Brontës (96 page)

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 splendours long since gone

And say one fate awaits on flesh and stone
⁷¹

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 picture made

To contradict its meaning

Where \should be/ sunshine painting shade,

And smile with sadness screening;

Where God has given a cheerful view

A gloomy vista showing

Where heart and face, are fair and true

A shade of doubt bestowing

Ah Lady if to me you give

The power your sketch to adorn

How little of it shall I leave

Save smiles that shine like morn.

Ide keep the hue of happy light

That shines from summer skies

Ide drive the shades from smiles so bright

And dry such shining eyes

Ide give a calm to one whose heart

has banished calm from mine

Ide brighten up Gods work of art

Where thou hast dimmed its shine

And all ask[sic] the wages I should ask

For such a happy toil

Ill name them – far beyond my task —

THY PRESENCE AND THY SMILE
⁷²

Though the poem exists only in draft form, scribbled in pencil on a page from the missing notebook, it was undoubtedly intended for presentation to Mrs Robinson. One can well imagine her gratification on receiving poetic tributes of this kind from her son's young tutor – though she might not have appreciated his tactful removal of the reference to her own ‘youth demure'!

It is not impossible that it was the discovery of poems like this, addressed to Mrs Robinson, that brought about Branwell's downfall. Even if the poems were not signed or attributed to Northangerland, Mr Robinson must have been able to recognize Branwell's distinctive handwriting. He certainly knew of Branwell's poetic efforts and ambitions, which Mrs Robinson encouraged but which he dismissed with contempt. Mrs Robinson was herself distantly related to Thomas Babington Macaulay whose
Lays of Ancient Rome
had been published to great acclaim in 1842, the year before Branwell's appointment to Thorp Green. It was undoubtedly through her that Branwell gained access to Macaulay, much to Mr Robinson's disgust: ‘my late unhappy employer shrunk from the bare idea of my being able to write anything, and had a day's sickness after hearing that Macaulay had sent me a complimentary letter'.
⁷³

Branwell also claimed that Mr Robinson would not recognize his poetic
pseudonym ‘Northangerland', in which case it seems unlikely that he was aware that his son's tutor was actually publishing poems under his very nose in the
Yorkshire Gazette
. This was a newspaper produced in York by Henry Bellerby, a bookseller and stationer who also ran one of York's two public libraries from his shop at No. 13, Stonegate. The Robinsons had an account with Bellerby and Branwell, like the rest of the family, borrowed books from his library.
⁷⁴
As Branwell was undoubtedly a regular visitor at the shop and library it is only surprising that his contact with Bellerby did not result in his poems being published by the
Yorkshire Gazette
much earlier. As it is, the paper published only four poems by Branwell, all of them within ten weeks of his dismissal.

On 10 May 1845 the
Yorkshire Gazette
carried two sonnets by ‘Northangerland', ‘Blackcomb' and ‘On Landseer's Picture – “The Shepherd's Chief Mourner” – a dog watching alone by his master's grave'. They were both old poems. The first had been written five years earlier, when Branwell was a tutor at Broughton-in-Furness, the second, which had already appeared in the
Bradford Herald
in 1842, dated back to at least 1841.
⁷⁵
The fact that he had at last got an
entrée
to a new newspaper seems to have encouraged Branwell. Sixteen days later he made a fair copy of a pair of new sonnets called ‘The Emigrant', which were duly published in the
Yorkshire Gazette
on 7 June. The subject was topical as the newspapers were full of the recent spate of emigrations prompted by the hardships endured by the poor in England and Ireland in ‘the hungry forties'. Many unemployed working-class families, as well as those, like Mary Taylor, seeking to earn their own living in a less censorious society, had left for the new worlds of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Branwell's first sonnet gives the story of the departing emigrant a new twist.

When sink from sight the landmarks of our home,

And – all the bitterness of farewells o'er –

We yield our spirit unto ocean's foam,

And, in the new-born life which lies before,

On far Columbian or Australian shore,

Strive to exchange time past for time to come;

How melancholy then – if morn restore

(Less welcome than the night's forgetful gloom)

Old England's blue hills to our sight again;

When we, our thoughts seemed weaning from her sky,

That
pang
, which wakes the almost silenced pain!

Thus, when the sick man lies, resigned to die,

A well-loved voice, a well-remembered strain,

Lets time break harshly in upon eternity.
⁷⁶

The second sonnet is less innovative and less successful, describing how the emigrant, now settled in his new home, finds comfort and calm in memories of the old.

At the beginning of June 1845 everything seemed to be going well for Branwell. He still enjoyed his lady's favours, his tutorial post was not arduous and left him plenty of time for his own pursuits, and his recent poetic efforts had been crowned with the accolade of publication in a widely respected journal. Neither he nor the Robinsons seem to have had the faintest inkling of the crisis that was about to burst upon them, though it must have been about this time that Anne Brontë handed in her resignation. Her reasons for doing so were never explicitly stated. Even her diary paper, written shortly after Branwell's dismissal, only hints at general dissatisfaction. Rereading her diary paper of 1841, she recalled:

How many things have happened since it was written – some pleasant some far otherwise – Yet I was then at Thorp Green and now I am only escaped from it – I was wishing to leave then and if I had known that I had four years longer to stay how wretched I should have been … but during my stay I have had some very unpleasant and undreamt of experience of human nature –
⁷⁷

This suggests that Anne was aware of the relationship between her brother and Mrs Robinson, though not necessarily that it was about to be exposed. As she must have served out her notice, her resignation would seem to have been prompted by a growing sense of disgust with Mrs Robinson and her children rather than fear of a scandal involving her brother. Five years with the Robinsons had brought her to the end of her endurance.

On 3 June, anticipating some hours of leisure ahead, Branwell compiled and sent off a list of books he would like to borrow from Mr Bellerby's library.
⁷⁸
A week later, on 11 June, Mr Robinson paid Anne the £3 10s. which was owed to her since the payment of her last quarter's salary of £10 on 11 May. On the same day, 11 June, he also advanced Branwell his quarter's salary of £20, which was not due until 21 July. Mr Robinson's reasons
for taking this unusual step are not clear. It cannot have been an effective dismissal or the payment would have been only for that proportion of the salary which had been earned, as Anne's had been. Even though Mr Robinson may have been anticipating the fact that Branwell was about to go home for a week's holiday, it still seems odd that he should have advanced the salary so early. The Robinsons themselves were to leave for Scarborough on 4 July but Branwell would be back at Thorp Green with them for at least two weeks before they set off – giving ample time for the salary to be paid then.
⁷⁹
Though it is tempting to see something sinister in this early payment, the reason may simply be that Branwell needed the money for his travel arrangements and that Mr Robinson tidied up his accounts with the Brontës by paying both on the same day before they left for home. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that even at this late date Mr Robinson had no cause for dissatisfaction with Branwell, or he would not have advanced his salary.

Though their salaries were paid on 11 June the Brontës probably did not leave Thorp Green till the following Saturday, 14 June. Charlotte does not mention Anne or Branwell in her letter to Ellen written on 13 June, but they were certainly at home by 18 June when their presence enabled Charlotte to write in high glee to accept Ellen Nussey's invitation to Hathersage. By 27 June Branwell had gone again: ‘Branwell only stayed a week with us', Charlotte told Ellen, ‘but he is to come home again when the family go to Scarbro'.'
⁸⁰
Though Branwell's comings and goings at this time also seem strange, it is unlikely that he lied to his family about his orders to return to Thorp Green, as Anne would have been able to contradict him.

Much has been made of the fact that when the Robinsons set off for Scarborough on 4 July, they left Edmund behind in his tutor's care. This is seen as the catalyst for Branwell's subsequent dismissal; both Winifred Gérin and Daphne du Maurier, for instance, suggest that Edmund revealed something about his tutor when he rejoined the family in Scarborough on 17 July which caused his outraged father to write that very day to dismiss Branwell.
⁸¹
Unfortunately, the assumption that Edmund was left behind is based solely on the unreliable and contradictory evidence of the visitor lists published in the weekly Scarborough newspapers. Even if we do accept that he might have travelled separately and that his belated appearances in the listings of the
Scarborough Record
and Scarborough Heraldaxc significant, the newspapers offer conflicting dates for his arrival and both place it after the accepted date of 17 July.
⁸²
As the two papers were sister publications, the
likeliest explanation is that Edmund's name was simply omitted by accident and that, in attempting to rectify the mistake, an apparent mystery was created.

The fact that Edmund travelled with the rest of his family is indirectly confirmed by other, more reliable, sources. The journal of George Whitehead, who lived at Little Ouseburn, notes that the Robinsons set off for Scarborough on Friday, 4 July; though he seems to have been well informed about the family, he does not mention that Edmund was left behind.
⁸³
This same date is confirmed by Mr Robinson himself, who recorded his travelling expenses to Scarborough in his cash book the following day. Of great significance is the fact that among those expenses is 17s. for the purchase of a whip for Edmund; as provision was made for five horses, Edmund was presumably riding one of these rather than with his family in the coach. Another gift to him of 12s. 6d. is recorded on 16 July.
⁸⁴
It therefore seems most likely that Edmund actually went to Scarborough with his family, as he had done in previous years, and that he was not left behind in Branwell's care. As Charlotte had told Ellen, Branwell would return home to Haworth when the family went to Scarborough.