BRANWELL'S CHARACTER.
Branwell's Character in his Poetry--The Pious and Tender Tone of
Mind which it Displays--Branwell's Tendency to Dwell on the Past
rather than on the Future--Illustrated--The Sad Tone of his Mind
--He is Inclined to be Morbid--The Way in which Branwell regarded
Nature--Observations on the Character Displayed in his Works.
It has often been observed that the life of a poet may best be learned
from the works he has left behind him. We may fall into error in
dealing with the circumstances of his external life, and may make
mistakes as to chronology or facts, and, in this way, may be led often
to form a false estimate of his character; but, if we discover the
personality concealed in his writings, if we can grasp the hidden
spirit by which they are informed, we shall be enabled to follow his
heart in its cherished affections, to understand the characteristic
tendency of his thoughts, and to comprehend even the very psychology
of his soul. This enquiry, it is true, is often difficult in the
extreme; one cannot always unravel the tangled mysteries in which
natural expression is wrapped up, nor fully pierce the cloudy medium
of conventionality or affectation through which it may be dimly
revealed; it is especially difficult, also, to follow it in the works
of a writer of a school like that of the Euphuists, or of Pope, where
the medium is one of exaggerated refinement, or of classical and
formal preciseness.
But, with the writings of Branwell Bronte, the case is entirely
different; and for a very simple reason, viz., that everything he
wrote proceeded from a personal inspiration, and was the direct
expression of the fulness of emotion, and of vivid thoughts or
feelings which could scarcely be hidden; because, in short, he wrote
in the true artistic spirit of having something to say.
If Branwell's affectionate nature led him to dwell upon the memories
of his earlier years, and upon the thoughts of those dead sisters whom
he had loved so much, he spoke in the voice of Harriet weeping for the
departed Caroline; it needed but his remembrance of the fell disease
that had deprived him of his sisters, and the fearful havoc which it
was yet to work in his family, to inspire him with the sad fancy of
his 'Percy Hall.' If he sank into the depths of morbid melancholy, and
was filled with a consciousness of the worthlessness of ambition, the
folly of pride, and the universality of sorrow, his sonnets were a
natural expression, in which he found both relief and consolation.
In his case it requires no Pheidian hand to bring out the statue from
the marble, but only a sympathetic spirit, a heart filled with the
affections of humanity, and a mind attuned to thoughts somewhat sad,
to enable one to enter into every mood in which Branwell wrote, and to
understand the moral and tender pathos that fills his works. It is
because Branwell's poems are so fully expressive of his feelings at
the time when they were written that they are so separately placed in
this work. But, before we conclude it, it will be well to sum up, in
a slight sketch, a few of the most characteristic features of his
writings, and, in so doing, we shall arrive at a correct estimate of
his disposition and of his poetry together.
The first thing, then, that strikes one in Branwell's verse, beginning
at its youthful period, is the tone of piety that distinguishes it.
The simple stanzas which he sent to Wordsworth, even, however
worthless as poetry, are valuable, because they show us the early bent
of his mind; and the beautiful lines which he wrote a year later, in
1838, where he first manifests that consciousness of the vanity of
earthly things, which his sister Anne also versified, tell us of the
hope of a heavenly future, which is contrasted, in its serenity, with
the evils of mortal life. The poem entitled 'Caroline's Prayer,' and
the one 'On Caroline' also, simple though they are, are evidence of
a devotional turn of mind; and mark again, in the longer poem of
'Caroline,' how Harriet finds divine consolation in the calm of Nature:
'Quiet airs of sacred gladness
Breathing through these woodlands wild,
O'er the whirl of mortal madness
Spread the slumbers of a child;'
and how tenderly she remembers the pious lessons which her dead sister
had drawn from the sufferings of the Saviour of man, a recollection,
let it be remembered, which Branwell himself preserved. A little later,
we find Branwell occupied upon a long poem, of which we possess only
a fragment, wholly sacred in its character, and moral in its
purpose,--'Noah's Warning over Methusaleh's Grave.' Here Noah, before
the universal Deluge, in the presence even of the cloudy wall 'piled
boding round the firmament,' harangues the people, bidding them
withdraw from sin, ere it be too late. It is true, however, that in the
later poems, when Branwell's mind is cast into its deepest gloom, this
disposition is not so prominent, and, perhaps, can be gathered only
from an abundance of tender touches, which could proceed from nothing
but a devotional spirit; and thus we may infer that, though he might
have lost some of his early piety, he never lost the effect of it.
There is, besides, throughout Branwell's work, the evidence of a justly
balanced morality, in that he nowhere exalts depraved passions, or
manifests impiety, or, more than all, corrupts his readers with the
painting of sensuous ideas, or the description of sensuous incidents.
And I would ask the reader, in connection with this admirable
characteristic of his poetry, to remember that he has never been
charged with indulgence of the kind that has lured away too many men
of genius and mental power.
The next thing that strikes me in Branwell's poetry is the strong love
that he manifests for the past, which he seems to value more than the
present, and whose pleasures he deems sweeter and purer than any the
future can have in store. This tone of thought could be very well
understood if we had regard to circumstances of the later period of his
life, when despair had cut off hope; but it is just as prominent in the
earliest poems he wrote. It would seem that, to the pensive mind of
Branwell, all the thoughts of childhood, all the joys of youth and its
affections, became, as years passed on, hallowed and exalted in the
golden halo of recollection. There were places in the sanctity of the
past where the roses of Bendemeer grew, unchanging ever; places to
which he turned for the joys of memory, when solitude inclined him to
reflection. These pleasures of memory were often of a pensive order,
for they were connected with sorrowful events, or they were joys turned
sorrowful, as joys will turn, when they have been long enough departed.
In Branwell's letter to Wordsworth, and in his other letters, he
expresses plenty of honest ambition, and talks bravely of work in the
future; and he spoke in the same way also. But I have received from his
poems the impression that this ambition grew from the requirements of
circumstances, and from literary emulation; that, in fact, the
constitution of Branwell's mind was of the gentle reflective nature to
which the pleasures of ambition appear hollow and insufficient in
themselves. At least it is clear that he dwelt with more satisfaction
on the past than on the future. So far, indeed, as his poetry is
concerned, we saw, in 'The End of All,' that it was only when loss made
the past too painful for thought, that he turned to the stony joys of
solitary ambition and personal fame. This seems to me to be a very
tender trait in his character, however little it might fit him to fight
the battle of life with those who looked for the joys of the future,
rather than turned to pleasures they could actually taste no more.
In Branwell's thoughtful moods, it required but the woodland sunshine,
perhaps, or the sound of the distant bells, to bring back memories to
him, as they brought back to Harriet, in the poem of 'Caroline,' many a
scene of bygone days, opening the fount of tears, and waking memory to
the thought
'Of visions sleeping--not forgot.'
Thus, under the pensive influence, there passed over her
'That swell of thought, which seems to fill
The bursting heart, the gushing eye,
While fades all _present_ good or ill
Before the shades of things gone by.'
It called up in her, also, the hours when Caroline, too, listening to
the wild storms of winter, had filled the nights with pictures and
feelings
'From far-off memories brought.'
These treasures of memory, to which Branwell refers in many of his
poems, were to him of a sacred nature, and might not be profaned. He
tells us, indeed, in one of his sonnets, that the tears of affection
are dried up by the growth of honours, and by the interests and
pursuits of life, which
'Dim or destroy those holy thoughts which cling
Round where the forms we loved lie slumbering.'
For the past was thus hallowed by Branwell, because in it lay his
earliest affections, and his most poignant sorrows. I have had
occasion, in speaking of several of the poems in this volume, to point
out the love which he shows for his dead sisters, Maria and Elizabeth,
and how he mourned them up to the last year of his life. For his
disposition was of a deeply affectionate order. He has, indeed, painted
for us too vividly, in both the poems of 'Caroline' and 'Percy Hall,'
the pangs of separation, and the cheerless void that remains when the
loved one has departed, to leave us any doubt as to the sensitiveness
of his nature.
It will not have escaped the reader's attention that Branwell's muse
sings often morbidly enough, and that,--like some spirit that cannot
forsake the scene of its mortal sorrows, and haunts the place of its
affliction--he dwells frequently upon details of a painful kind, that
others would gladly have relegated to oblivion. In the poem of
'Caroline,' the picture of his mother, clad in black, is still before
his eyes; he remembers even the grave-clothes of his sister in her
coffin, and
'Her _too_ bright cheek all faded now;'
the closing of the coffin lid, and the lowering of it into its narrow
bed are yet before his eyes; and painfully he remembers his feeling at
the grave-side:
'And wild my sob, when hollow rung
The first cold clod above her flung.'
Later, though he was occupied with different subjects, Branwell could
not entirely free himself from a morbid and painful analysis of the
physical effects of the disease he dreaded so much; and very
beautifully does he suggest the picture of consumptive decline and
early decay.
This tone of thought, and the many misfortunes and gloomy forebodings
that attended Branwell's later years, had a natural effect in giving
a mournful cast to almost every emanation of his muse; and we find,
in effect, throughout the poems here collected, that, save in one
instance--'The Epicurean's Song'--which we feel to be the production
of a moment of elation, there is scarcely a line that does not breathe
a consciousness of sad regret, or of cruel and bitter sorrow.
He was filled with the sense of the futility of human joy, and the
abiding presence of woe:
'No! joy _itself_ is but a shade,
So well may its remembrance die,
But cares, Life's conquerors, never fade,
So strong is their reality.'
These sorrows, as years went by, grew so terrible in their crushing
weight, that the mind could barely withstand them, and Branwell felt,
in that period when his cry was for peace in death, that, when the
light of life is gone,
'There come no sorrows crowding on,
And powerless lies Despair.'
With Branwell, indeed, as with Mary in his poem of 'Percy Hall,'
'thought felt irksome to the heated brain.'
It was then that oblivion became to him a coveted relief from
immediate woe, and that he envied the dreamless head of the wandering,
water-borne corpse, whose rolling bed seemed calmer than the turmoil
of the world.
This figure of the body rocked by the waves of ocean, brings me to a
consideration of the way in which Branwell regarded Nature, which had
something very noteworthy in it. It was always remarked by his friends
that the young poet was a great observer, and took an especial pleasure
in the works of Nature. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising, at first
sight, that, in his poems, he does not dwell upon them descriptively or
in a marked manner, and that we have to infer, from certain suggestive
touches and pictures--which do, indeed, speak more plainly than words
could--that he observed them at all. But we learn that the works of
Nature had for Branwell a deeper significance than for most people,
that he conceived they had some mysterious sympathy or unspeakable
connection with human affections, and were, in a manner, the expression
or immediate reflection of the Deity. Wordsworth, Southey, and
Coleridge had already looked upon Nature somewhat in this wise; but it
would be a mistake to suppose that Branwell imitated them: his thoughts
flow too swiftly and impetuously to admit of such a conclusion. It is
possible that, if his life had passed calmly, he might have dwelt upon
the simple beauties of Nature, and found in them a homely harmony with
familiar ideas; Charlotte and Anne in their poetry scarcely get beyond
this; but it was different with Emily and Branwell. Emily, with her
reserved, passionate nature, had a sympathetic spell in the solitary
moorland; and Branwell, labouring with his sorrows, found, in the
wildest storms, a being with whom he must battle, or saw, in the mighty
mountains, an image of unbroken strength and everlasting fortitude,
such a power as he must strive after and make his own. But, in
Branwell's earlier poems, this influence is not so marked, and his muse
is simply attuned to the saddened thoughts in which Nature
participates. Thus Wordsworth had sung:
'Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad,
Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw;
Sending sad shadows after things not sad,
Peopling the harmless fields with signs of woe:
Beneath her sway, a simple forest cry
Becomes an echo of man's misery.'
And thus we see, in Branwell's 'Caroline,' how, even in its calmness,
the beautifully suggested picture of eve--when the sunlight slants, and
the waters cease their motion, and the calm and hush tell of rest from
labour--is made to harmonize with the plaintive thoughts of Harriet.
But then comes the more significant question:
'Why is such a silence given
To this summer day's decay,
Does our earth feel aught of Heaven,
Can the voice of Nature pray?'
What, in short, is the harmonious and sympathetic spell that breathes
through Nature?
The wild places of the earth, mountains and moorlands, where the storms
raged, and the great winds blew, were nearest akin to the Titanic
genius of Branwell and Emily. Thus, in the sonnet, the everlasting
majesty of Black Comb was held up by Branwell as an example to man, and
as a contrast to human feebleness; and later, when his woe was most
acute, he was drawn into a 'communion of vague unity' with Penmaenmawr,
comparing the living, beating heart of man with the stony hill, and
begging,
'Let me, like it, arise o'er mortal care,
All woes sustain, yet never know despair,
Unshrinking face the griefs I now deplore,
And stand through storm and shine like moveless Penmaenmawr.'
And, lastly, in the 'Epistle from a Father to a Child in her Grave,' we
find him comparing himself with one in the midst of wild mountains:
'I, thy life's source, was like a wanderer breasting
Keen mountain winds, and on a summit resting,
Whose rough rocks rise above the grassy mead,
With sleet and north winds howling overhead.'
It will be seen from this short inquiry that the poetry of Branwell
Bronte was entirely introspective, having, almost to the last line,
some direct reference to his own thoughts or feelings; and that it
may thus be read as an actual part of the story of his life. The
disposition it reveals, though often hidden, as the readers of this
book know, through the effects of folly and indulgence, was one of a
singularly gentle, affectionate, and sympathetic character; passionate
and unstable, it is true, but a disposition, nevertheless, that has
been frequently misunderstood, and not seldom wronged. One of the aims
of this book has been to set Patrick Branwell Bronte right with the
public; an attempt, not to clear him from follies and weaknesses that
really were his--which the public, but for the mistakes of biographers,
would never have known--but to show that, at any rate, his nature was
one rather to be admired than condemned. It has aimed also, by the
publication of his poetical writings, to demonstrate that his genius is
not unworthy to be ranked with that which made his sisters famous. Yet
it may, perhaps, be held that the poems here published contain more of
rich promise than of real fulfilment, rather the earnest of literary
success than the actual accomplishment of it. But, in reading the
poetry of Branwell Bronte, which is so uniformly sad, it may be well to
remember what Mr. Swinburne has said, in speaking of Mr. Browning, that
'to do justice to any book which deserves any other sort of justice
than that of the fire or waste-paper basket, it is necessary to read it
in a fit frame of mind.'
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE