Branwell’s Infernal World

I have thought much about Branwell’s letter in the years since I first read it and I believe Charlotte must have taken it deeply to heart. I say this because I can see echoes of its contents in her subsequent writing of Jane Eyre. Heathcliff ’s description of his mad behaviour is used almost verbatim in Charlotte’s account of Bertha Rochester’s insanity. Branwell’s comment on his unhappy state is used to describe Jane’s shattered life after her discovery that Rochester has a mad wife. The blinding and maiming of Rochester – so reminiscent of Heathcliff ’s sufferings – is presented as a fitting punishment for a man who has desired an unacceptable relationship. I think the novel also reflects Charlotte’s feelings about what had been uncovered. When Jane Eyre recognizes that Rochester is ‘not what I had thought him’, she responds by saying, ‘I had now put love out of the question and thought only of duty.’ Was not that how Charlotte behaved towards Patrick Brontë once she knew he might not be her father? Above all, I suspect that the conclusion of Jane Eyre may well have been taken from what she wrote in reply to Branwell because it is a clarion call to face up to traumatic events that have wrecked one’s dreams:

Do not look forward to an uninterrupted flow of happiness. That is not the position of mortals this side of eternity … When the young fancy is warm, it sees nothing but a gay prospect before it. But sage experience removes the delusion, and teaches more moderate expectations. Let me advise you … to be fully resigned to the Divine will, constantly preserving a tranquil equanimity. Let each look upon the other as the best earthly friend. And be not blind to faults on either side, but cover them with a mantle of charity … Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

Back in 1854, my response was less complex. I simply appreciated for the first time why Charlotte had often been so sympathetic to her brother when his hopes of a sparkling career came to naught. She alone knew and understood the cause of his emotional collapse. The other letter I copied from Branwell, which is much shorter, shows how her initial attempts to help him came to naught because of another flaw in his character:

Broughton House

Broughton-in-Furness

Dearest Charlotte,

All is undone! My attempt to heed your advice and resume seeking a future for myself has proved fruitless!

In response to your encouragement I composed a letter to Hartley Coleridge at his cottage on the banks of Rydal Water and enclosed some of my verse. I told him that I had devoted my energies to literary composition since childhood, that I had never shown the outcome to any discerning mind, and that I would value his judgement on my skill or lack of it. To my amazement he agreed to see me and the day fixed for that was yesterday. You can imagine my pride when I shook the hand of the son of the great Coleridge, a man who associates with Wordsworth, Southey and many others of note. He looked older than his years, but I found his mind sharp enough, despite the reputation that he has earned for over-drinking. We discovered that we had certain interests in common, not least that he too writes of imaginary worlds like us. For the first time in weeks I felt happy again. He kindly promised to assist me in whatever way he could and I said that I would send him a copy of my translation of some of Horace’s verse. I felt the curse of Heathcliff had been lifted and I rejoiced.

But that was yesterday and today I have again accepted the certainty that any ambition is a complete waste of time. Today I discovered that the servant girl Agnes Riley was even more stupid than I had thought. She is with child. She came to see me with red-rimmed but hopeful eyes, expecting me to do the honourable thing. I told her that I was sorry to hear of her condition but that I would rather die than marry her. She threatened to inform Mr Postlethwaite. I told her that neither he nor any other man had the authority to make me wed a slut. I suppose that was not kind, but what matters unkindness when the sinner is already burdened with a far greater crime? Will God forgive fornication as well as murder? I think not. My life is stained by sins that can neither be forgiven in this life nor the next. Truly Heathcliff Earnshaw’s blood flows in my veins!

Mr Postlethwaite summoned me to his room and he confronted me with Agnes Riley’s accusations. What could I say? I immediately tendered my resignation. Poor Agnes wept throughout. That did not, of course, prevent Mr Postlethwaite dismissing her. I promised I would send her some money. I can only hope that our child will not survive. The thought of Heathcliff Earnshaw’s blood entering another generation chills me. I now have to return home and somehow explain to Father why I have left my post. I cannot possibly tell him the truth. I know you will say that I am overreacting but I have determined that in future a man of my ignobility should have no contact with the young lest I corrupt them. I will abandon tutoring in favour of some menial post, where I can be a danger to none.

My only concern at taking such a step is that I know my own weaknesses and I fear that such a course of action may lead me to drown my sorrows in alcohol or, worse still, make me turn to opium again. If I am so weak as to resort to such foul measures, then do not seek to stop me. They may be the means of an early death. Whatever you say to the contrary, I know you will be far better off without my sinful presence.

Your loving but unworthy admirer whom once you called brother,

Like many, I had been very surprised when Branwell had become a mere railway worker in the autumn of 1840. This letter made the reason very clear. It also made me realize why Charlotte had refused to abandon her desire to go to Brussels, even though he had pleaded with her to remain in Haworth to help him. Why should she stay to help a man who had shown such unworthy behaviour to Agnes Riley? It was ironic that, once abroad, she had behaved almost as badly. However, I knew that Charlotte would never accept this comparison. She viewed her passionate feelings for Professor Héger as a product of a genuine and irresistible love but I knew from her comments to me that she saw Branwell’s immoral doings as just a product of mindless lust – hence her strong disapproval of his distraught behaviour at the ending of his affair with Mrs Robinson in 1845. Given how Branwell had damned himself for his passing affair with Agnes Riley, I doubted not that he would have thought himself even more condemned by adding adultery to his crimes.

After reading both letters, I was sure that the key to the tragic family deaths in 1848 and 1849 rested with what had happened in 1839. Branwell had never recovered from the overwhelming emotional impact of his ill-fated meeting with Heathcliff. Instead his life had become ever more degraded and dissolute. It seemed to me Charlotte’s mounting concern over his behaviour offered a perfect explanation as to why she had become so obsessed with remaining anonymous when Jane Eyre became such a success. Alcohol loosens the tongue but unless the drunkard is noteworthy no one really listens. It is a different matter if the drunkard happens to be the brother of a famous authoress. Then the world would relish the scandal if, in a drunken state, Branwell spoke of what Heathcliff had revealed about her parentage. Had that happened, I did not doubt that her reputation would have been destroyed overnight. Had therefore Anne been right after all in speculating that Charlotte had had a hand in Branwell’s early death? If so, and Emily had been suspicious, did that also explain her quick demise? And had Anne’s agitation over Emily’s death made her the next target? It all seemed to make sense of what until then had been inexplicable.

The one thing I found hard to explain was why Charlotte encouraged Emily to write Wuthering Heights. Surely she would have wanted the name of Heathcliff forgotten, not immortalized? I could only assume that she had hoped that, by making Heathcliff fictional, no one would take seriously any drunken comments inadvertently made about him.

Understandably I hoped that all my speculation was wrong, and yet I feared the worst and that my surmises might be correct. I can assure you that it is not a happy experience to think that the person you have loved for so many years as your closest friend might be a murderer. As a consequence I knew that I had no option but to be open with Charlotte about what I had uncovered, even if I feared a very angry reaction, especially when she heard that I had dared search her papers in order to read some of Branwell’s letters. I decided to strike while the iron was hot and to discuss everything with her during her imminent planned visit to my home in May. It was my hope that she would reveal to me all that had actually happened, even if that meant admitting to crimes that she had hoped would always remain hidden.

For the first two days of her stay at Brookroyd I could not bring myself to initiate the conversation that I dreaded. Instead I let her speak at length about her forthcoming wedding. Her comments did little to convince me that she should be marrying Mr Nicholls, but I did what she requested in helping her prepare for her forthcoming wedding day, even accompanying her while she chose her dress. On the third day of her visit I engineered it so that we went out together for a quiet walk. I thought that perhaps the happy memories of earlier outings might put her into a better frame of mind to hear my disclosures. Once I had commenced, she listened with mounting displeasure as I recounted all that I had undertaken: my reading of Cathy’s manuscript so at variance with Emily’s novel, my finding of the entry in Dr Wroughton’s journal that revealed a second child; my search for Cathy’s missing daughter that led me, via discussions at Woodhouse Grove and the confession of John Reynolds, to the unpalatable truth that the lost child was Maria Branwell; my unearthing of the letters of Catherine Linton and my meeting with Walter Hodges that informed me of the tragedy that had destroyed the lives of three innocent young people; and, finally (and most painfully), my treachery of her trust in searching her letters to find the two written by Branwell in which he had disclosed his and possibly her true parentage and his murder of Heathcliff. Then I stopped, not daring to say what terrible conclusions I had drawn about the subsequent deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne.

‘My God,’ she said when I had finished, ‘I think I have underestimated you, Nell. All these years I thought you were no more than a useful glove – something to be taken out and used whenever that was desirable and then rapidly set aside when no longer required. Now I see you are quite a force in your own right and I respect you the more for it. But what do you propose to do with all this information? Sell it to the press so they can take pleasure in destroying our family’s reputation?’

‘Charlotte, how can you think that of me? I would never do anything to hurt you or your family’s reputation!’

‘Then why else have you gone behind my back, ignored by distinct advice, and wormed out all this family sewage?’

‘I love the truth, Charlotte.’

‘You may be clever but you still know just a fraction of the truth, Nell.’

‘I know enough that it has made me look with fresh eyes at the self-destruction that seized your brother. I am now sympathetic towards him in a way I never was while he was still alive.’

‘And is the implication that I was not sympathetic? Let me remind you that it was I and not you who had to contend with the drunkard who inhabited Branwell’s frame in the later years of his life. There was not a day that passed that I did not mourn the passing of the brother with whom I had grown up, the Branwell who had enlivened my life and inspired my imagination. You express sympathy for the later man and he deserves none. Whilst I worked tirelessly to drag this family out of obscurity, he let his emotions squander his greater talents. Whilst I took my destiny into my own hands, he whined that fate was against him and did nothing. When I weep for my dead brother – and I still do – I weep for a man who died on the day he met Heathcliff, not the man who died nine years later.’

Tears trickled down her cheek and I did not think her emotion feigned. She wiped them away with a gesture of frustration at her weakness. ‘Tell me, Ellen, what did all his suffering and talk of damnation initially stem from? Just two things. That he was born a bastard and that, in a moment of terror, he accidentally killed a man. Yet in response to those things he abandoned all hope of a distinguished future and sought to humiliate himself by taking on the menial role of a booking clerk at Sowerby Bridge Station. We all tried to put a brave face on his new employment, saying it was a role that held prospects because of the growing success of railway companies, but the truth was that the station was no more than a wooden shed and its stationmaster was a renowned sot. How could a man of Branwell’s talents and education endure such a place and such a master? I am not surprised he soon engaged in excessive drinking. We used contacts to achieve his promotion to the post of stationmaster at Luddenden Foot but that was scarce better. A man who could wax lyrical on the sweet strains of a nightingale was doomed to the company of amoral bargees and rowdy millworkers who were far his inferior and to whom his intellect meant absolutely nothing!’

‘But he did retain some of his former friends,’ I interjected.

‘A few but he saw them only intermittently. He would walk with them through the beautiful valley scenery, displaying his wondrous knowledge upon subjects moral, intellectual and philosophical, and temporarily recapture the feel of earlier and happier days. On such occasions he would repent of his malignant debauchery but once they were gone he would resume the path that had only one destination – his ultimate selfdestruction. As you well know, the depths to which he sank were soon made public when he was dismissed from the Leeds and Manchester Railway for a serious discrepancy in his station’s accounts. Eleven pounds went missing.’

‘I cannot prove that he did not take the money, Charlotte, but I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. You know that he often left the station in the hands of one or other of the station’s two porters and one of these may well have been the guilty party for the money’s disappearance.’

‘It matters not whether it was incompetence or theft that lay behind the loss, because either way he returned to Haworth in humiliating and public disgrace. I saw there was now no belief in his mind that he would ever publish anything of worth. Despair consumed him. And do you know the saddest thing of all? He could not bring himself to enter a church yet amid his scribbles I found repeated the one name that he hoped one day might bring him absolution from his innate sinfulness – Jesu … Jesu … Jesu.’

‘Yet you left him, Charlotte. You deserted him to go with Emily to Brussels, leaving him undefended against your father’s stern disapproval. Nor did you help him come to terms with the death of your aunt, who had so idolized him in happier times. You returned only for her funeral and then, because of your passion for Professor Héger, you left him again.’

‘Yes, I left him, but you have read the letter in which he describes his disgusting behaviour with Agnes Riley. In the light of that, for the first time in my life I put myself first and him second. And when I returned to Haworth, I was happy to leave him again for Brussels because I was sickened by what he had done to Aunt Elizabeth.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘The stupid doctor said that she had died of exhaustion after suffering from severe constipation but Branwell told me otherwise. He had deliberately killed her.’

‘He had no cause, Charlotte.’

‘That is where you are wrong. Branwell wanted Emily and me back. Making our aunt severely ill was a sure way of securing that.’

‘He cannot have been so evil.’

‘Like me, he was ready to use any means in order to effect what he wanted. Why should he worry about the consequences when he knew he was already damned? It only took a few powders secretly administered to make her bowels seize up. Can you imagine it, Ellen? He sat by her bed and secretly smiled at the thought of my return as he watched her writhe in agony for a fortnight. Our so-called father was touched by what he saw as Branwell’s devotion and left her entirely to his care, while he took to his prayers for her recovery. Branwell let no one else tend her, least of all our servant Tabby, who, though old and crippled, might have suspected things were not as they should be. The medicine prescribed by the doctor never touched her lips, only the poison which daily was dripped into her parched mouth. Branwell told me only towards the end did our aunt look at him with doubt in her face as if she finally understood that the boy on whom she had lavished her affection had no love for her and was indeed the cause of her vile sickness. But by then she was too weak to speak out or do anything.’

‘Then he is truly worthy of damnation,’ I said. ‘Please, Charlotte, be silent. I can bear no more revelations!’

‘But I thought you wanted the truth, Ellen,’ she replied with a grim smile.

As I looked at her harsh and cruel face, I suddenly thought of Anne’s conjectures that I had dismissed five years before. For the first time I believed them possibly to be true. I could see the young Charlotte determinedly ensuring that her older sisters should not stand in the way of what she wanted. I could see her as a young girl of eight poisoning them till her father took them and her back home. I recognized that the time had come for me to ask her directly whether she had been the cause of Maria and Elizabeth’s untimely deaths, and I replied, ‘Yes, I want the truth. It will surprise you to learn that I have in my care some documents written by Anne in which she thought you poisoned your elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, just to escape school. Were you guilty of the same crime as Branwell? Is that also the truth? Is that why, when we were young, you wrote a letter to me saying that you felt yourself to be one of the damned?’

If my words took her by surprise, she did not show it, but calmly answered, ‘I loved my eldest sisters, Ellen, but they were not prepared to support my demand that we should return home. They tolerated the appalling conditions in that school, but for me it was not just the cold and the damp and the terrible food that made life impossible. I could have borne those. The difference was that I was always being condemned. I strove to fulfil every duty yet I was daily termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, a useless and wicked creature. I could never please or win anyone’s favour. When I wrote about Lowood School in Jane Eyre I based it entirely on my horrid experiences at Cowan Bridge so please understand, Ellen, that when Mr Brocklehurst places Jane on a chair in front of the entire school and publicly humiliates her, that was what the Reverend Carus Wilson used to do to me. His cruelty is etched on my brain.’

Charlotte appeared to enter a trance as she spoke the following in a tone that was not hers and which I took to be a copy of her former teacher’s voice:

‘You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood … no single deformity points her out as a marked character. Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case … My dear children … this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you that this girl, who might be one of God’s little lambs, is a little castaway – not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on guard against her; you must shun her example – if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out of your converse. Teachers, you must watch her; keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinize her actions, punish her body to save her soul – if indeed, such salvation be possible for … this girl is a liar.’

I recognized the words from the book but only now did I appreciate their full significance. I think she had expected them to evoke my pity, but instead they raised a series of questions in my mind that would have horrified her had I voiced them. What on earth had Charlotte done as a schoolgirl to incur such a description of herself? Surely, if her behaviour had remotely warranted such words, was she not indeed the spawn of Satan himself? Was she not truly Heathcliff ’s child – a monstrous cuckoo in the Brontë nest? I knew how determined and ruthless Charlotte could be, even against those she professed to love. She had not specifically answered my question, but I doubted not she had poisoned her two older sisters and that, years later, she had similarly poisoned Emily and Anne to escape Roe Head. I knew that she and Branwell deserved to be exposed, but had I the stomach to do it? And would anyone believe me?

‘Branwell always talked as if he was the only person who suffered,’ continued Charlotte, oblivious of my discomfiture, ‘but I suffered far more than him as a child. I saw no reason to turn my back on a chance of happiness in Brussels in order to comfort my murderous brother. No, Ellen, I did the right thing. I demanded that he undertake appropriate employment or face having his crimes made known to the rest of the family and, in response, he quickly agreed that he should take up a post as tutor in the household in which Anne had served as a governess for almost two years. If that left me free to return to Brussels, did it not leave him free to carve a new life for himself under Anne’s watchful eye?’

‘But you must have known it would not work,’ I interrupted. ‘The Reverend Edward Robinson might have been a clergyman of wealthy means but he led a quiet and relatively remote life because he was an invalid. The pedestrian lifestyle at Thorp Green Hall was bound to soon bore Branwell and, in that situation, there was no way he would heed any advice proffered by Anne, who was so much younger than him and, in his opinion, the least talented of the family.’

‘You say that, Ellen, but at first, all went well. Branwell took up residence in an old building in the grounds and he informed me that he saw his new life as being a very appropriate punishment for his sins. How could I have foreseen that his employer’s wife would seduce him?’

‘Mrs Lydia Robinson had a husband who was a sick and emaciated man and who brought her no pleasure. Is it so surprising that she should find in Branwell an interesting diversion in what had become a tedious existence?’

‘It was not just sweet talk that was exchanged, Ellen. I know what happened because after their affair was uncovered and my brother was dismissed, he told me everything about it in the most nauseating detail. From the outset Mrs Robinson made clear that she wished not for mere dalliance but for him to go on to extremities. I do not find fault with him for giving in to her lewd wishes. He was seventeen years her junior and he found her attentions both flattering and arousing. She introduced him to erotic practices that I would blush to tell you. If I blame him for anything it is that he thought she actually loved him when in fact theirs was a relationship built entirely on carnal lust! Once the gardener reported to her husband how he had seen them locked in a passionate embrace in the boathouse, she dropped my brother as if he had never existed.’

‘Anne did not look at the matter like you,’ I responded. ‘She resigned when she saw what was happening. She knew that Branwell should have resisted Mrs Robinson’s advances.’

‘There speaks a true spinster! Do you have any understanding of passion, Ellen? Am I so different from my brother? You more than anyone know of my affair with Constantin Héger! At one level, my actions were no better than Branwell’s licentious fumblings with Lydia Robinson or with that slut he impregnated. The difference between us is that he let a dismissal from an invalid husband ruin his life. Branwell lacked the capacity to fight for what he wanted. That is not true of me. I have taken pleasure in opposing those who have stood in my way and I have always delighted in seeing an enemy – or if necessary a friend – removed from blocking my chosen path. Why else, for example, did I take so calmly the death of poor Martha Taylor in Brussels?’

‘Martha Taylor?’

‘Yes, sweet little Martha Taylor, despite her ugliness, threatened to draw Constantin’s affections away from me. That’s a truth you have never uncovered, Ellen, despite all your supposed cleverness.’

‘I think you are mistaken, Charlotte. I am sure that Martha would not have been interested in your professor. And, if he showed any interest in her, it would have been simply because, like all of us, he found her vivacity attractive and her prattle engaging.’

‘It was for that very reason I feared she might steal the heart of the man I had come to love. I knew I lacked her natural wit and that my ugliness was plain for all to see when contrasted with her beauty. Although she was the sister of one of my oldest and closest friends, no one was happier than I when she unexpectedly became ill and died.’

My stomach churned at these words. I could not stop my mind wondering whether Charlotte had had a hand in her death. It would have been but the work of a moment to pour some poison into a glass of fruit juice that Martha was drinking. My courage failed me and I did not ask whether this had been the case. I only hoped that I was wrong. Death can come in many forms and none but God knows the hour at which any of us will be summoned to depart our earthly existence. Recovering my composure as quickly as I could, I made only a simple comment. ‘I now appreciate that until recently I knew very little of the truth about your life or Branwell’s,’ I said.

‘There is little more to know about my brother. When I had to cope with the loss of my true love, I did not indulge in such loud-mouthed self-pity as did he, though my loss was infinitely greater than his. He had lost a conniving and duplicitous woman who never loved him, whereas I had lost a man of incalculable worth who genuinely adored me. His response was to become mindlessly drunk and destroy his gifts. Mine was to throw myself into writing and to encourage my sisters to similarly use their talents. You know the outcome of our labours. We put behind us the juvenile productions of the past and showed our true worth. In contrast, Branwell’s only achievement was to make life at Haworth intolerable. All he could do was talk endlessly of Mrs Robinson. He even kept his pockets full of her love letters so that he might continue to read of the passion they had once shared.

‘Whenever I challenged him to stop being sorry for himself and to take up worthwhile employment, he would feebly mutter about how “Heathcliff ’s curse” was an immovable block to God’s forgiveness and how it damned him of any chance of attaining worldly success. The passing months saw him produce only a few nondescript poems and some badly written fantastical fiction. The only inventiveness he showed was in the various reasons he gave to con my father out of money so he could fund his dissolute lifestyle.’

‘And what did he make of Emily writing about Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights?’

‘He never knew because, as you well know, we never told him that we were having our books published. That would have been too cruel. It was easy to deceive him because he was too wrapped up in his own world. He largely kept to his studio while I wrote in the dining room and Emily wrote in her room.’

‘I cannot understand why you encouraged Emily to write about Heathcliff in the first place, given his relationship to your family.’

‘Unlike Branwell, I am not obsessed with the man. I never met him and I have no way of knowing whether he did in fact father me. What did it matter if I had him transformed into fiction? If anything, it made him less real. When we sisters agreed to write, it was easy for Anne and me. Both of us turned to our recent experience for inspiration. Emily was not so fortunately placed. I gave her the idea of writing a romance about Heathcliff because I got the idea from my brother. Not directly, of course. Some of his friends had been encouraging him to write and they had agreed to meet him at the Cross Roads Inn, which is about halfway between Keighley and Haworth. It was expected that he would read some of his work to them. Typically he had done nothing but, not wanting to lose face, he rapidly scribbled some notes before going there. In his haste for inspiration he chose to write about the man who dominated his thoughts and so devised a foolish tale on Heathcliff ’s early life. When he returned home, the notes were cast aside. I found them. At first I confess I was horrified that Branwell should be mentioning Heathcliff to anyone, but then I realized it was better if people did think of him as being a fictional figure.’

I nodded my assent and she continued. ‘Reading my brother’s notes, I sensed they could be developed into a strong novel, but I did not care for the author to be Branwell. He was too unpredictable in what he might write. I knew it was safer if it was written by someone who had no idea that there was a real Heathcliff. I therefore passed some of the ideas contained in his notes on to Emily and she did a superb job with them. She created a sweeping drama that incorporated not only all her knowledge of this area and its people but also her own special love for the moors. I was not concerned that anyone might judge the novel to have any foundation in fact. Why should I have been? Most of the novel’s set pieces draw entirely from Emily’s imagination – Cathy’s ghost haunting the wintry moors, Heathcliff getting the sexton to open her coffin seven years after her burial and, of course, Lockwood’s discovery of Heathcliff ’s corpse. Why should I take anything other than pride in what she produced? I have no doubt that as each decade passes, it will be of our books the one most remembered.’

‘Did you not fear that Branwell might one day reveal to the world that Heathcliff was not just a fictional character but a real person?’

‘No. There was always a danger that whilst drunk he might talk of Heathcliff, but usually his speech was so slurred people did not bother to listen. When he was sober he had no desire to reveal our family’s guilty secret. His death certificate says he died from chronic bronchitis and wasting of the body, but you and I know his true spirit died that day he met and killed Heathcliff. From then the brother I had known was replaced by a doom-ridden failure. As I have said to you on more than one occasion, I shed my tears for the loss of the brother I loved long before his flesh finally gave way. It was only his death that released me to love him again. Looking at his body as it lay in his coffin I saw a marble calm over his features and I felt there was peace and forgiveness for him in heaven. All his errors, all his crimes, even that of murdering Aunt Elizabeth, seemed to me nothing in that moment. Every wrong he had done, every pain he had caused, vanished and I recalled only his wondrous promise, his natural family affection, and his many sufferings. And if I can forgive him, surely so will God? He who knew no peace in life is now at rest, and had his sins been scarlet in their dye, I believe now they are as white as snow.’

Moved by her eloquence, I could not bring myself to ask whether she had hastened his death – and whether that had led her to also seek the destruction of Emily and Anne. Instead I found myself saying, ‘God bless you for that, Charlotte, and may God be equally merciful towards you and me.’ We said nothing more that day. The next morning she was due to return to Haworth. At breakfast I vowed to her that I would keep quiet about what I had discovered and she graciously accepted that, almost certainly because it was her assumption that my investigations had come to an end. I am not sure she would have made such a misjudgement had not her mind been centred on her imminent marriage. In fact I had no intention of letting matters drop. Charlotte had sounded very convincing and I wanted to believe all that she had said, but I also recognized that she could fabricate the truth when she chose. Had she not deceived me for months that she was wasting her talents at the very time she was writing The Professor and Jane Eyre! Charlotte might have told me some of the truth but the more I thought about it the more I doubted that she had told me all of it. In the space of a few months it was not just Branwell who had died. So too had both Emily and Anne. Could I safely assume Charlotte had had no hand in those deaths? I felt I could not, however much she genuinely grieved for their loss.