'REAL REST.'--'PENMAENMAWR.'
'Real Rest'--Comments--Spirit of Branwell and Emily Identical--Letter
to Leyland--Branwell Broods on his Sorrows--'Penmaenmawr'--Comments
--He still Searches and Hopes for Employment--Charlotte's somewhat
Overdrawn Expressions--The Alleged Elopement Proposal--Probable
Origin of the Story.
Though Branwell Bronte was so feeble in health that, despite his
wishes, he found physical labour impossible, and though the reaction
from utter despair--through whose impetus he completed one volume of
his novel--had been followed by a condition which led him to think
worthy literary work beyond his power, we find him, almost at the same
time, writing two of the finest poems which remain from his hand. It
has been seen, in the letter addressed to Mr. Grundy, how he declares
that, owing to the state of his mind, he is unable to undertake any
literary work worth reading. But we have certain knowledge of an
immediate movement of his genius, and that it found expression in
verse, which gave a free course to his feelings. In the following poem
we have perhaps the most powerful and weird expression of inconsolable
sorrow ever penned. A strange calm had now succeeded the storms of
feeling its author had passed through.
REAL REST.
'I see a corpse upon the waters lie,
With eyes turned, swelled and sightless, to the sky,
And arms outstretched to move, as wave on wave
Upbears it in its boundless billowy grave.
Not time, but ocean, thins its flowing hair;
Decay, not sorrow, lays its forehead bare;
Its members move, but not in thankless toil,
For seas are milder than this world's turmoil;
Corruption robs its lips and cheeks of red,
But wounded vanity grieves not the dead;
And, though those members hasten to decay,
No pang of suffering takes their strength away.
With untormented eye, and heart, and brain,
Through calm and storm it floats across the main;
Though love and joy have perished long ago,
Its bosom suffers not one pang of woe;
Though weeds and worms its cherished beauty hide,
It feels not wounded vanity nor pride;
Though journeying towards some far off shore,
It needs no care nor gold to float it o'er;
Though launched in voyage for eternity,
It need not think upon what is _to be_;
Though naked, helpless, and companionless,
It feels not poverty, nor knows distress.
'Ah, corpse! if thou couldst tell my aching mind
What scenes of sorrow thou hast left behind,
How sad the life which, breathing, thou hast led,
How free from strife thy sojourn with the dead;
I would assume thy place--would long to be
A world-wide wanderer o'er the waves with thee!
I have a misery, where thou hast none;
My heart beats, bursting, whilst thine lies like stone;
My veins throb wild, whilst thine are dead and dry;
And woes, not waters, dim my restless eye;
Thou longest not with one well loved to be,
And absence does not break a chain with thee;
No sudden agonies dart through thy breast;
Thou hast what all men covet,--REAL REST.
I have an outward frame, unlike to thine,
Warm with young life--not cold in death's decline;
An eye that sees the sunny light of Heaven,--
A heart by pleasure thrilled, by anguish riven--
But, in exchange for thy untroubled calm,
Thy gift of cold oblivion's healing balm,
I'd give my youth, my health, my life to come,
And share thy slumbers in thy ocean tomb.'
Here the poet, his soul longing for freedom from mortality, his
crushed and wounded spirit hovering above the salt and restless wave,
contemplates the pale and ghastly body that floats thereon, and,
holding communion with it, touches in melancholy and beautiful words
its isolation and oblivion. Accompanying the dead in its watery
wanderings, he sees, with keen sympathy, its utter disseverance from
the world it has left, and contrasts with its condition the hopeless
sorrow of his own disappointed youth. He delineates, in words of
singular power and felicity, this weird and lonely picture; and, as an
artist and a poet, paints wildly, but beautifully, the decay of the
drowned in the ocean, and of the living, through the effects of
long-continued woe. Branwell had loved, indeed, however unfortunately;
and the misery of his passion caused him to turn his reflections within
upon himself. As with the 'Wandering Jew,' who sees in every rock, in
every bush, in every cloud, without hope of alleviation from his
abiding woe, the _via crucis_ of his suffering Lord--every thought
of Branwell's gifted mind, every conception of his fertile brain, every
aspect, to him, of ocean, earth, and sky,--was, in one way or other,
instinct with his own initial and irrepressible affection. Apart,
however, from the illusions respecting the lady of his heart, under
which he laboured, and which drove him to madness, there was a tendency
to gloom and despondency implanted in his very nature, a disposition of
mind in which his sister Emily largely resembled him. To such an extent
was this the case that, in her poem of 'The Philosopher,' written in
the October of 1845, she not only gives expression to similar weird
thoughts and desires, but one might think there had been some
interchange of ideas between the two,--that, perhaps, she had read his
'Real Rest,' and wrote the following words in half-censure of its
tendency. She is speaking of an enlightening spirit:
'Had I but seen his glorious eye
_Once_ light the clouds that wilder me;
I ne'er had raised this coward cry
To cease to think, and cease to be;
I ne'er had called oblivion blest,
Nor stretching eager hands to death,
Implored to change for senseless rest
This sentient soul, this living breath--
Oh, let me die--that power and will
Their cruel strife may close;
And conquered good and conquering ill
Be lost in one repose!'
It is noteworthy that Charlotte, also, in the second part of her poem
'Gilbert,' has used the incident of a corpse floating upon the waters,
which is seen by the unhappy man in his vision, not, indeed, to give
him the calm of oblivion, but rather, in contrast to Branwell's poem,
to wake in him the pains of sorrow and remorse.
Again, on the 25th of November, 1845, Branwell wrote to Leyland. He
could not free himself from the unfortunate ideas which had perverted
his understanding, but on every other subject he wrote justly.
'Haworth,
'Bradford, Yorks.
'MY DEAR SIR,
'I send you the enclosed,--and I ought to tell you why I wished
anything of so personal a nature to appear in print.
'I have no other way, not pregnant with danger, of communicating
with one whom I cannot help loving. Printed lines, with my usual
signature, "Northangerland," could excite no suspicion--as my late
unhappy employer shrank from the bare idea of my being able to
write anything, and had a day's sickness after hearing that
Macaulay had sent me a complimentary letter; so _he_ won't know
the name.
'I sent through a private channel one letter of comfort in her
great and agonizing present afflictions, but I recalled it through
dread of the consequences of a discovery.
'These lines have only one merit,--that of really expressing my
feelings, while sailing under the Welsh mountain, when the band on
board the steamer struck up, "Ye banks and braes!" God knows that,
for many different reasons, those feelings were far enough from
pleasure.
'I suffer very much from that mental exhaustion which arises from
brooding on matters useless at present to think of,--and active
employment would be my greatest cure and blessing,--for really,
after hours of thoughts which business would have hushed, I have
felt as if I could not live, and, if long-continued, such a state
will bring on permanent affection of the heart, which is already
bothered with most uneasy palpitations.
'I should like extremely to have an hour's sitting with you, and,
if I had the chance, I would promise to try not to look gloomy. You
said you would be at Haworth ere long, but that "ere" has doubtless
changed to "ne'er;" so I must wish to get to Halifax some time to
see you.
'I saw Murray's monument praised in the papers, and I trust you are
getting on well with Beckwith's, as well as with your own personal
statue of living flesh and blood.
'Mine, like your Theseus, has lost its hands and feet, and I fear
its head also, for it can neither move, write, nor think as it once
could.
'I hope I shall hear from you on John Brown's return from Halifax,
whither he has gone.
'I remain, &c.,
'P. B. BRONTE.'
The poem enclosed was entitled:
PENMAENMAWR.
'These winds, these clouds, this chill November storm
Bring back again thy tempest-beaten form
To eyes that look upon yon dreary sky
As late they looked on thy sublimity;
When I, more troubled than thy restless sea,
Found, in its waves, companionship with thee.
'Mid mists thou frownedst over Arvon's shore,
'Mid tears I watched thee over ocean's roar,
And thy blue front, by thousand storms laid bare,
Claimed kindred with a heart worn down by care.
No smile had'st thou, o'er smiling fields aspiring,
And none had I, from smiling fields retiring;
Blackness, 'mid sunlight, tinged thy slaty brow,
I, 'mid sweet music, looked as dark as thou;
Old Scotland's song, o'er murmuring surges borne,
Of "times departed,--never to return,"
Was echoed back in mournful tones from thee,
And found an echo, quite as sad, in me;
Waves, clouds, and shadows moved in restless change,
Around, above, and on thy rocky range,
But seldom saw that sovereign front of thine
Changes more quick than those which passed o'er mine.
And as wild winds and human hands, at length,
Have turned to scattered stones the mighty strength
Of that old fort, whose belt of boulders grey
Roman or Saxon legions held at bay;
So had, methought, the young, unshaken nerve--
That, when WILL wished, no doubt could cause to swerve,
That on its vigour ever placed reliance,
That to its sorrows sometimes bade defiance--
Now left my spirit, like thyself, old hill,
With head defenceless against human ill;
And, as thou long hast looked upon the wave
That takes, but gives not, like a churchyard grave,
I, like life's course, through ether's weary range,
Never know rest from ceaseless strife and change.
'But, PENMAENMAWR! a better fate was thine,
Through all its shades, than that which darkened mine;
No quick thoughts thrilled through thy gigantic mass
Of woe for what might be, or is, or was;
Thou hadst no memory of the glorious hour
When Britain rested on thy giant power;
Thou hadst no feeling for the verdant slope
That leant on thee as man's heart leads on hope;
The pastures, chequered o'er with cot and tree,
Though thou wert guardian, got no smile from thee;
Old ocean's wrath their charms might overwhelm,
But thou could'st still keep thy unshaken realm--
While I felt flashes of an inward feeling
As fierce as those thy craggy form revealing
In nights of blinding gleams, when deafening roar
Hurls back thy echo to old Mona's shore.
I knew a flower, whose leaves were meant to bloom
Till Death should snatch it to adorn a tomb,
Now, blanching 'neath the blight of hopeless grief,
With never blooming, and yet living leaf;
A flower on which my mind would wish to shine,
If but one beam could break from mind like mine.
I had an ear which could on accents dwell
That might as well say "perish!" as "farewell!"
An eye which saw, far off, a tender form,
Beaten, unsheltered, by affliction's storm;
An arm--a lip--that trembled to embrace
My angel's gentle breast and sorrowing face,
A mind that clung to Ouse's fertile side
While tossing--objectless--on Menai's tide!
'Oh, Soul! that draw'st yon mighty hill and me
Into communion of vague unity,
Tell me, can I obtain the stony brow
That fronts the storm, as much unbroken now
As when it once upheld the fortress proud,
Now gone, like its own morning cap of cloud?
Its breast is stone. Can I have one of steel,
To endure--inflict--defend--yet never feel?
It stood as firm when haughty Edward's word
Gave hill and dale to England's fire and sword,
As when white sails and steam-smoke tracked the sea,
And all the world breathed peace, but waves and me.
'Let me, like it, arise o'er mortal care,
All woes sustain, yet never know despair;
Unshrinking face the grief I now deplore,
And stand, through storm and shine, like moveless PENMAENMAWR!'
These lines are shadowed, like all his other writings, with the grief
that day and night oppressed him. Throughout the theme, his eager
yearning for mental quiet is finely expressed; and in it he contrasts
the strength and calm of the everlasting hill in its chequered history,
and in the ceaseless changes, and the lights and shadows that fall upon
it, with his own wild and stormy existence; the lady, whose charms have
bewildered his imagination, supplying him with a subject for sorrowful
recollections. The giant hill is the mighty image with which his
perturbed soul communes, and he implores for strength to enable him
to rise superior to his misfortunes, and to face, like 'moveless
Penmaenmawr,' the storm, adversity, and ruin that threaten him. But
there was little likelihood of the lady seeing these lines.
We find Branwell, at the time, making efforts to obtain some
employment that would divert him from useless brooding upon the
unfortunate circumstances that destroyed his peace. Scarcely, also,
was he less anxious to be away from home, for his presence there had
been his greatest humiliation when his family knew of his disgrace;
yet, with a method of which he was master, he appears to have kept
silence there on the subject his madness made him so ready to repeat
to others. However his sisters Emily and Anne might regard him,
Charlotte, at least, looked upon him as one of the fallen. She thus
writes to her friend concerning him on the 4th of November, 1845: 'I
hoped to be able to ask you to come to Haworth. It almost seemed as if
Branwell had a chance of getting employment, and I waited to know the
result of his efforts in order to say, dear ----, come and see us. But
the place (a secretaryship to a railway committee) is given to another
person. Branwell still remains at home; and while _he_ is here, _you_
shall not come. I am more confirmed in that resolution the more I see
of him. I wish I could say one word to you in his favour, but I
cannot. I will hold my tongue. We are all obliged to you for your kind
suggestion about Leeds; but I think our school schemes are, for the
present, at rest.' Again, she says on December 31st of the same year:
'You say well, in speaking of ----, that no sufferings are so awful as
those brought on by dissipation; alas! I see the truth of this
observation daily proved. ---- and ---- must have as weary and
burdensome a life of it in waiting upon their unhappy brother. It
seems grievous, indeed, that those who have not sinned should suffer
so largely.'[22] Charlotte also, writing to Nancy Garrs, who at times
assisted at the parsonage, complained of the conduct of her brother;
but, later, requested that the letter should be destroyed. Her wish
was complied with.
[22] Gaskell's 'Life of Charlotte Bronte,' chap. xiii.
It is, indeed, an almost impossible task to convey to the reader, in
the pages of a biography, an idea which will, in an adequate degree,
approach the intimate acquaintance which those who lived, saw, and
spoke with its subject possessed. And, yet, how necessary is such
knowledge to the right understanding of anyone's letters! But with what
chance of a true insight, then, shall we read the letters of Branwell
Bronte and his sister, if we have an incorrect view of his character?
Miss Robinson has confidently concluded, from certain depreciatory
references to himself, in his letters to Mr. Grundy, that, at this
period, 'he was manifestly, and by his own confession, too physically
prostrate for any literary effort,' with how much accuracy the reader
has seen and will further see. And Mr. Wemyss Reid, with respect to the
character of Mr. Bronte, adopting much of Mrs. Gaskell's view of him,
and relying upon his children's letters, has produced a portrait of him
to which, as he allows, 'some of those who knew him in his later years,
including one who is above all others entitled to an opinion on the
subject, have objected as being over-coloured.' We must not read, then,
too literally all that we find in the letters. It would be folly to
take word for word Charlotte's account of her father's anger when she
announced to him a proposal of marriage which had been made to her, and
which did not accord with his wish; or to believe that 'compassion or
relenting is no more to be looked for from papa than sap from
firewood,' when we know that he afterwards voluntarily gave way, and
sacrificed his own opinion. Nor would it be right to accept any
exaggerated confession of Charlotte about herself, in a literal sense.
And thus it does not sound well in Mrs. Gaskell, after completing her
account of the outward events of Branwell's life, to say, 'All that is
to be said more about Branwell Bronte shall be said by Charlotte
herself, not by me;' and then to proceed to extract such portions of
the sister's letters as condemned him, and to summarize or repress
anything favourable. But Miss Robinson has gone further. She, by
extracting a few censures from various letters, apart in date, and
leaving out all mention of the chance of the secretaryship in the
letter of November the 4th, and the words 'to him' in another, has left
her reader under the impression that, after his dismissal, Branwell
would not seek employment. 'Such was not his intention,' she says. But
Branwell's efforts to obtain the secretaryship, to which Charlotte
alludes, are sufficient evidence of a contrary disposition in him; and
we shall find that he exerted himself in other directions also.
The failure of the school-keeping has likewise been duly laid to his
charge, although, as we have seen, Mr. Bronte's oncoming blindness, in
the first place, and the difficulty of procuring pupils at Haworth,
were the causes of its failure. To the reason why no attempt was made
to open a school elsewhere, I shall have further to allude.
We have been told by Mrs. Gaskell that, some months after Branwell's
dismissal, he met the wife of his former employer clandestinely by
appointment. 'There was,' she says, 'a strange lingering of conscience,
when ... he refused to consent to the elopement which she proposed.'[23]
Miss Robinson, who adopts this report, thinks that the phrase 'herself
and estate,' in the letter he sent to Mr. Grundy, throws quite a new
light upon Mrs. Gaskell's opinion that there were any remains of
conscience left in Branwell Bronte. She says he counselled 'a little
longer waiting,'--that he might become possessed of the property, on
the death of the lady's husband. But if this incident of the proposed
elopement had actually taken place, the delay suggested by Branwell
should surely be held as proof that anything positively dishonourable
was repulsive to him. The lady, too, had an ample fortune of her own,
of which, had she proposed an elopement, she would have informed him.
But, if we consider the possible sources from which such a story as
this could arise, we may surmise that Mrs. Gaskell,--who first gave it
to the public, and on whose authority it alone remains,--obtained it,
with the many other incidents she has published, from the current
scandal of Haworth,--where else could she have heard it?--and when we
remember that the rumours of the village, though magnified a
hundred-fold, had their origin in the infatuated belief and wild
statements of Branwell himself, possibly we shall not be wrong if we
conclude that it had no foundation whatever in fact. Certainly there is
no sufficient evidence for it. And the story is in itself inherently
improbable, for it alleges that the lady had been not only regardless
of her reputation, but had cast to the winds all thoughts of those
pecuniary considerations which, a little later, upon the death of her
husband, are stated to have prevented her from marrying in honour the
supposed object of her affections.
[23] 'Life of Charlotte Bronte,' chap, xiii., 1st edition.
I have, earlier in this work, spoken of a poem on one of the traditions
of Lancashire, by Mr. Peters, entitled: 'Leyland's Daughter,' which is
the story of a romantic elopement. Branwell, early in 1846, proposed to
write a poem on Morley Hall, in the parish of Leigh, where the
elopement took place in the reign of Edward VI., in which he also would
touch upon the incident.
This tradition, and Branwell's intended work on the subject, became
often a topic of conversation both at Haworth and Halifax: and, it is
not improbable that, some ten years afterwards, when Mrs. Gaskell was
searching at the former place for materials for her work, the story of
this ancient elopement had become mixed with the stories of the village
respecting Branwell and the lady of his late employer, and thus, with
them, was ready for Mrs. Gaskell's hand, additions having been made as
to time and place.