32. CB to PBB, 17 May 1832: MS Gr. A pp.1–2, BPM [LCB, i, 112]. Ibid., 113 n.1 argues that the formal style and hand-writing suggest that this was a school exercise rather than a genuine letter home.
33. Ibid., 112.
34. PBB, The History of the Young Men, vol i, 15 Dec 1830–7 May 1831: MS Ashley 2468, BL [Neufeldt, i, 137–69]. This is the first of the children’s little books to be written in the minuscule hand but on much larger pages, a format Branwell later adopted for all his books.
35. PBB, Letters from an Englishman, vol ii, 8June 1831: MS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 170–9]. ‘White bread’ was loaves made from arsenic and oil of vitriol and ‘Prussian Butter’ was prussic acid ‘transformed by a process with which I am not acquainted’ into butter. The Brontës had a running joke about these poisons: for an advert for sale by auction of ’20 loaves of the best white BREAD impregnated with Prussian BUTTER’, placed by ‘Captain Make Thousands NOT EAT any more food for THE Remainder of their precious LIVES’ see CB, YMM for November 1829, 9Sept 1829: MS Lowell 1(4), Harvard [CA, i, 87–8]. Adulteration of food, particularly flour by arsenic, was a serious problem at this time: more than 220 people were poisoned by arsenic trioxide in cheap peppermints in Bradford in November 1858 and 22 died: Robert Elmsley, The Elements of Murder (Oxford, 2005), 100.
36. [EJB?], note on verso of title page of PBB, Letters from an Englishman, vol ii, 8June 1831: MS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 170 n.1].
37. Ibid., vol iii, 9–11 June 1831: MS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 180–90]. CA EW, 74 argues that Branwell wrote almost all his ‘Letters from an Englishman’ when Charlotte was at home, her enthusiasm and presence encouraging him to write. This argument cannot be substantiated. The dates of the Roe Head holidays are unclear but from the few letters of 1831–2 and 1835–8, when Charlotte was a teacher there, it would appear there were only 3annual holidays corresponding to the end of 3terms. The summer holiday seems to have been the 6weeks from around 17 June to the last week in July, so Branwell’s ‘Letters’ must have been written before Charlotte’s return home. The winter holiday began around 17 December and the new term began around 17 January. A possible Easter holiday in April is implicit in CB to EN, 10 May 1836: MS HM 24411 pp.1–2, Huntington [LCB, i, 143].
38. CB, A Fragment, 11 July 1831: MSS Bon 82 and Bon 87, BPM [VN CB, 86–91]; CB, Albion and Marina, 12 Oct 1830: MS at Wellesley [CA, i, 285–97]. The setting, choice of name (Albion for Douro) and character of the heroine, Marian Hume, all seem to me to be extremely derivative of Patrick’s The Maid of Killarney. Only the apparitions and the narrator Charles Wellesley’s sardonic voice in the preface are wholly Charlotte’s creations. I disagree with CA EW, 74–5 who sees ‘A Fragment’ as an immediate resumption of the imaginary world and a result of Charlotte’s brooding over the plot while at school. She must have been at home a full 3weeks before she wrote it and, if, as she claimed, ‘Albion and Marina’ was written in 4 hours flat, ‘A Fragment’ must have been abandoned very quickly through lack of interest.
39. CB, ‘The trumpet hath sounded’, 11 Dec 1831: MS Autograph File (52M-172), Harvard [VN CB, 91–2]. Most critics and biographers, including VN CB, 403 and CA EW, 75–6, follow Ratchford, 49–50 in seeing this poem as marking the sweeping away of the Glasstown kingdoms but such a cataclysmic event would certainly have inspired more than a single poem. Both Charlotte’s poem and Branwell’s works on Rogue’s revolution refer only to the destruction of the city, not the whole kingdom, which is still very much in being many years later, coexisting with Angria. There was thus no need for a ‘resuscitation’ of Glasstown on Charlotte’s return from Roe Head (Ratchford, 49ff.) as the kingdom had never been obliterated. Charlotte ‘was very familiar with all the sublimest passages [of the Bible], especially those in Isaiah, in which she took great delight’: EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 595]. Byron’s poem, ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’, one of his ‘Hebrew Melodies’ which were published in Blackwood’s Magazine, is based on the story in Isaiah of the King of Assyria whose troops were slain overnight by the angel of God.
40. CB, ‘O There is a land which the sun loves to lighten’, 25 Dec 1831: MS Bon 80(6), BPM [VN CB, 93–4].
41. ECG, Life, 85.
42. EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 595]; Revd Max Blakeley, ‘Memories of Margaret Wooler and her Sisters’, BST:12:62:113. The Archbishop of York’s tour of the area to consecrate new churches and hold confirmations took in Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield (where he dined with the Franks), Kirkburton, Heckmondwike, Liversedge, Brighouse, Huddersfield again and Birkenshaw, 21–7 September 1831: LM, 17 Sept 1831 p.3. It seems most likely that Charlotte was confirmed at the ceremony in Liversedge on Saturday 24 September and that the occasion was the reason for the presentation of a Book of Common Prayer inscribed ‘The gift of the Rev W Morgan of Bradford, to Charlotte Brontë, 1831’: Sotheby’s Sale of the Effects of Arthur Bell Nicholls, 26 July 1907, lot 14.
43. The death of Ann Cook is noted in CB to EN, 12 Jan 1840: MS n.l. [LCB, i, 208]. ECG, Life, 148 says that Ann was Charlotte’s former pupil and that she ‘had attached herself very strongly’ to Anne Brontë ‘who, in return, bestowed upon her much quiet affection’. For Emily’s friend, Louise de Bassompierre, see below, p.463–4.
44. CB to EN, 11 May 1831: MS BS 39 pp.2–3, BPM [LCB, i, 109–10].
45. CB to EN, 13 Jan 1832: MS p.3, Harvard [LCB, i, 110–11].
46. Ellen wilfully manipulated Charlotte’s biographers who sought her assistance by carefully selecting the letters she showed them and by editing out names, references to her own family and anything which appeared to her to reflect badly on her friend. Gaskell observed that the spirit of Charlotte’s letters varied according to the correspondent she was addressing: ECG to WSW, 15 Dec [1855] [C&P, 375].
47. EN, Reminiscences [LCB, i, 595].
48. PB to Mr Metcalfe, 30 June 1831 and Archbishop of York to PB, 27 June [1831]: MSS BS 183(a) and (b), BPM [LRPB, 78–9].
49. PB to I.C. Wigram, 8 Aug 1831: MS BS 183.5, BPM [LRPB, 79–80]. Edwin Smith preached in aid of the Sunday School at the afternoon and evening services on 14 August: Haworth Church Hymnsheet, 14 Aug 1831: MS BS x, H, BPM. Thomas Crowther raised £811s 5d preaching the sermons the previous year: LI, 21 Oct 1830 p.3. Patrick purchased a copy of Hymns for the Use of the National Sunday Schools (Keighley, R. Aked, 1821) in which he wrote ‘price 6d. To be kept, for the purpose of selecting Hymns, for the Annual Sunday School Sermons – at Haworth – Those selected must be marked, in order to prevent any from being used a second time – as repetition must be avoided –’: HAOBP:bb201, BPM. The plaque over the entrance to the Sunday School is still there. It continues ‘It was erected AD 1832 by Voluntary Subscription and by a grant from the National Society in London. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Prov.xxii.6.’
50. [Benjamin Binns], BO, 17 Feb 1894 p.6 who adds ‘I can vouch for the accuracy of the incident, for I witnessed it, and the boy was my own brother’. That Charlotte, Emily and Anne also taught there is confirmed by their former pupils: C. Holmes Cautley, ‘Old Haworth Folk who Knew the Brontës’, Cornhill Magazine, 29 (July–Dec 1910), 77–8 quoting Mrs Ratcliffe (Martha Brown’s sister); Edward Harrison to Rev A Wilkes, 26 Nov 1879: MS BS ix, H, BPM [BST:12:63:203–4] quoting Mr Midgley.
51. CB to EN, 21 July 1832: MS HM 24430 p.2, Huntington [LCB, i, 114].
52. Ibid., pp.1–3 [LCB, i, 114–5]. This description accords remarkably well with the pattern of ‘usual occupations’ followed by Patrick’s heroine Flora: 6–8am she read the Scriptures and other religious books; 8.30am joined the family for prayers then breakfast; 9–11am read history and belles-let-tres ‘such works as were calculated to refine, without sullying the mind’; 11–12 walked or rode; 12–1pm supervised preparations for dinner; the afternoon she devoted to fancy work ‘or more useful domestic employment’ and the evening to an hour or two’s recreation concluding the day ‘as she began it’ with her devotions
: PB, The Maid of Killarney, 86–7 [Brontëana, 166].
53. CB to EN, 21 July 1832: MS HM 24430 p.2, Huntington [LCB, i, 114]. Though 4 visits a month may not seem much compared to the daily visiting of Ellen or Gaskell, it is still significantly more than either Charlotte or her biographers would have us believe.
54. CB, The Bridal, 14 July–20 Aug 1832: MS divided between MA 2614, PM, and Bon 88, BPM [CA, i, 33–8]. The prose section, significantly, in view of Charlotte’s own position at the time, has the author going into the country ‘being weary with study … [and] tired of Verdopolis and all its magnificence’. Again, I disagree strongly with Ratchford, 55, 57, who suggests that, in contrast to her brother, [Charlotte] wrote with fresh assurance under the inspiration of her recent experiences, her imagination seething with new conceptions’. This is the third or possibly fourth reworking of the same story and exhibits all Charlotte’s old Glasstown preoccupations, lush description, magic, false visions and intervention by the Genii: it even incorporates Danasch, the evil genius of Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. For a possible early draft of ‘The Bridal’, abandoned because it was not working or Charlotte had lost interest in it, see CB, untitled fragment, ‘About nine months after my arrival at the Glasstown’, n.d.: MSS at KSC and Bon 112, BPM [CA, i, 333–5].
55. CB, St John in the Island of Patmos, 30 Aug 1832: MS transcript by ABN, in Brotherton, and CB, Lines on the Celebrated Bewick, 27 Nov 1835: MS in private hands [VN CB, 98–100, 100–2].
56. PBB, The Fate of Regina, May 1832: MS pp.1–8, originally in BPM (see Brontë Society Catalogue (1927), no.5), now in private hands [[VN PBB, 76–9]. The first 166 lines are missing with the first pages of the notebook in which the poem was written. The octavo notebook contains 5 poems of varying dates and copied out in an ordinary cursive hand rather than Branwell’s usual minuscule or rounded left-hand. This suggests that the notebook was a fair copy book and that ‘The Fate of Regina’ may be all that is left of a much longer story. The next two items in the notebook are PBB, ‘IIId Ode on the Celebration of the Great AFRICAN GAMES’ and PBB, Ode to the Polar Star, both 26 June 1832: MS ibid., 9–12, 13–15 [VN PBB, 79–83, 83–5].
57. PBB, ‘IIId Ode on the Celebration of the Great AFRICAN GAMES’, 26 June 1832: MS ibid., 11 [VN PBB, 81].
58. PBB, Ode to the Polar Star, 26 June 1832: MS ibid., 14–15 [VN PBB, 84].
59. PBB, Letters from an Englishman, vol vi, 2 Aug 1832: MS p.15, Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 238].
60. CB to EN, 5Sept 1832: MS BS 39.5 p.3, BPM [LCB, i, 117]; EN, Reminiscences: MS pp.48–50, KSC [LCB, i, 596].
61. CB to EN, 18 Oct 1832: MS n.l. and CB to EN, 1 Jan 1833: MS BS 40, BPM [LCB, i, 118–9, 120–1].
62. Ibid. Self-examination to see if any improvements had taken place was a ritual Anne also practised: see below, p.42.
63. CB to EN, 20 June 1833: MS HM 24404 p.3, Huntington [LCB, i, 122].
64. PBB, The Pirate, 30 Jan–8Feb 1833: MS Bon 140, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 230–49]. See above n.34.
65. CB, Characters of the Celebrated Men of the Present Time, 17 Dec 1829: MS in Law [CA, i, 128].
66. The first page of the ms is titled ‘THE PIRATE. A Tale by The Author of Letters from an Englishman’ i.e. James Bellingham but the cover is inscribed ‘THE PIRATE A TALE. By Captain John Flower’. Neufeldt, 239–40 does not comment on the anomaly; Ratchford, 59 accepts the Flower authorship; M&U, i, 171–2 misread Rogue’s addressing Bellingham as ‘Freind’ to ascribe authorship to ‘Everard’ Bellingham. It is clear from the title and references to the capture of Bellingham & Co.’s ships that the author is the merchant James Bellingham.
67. PBB, The Pirate, 30 Jan–8 Feb 1833: MS Bon 140 p.2, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 241].
68. Rogue’s piratical career is modelled on that of Conrad, subject of Byron’s poems The Corsair and Lara (1814). Rogue also shares Conrad’s bearing and character: ‘That brow in furrow’d lines had fix’d at last,/ And spake of passions, but of passion past;/ The pride, but not the fire, of early days,/ Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;/ A high demeanor, and a glance that took/ Their thoughts from others by a single look;/ And that sarcastic levity of tongue,/ The stinging of a heart the world hath stung …’: Byron, Lara, canto 1st verse v. See also James Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (London, 1824); Hogg was the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’ who contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine.
69. Zenobia made her first appearance as Zelzia Ellrington in October 1830 in Charlotte’s Albion and Marina and in June 1832 featured in The Bridal (see above, n.38 and n.54). The suddenness and incongruity of the match between Zenobia and Rogue is explained away by Branwell: ‘I had often heard Rougue declare that of all the women in the world he most admired Zenobia Elrington, her too I had not less often heard say that she thought Alexander Rougue in her mind in spite of his conduct had the form and spirit of a Roman Hero’: PBB, The Pirate, 30 Jan–8Feb 1833: MS Bon 140 p.13, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 248].
70. CB, [Lord Ronan] ‘Fair forms of glistening marble stand around’, 26 Mar 1833: MS Bon 80(4), BPM [VN CB, 106–7]. Branwell responded by treating the poem not as an advancement of the story but as a malicious invention by Douro which enrages Rogue, compelling his return to Glasstown: PBB, Real Life in Verdopolis, vol ii, 17 Aug 1833: MS pp.1, 20, Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 296, 332].
71. CB, Something About Arthur, 1 May 1833 MS p.1, Texas [CA, ii, pt i, 10]. A flashman, according to CA’s note, was a brothel’s or whore’s bully. Much of the description and slang is based on the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’. There are several distasteful incidents of unjustified cruelty, such as Arthur’s murder of Tree by tying his cravat ‘to such good purpose that the prostrate Lieutenants Life came squirting out to
72. See, for example, Maria Sneachie who, like Blanche Ingram in Jane Eyre is ‘a real, dazzelling, brilliant,
73. CB, The Foundling, 31 May–27 June 1833: MS Ashley 159, BL and CB, The Secret & Lily Hart, 7 Nov 1833: MS Rare PR 4167.S43, Missouri-Columbia [CA, ii, pt i, 43–125, 269–315].
74. See, for example, CB, The Foundling, 31 May–27 June 1833: MS Ashley 159 pp.7v–9, BL [CA, ii, pt i, 50, 103–18]; CB, The Secret & Lily Hart, 7Nov 1833: MS Rare PR 4167.S43 p.8, Missouri-Columbia [CA, ii, pt i, 297–8].
75. See, for example, Castlereagh and Julia in PBB, Real Life in Verdopolis, May–22 Sept 1833: MS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 266–332]. For Mary Percy and Sir Robert Pelham see PBB, The Politics of Verdopolis, 23 Oct–13 Nov 1833: MS Bon 141, BPM [Neufeldt, i, 333–64].
76. The Genii play no role at all in any of Branwell’s writings after his ‘IIId Ode on the Celebration of the Great AFRICAN GAMES’, 26 June 1832 (see above, p.216) until their last joint appearance in ‘The Pirate’ when Rogue throws Sdeath over-board in an attempt to kill him: on touching the water he changed into the ‘Cheif Genius BRANII’ and departed in flashes of fire with ‘the Cheif Genii TALLI EMII & ANNII’: They appear in a functional role for the last time in Charlotte’s writings in The Foundling, where the four Chief Genii restore Douro, Ellrington and Montmorency to life: CB, The Foundling, 31 May–27 June 1833: MS Ashley 159 p.9, BL [CA, ii, pt i, 116].
77. See, for example, PBB, An Historical Narrative of the War of Aggression, [Nov–Dec 1833]: MS Eng 869
(2), Harvard [Neufeldt, i, 406–65].
78. PBB, The Pirate, 8 Feb 1833: MS Bon 141, BPM and PBB, Real Life in Verdopolis, May–22 Sept 1833: MS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 240–9, 266–332]. The setting of the hideout, in a cavern amid desolate moorland hills and reached by a tunnel under the river, is strongly reminiscent of the Haworth area and later descriptions of Angrian countryside. It seems likely that Branwell’s evocative description of the scenery here, which was so different from that of Verdopolis, led him to develop ‘the provincial’ as opposed to ‘the metropolitan’ in the creation of Angria. It also, of course, draws heavily on Scott’s Rob Roy.
79. CB, The Green Dwarf, 2 Sept 1833: MS p.25, Texas [CA, ii, pt i, 206]. For Rogue’s flirtations see, for example, CB, The Foundling, 31 May–27 June 1833: MS Ashley 159 p.5, BL and CB, ‘The Post Office’ and ‘Brushwood Hall’, Arthuriana, 27 Sept–1 Oct 1833: MS MA 29, PM [CA, ii, pt i, 78–9, 227–31].
80. CB, The Foundling, 31 May–27 June 1833: MS Ashley 159, BL [CA, ii, pt i, 40–125]; PBB, Real Life in Verdopolis, May–22 Sept 1833: MS in Brotherton [Neufeldt, i, 266–332].
81. LM, 2Sept 1833 p.5. The festivities were to celebrate the removal from the public rooms of the Black Bull to new buildings in Lodge Street, Haworth: after 10 years of dramatically falling membership and only intermittent meetings, the Lodge affiliated to the United Grand Lodge of England in 1831 and thereafter enjoyed a revival in its fortunes: W. Feather, A Centenary History of the Three Graces Lodge, 408, Haworth, 1792–1931 (Keighley, [1931]), 41 quoting the Lodge Minute Books, which are now lost. The Masonic overtones of the Elysium Society are later made more explicit, as, for example, when Charlotte refers to its members as ‘Knight of the Mattock’: CB, The Secret, 7 Nov 1833: MS Rare PR 4167.S43 p.4, Missouri-Columbia [CA, ii, pt i, 282]. ‘Elysium’ was the site of Ambrose’s tavern in ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’.
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