intimating that he had discovered his proceedings which he characterised as bad beyond expression and charging him on pain of exposure to break off instantly and for ever all communication with every member of his family –53
This sounds as though Charlotte was quoting directly from Mr Robinson’s letter, though she gives no indication of what Branwell’s fault had been. The fact that Branwell was threatened with ‘exposure’ suggests that his employer did not suspect any collusion with members of his family who would similarly be ‘exposed’ by any revelations about Branwell. On the other hand, the fact that he was forbidden to communicate with every member of the Robinson family might suggest that one of them was equally implicated in Branwell’s transgression. This, too, is the only conclusion one can draw from the silence of Mrs Robinson and her children when Mrs Gaskell published her Life of Charlotte Brontë, which all but named Mrs Robinson as the ‘depraved woman’ who had tempted Branwell into ‘the deep disgrace of deadly crime’.54 It is true that Mrs Robinson, now Lady Scott, sought and published a legal retraction of Mrs Gaskell’s accusations but one would have thought that the simplest and most obvious method of disproving the story was for the Robinsons to set forth the real reasons for Branwell’s dismissal. Yet they conspicuously failed to do this, which suggests that there was at least some element of truth in the charges.
This possibility finds some support in a dispassionate review of the whole situation by George Smith, Mrs Gaskell’s publisher. With the threat of legal action hanging over him and Mrs Gaskell uncontactable on the Continent, the author’s and publisher’s solicitors held a conference:
it was determined to employ detectives in order to ascertain what evidence was available to justify the alleged libel. Much gossip, it was found, existed; but it was gossip of the kind which is apt to dissolve into mere vapour when tested in a court of law. The following Memorandum will show the sort of information which the Rev. Patrick Brontë, Branwell’s father, regarded as ‘evidence’ in this case, I am not much of a lawyer but I think I can conceive the opinion a lawyer would have of such ‘evidence’ – Branwell constantly received letters from Mrs— but Mr Bronte himself never saw them; could not say whether they were signed with her name; he ‘understood’ that the letters showed guilt; often remonstrated with Branwell, but he would keep up the correspondence. After his death (Branwell’s) ‘the children’ made the letters into a bundle and burnt them. A servant who went by the name of ‘Cherry’ was privy, he believed, to a good deal. A gardener – whose name he did not know – had definite proofs of guilt and had informed, as he understood, Mrs—’s husband. A surgeon who attended the family, he had been told, was cognizant of the intimacy. His conversations with his son, who frequently spoke freely with him, left no doubt as to the nature of the intimacy, etc., etc. All this, of course, was mere unverifiable gossip, quite insufficient to justify a public accusation.55
Though there was not enough hard evidence to rely on in a court of law, there was clearly much talk about Branwell’s relationship with Mrs Robinson, both in Haworth and at Thorp Green. Mr Brontës claims may have been legally unverifiable, but they were supported in other contemporary testimonies.
In the October after his dismissal Branwell himself gave a succinct account of his time at Thorp Green to Francis Grundy, his old friend from the railway days.
I fear you will burn my present letter on recognising the handwriting, but if you will read it through, you will perhaps rather pity than spurn the distress of mind which could prompt my communication, after a silence of nearly three (to me) eventful years … In a letter begun in the spring of 1848 [sic], and never finished owing to incessant attacks of illness, I tried to tell you that I was tutor to the son of [the Reverend Edmund Robinson], a wealthy gentleman whose wife is sister to the wife of [William Evans], M.P. for the county of [Derbyshire], and the cousin of Lord [?Trevelyan]. This lady (though her husband detested me) showed me a degree of kindness which, when I was deeply grieved one day at her husband’s conduct, ripened into declarations of more than ordinary feeling. My admiration of her mental and personal attractions, my knowledge of her unselfish sincerity, her sweet temper, and unwearied care for others, with but unrequited return where most should have been given, … although she is seventeen years my senior, all combined to an attachment on my part, and led to reciprocations which I had little looked for. During nearly three years I had daily ‘troubled pleasure, soon chastised by fear’. Three months since I received a furious letter from my employer, threatening to shoot me if I returned from my vacation, which I was passing at home; and letters from her lady’s-maid and physician informed me of the outbreak, only checked by her firm courage and resolution that whatever harm came to her, none should come to me …56
Some scholars have suspected that this story of an affair with Mrs Robinson was simply concocted to give a romantic hue to the more mundane or possibly more heinous crime that had caused his dismissal. It is true that Branwell had had a fascination with adultery and seduction from childhood, his alter ego, Northangerland, being a consummate practitioner of those arts. Even Branwell, however, could not have been so foolhardy as to think that his sisters and, above all, his clergyman father, would find adultery with his employer’s wife a more acceptable reason for dismissal than simple debauchery, debt, theft or fraud. Citing the ‘fact’ that Branwell’s version of events was not told to his friends until the autumn after his dismissal as proof that he had made up the story in the interval is misconceived.57 It was only to Grundy, with whom he had lost contact for nearly three years, that Branwell was obliged to tell his story in full. No such explanation was necessary for J.B. Leyland, the other correspondent who kept some of Branwell’s letters, because he was probably told the whole sorry tale as it unfolded. This was certainly true of John Brown, the Haworth sexton and stonemason, who had long been Branwell’s confidant despite the disparity in their ages and social standing.
One of the most exciting pieces of new evidence to emerge is the revelation that Branwell wrote to John Brown from Thorp Green, telling him of the progression of his affair with Mrs Robinson. Brown preserved these letters and I suspect that their existence was known to Mrs Gaskell when she was researching her Life of Charlotte Brontë. As she could not be contacted when the libel action was threatened, they were not available as evidence to support her stance. That she might have known of them, however, is suggested by the fact that it was her friend and fellow admirer of Charlotte, Richard Monckton Milnes, who saw the letters on a visit to Haworth in October 1859 and noted some of their contents in his commonplace book.
The letters show that Branwell’s affair with Mrs Robinson began surprisingly early, within a few months of his arrival at Thorp Green in January 1843. Though he had been melancholy and homesick when he wrote his poem ‘Thorp Green’ at the end of March, by May he was writing in the highest of spirits to John Brown:
to say he is living in a palace, with a delightful pupil – ‘I curl my hair & scent my handkerchief like a Squire – I am the favourite of all the household – my master is generous – but my mistress is DAMNABLY TOO FOND OF ME* He asks his friend seriously to advise him what to do – tells him to consult two other grave men, who will understand him. is it worth-while for him to go on to extremities, which she evidently desires – the husband is sick and emaciated – she is always making him presents, talking to his sister (the governess) about him – telling him she does not care a farthing for him – asking him if he loves her & so on, – that bull-headed & beastly-hearted fellow [name omitted] has written me a letter tht may do me a gt deal of harm: he [prays?] counsel – ‘don’t care about the spelling, but say wht you think’ he signs this ‘Jacob the son of Joseph’.
*She is a pretty woman, about 37, with a darkish skin & bright glancing eyes.–58
This letter bears all the hallmarks of Branwell’s style: his curious mix of boastfulness and indecisiveness, his humour and his fondness for writing in capital letters. There can be no doubt as to i
ts authenticity even though the original appears not to have survived. It therefore raises some important points. Mrs Robinson, by Branwell’s account, seems to have made all the running in the affair – as one would expect given their relative social positions and the fifteen-year difference in their ages. Had Branwell simply been living an Angrian fantasy and imagining himself into Northangerland’s shoes, this could not have happened: Northangerland was emphatically always the seducer, never the seduced. Though Branwell clearly enjoyed the attentions he was receiving and being able to brag about them to his friends, it would have been a much bigger feather in his cap if he could have boasted that it was he who had swept the lady of the house off her feet. The fact that he was the one being seduced therefore lends credence to his story. Mrs Robinson’s gifts to him and her continual questioning of Anne seem to have been regarded by Anne simply as evidence of the high regard in which her brother was held. At this point she cannot have suspected anything improper in their relationship and was able to report with entire truth to her sister at the end of the year that they were ‘both wondrously valued in their situations’.59
That Branwell should have sought John Brown’s advice on whether he should risk a sexual relationship with Mrs Robinson seems surprising, though perhaps it was because Brown seems to have had a reputation for philandering.60 Branwell himself was no innocent, having apparently already fathered a child at Broughton-in-Furness, and he had no difficulty in recognizing that Mrs Robinson wished him to ‘go on to extremities’. He clearly saw that Mrs Robinson was sexually frustrated: her husband’s ill health may have rendered him impotent and Branwell was an athletic and good-looking young man, dependent on her for his place as tutor to her son, whose daily presence in the house would not be questioned. No doubt, too, it was a boost to her vanity that at forty-three years of age she was still capable of seducing a young man of twenty-eight, despite the competing attractions of her three teenage daughters. Mrs Gaskell was later to suggest, on the authority of the lady’s own cousins, that this was neither the first nor the last time that Mrs Robinson had taken a lover and that her own relations had been obliged to drop her acquaintance because she had been ‘a bad heartless woman for long & long’.61 Though this was not entirely true, as Mrs Robinson found staunch defenders among her family and friends, such as Sir James Stephen, the behaviour of her own daughters suggests that their mother was not a model of rectitude. Only three months after Branwell’s dismissal Lydia, the eldest, was to cause a public scandal by running off with the Scarborough actor, Henry Roxby, and marrying him at Gretna Green even though she was only just twenty years old and therefore under age for marrying without parental consent. Her second daughter, Elizabeth, also committed an indiscretion serious enough to jeopardize her prospects of making a good marriage, by having an affair with a Mr Milner who threatened to publish her love letters in the York press and sue her for breach of promise when she refused to marry him. He had to be bought off at a cost of over £150, which suggests that he had some justice in his claim. Even the youngest daughter, Mary, seems to have been something of a flirt. In 1848 Charlotte commented that she and Elizabeth were ‘both now engaged to different gentlemen – and if they do not change their minds – which they have done already two or three times – will probably be married in a few months’.62 For all three daughters to have so flown in the face of convention in their dealings with the opposite sex suggests that their mother’s influence, if not her actual example, had not been of the best.
Branwell’s choice of pseudonym in his letter to John Brown was significant: both men had been brought up on the Bible and would know that the name Jacob meant ‘the supplanter’ in Hebrew.63 The name was therefore a shared joke indicating that Branwell had taken the husband’s place in Mrs Robinson’s affections. How soon the affair became adulterous cannot be determined but, if Branwell’s own testimony is to be believed, it would appear that he was sleeping with Mrs Robinson before the end of his first year at Thorp Green. Again, Lord Houghton’s commonplace book provides us with a tantalizing extract from Branwell’s letters to John Brown.
In Novr 1843 he writes regretting tht he has not seen some Haworth friends – ‘I know you think I drink, but the time is past when I could hold out against you all. I take no wine & brandy & water only once in the day – that is, before breakfast to enable me to face the AGONY of the day’ ‘My little lady grows thinner every day – she is full of spirit & courage, except in the thought of parting with me.’ He abuses a Methodist Preacher, who is told if he says anythg to damage him (B. B.) he shall be ruined & Miss Anne Marshall saw him do enough to hang him. He sends his friend a ‘lock of her hair, wch has lain
The reference to the ‘Methodist Preacher’ remains a mystery. Ann Marshall was Mrs Robinson’s lady’s-maid and confidante. Thirty-four years old when Branwell came to Thorp Green, she had graduated from children’s nurse to lady’s-maid and was therefore well placed to learn the secrets of the household. As Winifred Gérin has pointed out, there is an unexplained oddity in her dealings with the Robinson family. Between 4 July 1843 and 19 March 1845 Mr Robinson signed promissory notes over to her to the value of £520; these were not a mere formality as interest on them was paid and the total capital sum was repaid in full in 1846.65 It seems unlikely that she would have loaned such a sum to her employers in the first place as she earned only £12 a year and would not have needed to work at all if the capital sum had been available to her. The fact that the promissory notes only relate to the period of Branwell’s residence at Thorp Green inevitably gives rise to speculation that the two things were connected. However, it seems highly unlikely that such a large sum was Ann’s price for spying on her mistress, as Gérin suggests, and there were other people – including at least three others who were probably servants – to whom Mr Robinson also gave promissory notes.66 It may simply be that these were a form of investment by Mr Robinson to secure pensions for the future benefit of servants who had given long and faithful service.
In addition to Ann Marshall, Branwell had another confidant at Thorp Green. His fund of anecdotes, entertaining manner of relating stories and musical skills, had rapidly won him a circle of friends in the locality. Among these was Dr John Crosby, a surgeon in his mid-forties, who was the Robinson family physician and therefore in constant attendance on the ailing Mr Robinson. He was apparently a widower, living along with his fifteen-year-old son, William, and a female servant in the village of Great Ouseburn.67 Like Ann Marshall, Dr Crosby had unquestioned access to the house and, as Patrick Brontë later claimed, he was cognizant of the affair. Again like Ann Marshall, he was to keep in touch with Branwell after his dismissal and to be a main source of information about Thorp Green.
At this distance it is impossible to chart the progress of Branwell’s affair with Mrs Robinson. Mrs Gaskell says of him that
He was so beguiled by this mature and wicked woman, that he went home for his holidays reluctantly, stayed there as short a time as possible, perplexing and distressing them by all his extra-ordinary conduct – at one time in the highest spirits, at another, in the deepest depression – accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing an irritability of disposition bordering on insanity.68
This is borne out by the swings of mood also apparent in his letters to John Brown and by Charlotte, who thankfully told Ellen after the Christmas holidays of 1844–5 that Branwell had been ‘quieter and less irritable on the whole this time than he was in summer’. The previous October, too, she had reported to Monsieur Heger that ‘my poor brother is always ill’.69
Branwell’s highly pitched emotional state did not prevent him writing poetry, however, and there is evidence to show that he was still honing his skills and experimenting with form and metre. Very little survives from his days at Thorp Green, but this is not because his obsession with
Mrs Robinson precluded all literary activity. Recent research has shown that there was a Thorp Green notebook, just as there had been a Luddenden Foot notebook.70 Only a few scattered pages are now extant but they are of the greatest importance in providing an insight into Branwell’s happiness at Thorp Green. One of the poems, based on Wordsworth’s ‘View from the Top of Black Comb’, reveals that he continued to take great pleasure in making excursions into the surrounding countryside. From Grafton Hill, an eminence between Thorp Green and Boroughbridge, Branwell could enjoy a panoramic view across Yorkshire which, as he describes it, no doubt reminded him of the landscape of Angria. Surveying the Vale of York, with the towers of York Minster and Ripon Cathedral both clearly visible, he was brought back to his usual theme by the ruins of Fountains Abbey:
And girt by Studley’s woods the walls that now
Like sunbeams shining upon winter snow
Mock with their ruin
And say one fate awaits on flesh and stone71
Despite its gloomy conclusion, the poem is remarkable for its serenity and obvious enjoyment of the scene, suggesting it was written during the summer of 1843 or 1844.
Another poem, written at about the same time, is even more autobiographical and seems to have arisen directly out of an incident with Mrs Robinson. As was perhaps natural once the Robinsons knew that Branwell had trained as a portrait painter, he seems to have given the ladies tuition in painting and drawing and, on this particular occasion, Mrs Robinson had shown him her self-portrait.
Her effbrt/ shews a
To contradict its meaning
Where should be/ sunshine
And smile with sadness screening;
Brontës Page 70
