and Bedouin invaders. Zamorna’s sole prospect of revenge lay in breaking Northangerland’s heart by divorcing his wife, Percy’s beloved daughter, and banishing her to Alnwick where, he knew, she would die of a broken heart.98