Charlotte suggested that as Miss Wooler proposed to lend them her furniture, they would only need half the sum of one hundred pounds which Aunt Branwell had offered them to help set up their school. The remaining fifty pounds, Charlotte argued, would be well employed in giving herself and Emily the chance to spend six months in a foreign school.
I would not go to France or to Paris. I would go to Brussels, in Belgium. The cost of the journey there, at the dearest rate of travelling, would be £5; living is there little more than half as dear as it is in England, and the facilities for education are equal or superior to any other place in Europe. In half a year, I could acquire a thorough familiarity with French. I could improve greatly in Italian, and even get a dash of German, i.e. providing my health continued as good as it is now.
With Mary and Martha Taylor already established in Brussels, Charlotte continued, she would have every opportunity of seeing them, their cousins, the Dixons, who lived in the city and, through them, ‘I should probably in time be introduced to connections far more improving, polished, and cultivated, than any I have yet known.’ Having marshalled every argument she could muster to convince Aunt Branwell of the advantages of her plan, Charlotte ended her letter with an impassioned plea.
Papa will perhaps think it a wild and ambitious scheme; but who ever rose in the world without ambition? When he left Ireland to go to Cambridge University, he was as ambitious as I am now. I want us all to go on. I know we have talents, and I want them to be turned to account. I look to you, aunt, to help us. I think you will not refuse. I know, if you consent, it shall not be my fault if you ever repent your kindness.40
Charlotte did not tell her aunt quite all the truth. Far from simply putting off the plan to take over Miss Wooler’s school, it seems it had been abandoned altogether. A few weeks later she told Ellen:
Dewsbury Moor is relinquished perhaps fortunately so it is an obscure & dreary place – not adapted for a school – In my secret soul I believe there is no cause to regret it – My plans for the future are bounded to this intention if I once get to Brussels – & if my health is spared I will do my best to make the utmost of every advantage that shall come within my reach – when the half year is expired I will do what I can –41
Only to Emily did Charlotte confide the full extent of her plan:
Before our half-year in Brussels is completed, you and I will have to seek employment abroad. It is not my intention to retrace my steps home till twelve months, if all continues well and we and those at home retain good health.42
One can only wonder what Emily’s response was to this idea. For someone who had not survived more than six months away from home without becoming physically ill, the prospect of a year among strangers in a foreign land must have been truly intimidating. Anne was surely more likely to benefit from a Brussels education. Nevertheless, Charlotte was ruthless in her plan. She had determined she would get to Brussels ‘by hook or by crook’ and she knew that the elders were more likely to agree if she did not go alone. Emily was the only practical candidate to accompany her as the alternative meant Anne giving up her job, losing her salary and becoming a third burden on the family finances. Emily’s removal would only mean an inconvenience in the running of the household, so Emily it had to be. It was only now that Charlotte revealed to her that the Dewsbury Moor scheme had been intended for herself alone. ‘Grieve not over Dewsbury Moor’, she told Emily. ‘You were cut out there to all intents and purposes, so in fact was Anne, Miss Wooler would hear of neither for the first half-year.’43
Charlotte pursued her plans with a single-mindedness which reflected both selfishness and a determination to succeed. She gave her notice to the Whites and assisted in the selection of a new governess to replace her.44 Aunt Branwell had been persuaded to fund the Brussels scheme. Now it only remained to find an appropriate school. The Château de Koekelberg, where the Taylors were established, was too expensive but Mary had recommended another, cheaper school in Brussels. Charlotte was still waiting for a second opinion from Mr Jenkins, the episcopal clergyman in Brussels who was, coincidentally, the brother of Patrick’s old colleague at Dewsbury, David Jenkins, when her employment came to an end.
I got home on Christmas Eve. The parting scene between me and my late employers was such as to efface the memory of much that annoyed me while I was there, but indeed, during the whole of the last six months they only made too much of me.45
Charlotte’s attitude had been largely responsible for her unhappiness as a private governess. Once she could see a desirable escape route, she spent less energy finding fault with her circumstances and dicovered that her place was almost congenial.
Both her sisters were at home when Charlotte returned. Emily had been happy enough running the household but living in the imaginary world of her own creation. Though she had written only ten surviving poems throughout the year, their high narrative content suggests that they were part of the ‘good many books’ she had on hand when writing her diary paper in July.46 Among them was one of her finest poems, written in May 1841.
Shall Earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
Shall Nature cease to bow?
Thy mind is ever moving
In regions dark to thee;
Recall its usless roving –
Come back and dwell with me –
I know my mountain breezes
Enchant and soothe thee still –
I know my sunshine pleases
Despite thy wayward will –
When day with evening blending
Sinks from the summer sky,
I’ve seen thy spirit bending
In fond idolatry –
I’ve watched thee every hour –
I know my mighty sway –
I know my magic power
To drive thy greifs away –
Few hearts to mortals given
On earth so wildly pine
Yet none would ask a
More like the Earth than thine –
Then let my winds caress thee –
Thy comrade let me be –
Since naught beside can bless thee –
Return and dwell with me –47
Though the lines undoubtedly expressed Emily’s own passionate love for the natural world, it is almost certainly a Gondal poem. It contained an important idea that was to recur in later poetry and also in Wuthering Heights: a longing for death that rejected conventional views of Heaven in favour of a Paradise that was as like earth as possible. This idea was taken a stage further in another Gondal poem, written in July, by two mourners at their mother’s grave.
We would not leave our native home
For any world beyond the Tomb
No – rather on thy kindly breast
Let us be laid in lasting rest
Or waken – but to share with thee
A mutual immortality –48
This is to anticipate Catherine’s dream in Wuthering Heights by at least five years. ‘If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable’, she told Nelly Dean,
I dreamt, once, that I was there … heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.49
Another theme of the poems of this year was a familiar one, that of imprisonment, but the emphasis had changed from lamentation and despair at separation to a cri de coeur for liberty. A captive bird makes a passionate plea:
Give me the hills our equal prayer
Earths breezy hills and heavens blue sea
We ask for nothing further here
But my own heart and liberty.50
In another poem a Gondal character is similarly defiant.
Riches I hold in light esteem
And Love I laugh to scorn
And Lust of Fame was
but a dream
That vanished with the morn –
And if I pray – the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is – ‘Leave the heart that now I bear
‘And give me liberty’ –
Yes – as my swift days near their goal
’Tis all that I implore –
In life and death, a chainless soul
With courage to endure! –51
It was ironic that Emily was about to exchange the liberty of her life at Haworth for the prison of schooling in Brussels. Deprived of the freedom to pursue her own thoughts and inclinations, she would have neither the time nor the necessary equanimity of spirit to be able to write poetry.
The imminent departure of her sisters to Brussels had given Anne much food for thought. At first she toyed with the idea of giving up her post at Thorp Green in order to take Emily’s place in the household, but she had made herself so indispensable that the Robinsons positively pleaded with her to return.52 Had she really been in love with William Weightman, this would have been the one time when she could have legitimately seized the opportunity to stay at home. Coincidentally, this is also the time when Charlotte made her famous remarks upon which the whole castle in the air has been built. ‘He sits opposite to Anne at Church sighing softly – & looking out of the corners of his eyes to win her attention – & Anne is so quiet, her look so downcast – they are a picture –’.53 The last phrase, ‘they are a picture’, has been taken to imply that Anne was personally involved and returned Weightman’s supposed affection. However, Charlotte was keen to suggest that Weightman was in love with every girl in the neighbourhood and Anne’s modest reaction was surely the only one suitable in the circumstances. Had Weightman carried the flirtation any further, making similar overtures at the parsonage, Charlotte would have been the first to comment on it. Moreover, Charlotte’s concluding sentence is surely proof that she did not consider Anne’s affections were involved. She told Ellen, ‘He would be the better of a comfortable wife like you to settle him you would settle him I believe – nobody else would’.54
Although there can be no doubt that Anne would have preferred to remain at home – with or without the supposed attentions of the curate – she decided it would be best if she continued in her present employment. After her Christmas holidays, therefore, she returned to Thorp Green not knowing when she would see her sisters again, or even where they were going. Mr and Mrs Jenkins had finally replied with an unfavourable account of the French schools in Brussels, ‘representing them as of an inferior caste in many respects’. With less than three weeks to go before their proposed departure, their plans were suddenly changed completely. Baptist Noel, a friend of Patrick’s from his days in Thornton, and other clergymen whom Patrick consulted, suggested a school in Lille in northern France. The terms were more expensive – fifty pounds each for board and French alone – but included an extra sum for a private room, a luxury which Aunt Branwell generously agreed to fund.55 Charlotte regretted the imposed change from Brussels to Lille ‘on many accounts’ but in the end she got her own way. Mr Jenkins finally found a school of which he approved in Brussels, the plans were changed once more and Charlotte and Emily were plunged into preparation for their immediate departure.
I have lots of chemises – night gowns – pocket handkerchiefs & pockets to make – besides clothes to repair – & I have been every week since I came home expecting to see Branwell & he has never been able to get over yet – we fully expect him however next Saturday.56
It had been six months since Charlotte had last seen Branwell,57 who was still working on the Leeds and Manchester Railway over in Calderdale. In the meantime he had confounded her scepticism by doing well in his new job. Shortly after the grand opening of the Summit Tunnel, Branwell was promoted from his post at Sowerby Bridge. On 1 April 1841 he transferred to the next station further up the line at Luddenden Foot, where he was made clerk-in-charge on a much higher salary of £130 a year. Charlotte, who had hoped that her brother would be a great artist or poet, remained unimpressed, her only comment to Emily being, ‘It is to be hoped that his removal to another station will turn out for the best. As you say, it looks like getting on at any rate.’58
Luddenden Foot is a small village which, as its name implies, was then only a scattering of houses at the foot of the spectacularly beautiful Luddenden Valley, where it opens out into the Calder Valley. At this point the valley bottom is narrow so that the hills rise sheer on each side of the river and the road and railway which run beside it. Heavily wooded, its floor and hillsides a carpet of bluebells in spring, the valley gives way to steeply shelving pastureland and, on the hill tops, glorious stretches of wild moorland. Branwell took new lodgings in one of Calderdale’s many splendid seventeenth-century houses, built by yeoman farmers from the wealth accrued from the wool trade, though by that time simply a working farm. Brearley Hall was only half a mile away across the fields from the new station, though it was perched high above the valley bottom. Branwell’s new landlords were a wealthy farmer, James Clayton and his wife, Rachel, who lived there with their two sons, Jonas and Henry, and their respective families. Branwell was their only lodger.59
Francis Grundy, a young railway engineer, first made Branwell’s acquaintance at this time and painted a dismal portrait of the place.
When I first met him, he was station-master at a small roadside place on the Manchester and Leeds Railway, Luddendenfoot by name. The line was only just opened. This station was a rude wooden hut, and there was no village near at hand. Had a position been chosen for this strange creature for the express purpose of driving him several steps to the bad, this must have been it. Alone in the wilds of Yorkshire, with few books, little to do, no prospects, and wretched pay, with no society congenial to his better tastes, but plenty of wild, rollicking, hard-headed, half-educated manufacturers, who would welcome him to their houses, and drink with him as often as he chose to come, – what was this morbid man, who couldn’t bear to be alone, to do?60
This colourful, if grim, picture of Branwell’s ruin at Luddenden Foot has been accepted unquestioningly by biographers. This period, it is said, proved his downfall. Branwell spent his time in the pubs of the Calder Valley, neglected his job, doodled in the margins of the company ledgers and, as Grundy would have it, went thoroughly to the bad. In support of this view a passage from one of Branwell’s letters to Grundy is always quoted:
I would rather give my hand than undergo again the grovelling carelessness, the malignant yet cold debauchery, the determination to find how far mind could carry body without both being chucked into hell, which too often marked my conduct when there61
But Grundy, writing nearly forty years later, is an extremely unreliable witness, misdating Branwell’s letters to him by several years, delighting in wild exaggeration and having the doubtful benefit of being able to bend his memories to suit Mrs Gaskell’s portrait of the black sheep of the Brontë family.62
It was simply not true, for instance, that there was no village near at hand. About half a mile from the station was the ancient and pretty village of Luddenden, a thriving centre of the textile trade where stuff-weaving was still carried on in the tall, many-windowed houses and in the larger premises of the new mills. As a railway employee Branwell was allowed to travel free of charge and, by simply getting on the train, he could be in Sowerby Bridge or Hebden Bridge in a matter of minutes or even in Leeds or Manchester in under two hours. He is known to have visited Manchester on at least one occasion, returning full of enthusiasm at the ‘lightsome’ beauty of the parish church which he described in detail to Sutcliffe Sowden, a young clergyman friend. Nor did he have ‘no prospects, and wretched pay’.63 His promotion within six months of starting work on the railway had shown that he could rise rapidly if his work gave satisfaction. His salary was better than anything he had ever earned before and was almost a third more than Weightman, for instance, earned as curate of Haworth.64
Branwell
’s personal notebook – not the company ledgers – was indeed a strange mix of notes on railway affairs, poetry and sketches, but it also gives a brief glimpse into the sort of life he led at the time. He noted a concert by the Halifax Quarterly Choral Society at the Old Assembly Rooms in the Talbot Inn, Halifax, for instance, when a selection of sacred music – including one of his favourites, Haydn’s Creation – was to be performed on 11 November 1841. He also seems to have sent a subscription to the Motet Society, who were based in London, and, from the numerous inscriptions of ‘HOLY IESU’, ‘IESU’ and ‘SALVATOR’ which abound in the notebook,65 we can presume that he attended other concerts of sacred music in Halifax. The Halifax Quarterly Choral Society performed regularly, including an annual Christmas recital of another of Branwell’s favourites, Handel’s Messiah. Branwell is also unlikely to have missed the opportunity of seeing and hearing a rare performance in Halifax by the virtuoso pianist and ‘modern musical wonder’, Franz Liszt. His brilliant playing captivated the discerning Halifax audiences and he brought the house down with an impromptu set of variations on the National Anthem. Even the normally staid Halifax Guardian was swept away: ‘We never remember a concert which was marked by so much enthusiasm, or so many rapturous encores as that of last night.’66
Despite Grundy’s claims, Branwell also had access to plenty of books. Tradition has it that he was a member of the Luddenden Library, a large private collection of books housed in the upper chamber of the Lord Nelson Inn. This seems unlikely as there is no record of his name in the membership or receipt books and there were strict rules against admitting non-members to meetings.67 There were, however, a number of much larger libraries in Halifax, including a circulating library run by the Leylands at their shop in Cornmarket and a newly opened subscription library, containing 1900 volumes and taking in fifteen periodicals, at the Old Cock Inn.68 In his notebook Branwell noted down new titles that interested him: Manhood– the cause of its premature decline by J.I. Curtis, his old passion Blackwood’s Magazine, and the shortly to be published Wakefield’s Miscellany. As he also copied out the addresses and directions to the Manchester warehouses of Mr Pearson and Mr Warburton, he presumably found his way there in pursuit of the second-hand books they advertised.69 Nor was it the case that Branwell was continually in bad company at Luddenden Foot, as Grundy claimed, and the drunken Irish labourers introduced by later biographers simply did not exist at the time.70 However, there were incidents to suggest Branwell was occasionally quarrelsome, possibly as the result of drink. He recorded in his notebook, for instance, that he had spent the previous evening with several men – including George Thompson, a Luddenden corn dealer and maltster, James or John Titterington, both local worsted manufacturers, and Henry Killiner, the railway porter. Branwell notes that he had ‘quarrelled with J T about going but after a wrestle met him on the road and became friends – Quarrelled almost on the subject with G Thompson Will have no more of it. P. B. B.’71 Grundy himself, though piously suggesting that ‘I did him so much good that he recovered himself of his habits there after my advent’, seems to have been an influence for the bad. On one occasion, Branwell thought Grundy had treated him distantly at a party and responded by leaving in a temper and then sending him a set of reproving verses:
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