Brontës (50 page)

Throughout October and November Branwell was also heavily involved in completing the second volume of ‘The Life of Alexander Percy'. In one of the best and most interesting stories he had yet written, he followed the fortunes of Northangerland's wife and evil genius, Augusta di Segovia. Their passionate, destructive and death-defying love, which is based on an almost instinctive and complete knowledge and understanding of each other, foreshadows and possibly inspired the more famous love between Heathcliff and Catherine in Emily's novel,
Wuthering Heights
. Northangerland tells Augusta, for example:

I know thee and thou knowest how I love thee We will not confess what needs no confession but rather let me live an hour of heaven here in the arms of one with whom I sacrifice all hope of it hereafter – O Augusta with you here I do feel happy. as I or you can feel I know I am Alexander Percy who thinks that years with thee are bought cheaply by Eternity –
²⁴

At Augusta's instigation, Percy arranges for Sdeath to murder his father so that he can inherit his fortune and estates immediately and pay off his own huge gambling debts. Although patricide is suspected it cannot be proved, but greed proves their downfall. Augusta persuades Percy to renege on his debts and he returns to their house to find her lying dead in her room, murdered by Sdeath on the orders of the moneylenders. Augusta's death finally drives Percy into the atheism with which he had flirted for so many years, tainting his mourning with the blackest despair. Like Heathcliff, he too is haunted by the image of his dead beloved:

Thou art gone but I am here

Left behind and mourning on

Doomed in dreams to Deem thee near

But to awake and find thee gone
²⁵

Though the loss of Augusta explains Percy's future atheism and melancholy, the continuation of his story is envisaged at the end with the introduction
of Mary Henrietta Wharton, Percy's future wife and mother of his daughter, Mary Percy. As soon as this retrospective was finished, Branwell went on to a new venture, writing poetry with the specific purpose in mind of securing its publication in
Blackwood's Magazine
. In the new year he launched into yet another new project, plunging the fortunes of Angria into a horrendous spiral of war against the Government forces of Verdopolis which rapidly gave way to civil war within the kingdom itself.
²⁶

Branwell's confidence in himself and his own abilities cannot be better summarized than in the letter he wrote to
Blackwood's Magazine
on 8 December 1835. This was at least the third attempt he had made to be accepted as a contributor to the magazine. In previous letters, he now admitted:

I have perhaps spoken too openly respecting the extent of my powers, But I did so because I determined to say what I beleived; I know that I am not one of the wretched writers of the day, I know that I possess strength to assist you beyond some of your own contributors; but I wish to make you the Judge in this case and give you the benefit of its desiscion [decision].
²⁷

Branwell had been prompted to write again by the news that James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who had had such a profound influence on the young Brontës as a poet, author, and figure in the
Noctes Ambrosianae
, had died on 21 November. Having had no reply to his previous letters, Branwell was determined to receive a reply this time and began in a way calculated to attract attention. ‘Sir,' he demanded of the editor, ‘Read what I write;' he continued in less aggressive mood, citing his favourite passages from
Blackwood's Magazine
and offering himself as a contributor in place of Hogg.

He and others like him gave your Magazine the peculiar character which made it famous: – As these men die it will decay, unless thier places be supplied by others like them. – Now Sir, to you I appear writing with conceited assurance, – but
I am not
– for I know myself so far as to beleive in my own originality; and on that ground I desire of you admittance into your ranks; And do not wonder that I apply so determinedly, for the remembrances I spoke of, have fixed you and your Magazine in such a manner upon my mind that the Idea of striving to aid another periodical is
horribly repulsive
. My resolution is to devote my ability to you, and for Gods sake, till you see wether or not I can serve you do not so coldly refuse my aid …

Now Sir, do not act like a common place person, but like a man willing to examine for himself. Do not t[urn] from the naked truth of my letters but
prove me
– and if I do not stand the proof I will not farther press myself on you – If I do stand it – Why – you have lost an able writer in James Hogg and God grant you may gain one in

Patrick Branwell Brontë
²⁸

Though Branwell's obviously sincere desire to become a contributor to
Blackwood's Magazine
shone through his letter, the careless spellings, numerous crossings out and frequent, startling changes of handwriting did little to substantiate his claims to the editor's attention. His apparent arrogance and hectoring style, though hardly diplomatic, were not sufficient in themselves to merit rejection. Similar letters regularly appeared in the pages of
Blackwood's–
though Branwell may have misjudged his recipient in assuming that the jocose house style of the magazine was also appropriate for a genuine letter to the editor.
²⁹

Branwell faced the new year of 1836 in confident mood: if his future as yet appeared unclear it was only because he had a plethora of talents. If his artistic schemes never materialized then a career in letters beckoned. For the moment he would hedge his bets by pursuing both.

For the rest of his family the second half of 1835 had not been a particularly happy time. Charlotte had taken up her post as a teacher at Roe Head with deep reluctance. ‘Did I not once say Ellen you ought to be thankful for your independence?' she asked her friend. ‘I felt what I said at the time, and I repeat it now with double earnestness'. At least, however, as she also admitted, ‘my lines have fallen in pleasant places'.
³⁰
She was going to a place she knew, to work for Miss Wooler whom she loved and respected; her sister Emily would be with her and both Ellen and Mary Taylor would be near at hand. It is probable, too, that the prospect of teaching young girls was not as yet unpleasant to her. It is often forgotten in the despair and bitterness of her later experiences, particularly as a governess, that Charlotte could devise no happier fate for the heroines of her novels, if they had no hope of marriage, than to run their own school.
³¹

Though she was now entering the teaching profession, Charlotte herself was, at nineteen, very much of a marriageable age. As yet no suitor had approached her, but as an independent young woman earning her own living at Roe Head she might well attract the attention of a prospective husband. She was, after all, replacing a teacher who had left Roe Head to get
married.
³²
It was undoubtedly the possibility of her forming an unsuitable attachment, away from the careful supervision of her father and aunt, that prompted Patrick to write once more to his old friend, Elizabeth Firth Franks:

As two of my dear children, are soon to be placed near you, I take the liberty of writing to you a few lines, in order to request both you and Mr Franks, to be so kind, as to interpose with your advice and counsel, to them, in any case of necessity – and if expedient to write to Miss Branwell, or me, if our interference should be requisite. I will charge them, strictly, to attend to what you may advise … They, both, have good abilities, & as far as I can judge their principles are good also, but they are very young, and unacquainted with the ways of this delusive, and insnaring world, and though, they will be placed under the superintendence, of Miss Wooler, who will I doubt not, do what she can for their good, Yet, I am well aware, that neither they, nor any other, can ever, in this land of probation, lie beyond the reach of temptation.
³³

Aware of how indignant such a letter would make Charlotte, Patrick did not tell either of his daughters that he had written, contenting himself with the thought that Mrs Franks would be his eyes and ears.

In the end, however, it was not Charlotte but Emily who was to cause the family concern. Apart from the brief six months she had spent at the Clergy Daughters' School nearly ten years earlier, she had never spent any length of time away from home before. As if to reinforce the separation from her family, her first full day at school actually fell on her seventeenth birthday, the first she had ever passed away from home. Life as a schoolgirl at Roe Head had been difficult for Charlotte and it is unlikely to have been any easier for Emily, despite the advantages she had over her sister. She was neither as absolutely alone nor as unprepared as Charlotte had been, having had the benefit of lessons from her older sister based on what Charlotte herself had learnt at Roe Head. On the other hand, she had several disadvantages. Her relationship to a teacher may have made her vulnerable to unpleasantness from, or even ostracism by, her fellow pupils. The round of school routine would leave the sisters little time for private conversation and Charlotte may have slept in her own room away from the dormitory.
³⁴
Perhaps most important of all was her age, for at seventeen she would have been one of the oldest pupils in the school. Miss Wooler's practice of teaching new girls separately until they had reached
the required standard to join the rest of the class must have been particularly galling when pupils much younger than herself had already earned their places. Even when she joined them, she is likely to have been self-conscious both physically and mentally. Being tall for her age, she must have attracted even more malicious attention than Charlotte had done by her inexpensive and unfashionable clothing. Her intelligence, which a later teacher was to rate more highly than Charlotte's,
³⁵
must have added to her frustration with the learning by rote which formed such a large part of the school syllabus.

Added to all these problems was the fact that the pervasive nature of school routine effectively ensured that Emily had no time to spend in Gondal fantasies. Though nothing remains of the Gondal stories written before 1838, there is no doubt that these had already reached the same levels of complexity and sophistication as Charlotte and Branwell's Angria.
³⁶
Until now, Emily had always been free to let her imagination wander at will: though she had had lessons and household duties to perform, so long as these were completed satisfactorily, the rest of her time had been at her own disposal. Now, for the first time in her life, virtually every hour of her day was organized for her and there was scarcely a spare moment even to think about Gondal, let alone write about it. She could not even indulge in Gondal talk, for Anne, her playing partner, was far away at home in Haworth. For Emily the need to follow through her Gondal fantasies was so intense that it transcended the bounds of the imagination and affected her physical wellbeing. Deprived of the stimulus of Gondal, she had nothing to make the rigid routine of daily school life bearable.

When a schoolgirl herself, Charlotte had been able to turn her imaginative powers to good account by telling stories which won her friends, but Emily's extreme reticence, which Ellen had remarked on two years earlier, made this impossible for her. After the quiet and privacy of life at Haworth Parsonage, it must have been anathema to the seventeen-year-old Emily to be compelled to spend all her waking and sleeping hours in the company of boisterous, unimaginative and unsympathetic girls whom Charlotte herself, in one of her more vitriolic moods, described as ‘fat-headed oafs'. Though having at least some time to herself, Charlotte, too, suffered from the loss of privacy attendant on boarding school life.

The Ladies went into the school-room to do their exercises & I crept up to the bed-room to be
alone
for the first time that day . Delicious was the
sensation I experienced as I laid down on the spare-bed & resigned myself to the Luxury of twilight & Solitude.
³⁷

If Charlotte felt the need for privacy, how much more must Emily have done when she had to share even her bed with one of her fellow pupils? At seventeen, too, it must have been difficult to change the habits of the past ten years and adapt to the oppressive rigidity of the daily routine. Her misery was compounded by the fact that from the schoolroom and dormitory windows she could see the surrounding moorland hills slowly turning from the green and russet hues of summer to the glorious purple of flowering heather as July gave way to August and September.
³⁸
A tantalizing reminder of her own beloved moors at Haworth, which she was free to wander at will, this served only to reinforce the confining atmosphere of school. Her homesickness became so overpowering that she became literally ill, as Charlotte later explained:

Liberty was the breath of Emily's nostrils; without it, she perished. The change from her own home to a school, and from her own very noiseless, very secluded, but unrestricted and inartificial mode of life, to one of disciplined routine (though under the kindliest auspices), was what she failed in enduring. Her nature proved here too strong for her fortitude. Every morning when she woke, the vision of home and the moors rushed on her, and darkened and saddened the day that lay before her. Nobody knew what ailed her but me – I knew only too well. In this struggle her health was quickly broken: her white face, attenuated form, and failing strength threatened rapid decline. I felt in my heart she would die if she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained her recall.
³⁹

Emily's symptoms, so forcibly recalling the spectre of the consumption which had carried off Maria and Elizabeth, did not allow of any delay. By the end of October, just three months after setting out for Roe Head, Emily was back again in the regenerative atmosphere of her home at Haworth. She was fortunate that Charlotte, too, was suffering from the enforced deprivation of her own imaginative world: it was quite true that ‘nobody knew what ailed her but me', for who else but one of her own siblings could have recognized the importance of allowing the imagination free rein? That such freedom was inextricably linked with home, Charlotte also recognized quite clearly. Eighteen months later, when her own sense of deprivation was beginning to overpower her, she wrote: