[In the following excerpt, Knapp characterizes Brontë as a young man forever mourning the loss of his childhood, unable to achieve any measure of self-discipline, maturity, or strength of character and hiding himself in a fantasy world rather than facing reality.]

There was a light—but it is gone.
There was a Hope—but all is o'er,
And friendless, sightless, left alone,
I go where thou hast gone before,
And yet I shall not see thee more.
Ha! say not that the dying man
Can only think of present pain,
Oh no! Oh no! it is not so,
For where, Maria, where art thou!(1)

Branwell, like Romantics such as Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge, cultivated his imagination and emotions rather than his reason, thereby yielding to the continuous lure and excitement of the adventuresome, supernatural, morbid, and melancholy in life. His poetry, prose, and life-style reveal a painful egocentricity and overwhelming tendency toward self-indulgence. Unlike his highly disciplined sisters, who were continually attempting to deal with problems at hand, Branwell spent his time looking back, mournfully, toward his childhood. He set out to recapture and integrate into his present those happy years, through the medium of writing. Because he never had the strength or willpower necessary to step out from the binding and sweetly endearing effects of his childhood, he never grew, psychologically or aesthetically.

Hypersensitive, physically small, and emotionally frail, Branwell, unable to discover his ground bed, may be identified with the eternal adolescent type. His weakly structured ego and his highly active imagination were always surging forth uncontrolled, without direction or self-discipline. Moody and frequently subject to an overwhelming sense of despair and helplessness, Branwell always alternated between what Goethe depicted in The Sufferings of Young Werther and Faust as the heights of jubilation and the depths of despair. Nor did Branwell have the stamina to pursue a professional goal: enthusiastic and self-confident at first, the incipient writer, painter, railroad clerk, organist, tutor, would with time, feel increasingly disappointed with his endeavors, after which lethargy would set in. His lack of success may be attributed to his inability to work regularly, assiduously, or to follow through in pursuit of a chosen goal. Never had he developed the willpower or self-control to perfect his art. Rather than dealing directly with the problems at hand, or even learning to face himself and struggle through whatever the difficulties involved, he sought facile answers in a world of dream and fantasy. Unendowed with genius, unguided by a rigorous and knowledgeable hand, such an individual is most frequently doomed to failure.

Deprivation of a mother figure or anima (soul), defined as the unconscious feminine aspect of a man's personality, left Branwell unable to develop a conscious attitude toward woman. In that his projection onto women remained inchoate, he was unequal to the task of differentiating or evaluating the various facets of their personalities. Unless brought into consciousness, the anima is unable to fulfill its function as mediator between the rational and subliminal factors of a personality. The retaining wall that helps prevent subliminal contents from spilling over onto the rational world is nonexistent, and may overwhelm the individual.

Anima images, appearing in creative works, dreams, myths, and legends since time immemorial, range from harlot to the hyperdulian Mary. They are associated with eros—that is, with love and relatedness. That Branwell had been divested of his anima—an eros figure that establishes feeling relationships in a person's life—indicated that whatever values he saw in women, existed on a most primitive and rudimentary level. A person divested of the ability of differentiating between the multiple facets of a personality, including his own, is given to irrational or instinctual behavior, dominated by the passion of the moment. Branwell's family and friends commented on the fact that throughout his life he was a prey to irresponsible behavior, a victim of his desires, and driven by a sense of urgency. Had his anima been sentient and differentiated, he would have had the power to think out or assess his own personality traits and those of others. His anima would not only have been a source of inspiration to him, but would have led to greater understanding vis-à-vis others, thus opening the door to deeper layers of his psyche and affording him the possibility of building profounder and long-lived relationships.²

Feelings of bereavement for Maria and for the paradisiac world of his childhood left Branwell fundamentally solitary, unable to relate to others except on the most superficial of levels. Nor did he overcome his sense of loss for that composite mother/sister/anima figure that Maria had been for him. Appearing as she does in so many of his poems—“Misery I” (1835), “Misery II” (1836), “Caroline” (1837)—she is perfection; transcending the workaday world, she assumes divine status. As a spiritual, comforting, and loving force, she has the power to alleviate any and all sorrow, ushering in moods of sweet serenity.

And entering—Though a sacred stream
          Of radiance round him fell,
It could not with its silent beam
          His eager spirit quell. …
“Where hath my Gentle Lady gone?
          I do not find her here.”

The death of Elizabeth, the second eldest Brontë sister, a little over a month after Branwell's beloved Maria, was yet another break in the link with his heavenly past. When told that his mother, Maria, and Elizabeth had all been called to heaven by “Jesus,” he alertly questioned the reasons for Jesus to cause his family and him such pain. Was Jesus displeased with the Brontës? Could they, young and old, be to blame for some evil act or thought?

Death, disease, as well as a sense of irremediable guilt and loss settled over the Brontë home, as noted in the previous chapter, wreaking its savage destruction on Branwell's already-faltering sense of identity and purpose. Although he had grown intellectually and psychologically, his intense sense of divestiture remained constant, as attested to by such verses as “Misery I”:

Over Death's unfathomed sea,
Dark and dread the waves dividing. …
Shores of life, farewell forever,
          Where thy happiness has lain,
Lost for ever! Death must sever
          All thy hopes and joys and pain!

Instead of inculcating in Branwell's mind the necessity of structuring his life, his sisters spoiled him. Nothing they did could replace Maria's caring and reassuring manner, and their efforts remained emotionally unsatisfying to Branwell. The well-meaning but overly solicitous family did nothing but increase his willful ways and his uncontrollable temper tantrums.³

Favored in all ways, as the only boy, Branwell was given a room to himself with a window looking out on the moors, while his sisters slept in a tiny room on cots, folded by day to give them study space. So precious was he to the Brontë family that he was “Brannii the Genii.”

Many questions remain unresolved concerning Branwell's upbringing. Why, for example, did Reverend Brontë not send his son to boarding school, as he had his daughters, insisting, instead, on taking charge of his education at home? Perhaps he believed that only he had the expertise necessary to educate him properly in Latin, Greek, and the classics and, certainly, in matters of religion. Or was the father projecting his own unfulfilled desires onto his son? Reverend Brontë had failed to live out the brilliant career his backers had predicted for him and about which he had dreamed in his youth. The attempt to fit Branwell into a mold could only create a crushing dichotomy between what the young man considered himself to be and the adult he must become. He had to shine, to excel, to outdo the others in whatever way he could. He was unconsciously terrified that he might not be able to live up to his father's expectations. Nor was his anxiety alleviated by the stern and religiously oriented atmosphere pervading the Brontë home. The shadow of death, sorrow, and sin exacerbated a pronounced Brontë proclivity: morbidity.

Branwell always tried to please his father in every way by living up to the image he had of him: he studied, obeyed, and seemingly carried out whatever orders were given him in order to feel “safe.” Wrestling with conflicted views and feelings, Branwell may have felt it wiser to reveal his good side only—those characteristics he knew would not disappoint or anger his father. Early in life he mastered the art of hiding his evil or shadow side, defined as those factors within a personality that might be considered unacceptable. His dual nature, however, created such acute tension within his psyche that a collision between his rational and conscious side and his chaotic subliminal sphere was inevitable. Such confrontation ignited the sparks that precede explosion—and the temper tantrum ran its course. Branwell was a victim of his own inability to clarify his frustrations and to bring his needs and fears into the open.

The emotionally disadvantaged Branwell, it may be said, lived a dual life from a very early age: on the one hand, he identified with his father's exalted image of him, on the other, with his own understanding of what he was really like. Such a split prevented him from ever digging into his own ground bed. He felt “rootless,” unable to find himself or even develop a sense of identity. Lacking the steadiness that would have helped him find his way and given him a sense of harmony and balance, he became a victim of extremes, his acts taking on impulsive and quixotic qualities. Yearning for attention and admiration from father, sisters, and whoever visited the parsonage, Branwell was always ready to impress people with his fine intellect and his great charm—tactics evidently designed to counteract his inherent timidity and sense of inferiority. Matters were not helped by the fact that he was shorter than most young men, physically delicate, high-strung, with poor eyesight, and probably the butt of ridicule because of his golden-red hair. In one of his semiautobiographical narratives, “Life of Warner Howard Warner” (1838), he describes himself as a “shy-looking little being” who would “upon contradiction or scolding” get violently red, bite his lips “which prognosticated something other than a milk and water man.”⁴

Writing was Branwell's outlet. His epics, sagas, essays, dialogues, and poems were products of an active imagination, which he developed to an intensely high degree. Poured into his sagas were all the things he could not express overtly: his affects, instinctual drives, fantasies, dreams, ideas, thoughts and concepts. What he wrote became his reality, his way of adapting to the world.

Revealing patterns are contained in Branwell's juvenilia. That heroes rather than heroines abound in his writings is natural; that conquerors are strong types able to sweep over lands and oceans is also to be expected. The antithesis of their creator, Branwell's soldier-characters succeed in dominating events and people by sheer will, perseverance, and fortitude. Battles are fought rather than peace maintained. Cruelties of the bloodiest kind—relatively common, as in most war games—are unusual in the extremely detailed description of the ferocities involved. Interesting as well is the fact that whenever his heroes are put into inextricable situations, rather than apply reason to ferret out alternative routes to resolve their predicament, Branwell causes them to be killed. His sisters, on the other hand, thought out their heroes' or heroines' moves; thus they frequently were able to rectify unpleasant or dangerous situations rather than always resort to blood and gore. With Branwell, destruction in his writings becomes a way of life for his protagonists.

Branwell's “play” habits were symptomatic of his character. Killing off his heroes instead of expending the energy necessary to think of ways of extracting them from their dilemma demanded much less effort on his part than attempting to deal with problems rationally and openly. Unlike his sisters who, during their early teens, similarly spent a good deal of their time living in their imaginary world but also had to tend to household duties, Branwell focused on himself. While the girls learned to deal with the problems of running a home, going to school, and working for strangers, their brother studied, or wrote, or amused himself through imagination.

A psychologically fascinating figure appeared in one of Branwell's lead articles (included in Magazine, a creative endeavor he and Charlotte worked on) entitled, “Kairail Fish” (1829). This, an incredible creature of the sea, captured by sailors, measured one hundred feet in length by twenty to thirty feet in width. Its horn, which was hooked at the end, had been cut off by sailors, but grew back within half an hour.⁵ Branwell's imaginary monster of the sea is reminiscent of the mythical hydra of Lerna—a nine-headed poisonous water snake whose very breath was fatal to anyone approaching it. Unlike Hercules, who overpowered this destructive power thanks to the help of Iolaus, his nephew and also his charioteer, Branwell had neither the strength of the Greek hero nor a relative or friend capable of helping him out of his psychological impasse.

What does Branwell's Kairail Fish suggest psychologically? This impregnable and horrific figure living in the depths of his collective unconscious symbolized a latent but destructive power within him, a killer instinct that emerged not only in his writings but also during his mad tempers in the face of problems or entanglements of the moment.⁶ Nor, like Hercules, had he recourse to a wiser person who might have helped him deal with and finally accept this negative shadow element raging within him. Had he done so, he possibly could have integrated it into his whole personality, thus rerouting its raging and energetic power.

Branwell's war fantasies became overt shortly after his father gave him his first set of twelve toy soldiers on his seventh birthday (1824); another twelve two years later; a band of Turkish musicians (1827) and another set of Turkish musicians and a band of Indians (1828). Branwell ushered his toy soldiers into life in his action-packed saga, “The History of the Young Men.” In this and other works, he, together with his sisters, conjured imaginary lands, thrilling situations enacted by dukes and ladies, noble explorers, pirates, murderers, and cowards, all of whom made their way around the globe from Africa to India, Europe to the South Pacific.

It will be remembered that Branwell gave one of his second set of soldiers—the “Young Men”—to each of his sisters, that Charlotte named hers “The Duke of Wellington,” while her brother chose to name his soldier Napoleon. That Napoleon was Wellington's arch enemy, even in play, may suggest an unconscious rivalry for power between Branwell and Charlotte. Did he fear his sister's domineering manner? Or, perhaps, her alliance with her two sisters against him? Was it the ordered, methodical, and secretive ways of a matriarchate that made him feel inferior to them? Was it rejection that he feared? He knew his sisters to be hard workers, persevering, and accepting of their defects. Had they not been told, when entering Roe Head School, that they had never really learned grammar, knew little geography and were lacking in many other disciplines? Such criticism did not drive them to despair, but rather pointed the way to overcoming their inadequacies through hard work. Living a relatively cloistered life and treated as a genius by his family, Branwell himself was never put to the test.

Composing “The History of the Young Men” (1830-31) without Charlotte's collaboration, Branwell signed the work John Bud, Esq., “the greatest prose writer.” Such epithets not only fulfilled a need to declare his own worth, but were symptomatic of a rebellious streak in him aimed against sister domination. The action of his narrative, replete with wars, killings, cannibals, devils, and monsters, takes place in the eighteenth century in an African region extending from the Gulf of Guinea northwards, including the “famous” and spectacular Glass Town Harbour (later to be called “Verdopolis”).⁷ The author notes, “I am the Chief Genius Brannii, with me there are three others”—namely, his three sisters. In his fantasy world, Branwell was the leader of them all, that is, he dominated the group: man over woman.

The magazine he started, Branwell's Blackwood's Magazine, was modeled after Blackwood's Magazine, which he and his sisters read diligently, discussed, and abstracted with gusto. After the first three numbers, however, Charlotte, determined to lead the way, to set the goals and style of the venture, took over its direction, thus ending, as she wrote, the “Rule of Dullness.” Branwell, the weaker of the two, yielded to her wishes, as stated in his “Concluding Address” (July 29) to his readers.⁸

What was impressive in Branwell's Blackwood's Magazine was his incredible knowledge of the art of magazine writing and editing, as well as his familiarity with French culture and history. His articles covering a variety of subjects, ranged from a “Journal of a Frenchman,” “The Swiss Artist,” “Review of the Causes of the Late War,” “The Bay of Glasstown,” to all sorts of poems, paintings, etc.⁹

Many types of hero figures—good and bad—appear in the almost frenetically written pages. One of them, Young Soult, the Rymer, was the son of a real historical figure, a marshal in Napoléon's army who was regarded with such respect by the British that years later, when visiting London during the reign of King Louis Philippe, he was invited by Wellington to Apsley House. Interacting with Charlotte in their military strategies, Branwell sought someone of Wellington's stature, and created Soult's son. Charlotte, describing Branwell's hero in terms of Glass Town literature, underscored the stunning identification between her brother and Young Soult.¹⁰

Although “Young Soult's Poem” (1829) was conventional in every way, it nevertheless sang his hero's unconsciously inflated feelings of himself. Violence grows to unprecedented heights as Branwell focuses on Young Soult's escapades; evil in all of its forms is forever constellated in scenes of excessive brutality, deception, blood and gore, revealing a very real, but still-unconscious hostility on Branwell's part. Charlotte's sagas, on the other hand—even those written in collaboration with her brother—although replete with iniquities, emphasize what is right and disclose a strong sense of morality in her characters who are sound in feeling, and yielding when need be.¹¹

Branwell, who frequently identifies with evil, created several satanic creatures, one of the most vicious being Alexander Percy, Earl of Northangerland.¹² Like the Kairail Fish, Percy loomed large in Branwell's unconscious, again pointing to the powerfully destructive and unassimilated forces inhabiting his psyche.

Understandably, Branwell's emphasis on the military and all of its paraphernalia was implicit in the atmosphere of his generation. Europe had gone through seismic upheavals—the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the Napoleonic wars, the Restoration, and in 1830, yet another, although slight political tremor with the advent of Louis Philippe.

A general letdown followed the tempestuous upheavals on the Continent, paving the way for the onset of a type of lethargy, narcissism, and self-indulgent depressive state that the French labeled mal du siècle. François-René de Chateaubriand's literary hero René, who suffered from lethargy, apathy, passivity, and general morbidity was the prototype of scores of young men throughout the nineteenth century. That Chateaubriand's name appears on the title page of “Young Soult” suggests the impact of this egocentric Frenchman's writings on Branwell. We know Branwell had read Chateaubriand's Travels in Greece and the Holy Land. If he had not actually read René (1805), Branwell most certainly had heard of this work, so instrumental in spreading the virus of depression, melancholia, pessimism, lethargy, and vagueness of soul to so many young people in Europe, including its poets, Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, and the young Hugo and Goethe. In René, Chateaubriand probes the feeling world of an impressionable, highly sensitive young man, given to tears and suffering from ennui. The product of a solitary and joyless upbringing in Brittany, René responded emotionally to its forests, moors, and windswept oceans. His only companion and his great love, the single person with whom until her death he shared his fantasies of traveling to distant lands, was Lucile, his high-strung and unbalanced sister.

Unlike the French writer, Branwell did not probe his inner world, but rather focused on externalities, taking his heroes all over the globe. But whereas Chateaubriand traveled to England and to America, Branwell, until almost nineteen, had gone virtually nowhere. Most importantly, he did not possess Chateaubriand's genius.

Whereas many Romantics attached a whole philosophical dimension to their writings, such as a belief in the goodness of humankind—an aftermath of Jean Jacques Rousseau's cult of the “noble savage”—Branwell's juvenilia and his poetry had no moral thesis. In this regard, they differed as well from the writings of the politically oriented English Romantics.

William Wordsworth crossed the Channel and sided with the French Revolutionists, returning only after his family, dismayed by the excesses of the French proletariat, cut off his allowance. During his stay in France, however, he became cognizant of the meaning of political and mob uproar, as well as the injustices of economic disparity. In Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with Coleridge, he stated his beliefs that the lives of the poor and destitute are fitting themes for poetry, and that everyday speech should be used rather than the pompous and conventional language of the classicists. Nature was Wordsworth's catalyst. Since it was animated with an active spirit, it remained his companion throughout his life. Branwell was engaged neither in helping the poor nor in political activity. His juvenilia and poetry are devoid of moral obligations or theories; they merely mirror his mood of the moment, motivated by conquest, or waxing in unutterable melancholia.

Branwell was certainly taken with Wordsworth's emphasis on the feeling world (as implicit in “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”) and his mystic passion for Nature, an ally with which he identifies. Likewise Branwell could relate to the world of the opium-addicted Coleridge who delved into strange supernatural realms. Like Coleridge, Branwell believed in the supremacy of the imagination over that of literary rules. Like Coleridge, he was temperamentally weak and unwilling to struggle over the execution of his poetry, rendering his efforts often problematic.

The fact that the Romantics focused mostly on the individual's subjective reactions to their inner and outer world fed directly into Branwell's own narcissistic nature. Shelley's “Prometheus Unbound” and “Excursion” convey the zest of renewed youth, expectancy, marvel, and an idealism that promised a new way on earth—a pledge of heaven. Keats also took refuge from sordid existence by dreaming of marvels. The ancient world of myth prevailed in “Endymion” and “Hyperion,” along with divine forms, beautiful beings, and bountiful nature, with its woodlands and caverns. Like the despairing, somber, violent, voluptuous, passionate, reckless, and rebellious Byron, Branwell looked upon himself as both a victim and hero of destiny. He would have liked to live out his passions and sorrows in a “Childe Harold” of his own manufacture, or in the wild and supernatural motifs of Byron's Manfred, Cain, and Don Juan. Unlike Byron, Branwell joined neither the fight for the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule, nor any other movement or struggle.

Branwell was a derivative poet; he was talented, to be sure, but not an innovator. He was a rhymer, as was his hero Percy, an explorer of feelings and a fighter—but on paper. Lacking perseverance, rarely if ever did he probe the world of thought in his writings. His themes, images, and frenetic pulsations, therefore, take on a sameness and a monotony that was, interestingly, implicit in some of Wordsworth's later poems, and not infrequently present in the writings of some Romantics, such as Chatterton, “the neglected genius,” and others who were fated to die young.

Branwell's imaginary world expanded and ascended in keeping with his moods. His covering letter when sending his poem, “Misery,” to Blackwood's Magazine on April 8, 1836, instead of being courteous and humble, was aggressive, almost uncouth, and remained unanswered.¹³ Nor did Wordsworth reply to his letter written in a similarly arrogant style, in which he enclosed his poem of desperation, “Still and bright, in twilight shining.”¹⁴

Did the editor of Blackwood's Magazine and Wordsworth consider Branwell's pained and seething outpourings merely the work of a banal rhymer? Or were they put off by his gushing language and all the trappings of its Gothicism: the dungeon, the darkened sky, the harsh wind, the ancestral glory, the hopelessness of it all? Branwell's bitterness and inner hurt following Wordsworth's silence was perhaps more devastating than his disappointment over the unresponsiveness of the editor of Blackwood's Magazine. Nevertheless, that the eternal adolescent's naïve plea for help remained unanswered did not diminish his productivity, though it did wreak havoc on his feelings of self-worth.

Branwell's energy, nevertheless, remained unabated. From the age of ten to seventeen, he wrote more than thirty volumes of stories, poems, plays, journals, histories, literary criticism, not counting those that have been lost or destroyed. His incredible knowledge of French history and literature was impressive as were the vast amounts of information he had amassed concerning multiple subjects including London's topography. Unconsciously, he pressured himself continuously to live outside of the world of reality rather than face it and confront the problems of the adolescent.

Loneliness, after his sisters' departures for school or for their posts, might have been instrumental in encouraging Branwell to join the Haworth boxing club, thus finding the companionship of other young men that had been denied him before. Important to him were the workouts he hoped would strengthen his body, in which he took such pride. After all, he might have reasoned, had not Byron been fascinated with sports? As a member of the Boxing Club, the seat of which was the Black Bull Hotel, Branwell met all sorts of people, including, most probably, some unsavory drinking partners. Naïve, unaccustomed to worldly men, he was influenceable. That he felt different from others and set apart, given his education and breeding, was a source of humiliation for him, increasing his already pronounced sense of alienation. Other reasons for the dichotomy between himself and others stemmed from the fact that members of the Boxing Club worked for a living while he did not. Whatever small sums he had were given him by his father and sisters. In time, he grew ashamed of his penury, trying to remedy it as best he could by borrowing from anyone willing to lend him whatever amounts he needed at the moment.

Blind to his son's weaknesses, Reverend Brontë still had hopes he would make something of himself. He encouraged Branwell to develop his musical talents, offering him flute and organ lessons; he also gave him the money to attend concerts at Leeds, Bradford, and Keighley. Branwell was particularly drawn to orchestral performances of oratorios by Handel and Masses by Haydn and Mozart. In keeping with his temperament, he returned home overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all. Under the effects of such highs, Branwell wrote about music, interspersing such sequences amid depictions of wars, banquets, theatrical productions, and other thrilling happenings, as evident in his six-volume Letters to an Englishman (1831). Particularly intriguing is an imaginary response to a spectacular musical feat that took place in Africa. The audience numbering five or six million people listen enraptured to the sounds of an orchestra comprising ten thousand performers, and two- or three-hundred instruments.¹⁵

Although Reverend Brontë in his heart of hearts may never really have considered the possibility of a musical career for his son, he did believe in his talent as a painter and did everything possible to help him achieve success. He was impressed, as well he might have been, with Branwell's gift for drawing. Ever since he was a child he had been illustrating his sagas with depictions ranging from Gothic castles fallen into ruin, thatched cottages, dungeons, intricate and bizarre-looking sequences of pillars and spiral staircases à la Piranesi and Fuseli. Impressed with the engravings of John Martin, always accessible to him since they garnished the Parsonage, he frequently emulated what he considered to be Martin's fascinating ancient colonnades and embattlements. Branwell also responded with passion to the works of two Yorkshire artists, Joseph Bentley Leyland, and the portrait painter William Robinson.

So impressed was Reverend Brontë with his son's seemingly intense desire to become an artist that despite his paltry finances, he had him take lessons with Robinson, known for his paintings of Wellington, the duke of York, Princess Sophia, and more. What neither father nor son took into consideration were the years of rigorous training an artist must put himself through in order to become a master.

Moreover, vast differences exist between painting and drawing. That Branwell excelled in the latter did not necessarily mean that he would in the former. Had Branwell proven himself a painter? Seemingly, in 1834 or 1838, the date is unclear, he painted a group portrait of his sisters, which is reproduced on the dust jacket of this book, probably including himself in the center, later blotting out his figure, substituting a pillar in his stead. Branwell's friend and biographer, Francis Leyland (brother of the sculptor), wrote that “he never had been instructed in the right mode of mixing his pigments, or how to use them when properly prepared. … He was, therefore, unable to obtain the necessary flesh tints, which require so much delicacy in handling, or the gradations of light and shade, so requisite in … a good portrait.”¹⁶ Leyland did praise Branwell's fine draughtsmanship, his ability to capture his subjects' likenesses, and the dexterity with which he placed them on the canvas.

Encouraged by his teacher and his family to seek admission to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Branwell left for the big city in 1835, with high hopes. Why then did he not follow through? Was it out of fear of being rejected? out of apathy? too much liquor? Whatever the answer, Branwell failed even to apply to the Academy schools. He did go sightseeing during his seven-day stay in London and seemingly enjoyed viewing all the places about which he had read. That he never brought himself to fulfill his mission must have been a source of disappointment and humiliation to him. What could he possibly say to family and friends?¹⁷

Rather than dissuade Branwell from opening a studio of portraiture in Bradford (1839), his family and friends encouraged him to do just that. Although able to boast of having such well-placed citizens as Mr. and Mrs. Kirby sit for him, competition at the time was fierce. Branwell neither had the training nor the experience, perseverance, or luck to become a painter of renown.

His series of failures dug deep and his emotional wounds and unhealed scars rendered him even more helpless than before. Wallowing in despair, never having the wisdom or the courage to make the necessary effort to see things through to the end, he became more deeply addicted to alcohol and drugs, resorting to deceit and prevarication to hide his increasing feelings of degradation from his family. That he was admitted to the Masonic Lodge of Haworth, January 1, 1836, and appointed secretary to the local Temperance society of which his father was president was another example of Reverend Brontë's blindness when it came to his son; it was also a grotesque travesty of morality. So, too, was the teaching post Branwell obtained, but kept for only a short period at the local Sunday school. His explosive temper and impatience with the young students did not serve to endear him to them.

The greater Branwell's sense of failure in the outside world, the more intolerable grew his life at home. Blaming his family's ascetic and narrow views for his weaknesses could no longer alleviate his progressively sinister situation. A scapegoat is frequently in order when a person is unable to shoulder responsibilities. Branwell's family was eminently well suited for the role: they had never understood his intellectual nor his emotional needs. So acutely wounded had Branwell been that even blaming others for his deficiencies no longer alleviated his hurt. In “O God! While I in Pleasure's Wiles,” he yearns for strength, although he is aware that he is slipping ever further into dejection and apathy—into a world of eternal sleep.

The severest blows of them all were yet to come: Branwell's dismissal from his tutoring post at Thorp Green for his alleged romance with his employer's wife, Mrs. Robinson; to be followed by the marriage of the newly widowed Mrs. Robinson. That Branwell believed that the sophisticated Mrs. Robinson was in love with him and would marry him once her husband had died is paradigmatic of his naïveté and vulnerability. One might even question the very reality of Branwell's liaison. Was it, perhaps, a figment of his imagination? So out of touch was Branwell with reality that he might have indulged in wishful thinking. Or could she have played the role of mother figure in his life as Mme. de Renal had for Julien Sorel in Stendhal's The Red and the Black?

Branwell's irremediable sorrow drove him further and further into alcoholism, drug addiction, and debt. In imitation, seemingly, of De Quincey, he increased his doses of opium, begun, so it is thought, after his period of dejection following his failure as a painter at Bradford.¹⁸ Had not De Quincey in his Confessions of an Opium Eater praised the pleasures to be derived from this drug? The effects of opium lasted eight hours, longer than those of liquor, thus increasing the time one could bask in beatitude. Furthermore, liquor was discernible on the breath while opium was not; opium was cheap and could easily be procured on any druggist's shelf in liquid form (laudanum).

Branwell's last work, which was never completed, And the Weary Are at Rest (1845), was a conclusion to his Angrian cycle. As to be expected, it showed neither evolution in his writing style nor depth in his characterizations. The same may be said for “Thorp Green,” yet another self-absorbed poem:

I sit, this evening, far away
          From all I used to know,
And nought reminds my soul to-day
          Of happy long ago.

For some time, much to his father's dismay, Branwell claimed to be an unbeliever. According to Charlotte, two days before his end, he seemed to have undergone a spiritual transformation: “all at once he seemed to open his heart to a conviction of the existence and worth” of the religion he had affirmed “he would never believe at all.” His frequent appeals to God in some of his last poems, such as “Peaceful Death and Painful Life,” seems to confirm Charlotte's affirmation.

Why dost thou sorrow for the happy dead?
          For if their life be lost, their toils are o'er
          And woe and want shall trouble them no more,
Nor ever slept they in an earthly bed
So sound as now they sleep while, dreamless, laid
          In the dark chambers of that unknown shore
          Where Night and Silence seal each guarded door.

Branwell's death on September 28, 1848, at the age of thirty-one, yielded this troubled soul calm and serenity.

Notes

1. Patrick Branwell Brontë, The Poems of Patrick Branwell Brontë, ed. Tom Winnifrith, p. 28. “Misery II.” All poetry in this chapter is drawn from this edition.

2. Esther Harding, Psychic Energy, pp. 136-7.

3. Barbara Hannah, Striving towards Wholeness, p. 149.

4. Winifred Gérin, Branwell Brontë, p. 19.

5. Legends of Angria. Edited by Fannie E. Ratchford and William Clyde De Vane, p. 18.

6. Hannah, p. 151.

7. Barbara Evans and Lloyd Gareth, The Scribner Companion to the Brontës, p. 36.

8. Gérin, p. 40.

9. Ibid., p. 43.

10. Evans, p. 139, (“The Characters of Celebrated Men” 1829).

11. Ratchford, p. 23.

12. Evans, p. 140.

13. Life and Letters, vol. 1, p. 135 (April 8, 1836, #42).

14. Ibid., p. 151 (January 19, 1837, #57); 127 (May 8, 1835, #36, Ellen Nussey).

15. Gérin, p. 73.

16. Ibid., p. 83.

17. Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 124 (January 24, 1847, #280, J. B. Leyland).

18. Francis H. Grundy was Branwell's friend after 1841.

Works Cited

Primary Sources:

The Shakespeare Head Brontë. Edited by T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington. 19 volumes. Oxford: The Shakespeare Head Press, 1931-38. (Novels, 11 volumes; Life and Letters, 4 volumes; Poems, 2 volumes; Miscellaneous and Unpublished Writings, 2 volumes.)

Legends of Angria. Edited by Fannie E. Ratchford and William Clyde De Vane. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933.

Patrick Branwell Brontë, The Poems of Patrick Branwell Brontë. Edited by Tom Winnifrith. New York: New York University Press, 1983.

Secondary Sources:

Evans, Barbara and Gareth Lloyd, The Scribner Companion to the Brontës. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.

Gérin, Winifred, Branwell Brontë. London: Radius Book/Hutchinson, 1972.

Hannah, Barbara, Striving towards Wholeness. Boston: Sigo Press, 1988.

Harding, Esther, Psychic Energy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.