Branwell Bronte, the bottle, and a bit of blasphemy

One of the chief aims of Juliet Barker's The Brontes is clearing up longstanding misconceptions about the family in general, and Barker pays particular attention to Branwell Bronte's bad reputation. She is fairly convincing on that point, making a strong case for the potential of his early poetry and a reasonable one for doubting that his dissipation began as early as is often assumed.

At times, however, she seems to push a bit too far against the familiar storyline: again and again she'll quote a passage from one of Branwell's letters to friends in which he details drinking bouts--

I gave some stiffish toasts. . . . till the room spun round and the candles danced in our eyes. . . . I found myself in bed next morning with a bottle of porter, a glass, and a corkscrew beside me.

--only to dismiss it:

No doubt in bragging about his exploits, the twenty-year-old Branwell exaggerated them to suit the older and more worldly John Brown: indeed, the whole account sounds suspiciously like one of the bar-room brawls in the his Angrian tales.

Twenty-year-olds do exaggerate, but they also quite frequently drink to excess, even the ones who don't go on to be alcoholics. It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that when Branwell told a friend he'd been drinking a lot, he'd probably been drinking a lot.

The above reference to Angria, the imaginary world of Branwell's and Charlotte's extravagant juvenilia, reminds me to share an earlier, fictional account of drinking that Branwell wrote. It tells of a rowdy drinking session among some of the leading men of the fictional nation, one of whom opens this passage by proposing a toast (the poor spelling is Branwell's):

"Its speedy entombement in our stomachs and its ressurection with us in another world!"

The President himself contradicted such a toast swearing that He had enough to do with resurrection of its ghost next morning and Crofton had been vowed that after a full dinner and flowing glass he had too often been troubled with its resurrection the next minute.

Having grown up in the northern reaches of the Bible Belt, among a broadly Baptist-inflected temperance culture, I find Branwell's gentle blasphemy here quite amusing. Given his bad end, like any of his writings on drinking it's tinged with sadness, for we know what's to come. But much like Kingsley Amis's writings on the same subject, it's clever enough that it seems a shame not to share it.

The Brontes at home

Juliet Barker's The Brontes is satisfyingly rich in quotations, drawing on letters, diaries, later accounts by friends and neighbors, and, at length, the Bronte children's copious juvenilia. The selection that's pleased me most thus far is a diary entry by Emily and Anne commemorating the utterly ordinary day of November 24, 1834, when Emily was sixteen and Anne was fourteen. Written with Anne's "dreadful handwriting and spelling," which all the siblings seem to have shared, it skips and wanders through the day with the casual confidence of youth:

November the 24 1834 Monday Emily Jane Bronte Anne Bronte I fed Rainbow, Diamond, Snowflake Jasper phesant (alias this morning Branwell went down to Mr Drivers and brought news that Sir Robert peel was going to be invited to stand for Leeds Anne and I have been peeling Apples [for] Charlotte to make an apple pudding. and for Aunts and apple Charlotte said she made puddings perfectly and she was of a quick but lim[i]ted intellect Taby said just now come Anne pillopatate (IE pill a potato Aunt has come into the Kitchen just now and said where are you feet Anne Anne answered on the florr Aunt papa opened the parlour Door and gave Branwell a Letter saying here Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte--The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine Sally mosley is washing in the bak-KitchinIt is past Twelve o'clock Anne and I have not tid[i]ed ourselves, done our bed work or done our lessons and we want to go out to play We are going to have for Dinner Boiled Beef Turnips potato's and applepudding the Kitchin is in a very untidy state Anne and I have not Done our music excercise which consists of b majer Taby said on my putting a pen in her face Ya pitter pottering there instead of pilling a potate I answered O Dear, O Dear, O Dear I will derictly that I get up, take a Knife and begin pilling.

All misspellings, misgrammarings, mispunctuatings are Emily's own, but the charm comes through, does it not? That feeling, familiar to anyone with siblings, of a closed, but permeable, shared universe? A sense that we're being given the play-by-play of a comfortable evening at home, with the world's cares far from the door? And would I be stretching a point to say that the people who rail against blogs and Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook &c. for being little but the record of our increasing self-obsession might look at this ephemera and, were they to be honest, acknowledge that it was always thus?

A few lines later, the diary entry turns unexpectedly, retrospectively sad:

I say I wonder what we shall be like if all be well and what we shall be and where we shall be if all goes on well in the year 1874--in which year I shall be in my 57th year Anne will be going in her 55th year Branwell will be going in his 58th year And Charlotte in her 59th year hoping we shall all be well at that time.

By 1874, there would be no Brontes in England. Branwell was the first to go, in September of 1848, followed by Emily in December and Anne the following March. Charlotte nearly made it, dying in March of 1855, just before her 39th birthday.

Things I've learned in just the first 200 pages of the new edition of Juliet Barker's The Brontes

1 That biographers are insane. Barker writes in her introduction:

I have made it a point of honour to go back to the original manuscripts of all my material wherever possible, quoting them in preference to printed versions.

And she did that despite the fact that the manuscripts are for the most part "written in the Brontes' minute and cramped hand," which they developed in order to mimic, as closely as possible with a quill pen, the small type they found in printed books.

Biographers are insane, and I'm endlessly grateful for that fact.

2 That February 28, 1810 was named a Day of National Humiliation in England in recognition of the nation's poor efforts against Napoleon and France. Patrick Bronte wrote a 265-line poem in honor of the day, but the day otherwise seems to have been more or less lost to the mists of time--or at least a quick Google search hasn't blown them away and revealed it.

The idea stood out for me if for no other reason than because I had a hard time imagining the United States ever making the same choice. Circumstances, I realize, are different--national humiliation would have a much different sense in a kingdom with an official establishment of religion than for a nation without an official religious (and thus penitential) tradition--but it was still difficult to picture a president or Congress telling the nation to bow its head for even a single day.

Yet my search unexpectedly turned up three American instances: May 11 1775 and May 15, 1776, in the early, dark days of the Revolutionary War, and April 30, 1863, five weeks before Gettysburg. Lincoln's shouldn't, I suppose, surprise us. As we know, he was not averse to casting the Civil War in biblical tones, and the suffering thereof as a judgment, as in the closing paragraphs of his Second Inaugural:

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Still, it's hard to imagine such a day being declared in the present--even leaving aside the religious complications in a secular nation. America is not one to admit its mistakes or submit itself to judgment. Our besetting sin, stronger it seems every year, remains one that would be familiar to literary figures from Melville's Confidence-Man to Lewis's Babbitt: incessant, even frenzied boosterism. We only do good; we only are the best.

3 That Patrick Bronte was almost certainly a much more loving father than he's generally given credit for. Barker makes a convincing case for his involvement and interest in the lives of his children, and his concern for their welfare. Oh, and along the way she clears up the strange old story--told often as a mark of his temper or even mania--about him firing a pistol out the window of the parsonage every day: Haworth was at the time in the midst of a region unsettled by Luddite activity, often violent, and Bronte took to keeping a loaded pistol by his bedside at night. The gun, however, was so primitive that the only way to unload it was to fire it, which he did, apparently, rather than leave a loaded pistol in a house of six children. (But let's not pretend that he also didn't enjoy it--who wouldn't enjoy having the excuse to send a shot ringing harmlessly over the misty moors every morning?)

4 That in 1830, when Patrick, a minister, was sick in bed with a serious lung ailment, the following very strange incident occurred, which fourteen-year-old Charlotte wrote down:

Taby & I were alone in the Kitchen, about half past 9 anti-meridian. suddenly we heard a knock at the door, Taby rose & opened it, an old man appearing standing without, who accosted her thus,

OM does the parson live her?
T yes
OM I wish to see him,
T he is poorly in bed.
OM indeed I have [a] message for him.
T who from?
OM from the LORD.
T who?
OM, the LORD, he desires me to say that the bridegroom is coming & that he must prepare to meet him; that the cords are about to be loosed & the golden Bowl broken, the Pitcher broken at the fountain & the wheel stopped at the cistern.

here he concluded his discourse & abruptly went away. as Taby closed the door I asked her if she knew him, her reply was that she had never seen him before nor any one like him.

The man was surely, as Charlotte herself concluded, merely a religious fanatic--Patrick Bronte's Evangelical brethren were no strangers to apocalyptic talk--but the experience must nonetheless have been quite creepy. It's one I'll remember on Halloweens to come.