Frances Atkinson is more promising. In June 1841 she was seventeen, with a six-month-old daughter, living with her family on the road running between Broughton House and High Syke House. Tantalizingly, her occupation is given as female servant, though she clearly did not live in the house of her employers, who are not named. Again, given her address, she is likely to have been a servant of the Postlethwaites or the Fishes. Her daughter, Frances, however, was still living with her grandparents in 1851, though she died at the age of thirteen and was buried on 2 April 1854.58 This would seem to be too late a date for Branwell’s child, as Houghton’s statement implies that the child died not long after its birth and certainly before Branwell himself.
The final possibility is Agnes Riley, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of an agricultural labourer who lived at Sunny Bank, which was also in Broughton West. In 1841 her employment was not listed but she lived with her parents and her daughter was said to be four months old. According to her birth certificate, Mary Riley was born on 20 February 1841, so she must have been conceived in May of the previous year while Branwell was living at Broughton. If the pair were not caught in flagrante, this would still have given time for the pregnancy to be confirmed, if not obvious, before Branwell was dismissed towards the end of June. The baby was named Mary, and although she may simply have been named after her grandmother, it is significant that this was one of Branwell’s favourite names, which he used repeatedly in his juvenilia. It is also significant that Mary immediately disappears from the records, suggesting that she died young. Her mother, however, married Thomas Mingins on 17 January 1846 and went to live with him at Bootle, on the coast not far from Broughton. In 1852 they emigrated to Australia with their three children and it was there that Agnes herself died in 1908, leaving her family unaware that she had borne a daughter before her marriage.59
The mother of Branwell’s child would have had a claim on him for its maintenance and, if he refused to pay, could have taken bastardy proceedings against him to compel him to do so. Though the maintenance can have been little enough, it would nevertheless have been an additional drain on Branwell’s already slight resources. He does not appear to have ever returned to Broughton to visit his child and there is no evidence of any contact with her mother.
Branwell was dismissed at midsummer 1840,60 having kept his post as a tutor for only six months. He returned to Haworth but whether he told his family the reason for his dismissal can only be conjectured. For him, the fact that he had lost his job paled into insignificance beside the fact that a professional literary career was now opening out before him. Within a few days of his return, he had polished up his translations of the first two books of Horace’s Odes and sent the first on to Hartley Coleridge for approval. His letter was an odd mixture of self-deprecation and egotism. ‘You will, perhaps, have forgotten me,’ he told Coleridge, ‘but it will be long before I forget my first conversation with a man of real intellect, in my first visit to the classic lakes of Westmoreland.’ He went on to request Coleridge’s opinion of his translation:
you might tell me whether it was worth further notice or better fit for the fire … and will you, sir, stretch your past kindness by telling me whether I should amend and pursue the work or let it rest in peace? … I dared not have attempted Horace but that I saw the utter worthlessness of all former translations, and thought that a better one, by whomsoever executed, might meet with some little encouragement. I long to clear up my doubts by the judgement of one whose opinion I should revere, and – but I suppose I am dreaming – one to whom I should be proud indeed to inscribe anything of mine which any publisher would look at, unless, as is likely enough, the work would disgrace the name as much as the name would honour the work.
Amount of remuneration I should not look to – as anything would be everything – and whatever it might be, let me say that my bones would have no rest unless by written agreement a division should be made of the profits (little or much) between myself and him through whom alone I could hope to obtain a hearing with that formidable personage, a London bookseller.
Branwell evidently had second thoughts about his naive proposal to share the profits of his translation with Coleridge, for he rather touchingly added a footnote: ‘If anything in this note should displease you, lay it, sir, to the account of inexperience and not impudence.’61
The translations, substantially revised over the last three months, were among the best work Branwell had ever produced and would probably have had a ready market at the time.62 It is perhaps the most tragic irony of Branwell’s life that Coleridge never seems to have got round to sending him a reply, though towards the end of the year, on 30 November or 1 December, Coleridge set out his opinions in a draft letter. It is worth quoting this draft, if only to answer those who believe Branwell to have been a worthless individual and an even more worthless poet.
You are by no means the first or the only person who has applied to me for judgement upon their writings. I smile to think that so small an asteroid as myself should have satellites … Howbeit, you are – with one exception – the only young Poet in whom I could find merit enough to comment without flattery – on stuff enough to be worth finding fault with. I think, I told you how much I was struck with the power and energy of the lines you sent before I had the pleasure of seeing you. Your translation of Horace is a work of much greater promise, and though I do not counsel a publication of the whole – I think many odes might appear with very little alteration. Your versification is often masterly – and you have shown skill in great variety of measures – There is a racy english in your language which is rarely to be found even in the original – that is to say – untranslated, and certainly untranslateable effusions of many of our juveniles, which considering how thorough[ly] Latin Horace is in his turns of phrase, and collocation of words – is a proof of sound Scholarship – and command of both languages –63
Coleridge intended to discuss the translation of each ode individually, but evidently ran out of time. Even the draft letter was never completed.
While Branwell waited hopefully for a reply, he undoubtedly told his family of Coleridge’s interest in him. This seems to have encouraged Charlotte to contact him herself. She had, as usual, been busy with her writing. Some time in the spring of 1840, or possibly earlier, she completed a new story about Caroline Vernon, the illegitimate daughter of Northangerland by the opera singer, Louisa Vernon.64 The story was the usual tiresome tale of a young and beautiful girl falling in love with Zamorna but it was given an added twist by having Caroline’s realization of her feelings dawn only slowly. Charlotte also introduced, for the first time, a French theme: Louisa has a French maid, with whom she converses in the vernacular, and Caroline herself is brought out into Parisian society. This new departure was the result of Charlotte’s latest reading, for the Taylors had been inundating her with French novels throughout the year: ‘I have got another bale of French books from Gomersal –’, she told Ellen in August,
containing upwards of 40 volumes – I have read about half– they are like the rest clever wicked sophistical and immoral – the best of it is, they give one a thorough idea of France and Paris – and are the best substitute for French Conversation I have met with.65
It was not her French story which she decided to send to Coleridge, however, but the beginning of another tale, which she carefully disguised to hide its Angrian origins. Set in the West Riding, it featured Alexander Percy, his daughter Mary, and of course Zamorna under a new name, Arthur Ripley West.66 Using a pseudonym herself, ‘C. T.’, which stood for Charles Townshend, one of the narrators she used most often in her Angrian writing, Charlotte sent the manuscript to Coleridge for his comments. Like Southey, he seems to have responded with cautionary advice, though not entirely disapprovingly. The correspondence has not survived but Charlotte’s extraordinary letter thanking him for his reply has been preserved. It is clear that she now recognized the truth of the advice given her so long ago by both her father and Rob
ert Southey: constant indulgence of the imagination did not make living in the real world any easier. In her first draft, written on the wrapper in which Coleridge returned the manuscript, Charlotte wrote:
Authors are generally very tenacious of their productions but I am not so attatched to this production but that I can give it up without much distress
You say the affair is begun on the scale of a three volume novel
I assure you Sir you calculate very moderately – for I had materials in my head I daresay for half a dozen – No doubt if I had gone on I should have made quite a
As if to prove that her manners now bordered on the idiotic, Charlotte continued the letter in a flippant and frivolous tone which verged on disrespect.
The idea of applying to a regular/ Novel-publisher and seeing Mr West and Mr Percy at full length in three vols is very tempting – but I think on the whole from what you say/ I had better lock up this precious manuscript – wait patiently till I meet with some Maecenas who shall discern and encourage my rising talent – & Meantime bind myself apprentice to a chemist & druggist if I am a young gentleman or to [a] Mantua maker & milliner if I am a young lady … I am pleased that you cannot quite decide whether I am of the soft or the hard sex/ an attorney’s clerk or a novel-reading dressmaker. I will not help you at all in the discovery and as to my handwriting
Charlotte seems to have got a frisson from the fact that Coleridge was unable to identify her gender. This liberation from the constraint of her femininity and the social conventions imposed on women was a heady potion but one which was later to leave a bitter taste in her mouth.
For Charlotte, still ‘wanting a situation’, June was a month of social pleasures, despite the bombshell of Branwell’s dismissal. On 10 June she travelled over to Gomersal to stay at the Red House with the Taylors, moving on after a few days to stay at Brookroyd with Ellen Nussey. Before the end of the month, Mary Taylor had returned the visit and come to stay at Haworth. The hours passed very pleasantly, the obliging Mr Weightman entertaining their guest with several games of chess ‘which generally terminated in a species of mock hostility’.68 Branwell, on his return home, cast no cloud over the party and enlivened it by paying court to Mary, who was his own age and an acknowledged beauty. Perhaps because of his recent experience at Broughton, however, Branwell was unwilling to be drawn into anything more serious and immediately backed off when he found that Mary responded to his attentions. Writing later in the year to Ellen, Charlotte asked:
Did I not once tell you of an instance of a Relative of mine who cared for a young lady till he began to suspect that she cared more for him and then instantly conceived a sort of contempt for her –? You know to what I allude – never as you value your ears mention the circumstance … Mary is my study – for the contempt, the remorse – the misconstruction which follow the development of feelings in themselves noble, warm – generous – devoted and profound – but which being too freely revealed – too frankly bestowed – are not estimated at their real value. God bless her – I never hope to see in this world a character more truly noble – she would die willingly for one she loved – her intellect and her attainments are of the very highest standard [?yet during her last visit here – she so conducted herself on? one or two occasions that Mr Weightman thought her? mad – do not for a moment suspect that she acted in a manner really wrong – her conduct was merely wrought to a pitch of great/ intensity and? irregularity/ seldom equalled – but it produced a most unfortunate impression. I did not value her the less for it, because I understood it,] yet I doubt whether Mary will ever marry.69
If Charlotte viewed her brother’s behaviour towards Mary with distaste, she was also growing rapidly disillusioned with William Weightman. His conduct had not changed, but Charlotte’s perception of it had; she realized that his attentions, which had seemed so personal, were freely and equally offered to all the young ladies of his acquaintance. Piqued that she had allowed herself to interpret them otherwise and fearing that she might have appeared foolish, she turned against him with sudden venom. She denounced him to Ellen as ‘a thorough male-flirt’, listing among his victims an ‘inamorata’ from Swansea, whose letters he had just sent back, Sarah Sugden of Keighley who was ‘quite smitten’ and Theodore Dury’s daughter Caroline, to whom he had just despatched ‘a most passionate copy of verses’.70 No doubt observing Weightman behaving in just the same way towards all these ladies as he had towards herself, her sisters and Ellen, and seeing their equally rapturous reception of his attentions, Charlotte rather regretted her own infatuation.
Her embarrassment was relatively short-lived, however, for in July they were temporarily deprived of Weightman’s company. He left Haworth on 14 July for Ripon where the bishop, Charles Longley, had announced his intention of holding an ordination ceremony on 19 July. Having passed the bishop’s customary oral examinations, Weightman was ordained priest with thirteen other candidates in the magnificent twelfth-century surroundings of Ripon Cathedral.71 He then went home to Appleby for a holiday before resuming his duties as a fully fledged clergyman in Haworth in September. In Appleby he spent part of the time staying with Agnes Walton and her father, where he seems to have been an accepted suitor for her hand and wrote to Branwell in high glee to describe the balls at which he had figured and speaking ‘rapturously’ of Agnes herself. Even so, he did not forget his friends in Haworth: the Brontës were overwhelmed with gifts of game, a large salmon and a brace each of wild ducks, black grouse, partridges, snipe and curlew. Nor was Ellen Nussey forgotten: she too received a brace of duck. Charlotte’s sour – and unjust – response was to tell Ellen
It is my devout belief that his Reverence left Haworth with the fixed intention of never returning – If he does return it will be because he has not been able to get a living – Haworth is not the place for him, he requires
How prejudiced Charlotte was in her judgement of the young curate, she was soon to find out. She overheard her father asking Weightman why he seemed in such low spirits one evening and his reply that he had been to visit Susan Bland, ‘a poor young girl, who, I’m afraid, is dying’. Though Susan Bland was Charlotte’s oldest and best scholar in the Sunday school, Charlotte was unaware that she was even ill. Two days later she called to visit the girl and found, her
seemingly far on her way to that bourne whence no traveller returns. After sitting with her some time, I happened to ask her mother if she thought a little port wine would do her good. She replied that the doctor had recommended it, and that when Mr Weightman was last there he had sent them a bottle of wine and a jar of preserves. She added, that he was always good-natured to poor folks, and seemed to have a deal of feeling and kind-heartedness about him.73
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br /> It is unfortunate that it is Charlotte’s image of Weightman as a flighty, flirtatious socialite which has been perpetuated when there was clearly a very different and much deeper side to his nature. Others also testified to his assiduous attention to his pastoral duties – which eventually resulted in him catching a fatal dose of cholera. The church registers, too, provide a worthy, if dull, record of the extent to which he relieved Patrick of the round of baptisms, marriages and burials: unlike his predecessor, William Hodgson, he performed almost all the duties, Patrick retaining only the less arduous and less frequent marriage services.74 Patrick himself, who was best-placed to know, testified to his curate’s piety and dedication to his clerical duties:
He thought it better, and more scriptural, to make the love of God, rather than the fear of hell, the ruling motive for obedience. He did not see why true believers, having the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come, should create unto themselves artificial sorrows, and disfigure the garment of gospel peace with the garb of sighing and sadness. Pondering on, and rejoicing in the glad tidings of salvation, he wished others to rejoice from the same principles, and though he preached the necessity of sincere repentance, and heart-felt sorrow for sin, he believed that the convert, in his freedom from its thraldom, should rejoice evermore in the glorious liberty of the gospel… in the Sunday School, especially, he was useful in more than an ordinary degree. He had the rare art of communicating information with diligence and strictness, without austerity, so as to render instruction, even to the youngest and most giddy, a pleasure, and not a task.75
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