The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (11 page)

“I am not sad, and I am not hiding anything,” I insisted, but my cheeks grew warm, and I felt Emily’s questioning eyes on me.

“You
are
sad,” said he drunkenly. “I’ve seen it in your eyes. I should know. I know all about sad.” To my consternation, Branwell’s face suddenly crumpled, and he burst into tears. “Oh God! What am I to do? The misery—the anguish—the despair!” He dropped to the floor on his knees, and cried out, “How can I live without my life? How shall I bear it?”

So stunned was I by my brother’s erratic behaviour, that I could only stand in a state of paralysed dismay. Emily went to him; she soon coaxed him, weeping, to his feet, and led him from the room. I knew she would take him upstairs and settle him in bed, as she had done on many such occasions in the past. In the deadly quiet that followed, papa let out a small sob. He stood just inside the doorway, his gaunt countenance ravaged with grief and disappointment. I wrapped his thin frame in my embrace and held him tight, at a loss for words. “I am here now, papa,” was all I could think of to say.

“I am glad of it, child,” was his broken reply.

“Let me help you back to bed,” I offered, but he waved me off with a firm hand and shuffled out of the room.

The moment papa was gone, Anne burst into tears. My own anguish, which had been suppressed for nearly a week, now welled up like a white heat within my chest and spilled forth in a torrent from my eyes.

On previous occasions when Branwell was drunk, my sisters and I had tried to maintain a strong, united front, pretending that all was well once the worst was over, even when it clearly was not. This time, however, I was too distraught to be brave; I saw, in Anne’s answering gaze, that she was equally incapable of the task. In unison, we moved into each other’s arms, where we held each other tightly and indulged our tears for some minutes. At last, we dried our eyes and sank down on the sofa, where I regained my composure.

“What on earth has happened?” I asked, as I took off my gloves and bonnet. “Why is Branwell so distraught?”

“He has been dismissed from his post.”

“Dismissed? But why? You said Mrs. Robinson thinks so highly of him!”

“She did. Oh, Charlotte! I feel so naive—so stupid. From almost the first day Branwell arrived at Thorp Green Hall, I saw that he was the favourite of all the household. I was proud of him, and delighted. Mrs. Robinson was always commenting on what a remarkable young man he is. I thought she admired and appreciated him for his skills as a tutor and an artist. Until last month, I never thought—I never imagined that
she,
that
he
could do something so—so—” Anne’s voice quivered, as fresh tears spilled onto her cheeks.

“What? What has Branwell done?”

“He has been having a love affair these three years past with Mrs. Robinson!”

I
stared at Anne in shock and consternation. “A love affair? You cannot mean it. She is a married woman, and so much his senior. Surely they did not—”

“They
did.
Imagine the very worst and most sordid possible behaviour, Charlotte, and that is what they are guilty of. A week ago Thursday, Branwell received a letter from the Reverend Edmund Robinson, expressing his outrage and sternly intimating that he had discovered Branwell’s proceedings. He charged Branwell, on pain of exposure, to break off instantly and for ever all communication with every member of his family!”

“Did you say a week ago Thursday—the 17th?”

“Yes.”

Diary: it was that same Thursday night that I had had my terrible dream. A great numbness washed over me; for some moments, I was too stunned to think or speak. “Is it possible that Mr. Robinson is mistaken? Are you certain there is truth to the charge?”

“If only there was not. It is all true, Charlotte. Branwell has admitted everything. He claims that Mrs. Robinson has been at the helm of the affair from the beginning.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Yes. We both know Branwell too well, with all his Northangerland fantasies, to think that he would lie about being seduced.”

Northangerland was the central character in Branwell’s fiction—an amalgam of Buonaparte, Satan, and the quintessential Byronic hero—a rakish figure my brother so closely identified with, that he had used the name as his pseudonym for most of his published poetry.

“I suppose you are right. In his eyes, if he could have boasted that he swept the lady of the house off her feet and into his bed, he would have seen it as a far bigger feather in his cap.”

“He said Mrs. Robinson sought him out just a few months after he arrived at Thorp Green. Branwell admired her, and was grieved by her husband’s callous treatment of her on several occasions. You know our brother has never been one to hide his emotions.”

“No; he is not.”

“When he openly and rashly expressed his feelings for her one day, to his surprise she declared feelings of her own. By the end of that first summer, she had encouraged him to—to—to go on to extremities. They met in secret at the house, or when Mr. Robinson was away. He says he is deeply in love with her. The way he talks—it is as if she has become all that matters to him in life.”

“Oh! This is too horrible. But this explains Branwell’s strange, irritable conduct over the past few years. He seemed to hate coming home for holidays, and when he
was
here, he exhibited such a wild range of feelings, from the highest spirits to the blackest of depressions—I could not understand it. On more than one occasion, I thought I detected an expression of hidden guilt in his eyes, but he always denied it.”

“I thought the same.”

“He is passed out in bed,” announced Emily, entering the room and sinking heavily into the easy chair beside us. “If we are very lucky, we will not hear a peep from him till morning.”

“Anne,” said I, “how and when did you learn the truth about all this?”

“I was taking a walk one afternoon last month through the woods behind Thorp Green, when I came upon Branwell sitting beneath a tree, writing in a note-book. When I asked what he was writing, he blushed. I was not going to press the matter, but he thrust the note-book at me and told me to read it. It was filled with poems of his own composition—most of them impassioned love poems about Mrs. Robinson. I was shocked and horrified. He only laughed and said, ‘Do not be such a prude.’ He then told me the whole story. I wanted to die of shame. I knew I could not stay in that house a moment longer.”

“I do not blame you for leaving,” said I. “I would have done the same.”

“Oh, Charlotte! You speak of blame. In some ways, I cannot help but blame myself for what has occurred.”

“What do you mean?”

Anne hesitated. Already, in the past few minutes, she had talked longer and expressed more emotion than in any conversation we had held in the past five years; I was afraid she might again withdraw into her quiet shell; but she did not.

“I have been unhappy at Thorp Green Hall for a long time, but not only with regard to my dissatisfaction with my duties as governess. I have had many other, unpleasant and undreamt of experiences of human nature, which—which have troubled me greatly. Knowing—even suspecting—what I did, I should never have recommended Branwell for a post at that house.”

Emily sat up straight in her chair and stared at Anne. “What experiences, Anne? What are you not telling us?”

Anne averted her gaze, and a blush crept over her cheeks. “I am loath to even speak of it, but since you both know nearly all already—” She took a breath, and went on, “I have seen Mrs. Robinson flirt openly with other gentlemen—guests and visitors to the house. I suspect that she was
overly friendly
with many of them—and it was not just my mistress who behaved so. In the
years since Branwell’s arrival, I have observed numerous examples of base immorality between adults who are married, but not married to each other; all the while, their own spouses were in the house or on the grounds; at times, they were in the very next room. It grieved and sickened me to witness such immoral behaviour, and to be powerless to stop it—for how could I come forward with my suspicions? Surely I would have been dismissed on the spot. I blush with shame when I reflect that, simply by remaining silent, I became an unwilling accomplice to their indiscretions. And even more when I recall that, on one occasion a year past, one of their male guests, after imbibing too much liquor, attempted to become overly familiar with me.”

“Oh Anne!” cried Emily. “What did you do?”

“I fended him off. He never spoke of it again; I believe he was too drunk to recall what had happened.”

“Anne, I am so sorry.” Tears stung my eyes as I took her hands in mine. I realised, of a sudden, that my own experiences as a governess, which I had once thought so oppressive, were in fact quite tame and inconsequential in comparison with Anne’s. “All this time, I had no idea of what you were suffering. If only you had told me, I would have insisted that you leave Thorp Green years ago.”

“That is precisely why I did not mention it. It would only have caused you needless pain. How could I be certain, if I did leave, that circumstances would be different anywhere else?” Anne gave a deep sigh. “It mortifies me now, to think that while all this was occurring, Mrs. Robinson was on intimate terms with
Branwell
—and I had no inkling! It must have fed her vanity that, at forty-three years of age, she could seduce a good-looking young man, seventeen years her junior—particularly with three beautiful daughters in the house.”

“How did they get away with it so long, I wonder?” I asked.

“Apparently, Mrs. Robinson’s lady’s maid and the family doctor were both in collusion with her,” replied Emily.

“I must admit,” added Anne, “Mrs. Robinson was very adept at deception. To her husband’s face, she always appeared entirely
proper. Behind his back, she constantly complained that he was old and sick, and could not—could not sufficiently attend to her needs.”

“Was it true, do you think?” I inquired.

“I do not know. He did not become sickly until recently, and he is not so very old; Mr. and Mrs. Robinson are the same exact age, in fact. He is a stern and intractable man, but for all his faults, I think him a far better and more respectable person than his wife.”

“How did
he
discover his wife’s infidelity?”

“We found that out only yesterday,” replied Emily, “when Branwell received a letter from the Robinsons’ doctor, whom he had befriended. As if Branwell’s previous actions had not been depraved enough, he did another incredibly stupid thing. Unable to be parted from that woman even for the few weeks of their holiday, he secretly followed them to Scarborough.”

“No!”

“The Robinsons’ gardener accompanied them on their journey, to assist the groom with the horses and luggage,” continued Emily. “He observed Branwell and Mrs. Robinson together in a boat-house, just below their lodgings at The Cliff. Apparently, said gardener felt a greater loyalty to his master than his mistress, for he wrote to Mr. Robinson upon his return home, revealing all.”

“And now Mr. Robinson has written, threatening to shoot Branwell if he dares to set foot again at Thorp Green Hall!” exclaimed Anne. “Branwell is utterly destroyed. Since Thursday he has done nothing but drink and storm and rage about the house in a frenzy of grief. We have not had a moment’s peace, except when he is at the tavern, or passed out cold.”

“I have never heard such ravings,” said Emily. “He is like a soul in hell.”

“Oh,” said I, “to think that I was whiling away my time at Hathersage for more than a week, and you were all suffering so. I wanted to come home a week ago Thursday; I
knew
I should have.”

“I am glad you stayed a little longer, if you enjoyed yourself,” said Emily. “God knows, it is not going to be any fun around
here
for a long while.”

“Charlotte, what are we to do?” said Anne.

“I do not know.”

On one point, I felt compassion for Branwell, and great sympathy for his plight: the fact that he had been attracted to, and had great love for, some one who was already married. It was a hopeless situation, beset with agonies, heartaches, and torments which (I acknowledged only in the deepest, most private recesses of my mind and heart) I had some past, mortifying experience.

“I am utterly heart-sick,” I said at last, taking careful measure of my words. “We cannot choose the objects of our affections, any more than we can choose our parents. If, however, by some misfortune, our feelings lead us in a direction that is not condoned by God or by society, we can—
we must—exert self-control
; we must
not act
on those unlawful desires. The fact that Branwell did—that he succumbed to temptation with Mrs. Robinson—is truly wicked.”

Emily glanced sharply at me at this pronouncement; the shrewd expression in her eyes told me she perceived that a personal truth lay behind it. However, she only said, “I agree with you. Branwell has tried to blame all this on Mrs. Robinson; but no matter how blatantly that woman threw herself at him, he was an equal player in all of this. He cannot justify his actions.”

Branwell held every one in our household a hostage of his torment for the next ten days, alternately drowning his distress of mind with alcohol or stunning it with opiates. He had only to cross the street from Haworth church to buy a sixpence-worth of opium, readily available at Betty Hardacre’s drug-shop; and to our great despair, nothing we said or did could dissuade him from the practice. When we could bear it no longer, my sisters and I sent him away to Liverpool for a week in the company of his friend John Brown, where they took a pleasure steamer along
the coast of North Wales. I believe the brief respite did him good.

“I know what you think of me, Charlotte,” said Branwell one warm, August evening, not long after his return. “I know I have brought all my miseries upon my own head, but I am determined to fix myself.”

I was seated on a stile in a meadow behind the parsonage, overlooking the moors, which were lushly carpeted in the brilliant purple hue of summer. I had ventured out alone to find a bit of cool breeze to read by in the fading light of day, when Branwell appeared. Closing my book now, I said, “I applaud your determination. I look forward to meeting the new and improved Branwell.”

“You can wipe that sceptical look right off your face. Look at the progress I have made: I am standing here, cheerfully speaking to you, without the stimulus of six glasses of whisky!”

“An admirable achievement—but occasioned, as we both know, only by the absolute want of means—as papa has steadfastly refused to give you any money.”

“I tell you, Charlotte, I am going to change.” He perched on the stile beside me and gazed out pensively across the moor. “Nothing will ever again bring me so low as the nightmare of my old days, years ago, at Luddenden Foot. I would rather cut off my own hand, than to undergo again the groveling carelessness and malignant debauchery which too often marked my conduct when I was there.”

“Why, Branwell? Why did you act thus? You always said that you liked that job.”

“I did. The railroad is an exciting new venture, and it allowed me to earn my keep. But you
must
know, having been raised on Virgil and Byron, I aspired to greater things than ‘clerkin-charge’ of a tiny, out-of-the-way rail station, housed in a rude little hut. There was nothing to do! My only friends were in Halifax, and I could not go there as often as I liked. What other recourse did I have, besides drink?”

“Surely you do not expect me to dignify that with an answer?”

“At least I was not entirely lost to
everything
while I was there. I did write—or rewrite—a lot of poetry.”

“I remember.” I sighed. “I am a little envious of you, you know.”

“Envious of
me
? Why?”

“Because your poetry has been published. I have long dreamt of being published myself.”

“Well,
dreaming
of it will not make it happen, sister dear. You have talent, and you know it—but as they say: nothing ventured, nothing gained. To be published, you must first write something worthy of
being
published, and then you must be bold enough to submit it.”

“True.” I met his gaze. The affection in his eyes was so genuine, and he looked so bonny and fine, sitting there with the rays of the setting sun burnishing his carroty hair to gold, that for a moment he seemed like the Branwell of old. As children, we had been soulmates, inseparable, in perfect tune with each other; we had been able to complete each other’s sentences, and anticipate each other’s every thought and move; and we had both delighted in a continuous rivalry of creativity and composition that lasted nearly two decades. Was it possible that we might get a measure of our friendship back? Would Branwell truly try to “fix” himself? I said: “I have greatly missed you of late.”