Brontës (46 page)

It is possible that the younger Brontës were also personally involved in the performances. Branwell had played the flute since at least November 1831, when he began to compile a book of his favourite arrangements. These ranged from church music, such as the Old Hundredth psalm and a funeral march, through to Scottish ballads such as ‘Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled' and ‘Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonny Doon', via such ephemera as ‘Oh no, we never mention her'. The choice of music suggests that Branwell may well have been involved in both the church orchestra and the Haworth Philharmonic Society. He could also play the piano and when the organ was installed in the church, Branwell seems to have learnt to play this too, under the tuition of Abraham Sunderland. Like his father, he was enthusiastically
fond of sacred music, particularly Handel's oratorio
Samson
and the masses of Haydn and Mozart, and though he did not play well he was an appreciative listener.
³²

His sisters, too, were keenly interested in music. Emily and Anne both played the piano, though Charlotte had been discouraged from doing so at Roe Head because of her poor eyesight. Patrick, ever anxious to foster any signs of rising talent in his children, bought a cottage piano some time in late 1833 or in 1834. Acquired from John Green, a music agent of Soho Square in London, but probably purchased in one of the many music shops in Leeds, Halifax or Bradford, the piano was a comparatively cheap one but the best Patrick could afford. Though cased in mahogany, it had only five octaves and its strings were hidden behind an upright pleated silk screen. Abraham Sunderland was still coming regularly to the parsonage to give Emily and Anne their lessons as late as November 1834.
³³

If the Brontës' passion for music was not fulfilled in Haworth, they had plenty of opportunity to go elsewhere. Halifax was less than a dozen miles away, within walking distance for Branwell at least, and had a remarkable reputation for music. Its concerts attracted musicians, composers and performers of international standing. Paganini, the virtuoso violinist, played there on 9 February 1832 and he was followed by Johann Strauss, ‘The Waltz King', and his orchestra, a youthful Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn.
³⁴

On a much less grand scale, but more accessible, were the frequent concerts held in Keighley, sponsored by the Mechanics' Institute and the Keighley Philharmonic Society, especially during the winter season. On 27 November 1833, for example, the musical amateurs of the Keighley, Haworth and Bingley districts all gathered for their annual meeting at the National School in Keighley; the highlight of the evening was a performance of the Dettingen
Te Deum
. In January 1834 the town held a music festival which drew some of the biggest audiences ever seen in the area. The Brontës are likely to have attended as their music teacher, Abraham Sunderland, conducted the orchestra and choirs in the selection of sacred music and Thomas Parker was the principal soloist. Mr Greenwood again returned from London to play the organ of the Wesleyan Methodist chapel and performed ‘an astonishing extempore fugue'. The
Leeds Mercury
declared that ‘The performances have given a great impetus to the musicians in the town and neighbourhood.' Another special concert was given on 29 December 1834 in the large hall of the new Keighley Mechanics' Institute building which had just been opened the day before: the singers
included professionals from Leeds and the hall was packed with ‘the most respectable families of the town and the surrounding district for several miles'.
³⁵

Keighley was an increasingly prosperous town and in the 1830s it was expanding rapidly. A new market place, with handsome buildings round it, was begun in 1833 and a new National Church Sunday School and Mechanics' Institute in 1834.
³⁶
The place had much to offer the Brontës by way of entertainment. In addition to its concerts and circulating libraries, the town held regular lectures, mostly sponsored by the Mechanics' Institute, of which Patrick became a member after Charlotte's return from Roe Head. The lectures were increasingly varied in subject matter by this time and were a more attractive prospect than the purely scientific ones of the early days. One of the most popular was a course of lectures in 1832 on ancient British poetry. Again, the Brontës are likely to have attended as the subject was one in which they were keenly interested and the lectures were given by a former schoolmaster of Keighley, William Dearden, who was an old family friend. By the winter season of 1835, free lectures were being given fortnightly in the new Mechanics' Institute on subjects as diverse as Napoleon, geography and Poland, and Patrick himself had been enlisted as one of the lecturers.
³⁷

Keighley was also home to the artist John Bradley, who had given lessons in drawing and painting to the Brontë children for at least the period 1828–29 to 1831, if not longer.
³⁸
His encouragement, as much as his example, inspired both Branwell and, more surprisingly, Charlotte to dream of careers as professional artists. To this end, on her return from Roe Head Charlotte had immersed herself in her art, copying in minute detail the plates and engravings which appeared in annuals and albums such as
Friendship's Offering
and
The Keepsake
. Many of these were pencil and watercolour portraits which are particularly interesting because they are all, without exception, of young and beautiful people in romantic poses – a poignant preoccupation given Charlotte's obsession with the notion of her own physical unattractiveness.

Byron's influence was as evident on her art as in her writing: she copied portraits of the poet himself, his patroness the beautiful Countess of Blessington, the equally lovely Lady Jersey, whose picture had appeared in Moore's
Life of Byron
, and even illustrations of characters from his poems, such as ‘The Maid of Saragoza'. The women are invariably large-eyed, long-necked, ringleted and bejewelled; the men are effete in feature and form,
with elaborately curled hair and military dress. Undoubtedly these idealized portraits represented the heroes and heroines of Charlotte's imaginary world as well as being a serious exercise in draughtsmanship.
³⁹

Equally numerous, however, are what Mrs Gaskell called Charlotte's copies of ‘nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings' of landscapes such as ‘Santa Maura' and ‘Geneva' which had been engraved by Edward Finden as illustrations to editions of Byron's letters and journals. These Charlotte lovingly and laboriously reproduced in pencil, drawing in dots instead of lines, ‘(‘stippling,' don't the artists call it?) every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving.'
⁴⁰
One such drawing, ‘Cockermouth', she presented to Abraham Sunderland to thank him for his role in organising the inauguration of the new church organ but two others, ‘Bolton Abbey' and ‘Kirkstall Abbey' were destined for greater things. Perhaps inspired by Bradley, who had shown there regularly, Charlotte submitted them to the Royal Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for inclusion in its summer exhibition of 1834.
^4l

The Society's exhibitions had been held annually in Leeds since 1808 and drew together paintings of old masters in private collections and new works by contemporary artists such as Sir Thomas Lawrence, Richard Westall and J. M. W. Turner. Four hundred and sixty-four sculptures, paintings and drawings were exhibited in the summer of 1834 and listed in the catalogue among the items for sale were Charlotte's two drawings. For an eighteen-year-old who had hero-worshipped artists since childhood this was a dream come true: her ambitions were about to be realized and the whole family was determined to share in her triumph. The Brontës were therefore among the 2,000 visitors to the exhibition where they saw Charlotte's drawings displayed alongside works by J. M. W. Turner, William Robinson and the new
enfant terrible
of the art world, Joseph Bentley Leyland, a Halifax sculptor who made his dazzling public debut with a colossal head of Satan which went on to achieve great critical acclaim in London. Such success was not to be Charlotte's lot: her pictures remained unnoticed and unsold, forcing her to abandon her ambition to be a professional artist.
⁴²

It was therefore ironic that the same exhibition which ended her hopes put her brother firmly on the path to an artistic career. One of Charlotte's fellow exhibitors was William Robinson, who had shown seven portraits ‘all largely partaking of the skill and care which distinguish the works of this excellent portrait painter'. A Royal Academician with a studio in Leeds,
Robinson was in his mid-thirties, well-established and well-connected. He had been a free pupil of the great Sir Thomas Lawrence, an inn-keeper's son who had himself studied at the Royal Academy and succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as Painter-in-Ordinary to the King until his death in 1830. Robinson had learned to imitate Lawrence's style: even his most famous portrait, that of the Duke of Wellington, was merely an adaptation of one by Lawrence.
⁴³

Having seen Robinson's pictures at the exhibition, Patrick determined to procure his services as a tutor to his son, apparently paying the huge sum of two guineas a lesson for the privilege.
⁴⁴
What Patrick did not know was that Robinson's reputation had not translated into a good living. He was probably already in financial difficulties as he died only a few years later, in 1838, leaving his widow and children in absolute penury. Perhaps more seriously, as Leyland's brother Francis, who also frequented artistic circles, pointed out, Robinson failed to teach Branwell the correct way to mix his pigments and how to apply them properly. His pupil was therefore unable to depict the delicacy of fleshly tints and the variations of light and shade; the colours he used faded rapidly, leaving behind only the tint of the boiled oil with which he mixed his pigments. It is striking, too, that the hard features and sometimes wooden, formal poses of Branwell's subjects are the very points on which Robinson himself was criticized.
⁴⁵

That Branwell was going to be a professional artist – and a distinguished one at that – had long been assumed by his family. When Ellen Nussey visited in the summer of 1833 he was already preparing himself by painting in oils, possibly under Bradley's tuition.
⁴⁶
Now, under Robinson's instruction, he copied the works of other artists and, most famously, twice persuaded or bullied his sisters into sitting for him. Both oil paintings also included a self-portrait. In one, which Mrs Gaskell described as a ‘rough, common-looking oil-painting', he immediately painted himself out again, probably because the composition was too cramped in the upright format he had chosen. The ghostly image of Branwell, together with the delicate pencil sketching which formed the basis of his portraits, is gradually re-emerging as the badly mixed paint becomes transparent with age. This is the famous ‘Three Sisters' or ‘Pillar Portrait' which, by an irony of fate, is now one of the most popular paintings in the National Portrait Gallery.
⁴⁷

The second portrait was done in a landscape format, giving greater room for Branwell and his sisters. They are gathered round a table on which Branwell, gun in hand, has just placed his trophies of the day's shoot. This
portrait was described by one visitor to the parsonage in 1858, who saw it hanging in pride of place on the stairs, as ‘a shocking daub, not up to the rudest sign board style'. Though Charlotte's husband, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, can hardly be said to have been a man of artistic judgement, it is worth noting that he destroyed this portrait on the grounds that the likenesses were so bad, keeping only the fragment which had the delicate and sensitive profile of Emily. The composition of the original picture is now only known from a photograph of it belonging to Martha Brown, the Brontës' servant, and a set of tracings of the three girls made by John Greenwood, the Haworth stationer.
⁴⁸

Whatever the merits of the paintings as art, they are invaluable, if unflattering portrayals of the four Brontës as they were in 1834, a year after Ellen's visit to Haworth. Charlotte, at eighteen, is the only one to wear her hair long and put up into a bun at the back, with long sausage shaped ringlets framing her face. As befits her age, she is also the only one to wear a high-collared dress. Her face is square-jawed, with a high forehead, large nose and prim mouth. Emily and Anne, at sixteen and fourteen, are physically more alike, with longer and thinner faces, and wearing their hair loosely curled at shoulder length. In the gun group they both wear the same unflattering scoop-neck dresses as Charlotte, but without her modest high-necked collar. In the other portrait they all wear simple V-necked dresses with large fichu-type collars. Branwell, who has significantly made himself appear the tallest in both portraits, though he was actually shorter than Emily, wears his bright red hair parted and artistically arranged in wisps and tendrils over his remarkably wide and high forehead. It says much for the closeness of the Brontë family that, even after Branwell's downfall, they preferred to have on display the gun group, which included him, even though it was a poorer painting.

Charlotte was also producing portraits from life at this time. Within fourteen months, between 17 April 1833 and 17 June 1834, she drew one delicate pencil portrait and two watercolour portraits of Anne. All are in profile, though in one watercolour the face is slightly turned towards the artist. They are recognizably the same person as Branwell's portraits of Anne, with her long neck, thin features and pronounced mouth. Whatever the reason behind Charlotte's sudden excursion into portrait painting, it seems that she was only able to persuade the more pliant Anne to sit for her as there are no known portraits of Emily by either of her sisters.
⁴⁹