Brontës (52 page)

The Reverend William Hodgson's origins are obscure, but he was certainly of humble birth and may have been an Irishman. He was newly ordained and Haworth was his first and only curacy; in 1837 he was promoted to the incumbency of Christ Church at Colne, on the Lancashire side of the moors behind Haworth, where he remained for the rest of his life.
⁵⁸
By temperament he was a fiery and somewhat tactless young man who proved to be a voluble advocate of the Established Church and a vigorous opponent of Dissenters both in the pulpit and in print. His position
in Haworth seems to have been awkward from the start. Though he took his first duty, a burial, on Christmas Day 1835, following this with two baptisms on 27 December, he did not begin signing the church registers with his title as ‘curate' until the middle of April the following year. This coincided with Patrick's first grant of fifty pounds from the Church Pastoral Aid Society towards the cost of his curate's salary, which would make a formal appointment financially possible. Until this point, however, it would seem that the arrangement was informal and that the curate was paid either out of Patrick's own pocket (which seems extremely unlikely) or by means of a subscription among the wealthier Anglicans in the chapelry.
⁵⁹

Never one to shirk his responsibilities, Patrick continued to take the larger proportion of the baptisms, marriages and burials, but Hodgson was able to stand in for him on a regular basis, take the Sunday schools and also relieve him of some of the Sunday duties. Indeed, on the first or second Sunday after his arrival he found himself flung in at the deep end.

It had been arranged that Mr Hodgson should preach in the morning and Mr Brontë in the afternoon, but while Mr Hodgson was in the afternoon Sunday School Mr Brontë sent for him and told him that he felt unequal to the task of preaching and that Mr Hodgson must take his place. To this Mr Hodgson demurred, urging that he had no sermon ready. ‘Oh,' said Mr Brontë, ‘you must preach extempore; the people like it better.' Poor Mr Hodgson with much sinking of heart had to do as he was bid, and the Haworth folk used to remind him of that first extempore sermon and say that he never preached a better one.
⁶⁰

Though the sudden appearance of a young, unmarried curate in the village might have been expected to cause at least a flutter of interest at the parsonage, Hodgson's entire curacy seems to have passed unremarked by the younger Brontës.
⁶¹
Apparently they saw little of him. He had taken lodgings at Cook Gate with a lady of independent means called Grace Ogden who lived there with her daughter, Susanna, and her three-year-old granddaughter, Grace. He paid the occasional duty visit to Patrick but was not, it appears, admitted into the family on any terms of intimacy. Perhaps not unnaturally, Hodgson formed the impression that pride was largely responsible for the girls' shyness and reserve, though he had a great deal of respect for Patrick and ‘scouted with indignation' Mrs Gaskell's tales of his outbursts of intemperate rage.
⁶²

Charlotte and Anne's time at home was too short and precious to be
wasted on civilities towards a young clergyman. Indeed, Charlotte seems to have spent most of her holiday steeling herself for the return to Roe Head. It is possible that she talked to her father about her unhappiness at the prospect of teaching for the rest of her life and told him something about her passionate need to write. Perhaps Branwell's recent letters to
Blackwood's Magazine
prompted her to imagine that she, too, might earn her living by her pen. If she was already nurturing ambitions in that quarter, Patrick firmly quashed them, pointing out the unlikelihood of her succeeding as a writer. It seems likely also that he warned her against allowing herself to be seduced away from her duties by Angrian fantasies which poisoned her mind against her daily life. Patrick knew what he was talking about. Many years before he had himself felt the pull of literary ambition but, having conquered it, he gave short shrift to those who did not. In the preface to his
The Cottage in the Wood he
had written:

The sensual novelist and his admirer, are beings of depraved appetites and sickly imaginations, who having learnt the art of
self-tormenting
, are diligently and zealously employed in creating an imaginary world, which they can never inhabit, only to make the real world, with which they must necessarily be conversant, gloomy and insupportable.
⁶³

He urged Charlotte to attend more closely to her duties, to contrive to become more interested in them and to confine her literary activities to the purely recreational. There was no harm in pursuing flights of the imagination as an amusement in leisure hours but when this became so obsessive that it interfered with the mechanics of real life, then it was time to crush it. Acknowledging in her heart the justice of these remarks, Charlotte later wrote, rather sadly, that

Following my Father's advice, – who from my childhood has counselled me … I have endeavoured not only attentively to observe all the duties a woman ought to fulfil, but to feel deeply interested in them. I don't always succeed, for sometimes when I'm teaching or sewing I would rather be reading or writing; but I try to deny myself; and my Father's approbation amply rewarded me for the privation.
⁶⁴

It was perhaps Patrick, too, who suggested that piety, not Angria, should be Charlotte's mental crutch for the future. In one of the poems she wrote
during the Christmas holidays, Charlotte reflected on what she was increasingly to see as a conflict between her religion and her imagination. She looked back with nostalgia to the simple and unquestioning faith of her youth:

My heart was better then than now

Its hopes soared far more free

I felt a blind, but ardent glow

Of love for piety

Even as a child, however, her imagination had betrayed her. Her fascination with stories of ghosts and spectral hauntings had undermined her certainty and wrought on her nerves to such an extent that she ‘almost feared to pray'. Now ‘other visions' of Angria haunt her, which, though not as painful, ‘yet fever the blood in its flow'. Such is their potency that a poem which clearly began with the intention of seeking solace in religion ends up as yet another digression into the hot-house world of Angria. This Charlotte felt called upon to justify: her imagination is already her solace:

Is it not well, that thou can'st call

Her hallowing scenes to thee

When haply in thy spirit all

Sinks chill & hopelessly

Is it not well when severed far

From those thou lovedst to see

That she has hung her golden star

O'er alien hill & tree
⁶⁵

Charlotte did make an effort to turn from Angria, however futile it turned out to be. During the whole month of her holiday, she made no attempt to write a prose story despite the fact that Branwell had completed one Angrian adventure on 7 January 1836 and promptly begun another the same day.
⁶⁶
For him there was no hint of conflict but, on the other hand, his Angrian obsession had less of idolatry in it. In another poem written the day before her return to Roe Head, Charlotte recognized the unpalatable fact of her blasphemy; Zamorna was

… not the temple but the god

the idol in his marble shrine

Our grand dream is his wide abode

And there for me he dwells divine

Knowing that she must go back to Roe Head the next day, she bade farewell to each of her beloved Angrian characters in turn and resolved to shut them out of her mind until she returned home again.

But no more now of the wondrous dream

My time of pleasant holiday

Is faded like a sunny beam

And I must here no longer stay

may we all meet in joy again

And then I'll sing a lighter strain

This evening hear the solemn Knell

Farewell! & yet again farewell!!
⁶⁷

On 20 January 1836, Charlotte and Anne returned to school, leaving Emily and Branwell at home with Patrick and Aunt Branwell. At nineteen, Charlotte's future stretched out before her in a seemingly endless and uninviting prospect; she had no alternative but to teach. For Branwell, however, there was an embarrassment of riches. The Royal Academy plan may have been shelved but even more exciting schemes were being put forward. It was now suggested that he should make a study tour of the Continent.

In preparation for this plan, Branwell joined the Freemasons, hoping to benefit from their network of contacts while he was abroad. His name was put forward and approved at a meeting of the Three Graces Lodge in Haworth on 1 February 1836. There was one important obstacle to his initiation: Branwell was only eighteen years old and the minimum age for admittance was twenty-one. On 8 February John Brown and Joseph Redman, the Worshipful Master and Secretary of the Lodge, who also happened to be the church sexton and parish clerk respectively, wrote to the Provincial Lodge at Wakefield seeking a dispensation to allow Branwell to be admitted. They made light of his age, passing him off as ‘about 20 Years of Age' and pointed out that his father ‘is Minister of the Chapelry of Haworth, and always appears to be very favourable to Masonry'.
⁶⁸
The application was unexpectedly refused, provoking a second letter from Brown and Redman explaining
we doubted not but our request would be complyed with, being, as we thought agreable to the laws of the Craft – vide Book of Constitutions, Page 90, – where going abroad is not mentioned, but in fact, this young Gentleman is a Pourtrait Painter and for the purpose of acquiring information or instruction intends going on to the Continent this Summer –
⁶⁹

This explanation ‘quite alters the case' and a dispensation was immediately issued for Branwell to become a member of the Lodge of the Three Graces. He was initiated as one of the brethren in a ceremony on 29 February 1836.
⁷⁰

The fact that Branwell was planning an ambitious artistic tour of the Continent within a few months of the supposedly devastating failure of his Royal Academy ambitions is further evidence that he never made that fateful trip to London the previous autumn. It suggests not only that he was still preparing himself for eventual entry to the Royal Academy but also that he had the full backing of his father, without whom he could not have afforded to go abroad. It is hardly likely that Patrick would have sanctioned a tour of Europe if Branwell had already proved himself totally untrustworthy, financially and morally, only a couple of hundred miles away from home in London.

Branwell was also still pursuing
Blackwood's Magazine
with a single-mindedness which suggests that he was less than committed to the idea of an artistic career. The brothers Blackwood were not noted for their punctiliousness in replying to correspondence and all Branwell's letters had so far remained unanswered. Undeterred, he wrote again on 8 April prefacing his letter with ‘Sir, Read now at least,' written in large characters across the top of the page.
⁷¹
With the letter he enclosed two scenes from a long poem somewhat infelicitously entitled ‘Misery'. If the editor would not ask Branwell for a sample of his writing, then he would have it thrust upon him.

The poem drew on a typical Angrian scenario and told of the defeated Count Albert's flight through a stormy night, his unexpected discovery of his dying wife, Maria, and his own subsequent death on the battlefield, where he is tortured by fear of there being no life beyond the tomb. Branwell planned, but did not attempt, a third concluding scene in which the soul of Count Albert was followed to its final misery after death.
⁷²
Though the poem did not substantiate Branwell's claims to originality or especial powers, being highly imitative of Byron, it was nevertheless as good
as, if not better than, much of the poetry that was then appearing in
Blackwood's
. Unusually, Branwell took a great deal of trouble over the lines, drafting and redrafting them until he was satisfied with the result. The first scene, a resonant description of a lone horseman struggling through the storm to reach his home, was substantially written within ten days of sending his letter of 8 December 1835; the second scene, which brought the total number of lines up to 728, was finished on 2 March 1836.
⁷³
The final version was neatly written up and far more polished and considered than the accompanying letter. Branwell had at least the grace to offer an apology for his frequent changing over from right-handed to left-handed writing: he had hurt his right hand while boxing and had, till now, been unable to use it. With assumed carelessness, he sought the editor's opinion of his verse.

The affair which accompanies my letter is certainly sent for insertion in Blackwood as a Specimen, whi[c]h, wether bad or good, I earnestly desire you to look over, it may be dis-agreeable – but you will then Know wether in putting \it/ into the fire you – would gain or lose

It would now be impudent in me to speak of my powers since in five minutes you can tell wether or not they are Fudge and nonsense but this I know that if they are such I have no intention of stooping under them. New powers I will get if I can and provided I keep them you Sir shall see them.
⁷⁴

Branwell's laudable determination to persevere with and improve his poetry suggests that the eighteen-year-old was torn between his desire to be an artist and a poet. His hope of becoming a contributor to
Blackwood's
did not necessarily exclude the possibility of his becoming a successful portrait painter, but it inevitably raised doubts about whether he would have the determination to overcome the hurdles in his path should he ever attempt to enter the Royal Academy. At this moment he clearly wanted nothing more than to be accepted as one of the elite band of
Blackwood's
contributors. In case the editor found his subject matter morbidly off-putting, Branwell urged him: