Romancing Miss Bronte (15 page)

A muffled snort escaped Leyland’s nose.

“She was so lonely and unhappy. Always making me presents—and telling Anne how fond of me she was. I knew what she wanted from me and I knew it was wrong, but by God, Leyland—to feel that power, to know that there’s someone who lives every waking minute in anticipation of one glimpse of you—one word.”

He stared grimly at his glass of wine.

“Now she’s gone. It’s all gone. My dreams, my health, my youth—”

“Don’t be a fool. You’re not even thirty yet.”

“But I can’t work. I’ve lost my appetite. My nights are dreadful. I still dwell on her voice, her person …”

Leyland, who had heard all this before, let his thoughts wander into the fog.

“She doesn’t get my letters. They send them back unopened. Bastards. They hate me like hell. Now I’m stranded. Thoroughly stranded.”

In some remote region of Leyland’s brain, the fog lifted. “You mean to say the money’s dried up?”

Branwell’s head drooped lower. “I’m sure if I write to the good doctor—he’ll make an appeal to her on my part….”

“Lord, I hope so …”

Branwell began to slip into his moody worst. Tears swelled in his eyes. “It’s the mind, Leyland. It’s dried up. Frozen. Nothing rouses my imagination anymore.”

“You’ll find your way back,” Leyland said, with more reassurance than he felt.

“I fear it’s worse than that … it’s not just about inspiration. I’ve never told anyone this before …”

“What?”

“It doesn’t work anymore, Leyland. I can’t find the words. My powers have greatly diminished. I can feel it. Nothing I do is any good.”

Leyland could not bring himself to do anything but give a somber and sympathetic nod.

“All I know is that it’s time for me to be something when I’m nothing. Nothing at all. My father can’t have long to live and when he dies, my evening will become night.”

There was a long, difficult silence.

“God, Leyland, she did love me once. We did have hope for a future together. And I swear to you, she loved me even better than I did her.”

Even in his lucid moments he could not admit to himself that it was the loss of the lady’s estate that had dealt the final blow to his dreams. He knew, deep down where truth swims in the murky subconscious, that without her money the only future for him lay in a lifetime of demeaning labor as a lowly tutor in the service of those more fortunate than himself.

“Let’s order another bottle,” Leyland said, lifting a sluggish arm to his friend’s shoulder. “The night’s on me.”

“Too good of you. Such a bore. All this bother about bills.”

“We’ll manage.”

“Bugger the bastards.”

“Amen.”

Despite the lamentable state of his mind, Branwell plodded on—scribbling a few lame verses from time to time, trying to squeeze from his damaged brain cells a handful of worthy words. All his life he had turned to his imagination for delivery from worldly cares; there lay his inner sanctum. Increasingly, he replied on opium; a few grains dissolved in alcohol—a tincture cheaper than gin—produced fabulous dreams.
And dreams were the stuff of which great poetry was made. Coleridge and De Quincey had proved as much, and he—Patrick Branwell Brontë, the great Romantic with a grief-stricken heart—he would imitate them.

The
Halifax Guardian
, a reputable newspaper with high standards, had published a number of his earlier poems, and so one fine spring day, his pocket jingling with a few shillings courtesy of a father grateful for the slightest effort, Branwell rode the train into Halifax with the intention of placing an ad for a position as a tutor on the Continent and—more important—submitting his latest labor for publication. It was an earlier poem he had reworked, transforming his grand passion into great art; he had dedicated it to Lydia and signed it by his pen name, the noble (and pretentious) Northangerland.

Just outside the
Guardian
’s office he collided with January Searle, a critic and editor-at-large in the district. Searle was a dreaded figure, a self-important man with harsh opinions; the local writers cultivated his friendship, but they all despised him.

“Mr. Brontë!”

“Mr. Searle. Good day.”

“A coincidence, running into you …”

“How’s that, sir?”

“Because I’ve just finished this strange novel—surely you’ve heard about it—
Wuthering Heights
. Supposedly written by the brother of the author of that improbable melodrama
Jane Eyre
.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of the books, sir. Caused quite a stir—”

“So you haven’t read them?”

“Don’t have time for that sort of thing, sir,” he replied. “Been busy with my own work …”

Searle leaned closer and said in a low voice, “You sure you’re being straight with me?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Searle eyed him closely. “You really don’t know what I’m talking about?”

“I am indeed baffled, sir.”

“You sometimes write under a pen name, is that correct?”

“I do. I publish my poetry under the name of Northangerland.”

“Not Bell?”

“Bell?”

“So you’re not the mysterious author of
Wuthering Heights
?”

Branwell screwed up his brow. “I am not.”

“Well, I’d have sworn it was written by you. Thought I saw something of your brooding in it—all that business about love beyond the grave. Just the sort of strange fancy that a diseased genius such as yours might produce. And the setting appears to be Yorkshire, you know.”

“You prick my curiosity, sir. I shall have to read it.”

“You must! A devil of a hero. Byronic and quite Romantic. But shocking beyond words. I dare say I’m a little disappointed. Thought I’d unmasked one of the infamous Bell brothers.” Searle touched his hat and sped away.

Branwell was a familiar face around the
Guardian
, and the editorial clerk found him unusually subdued that afternoon. He was in a hurry to do his business, and then he went quickly on his way, which was not like him at all.

The bookseller said, “Beg your pardon, sir, we got in only a few copies and sold them right away.”

“
Wuthering Heights
?”

“Yes, sir—comes in a three-volume set with a shorter title. Don’t recall the other one straight off. Name of a woman.”

“Jane Eyre
?”

“No, sir. That was published last September.” The bookseller opened a ledger and squinted through his spectacles at the entries. “But I’ve got more on the way if you’d like to place your order. Be more than happy to hold—”

Branwell cut him off. “Who are the authors?”

“All three titles written by the Bells. Relatives I hear, and rumor has it they’re—”

“The surnames,” Branwell snapped. “What are the surnames?”

“The surnames? Rather unusual names, as I recall. It was Currer Bell wrote
Jane Eyre
—”

“Currer?”

“Yes, sir. Rather odd for a Christian name. More often a family name.”

“And the others?”

He lowered his nose closer to the ledger. “Here we are.
Wuthering Heights
and
Agnes Grey
by Ellis and Acton Bell.”

“Ellis and Acton.”

“Would you like to leave your name, sir? We should have them in next week.”

Immediately upon arriving at the Old Cock he sent off a note to Leyland.

Like many provincial inns, the Old Cock maintained a lending library for its patrons, and Branwell was told that he was indeed lucky to
get his hands on one of the novels because there was a waiting list a foot long; Elijah Daniels was next up for
Wuthering Heights
but he hadn’t come to claim the book yet, so Branwell was welcome to it without charge for a few hours.

He ordered a whiskey and settled in a chair by a window where the light was good enough to read by.

The prose was new and fresh to him, but within a few pages he recognized the raw materials of his sister’s imagination. This was certainly not Charlotte’s writing: this was no tale of slavish submission, of yearning for the sophisticated and the glamorous. Here was the creation of a wild, natural world populated by people of violent, raw emotions; he could easily see Emily living here—content, at peace, at home.

“My God,” he muttered, his heart thumping.

Then he began to laugh.

That was the last thing he remembered. Sometime later he woke up with the Old Cock’s owner staring down at him; worry was etched on her kindly, florid face. He’d had a sort of fit, she explained, just fell off his chair and went quite unconscious—although he’d barely touched his glass of whiskey. After it had passed she’d had him carried to the back room and laid out on a bench. Branwell begged her forgiveness, praying he’d done nothing to offend her, and as soon as he had the strength to walk he took himself out.

Leyland’s landlady let him in, and Leyland found him wrapped in a grimy blanket, asleep on the floor.

“Not drunk,” Branwell said, raising a gaunt hand to grip his friend’s arm. “Had a little illness—you know what I mean—quite temporary. All right now. Not drunk … promise you. Just need to sleep.”

That spring they noticed a change for the worse; he seemed entirely broken down and embittered. He borrowed money everywhere and owed everyone. He had run up such a bill at the Old Cock that the owner took her case to the authorities. A sheriff’s officer from York came around one day with a warrant for Branwell’s arrest.

He behaved appallingly, crouching in the chipping shed behind a chubby marble angel until Emily came to get him.

“You can come out. He’s gone,” she said sharply, hugging her shawl around her bony shoulders. “Thanks to you we’ll be eating potatoes for the rest of the month.”

He rose, shivering, his nose red from the cold. A hoarse cough shook his small frame.

“If it’d been up to me, I’d have let you go to prison.”

“How can you say that?” he cried. “Can’t you see how ill I am? I would’ve died.”

Emily was struck with sudden remorse. The idea of Branwell in a rat-infested prison, shivering on a straw mat teeming with vermin. Her brother.

“Don’t be a fool,” she said gruffly. “We would never let them take you. Papa would sell our last stick of furniture rather than see those monsters take you away.”

She put an arm around him to steady him. “Come inside now. It’s safe.”

There was no one else home that fine April morning. Martha had gone to the butcher’s, their father had driven to Griffe Mill with Stephen Merrall, and Charlotte had taken Tabby to visit her nephew in the village. Later they all wondered at the seemingly insignificant circumstance that prevented a tragedy, how Anne, who was in the kitchen with the glue bottle mending a chipped teapot, had suddenly recalled that there was a broken china cat sitting on her dresser. How she had deliberated, thinking about the other chores that needed to be finished that morning, but had opted in favor of fetching the cat with the broken tail.

Branwell had not been out of his room all morning. Now, reluctant to disturb him, Anne climbed the stairs on tiptoe. Mounting the last few steps she noticed gray smoke seeping from the crack beneath the door of his room.

Her heart in her throat, she pounded on the door.

“Branwell!”

When there was no reply she threw open the door; a gray cloud wafted from the room, and through the veil of smoke she saw her brother on his bed against the wall, stretched out like a dead man on a funeral pyre.

His sheets, tumbling over the side of the mattress, had caught fire from a candle set on the floor.

“Oh Lord—oh mercy!”

Holding up her skirts, she dashed inside.

“Branwell! Get up!”

He lay in a drugged stupor, eyes wide open and staring, incapable of either speech or movement.

There seemed no way to reach him without breaching the wall of flames.

“Emily! Help!”

The washstand! she thought. But the washbasin stood empty. “Where’s the pitcher?” she shouted at him. “What did you do with it?”

She spied it on the floor beneath the window, but it, too, was empty. Finally, in a panic, she flung it against the wall above his bed.

“Branwell!”

At the sound of shattering pottery and his sister’s shouts he turned his head, bringing his glassy eyes to rest on her.

Just at that moment Emily flew into the room. With the seeming strength of a Titan she grabbed her brother by the collar of his nightshirt, heaved him off the flaming bed, and dragged him across the room to safety.

She yanked the burning sheets from the bed, hiked up her skirts, and kicked the flaming bundle into the corner. She was still stamping out the flames when Anne came back up from the scullery lugging a bucket of water.

Once the fire was out, Anne slumped to the floor, her back against the wall. Emily stood in front of her, protective, feral, the dripping bucket swinging from her hand.

“Are you all right?” she asked Anne.

“I think so. Are you hurt?”

“No.”

But their hearts were pounding and every limb was shaking violently.

“I shouldn’t have thrown the ewer. I was trying to wake him up.”

“It’s all right.”

“It was Aunt Branwell’s.” She mustered a weak smile. “It’ll just give me something else to glue together today.”

Anne lowered her head between her knees and began to sob.

Emily was far from tears. She glanced around the room, at her sister weeping and her stupefied brother who was now sitting in the middle of the floor examining his ripped nightshirt with an idiotic look on his face. The room was a disaster: shards of the shattered ewer all over the bed, a sodden bundle of burned sheets in the corner, piles of waterlogged papers and books scattered across the floor; had the papers caught fire, they would have taken the entire house with them.