‘I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood. I have suffered much sorrow since I last saw you at Haworth.’
Charlotte and Anne, it will be remembered, were at this time on their way home from Brussels, and Anne had to seek relief from her governess bonds at Mrs. Robinson’s. Branwell would seem to have returned with Anne to Thorp
Green, as tutor to Mr. Robinson’s son. He commenced his duties in December 1842.
It would not be rash to assume—although it is only an assumption—that Branwell took to opium soon after he entered upon his duties at Thorp Green. I have already said something of the trouble which befel Mrs. Gaskell in accepting the statements of Charlotte Brontë, and—after Charlotte’s death—of her friends, to the effect that Branwell became the prey of a designing woman, who promised to marry him when her husband—a venerable clergyman—should be dead. The story has been told too often. Branwell was dismissed, and returned to the parsonage to rave about his wrongs. If Mr. Robinson should die, the widow had promised to marry him, he assured his friends. Mr. Robinson did die (May 26, 1846), and then Branwell insisted that by his will he had prohibited his wife from marrying, under penalties of forfeiting the estate. A copy of the document is in my possession:
The eleventh day of September 1846 the Will of the Reverend Edmund Robinson, late of Thorp Green, in the Parish of Little Ouseburn, in the County of York, Clerk, deceased, was proved in the Prerogative Court of York by the oaths of Lydia Robinson, Widow, his Relict; the Venerable Charles Thorp and Henry Newton, the Executors, to whom administration was granted.
Needless to say, the will, a lengthy document, put no restraint whatever upon the actions of Mrs. Robinson. Upon the publication of Mrs. Gaskell’s Life she was eager to clear her character in the law-courts, but was dissuaded therefrom by friends, who pointed out that a withdrawal of the obnoxious paragraphs in succeeding editions of the Memoir, and the publication of a letter in the Times, would sufficiently meet the case.
Here is the letter from the advertisement pages of the Times.
‘8 Bedford Row,
‘London, May 26th, 1857.‘Dear Sirs,—As solicitor for and on behalf of the Rev. W. Gaskell and of Mrs. Gaskell, his wife, the latter of whom is authoress of the Life of Charlotte Brontë, I am instructed to retract every statement contained in that work which imputes to a widowed lady, referred to, but not named therein, any breach of her conjugal, of her maternal, or of her social duties, and more especially of the statement contained in chapter 13 of the first volume, and in chapter 2 of the second volume, which imputes to the lady in question a guilty intercourse with the late Branwell Brontë. All those statements were made upon information which at the time Mrs. Gaskell believed to be well founded, but which, upon investigation, with the additional evidence furnished to me by you, I have ascertained not to be trustworthy. I am therefore authorised not only to retract the statements in question, but to express the deep regret of Mrs. Gaskell that she should have been led to make them.—I am, dear sirs, yours truly,
‘William Shaen.
‘Messrs. Newton & Robinson, Solicitors, York.’
A certain ‘Note’ in the Athenæum a few days later is not without interest now.
‘We are sorry to be called upon to return to Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë, but we must do so, since the book has gone forth with our recommendation. Praise, it is needless to point out, implied trust in the biographer as an accurate collector of facts. This, we regret to state, Mrs. Gaskell proves not to have been. To the gossip which for weeks past has been seething and circulating in the London coteries, we gave small heed; but the Times advertises a legal apology, made on behalf of Mrs. Gaskell, withdrawing the statements put forth in her book respecting the cause of Mr. Branwell Brontë’s wreck and ruin. These Mrs. Gaskell’s lawyer is now fain to confess his client advanced on insufficient testimony. The telling of an episodical and gratuitous tale so dismal as concerns the dead, so damaging to the living, could only be excused by the story of sin being severely, strictly true; and every one will have cause to regret that due caution was not used to test representations not, it seems, to be justified. It is in the interest of Letters that biographers should be deterred from rushing into print with mere impressions in place of proofs, however eager and sincere those impressions may be. They may be slanders, and as such they may sting cruelly. Meanwhile the Life of Charlotte Brontë must undergo modification ere it can be further circulated.’