Brontës (42 page)

How close the partnership between brother and sister was at this time is illustrated by two stories which they wrote contemporaneously: Charlotte's ‘The Foundling', written between 31 May and 27 June 1833, and Branwell's more ambitious two-volume story ‘Real Life in Verdopolis', begun in May and finished in September of the same year.
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Each story introduces a new young and bold outsider to the Verdopolitan scene, Edward Sydney and Viscount Castlereagh, who align themselves with the Marquis of Douro and Viscount Ellrington respectively. Both Sydney and Castlereagh fall in love with and eventually marry, after many trials of their devotion, a Julia who has almost been forced into a marriage with a rival lover against her will. In ‘The Foundling', the Glasstowners riot and attack the Tower of All Nations, thinking that their leader, Ellrington, is imprisoned there and similarly,
Ellrington himself in ‘Real Life in Verdopolis' leads a popular attack on the prison in Glasstown to release some of his fellow conspirators who might betray his secrets.

Both stories also introduce a new and sinister element in Glasstown life, a secret society. Charlotte's was based on the Philosopher's Isle, where the nobles of Glasstown were sent for their education; under the instruction of Manfred the magician, the students learnt the secrets of life and death but were sworn not to misuse the knowledge. Branwell's, typically, is not concerned with magic but with politics. Castlereagh is ritually initiated into the society, which is called the Paradise of Souls or the Elysium, and swears never to divulge its secrets: he is then free to join in its activities which, for the moment, consist chiefly of gambling, drinking and fighting. Ellrington is the President, the Marquis of Douro its Vice-President. Interestingly, these accounts of secret societies coincide with the revival of a masonic society, the Lodge of the Three Graces, in Haworth. At the very time Branwell was writing about the Elysium Society, his father was preaching a sermon to the masons of the surrounding area who had gathered in Haworth to celebrate the opening of the lodge's first private meeting rooms.
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If the stories had a great deal in common, they were also used to score points against their respective authors. In ‘The Foundling' Edward Sydney makes a great maiden speech in Parliament against Ellrington and succeeds in defeating his motion against the government: Branwell responds by having ‘that hat[e]ful spider Sydny' soundly drubbed in a speech by Montmorenci, Ellrington's ally, which accuses him of being unfit for office.
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Charlotte makes Zenobia bewail the fact that she ever married Ellrington and declare that she married him solely in a fit of pique at the marquis whom she truly loves. Branwell gets his own back by having the marquis become well and truly embroiled in all the disreputable activities of the Elysium Society: ‘till I read this admirable work', responded Charlotte as Charles Wellesley, ‘I was ignorant to what a hopeless depth he had sunk in the black gulphs of sin & dissipation'.
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The interchange of characters and ideas and the interweaving of often complex story-lines demanded a close partnership between brother and sister. Although they did not necessarily discuss their plots beforehand, they were quick to respond to developments in each other's writing. The very act of writing thus became a sort of game in which each attempted to outdo or outmanoeuvre the other. As soon as one story ended, another began, so that they constantly had some writing on hand. No writings by Emily and Anne
exist from this period. It is possible that they were as deeply absorbed in the imaginary worlds as their older siblings, but this seems unlikely. A thundering editorial in Branwell's ‘Monthly Intelligencer', written between March and April of this year, suggests that the fourteen- and thirteen-year-old girls had ‘absconded' from Glasstown, leaving the fate of their characters in Charlotte and Branwell's hands.

A Few words to The Cheif Genii

When a Parent leaves his Childern young and inexperienced, and without a cause absconds, never more troubling himself about them those Childern according to received notions among men if they by good fortune should happen to survive this neglect and become of repute in society are by no means bound to believe that he has done his duty to them as a parent, merely because they have risen, nor are they indeed required to own or treat him as a parent. this is all very plain. and we believe that 4 of our readers will understand our aim in thus speaking.

A child of the G—ii
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This suggests that the foundation of the kingdom of Angria gave Emily and Anne an excuse to break away and establish their own independent world of Gondal, though there are no specific references to it until November of the following year. It seems unlikely that they had simply abandoned Glasstown and given up writing altogether.

Charlotte and Branwell's absorption in the affairs of Glasstown was of necessity put aside for a few weeks in the summer. At long last Charlotte was able to return the kindness she had been shown at The Rydings the previous autumn and invite Ellen to stay at the parsonage. In July 1833, Ellen paid her first visit to Haworth and, though recorded many years later, we have her own detailed account of her impressions of the Brontës and their home. This is the first comprehensive description of the family on record.

From the very start, Ellen stood in awe of Patrick. At fifty-six and with his hair already snow white, he must have seemed very old to his sixteen-year-old visitor: she politely described him as looking ‘very venerable' and his old-fashioned manner and mode of speech as having a ‘tone of high-bred courtesy'. She clearly did not believe in his poor state of health, regarding him as a hypochondriac and the enormous white silk cravat which he wound round his throat to protect him from bronchial complaints as an eccentric affectation. His habit of sleeping with a loaded pistol to hand,
which he discharged from his bedroom window each morning, filled her with alarm; the ‘strange stories' told to him by some of his oldest parishioners, which he recounted to his family, were ‘full of grim humour & interest' to them but made Ellen ‘shiver and shrink from hearing'.
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Aunt Branwell, who was a year older than Patrick, Ellen also found something of a curiosity, describing her as ‘a very small antiquated little lady', wearing silk dresses, huge old-fashioned caps and a false hair-piece – a row of ‘light auburn curls' – on her forehead. She had ‘a horror' of the Yorkshire climate and amused Ellen by clicking about inside the parsonage wearing pattens, normally only worn outside, to protect her feet from the cold stone floors.

She talked a great deal of her younger days, the gaities of her native town, Penzance in Cornwall, the soft warm climate &c She very probably had been a belle \among her acquaintance,/ the social life of her younger days she appeared to recall with regret

The thoroughly modern Ellen was shocked when Aunt Branwell teasingly offered her a pinch of snuff from her pretty gold snuffbox, this being a habit that had died out among gentlewomen in the early years of the century. She was still responsible for Anne's lessons and sewing, though Emily had begun to have the disposal of her own time.
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Even Tabby, ‘the faithful trustworthy old servant', was, according to Ellen, ‘very quaint in appearance'. She was also extremely active, and still regarded it as her duty to accompany her ‘childer' when they walked any distance from home if Branwell was unavailable as an escort. Intensely loyal to the Brontës, she always rebuffed the curious enquiries from the Haworth people who wished to know if they were not ‘fearfully larn'd', refused to indulge in gossip and went off in a huff to recount the story to her charges.
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With the younger generation, Ellen had more empathy. Emily, now fifteen, had a ‘lithesome graceful figure' and was the tallest in the house after her father.

her hair which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte's was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes, kind, kindling, liquid eyes, sometimes they looked grey, sometimes dark blue but she did not often look at you, she was too reserved. She
talked very little. She and Anne were \like twins,/ inseparable companions, \and/ in the very closest sympathy which never had any interruption.

Anne, dear gentle Anne, was quite different in appearance to the others. She was her Aunt's favorite. Her hair was a very pretty light brown and fell on her neck in graceful curls. She had lovely violet blue eyes, fine pencilled eye-brows, a clear, almost transparent complexion.
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Anne's hair was actually darker than Ellen remembered: a little plait, cut off and carefully preserved by Patrick on 22 May 1833, suggests that it had deepened to a rich brown with a hint of auburn, though it remained fairer than her sisters'.
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Of Branwell, whose later career rendered him unmentionable in Ellen's eyes, she had nothing to say, except that he studied regularly with his father and was already learning to paint in oils because, even at this early date, all the family expected him to have a distinguished career as an artist.
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From other sources at the time, however, we learn that he was small for his age but good-looking, with his father's aquiline nose and a high forehead. Afflicted with his sisters' poor eyesight, he was obliged to wear glasses and he wore his hair, which was the reddest in the family, rather long in what he considered an artistic fashion. With somewhat untypical self-deprecating humour, Branwell caricatured himself as a colour grinder to the great Verdopolitan portrait painter, Sir Edward de Lisle, in one of his stories of the following year.

This grinder was a fellow of singular aspect he was a Lad of perhaps 17. years of age but from his appearance he seemed at le[a]st half a score years older and his meagre freckled visage and large Roman nose thatched by a thick matt of red hair constantly changed and twisted themselves into an endless variety of incomprehensible movements. As he spoke instead of looking his auditor streight in the face he turned his eyes which were further beautified by a pair of spectacles, either toward his toes nose or fingers and while one word issued stammering from his mouth it was straightway contradicted or confused by a chaos of strange suceeding jargon.
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Like his hero, Viscount Ellrington, Branwell was an intellectual with an extensive knowledge of the classics and a passion for music. Unlike his hero, he was excitable and emotional and unable to conceal his feelings.

It must have been about this time that Branwell went to Keighley Feast
with his friend Michael Merrall, son of a local mill owner. The town was crowded with stalls, booths and sideshows which were lit up as evening fell. Branwell was in such a state of excitement that he was barely able to control himself and insisted on seeing and trying everything. When he and Merrall went on one of the fairground rocking boats, however, he was so overwrought that each time the boat plunged downwards, he screamed ‘Oh! my nerves! my nerves! Oh! my nerves!' Later, as the friends made their way on foot back to Haworth, they wrestled with each other and Branwell lost his glasses, resulting in a sleepless night as he worried about having to confess to his father how he had lost them. Fortunately for him, the confession was avoided as Merrall found the glasses, undamaged, the next morning and returned them to Branwell without his father being any the wiser.
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Branwell was also apparently involved in a village boxing club which met in an upper room of one of the public houses. No doubt part of the attraction of ‘the noble art' was that it asserted Branwell's masculinity in a house full of girls. On the other hand, he was also following in the footsteps of his much admired Lord Byron and even
Blackwood's Magazine
, which had formed so many of his other tastes, dedicated articles to the subject on a regular basis. Branwell's new interest was carried over into his writing; about this time both Ellrington and the Marquis of Douro take up pugilism in the halls of the Elysium Society.
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Odd references indicate the daily routine of life at the parsonage at this time. Breakfast – at least for Emily and Anne – was oatmeal porridge – a somewhat surprising choice to the fastidious Ellen. A portion of this meal was always reserved by them for the dog, Grasper, which appears to have been a terrier of some kind. In the afternoons the young people would walk out on the moors if the weather was favourable. Emily – her reserve temporarily forgotten – Anne and Branwell would go ahead, fording the streams and placing stepping-stones for Charlotte and Ellen who followed in their wake. Emily and Anne's favourite walk was along Sladen Beck to a place where several springs converged on the stream: with typical hyperbole, which suggests it may have played a role in their fictional writing, they called it ‘The Meeting of the Waters'. It was here that Emily, ‘half reclining on a slab of stone played like a young child with the tad-poles in the water, making them swim about, and \then/ fell to moralising on the big and the little, the brave and cowardly as she chased them \about/ with her hand'. The adults spent the afternoon more sedately, Aunt Branwell reading aloud to Patrick and arguing the issues with him. Sometimes the
discussions would continue throughout tea, which the family all took together, and Ellen observed, with some admiration, that Aunt Branwell would tilt her arguments against Patrick ‘without fear'. The household assembled once again at eight o'clock for family worship and then at nine Patrick retired to bed, pausing only to tell his ‘children' not to stay up too late and to wind the grandfather clock halfway up the stairs.
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The sole exception to this daily routine was the now customary annual ritual of inviting the Sunday school teachers to tea, which Ellen witnessed for the first time. Her genteel manners were shocked by the way these robust factory girls called their employers by their Christian names and, much to the amusement of the Brontës, she suggested that they should be taught a more respectful form of address. ‘Vain attempt!' was Emily's typically laconic response. Ellen had her revenge, however, when the girls undertook to initiate the Brontë sisters into playing some games. ‘The Brontë faces were worth anything as a study', she gleefully reported, ‘they had such a puzzled, amused, submissive expression, intently anxious though, to give pleasure and gratify others.'
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