Charlotte was unmoved by Branwell’s contempt. The pent-up flow of creativity which had been released continued unabated throughout January, sparking off a number of long poems reflecting on the trials of war-torn Angria and its king.18 However it was no longer simply the attraction of the current storyline which inspired her. During the vacation, Charlotte and Branwell decided that they should attempt to turn their writing skills to good account and, if possible, earn a living from them. To do this they needed the advice and judgement of those who were already professional writers, so both embarked upon a course of letter-writing to their literary idols. On 29 December 1836 Charlotte wrote to Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, sending him some of her poems and requesting his opinion of them. Charlotte’s letter is not extant, but Southey referred to it as ‘flighty’, an epithet which is also entirely appropriate for the letter she wrote some years later to Hartley Coleridge,19 Southey’s nephew and son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was also fulsome in its praise of Southey himself, if his quotes from her letter are an indication of its content. As Southey was away from Keswick at the time, Charlotte was forced to wait over two months for his reply. When it finally came, it was not very encouraging.
you live in a visionary world, & seem to imagine that this is my case also, when you speak of my ‘stooping from a throne of light & glory’ … You who so ardently desire ‘to be for ever known’ as a poetess, might have had your ardour in some degree abated, by seeing a poet in the decline of life … You evidently possess, & in no inconsiderable degree what Wordsworth calls ‘the faculty of verse’. I am not depreciating it when I say that in these times it is not rare. Many volumes of poems are now published every year without attracting public attention, any one of which, if it had appeared half a century ago, would have obtained a high reputation for its author. Whoever therefore is ambitious of distinction in this way, ought to be prepared for disappointment.
The sting was in the tail, however, as the elderly poet administered his ‘dose of cooling admonition’ to those ardent hopes and burning ambitions of the young girl who had written to him.
there is a/ danger of which I would with all kindness, & all earnestness warn you. The day-dreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind, & in proportion as all the ordinary ‘uses of the world’ seem to you ‘flat & unprofitable’, you will be unfitted for them, without becoming fitted for any thing else. Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, & it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment & a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, & when you are you will be less eager for celebrity … Write poetry for its own sake, not in a spirit of emulation, & not with a view to celebrity: the less you aim at that, the more likely you will be to deserve, & finally to obtain it.20
Though ironic in that the Poet Laureate could see no worthwhile future, except in the traditional roles of wife and mother, for a woman whose novels were later to achieve far more lasting fame than his own works, Southey’s attitude was a general one in the nineteenth century. It was just what Patrick Brontë had always advised his daughter, urging her to content herself with fulfilling her duty and not to allow her seemingly unattainable ambitions to sour her daily life. Perhaps it was hardly surprising that a constant theme throughout Charlotte’s future novels was the fact that there were practicable alternatives to the conventional role of woman as goddess of the hearth: ‘I believe single women should have more to do – better chances of interesting and profitable occupation than they possess now.’21
Charlotte’s initial reaction to Southey’s letter was one of gloom. The shining prospect of literary fame had been snatched from her. On 16 March she wrote more soberly to thank him for his advice.
At the first perusal of your letter I felt only shame, and regret that I had ever ventured to trouble you with my crude rhapsody; – I felt a painful heat rise to my face, when I thought of the quires of paper I had covered with what once gave me so much delight, but which now was only a source of confusion … I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in print; if the wish should rise, I’ll look at Southey’s letter, and suppress it.22
As further proof of her intention to take the Poet Laureate’s advice to heart, she ritualized her putting away of literary ambition by writing upon the letter wrapper: ‘Southey’s Advice To be kept for ever Roe-Head April 21 1837 My twenty-first birthday’.23
While Southey’s letter had apparently closed an avenue of escape from teaching for Charlotte, Branwell was not even rewarded with replies to his letters. On 4 January 1837, he had made ‘one last attempt’ on Blackwood’s Magazine. ‘I will at last and most earnestly ask of you a Personal Interview’. Branwell’s somewhat startling proposition was to show the editor either his chronicles of Angria or his ‘Life of Alexander Percy’:
In a former letter, I hinted, that I was in possession of something the design of which, whatever might be its execution, would be superior to that of any series of articles which has yet appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine – But, being prose, of course, and of great length, as well as peculiar in character, a description of it by letter would be impracticable.
With a singular lack of tact Branwell then lectured the editor on why he must at last respond.
Now, is the trouble of writing a single line, to outweigh the certainty of doing good to a fellow Creature and the possibility of doing good to Yourself? – Will you still so wearisomly
Even this letter, despite being written much more neatly and with evidently more care than his earlier ones, met with no response. Undeterred, Branwell next chose, like his sister, to write to one of the literary luminaries of the day, William Wordsworth. His overwhelming desire to please the poet who, with Byron, had most influenced his own style, led him to some injudicious flattery. He tried to depict himself as a Wordsworthian child of nature, growing up among the mountains of the north:
Sir,
I most earnestly entreat you to read and pass your Judgement upon what I have sent you, because from the day of my birth to this the nineteenth year of my life I have lived among wild and secluded hills where I could neither know what I was or what I could do. – I read for the same reason that I eat or drank, – because
He had now reached an age when ‘I must do something for myself’; if his literary talents were indeed worthless then he must pursue an alternative career. He hoped that Wordsworth would be able to assess their value.
Do Pardon me, Sir, that I have ventured to come before one whose works I have most loved in our Literature and who most has been with me a divinity of the mind –
My aim Sir is to push out into the open world and for this I trust not poetry alone that might launch the vessel but could not bear her on – Sensible and scientific prose bold and vigorous efforts in my walk in Life would give a farther title to the notice of world and then again poetry ought to brighten and crown that name with glory – but nothing of all this can be even begun without means and I must in every shape strive to gain them; Surely in this day when there is no
t a writing poet worth a sixpence the feild must be open if a better man can step forward …
Forgive undue warmth because my feelings in this matter cannot be cool and beleive me to be Sir
With deep respect
Your really humble Servant
P B25
Branwell’s obviously youthful sincerity and enthusiasm did not outweigh his maladroit comments in the eyes of the great poet. Nor did the fact that the poem Branwell enclosed, ‘The Struggles of flesh with Spirit Scene I – Infancy’,26 had obvious echoes of Wordsworth’s own ‘Intimations of Immortality’. Wordsworth was ‘disgusted with the letter’, though he certainly exaggerated in saying that it contained ‘gross flattery and plenty of abuse of other poets’.27 Like the editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, he did not deign to reply.
Despite the singular lack of success which writing to the leading literary men of the day had produced, Branwell did not abandon the idea of future fame in that field. While still continuing with his Angrian chronicles, on 9 March he began a serious retrospective of his work, collecting the best poems from stories he had written as long ago as December 1833 and then correcting and transcribing them into a notebook he designated for the purpose.28 He kept the notebook for just over a year, adding to it regularly and including some of his most recent compositions, so that it was to become an important reference work for future attempts at publication. As the earliest of both Emily and Anne’s surviving dated poems also belong to roughly the same period,29 it suggests that they too had seen the importance of preserving their poetry independent of the bulky Gondal manuscripts.
Even Patrick seems to have put pen to paper in the new year, writing a skittish ‘Ode to that Unruly Member the Tongue’ which was published in the Leeds Intelligencer on 21 January 1837. The poem drew on the old tale of a man who arranged an expensive cure for his wife’s dumbness, only to be driven mad by her continual nagging. In what one can only call doggerel, the poem made the point that Daniel O’Connell, the Irish nationalist leader, who was a vociferous opponent of church tithes, had similarly driven his audiences mad with the use of his tongue. It was not surprising, given the subject and tone of the poem, that Patrick chose to submit it under his initials alone.30
Politics were very much in the minds of both Patrick and his son throughout 1837. On 27 January Branwell took the lead in establishing a Haworth Operative Conservative Society at a meeting in the church Sunday school room. He acted as secretary for that meeting and was appointed chairman for the second quarter of the year. The objectives of the society were ‘to maintain loyalty to the King attachment to the connection between church and State respect for the independance and prerogatives of the House of Lords and a proper regard for the Commons House of Parliament’. The society must have had the backing of Patrick, who gave its members the use of the Sunday school room for two hours every day of the week except Wednesday and Sunday. It also enjoyed the support of Joseph Greenwood of Spring Head, who presented the society with a donation of five shillings and his copies of the London Times newspaper, the day after he had received them.31
The support of such a society would have been important to Patrick at a time when he was once more in open opposition to the Government. On 22 February he called and chaired a meeting of the inhabitants of the township in the Sunday school room. Its object was to petition Parliament to repeal the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 whose measures were just beginning to be put into practice in Yorkshire. Its severity has become legendary, lambasted by the enduring images of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. The Act ended outdoor relief, which had been administered locally by the parish vestry and had supplemented the incomes of the poor during periods of unemployment or need. Poor Law unions, administered centrally by commissioners in London, had been formed out of groups of parishes, and those who through old age, infirmity or unemployment were no longer able to support themselves could only obtain assistance by residing in the workhouse. There the able-bodied had to work to earn their keep, and the work was invariably hard labour, such as breaking or grinding stones. The greatest hardship of all, and the one which inflamed most passions, was the separation of the sexes: husbands and wives, parents and children, however old or young, were strictly segregated with little or no prospect of ever being reunited. The provisions of the Poor Law Act were now being enforced in Yorkshire and Lancashire, where the vagaries of the textile trade meant that many honest and hardworking factory operatives would find themselves at one time or another in the workhouse – or die of starvation if they wanted to keep their families together.
Despite threats from local Whig mill owners, so many people turned up for the meeting that it had to be adjourned into the open air. There Patrick addressed the assembled crowds, declaring that ‘upon that occasion neither speakers nor hearers had met to promote the interests of party, but to plead the cause of the poor’. He entreated the people of Yorkshire and Lancashire to rouse themselves and oppose the Act, for ‘if dear times and general distress should come on, starvation, deprived of relief, would break into open rebellion’.32
Patrick was supported by several others who spoke with equal passion. Abraham Wildman, the Keighley Chartist, displayed to the meeting the food given to a pauper for a whole day’s consumption: a single potato pared down to bring it within the regulation, a solitary mouthful of beef and a penny’s weight of cheese. He declared the Act contrary to the Scriptures and the constitution of England. Archibald Leighton, a wool-comber who lived in Main Street, Haworth, and the Reverend William Hodgson, Patrick’s curate, were also among the speakers; Branwell read and moved the petition, which was carried unanimously and sent to one of the local members of Parliament and the Archbishop of Canterbury for presentation to the Houses of Commons and Lords respectively. The meeting achieved unlooked-for publicity, not only in the local press but also in The Times, which carried a full report of the speeches and resolutions made.33 Once again, Patrick’s sense of justice had placed him in an otherwise unlikely political alliance. It was an irony that Patrick himself could not fail to appreciate that he thus classed himself with the Radicals, Chartists and revolutionaries who, only a few months later, were addressing an anti-Poor Law rally of thousands on Hartshead Moor.34
Haworth had not one but two public meetings in a week. On 27 February Hall Green Baptist Chapel hosted a meeting to petition Parliament for the total abolition of church rates. Patrick, Branwell and Hodgson made a point of attending ‘with the intention of disturbing the harmony of the meeting’, as one hostile newspaper reported, ‘but finding themselves unsupported they prudently contented themselves with holding up their hands against the resolution’. This caused much laughter, as they were the only opponents in an otherwise unanimous meeting.35 John Winterbotham, as might be expected, was one of the main speakers and used the opportunity to accuse Branwell publicly of sending false statements to the Intelligencer. ‘The accused party proclaimed by his blushes and his silence the truth of the charge alleged against him.’36
Straight after this meeting, as the correspondent to the Leeds Intelligencer mischievously remarked, the company adjourned to the Black Bull Inn ‘to make a night of it’. In fact, the object was not to make merry but to found a reform association which would set up newsrooms throughout the township, giving the poor access to Radical newspapers which were otherwise beyond their pocket. It is interesting that it was felt necessary to establish a reform association, as this was clearly a reaction to the foundation of the Conservative Operative Society:
the political clergymen and their satellites take a good deal of pains to wheedle the Radicals and ‘unwashed’ artisans; but the people of Haworth are too shrewd to be gulled by them … They know how to distinguish between those who are but moderate or partial Reformers, and those who are no Reformers at all, but conservators of all abuses and abominations.37
Patrick’s reaction to the decision to send an anti-church rate petition to Parliament in the name of the inhabitants of Haworth was apparently
one of great anger, if the hostile Bradford Observer is to be believed.
The church parson and his curate have been in a dreadful state of excitement ever since. On last Sabbath morning one of them commenced a fierce attack upon all Dissenters; and in the afternoon both of those meek-spirited clergymen let loose a whole volley of vulgar abuse, in a double lecture in the church, to the great consternation of the congregation. It is feared they are both in a rabid state; some say they believe if any one had challenged the old gentleman that he would have fought, for he declared that he cared for no man or woman, and made great professions of valour. And the young potato eater is really boiling with rage, and offering the most frightful menaces to the whole race of dissenters.38
Hodgson was the more fiery of the two and undoubtedly gave the morning sermon attacking Dissenters. He had already written a provocative letter to the Leeds Intelligencer, trumpeting the fact that on Sunday, 26 February, he and Patrick between them baptized seventy-two children, followed by a further sixty over the next two days. For so many baptisms to take place on the eve of the introduction of civil registration, which would allow Dissenters to perform their own baptisms, marriages and burials, was proof, in Hodgson’s eyes, that they actually preferred the services of the Established Church.39
Political tensions in Haworth heightened over the next few months. The Tory Guardians of the Poor, William Thomas, Robert Ogden and Nathan Ogden, all withdrew their names from the list of guardians because of their opposition to the Poor Law Amendment Act. Branwell drew up their public declaration and noted on it that the Conservative Committee not only supported them but also would refuse to put up any other Tory candidates in the forthcoming elections for parish officers as a means of expressing their ‘most decided Abhorrence of this Unjust Tyrannical Unconstitutional and unintelligible Act’. The Dissenting and Whig/Radical constables of Haworth had no hesitation in putting forward their own names as candidates and, being all large manufacturers, were said to have threatened their workpeople with instant dismissal if they did not vote for them. The constables then called the election meeting for midday on Easter Monday in the church vestry. This was a move calculated to cause trouble, for the church service on that day always began at twelve o’clock and the sermon was usually preached by the vicar of Bradford, to whom Haworth traditionally had to pay substantial church rates.40
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