Chapter 2 OTHER POEMS.

Branwell at the Parsonage: his Loneliness?-?'The Epicurean's Song'?-?'Song'?-?Northangerland?-?'Noah's Warning over Methusaleh's Grave'?-?Letter to Mr. Grundy?-?Miss Branwell's Death?-?Her Will?-?Her Nephew Remembered?-?Injustice done to Him in this Matter by the Biographers of his Sisters.

During the absence of his sisters Charlotte and Emily in Brussels, and while Anne was away as a governess, Branwell no doubt felt lonely at the parsonage at Haworth; but he appears to have sought consolation from his troubles in the soothing influences of music and poetry. He knew that these employments softened many of the difficulties that beset the road of human life, and that they introduced men into a purer and nobler sphere than that which is called reality. He felt that they led 'the spirit on, in an ecstasy of admiration, of sweet sorrow, or of unearthly joy, to the music of harmonious, and not wholly intelligible words, raising in the mind beauteous and transcendent images.' Whatever may have been said as to Branwell's proneness to self-indulgence, and his enjoyment of society, even that of 'The Bull,' and of the corrupt of Haworth, none of his alleged depravity and coarseness of disposition disfigured his verses, however deficient his early effusions may have been in the higher excellencies of the Muse. From the general tenor of his writings, which is religious and sometimes philosophical, he seems, under his misfortunes, which were ever with him in one shape or another, to have sought consolation in the shadowed paths of poetry and reflection.

Some lights now and then diversify the general gloom of his stanzas; but, even then, an air of sadness still pervades them. More I shall find to say on the special features of Branwell's poems in the later pages of the present work.

He wrote the following verses in 1842:

THE EPICUREAN'S SONG.

'The visits of Sorrow

Say, why should we mourn?

Since the sun of to-morrow

May shine on its urn;

And all that we think such pain

Will have departed,-then

Bear for a moment what cannot return;

'For past time has taken

Each hour that it gave,

And they never awaken

From yesterday's grave;

So surely we may defy

Shadows, like memory,

Feeble and fleeting as midsummer wave.

'From the depths where they're falling

Nor pleasure, nor pain,

Despite our recalling,

Can reach us again;

Though we brood over them,

Nought can recover them,

Where they are laid, they must ever remain.

'So seize we the present,

And gather its flowers,

For,-mournful or pleasant,-

'Tis all that is ours;

While daylight we're wasting,

The evening is hasting,

And night follows fast on vanishing hours.

'Yes,-and we, when night comes,

Whatever betide,

Must die as our fate dooms,

And sleep by their side;

For change is the only thing

Always continuing;

And it sweeps creation away with its tide.'

Here Branwell, writing, contrary to his custom, in a gay mood, forgets the failures of the past, diverting his mind from them by seeking serenity in the diversions which now and then lighten his path. He is perfectly conscious of the fleeting nature of earthly things; and, with that natural and felicitous faculty of versification with which his images and figures are invariably described, he invests the Epicurean with the hopes of the Optimist, or with the indifference of the Stoic to the shadows which ever and anon dim the pleasures of human existence. There is nothing assuredly in this lyric of the 'pulpit twang,' to which Miss Robinson refers, nor is it a 'weak and characterless effusion.'

To the year 1842 belongs the following song which in feeling reminds one of Burns' 'Auld Lang Syne.' The subject, however, is distinct, and is pervaded by a profound sentiment of enduring affection, and is expressive of the deepest feeling in reference to it.

SONG.

'Should life's first feelings be forgot,

As Time leaves years behind?

Should man's for ever changing lot

Work changes in the mind?

'Should space, that severs heart from heart,

The heart's best thoughts destroy?

Should years, that bid our youth depart,

Bid youthful memories die?

'Oh! say not that these coming years

Will warmer friendships bring;

For friendship's joys, and hopes, and fears,

From deeper fountains spring.

'Its feelings to the heart belong;

Its sign-the glistening eye,

While new affections on the tongue,

Arise and live and die.

'So, passing crowds may smiles awake

The passing hour to cheer;

But only old acquaintance' sake

Can ever form a tear.'

Leyland was himself a poet, as I have said, and a literary critic of ability and judgment. Branwell submitted some poems to him for opinion, and he advised his friend to publish them with his name appended, rather than under the pseudonym of 'Northangerland,' for he considered them creditable to his genius. But Branwell, on July 12th, 1842, writing to Leyland, asking some technical questions, says, in a postscript, 'Northangerland has so long wrought on in secret and silence that he dare not take your kind encouragement in the light which vanity would prompt him to do.'

On August 10th, 1842, he wrote to Leyland in reference to a monument, which that sculptor had recently put up at Haworth, and he concluded by saying:

'When you see Mr. Constable-to whom I shall write directly,-be kind enough to tell him that-owing to my absence from home when it arrived, and to the carelessness of those who neglected to give it me on my return,-I have only now received his note. Its injunctions shall be gladly attended to; but he would better please me by refraining from any slurs on the fair fame of Charles Freeman or Benjamin Caunt, Esquires.'

Branwell did not lose his early interest in the 'noble science,' but continued it with a half-serious constancy. Constable and Leyland regarded the pugilistic encounters of the 'Ring' as brutal and degrading, but Branwell always professed to defend its champions with energy and zeal; and in this letter he playfully alludes to two of them. Among his literary labours of the year 1842 is the following poem. It is entitled:

NOAH'S WARNING OVER METHUSALEH'S GRAVE.

'Brothers and men! one moment stay

Beside your latest patriarch's grave,

While God's just vengeance yet delay,

While God's blest mercy yet can save.

'Will you compel my tongue to say,

That underneath this nameless sod

Your hands, with mine, have laid to-day

The last on earth who walked with God?

'Shall the pale corpse, whose hoary hairs

Are just surrendered to decay,

Dissolve the chain which bound our years

To hundred ages passed away?

'Shall six-score years of warnings dread

Die like a whisper on the wind?

Shall the dark doom above your head,

Its blinded victims darker find?

'Shall storms from heaven without the world,

Find wilder storms from hell within?

Shall long-stored, late-come wrath be hurled;

Or,-will you, can you turn from sin?

'Have patience, if too plain I speak,

For time, my sons, is hastening by;

Forgive me if my accents break:

Shall I be saved and Nature die?

'Forgive that pause:-one look to Heaven

Too plainly tells me, he is gone,

Who long with me in vain had striven

For earth and for its peace alone.

'He's gone!-my Father-full of days,-

From life which left no joy for him;

Born in creation's earliest blaze;

Dying-himself, its latest beam.

'But he is gone! and, oh, behold,

Shown in his death, God's latest sign!

Than which more plainly never told

An Angel's presence His design.

'By it, the evening beams withdrawn

Before a starless night descend;

By it, the last blest spirit born

From this beginning of an end;

'By all the strife of civil war

That beams within yon fated town;

By all the heart's worst passions there,

That call so loud for vengeance down;

'By that vast wall of cloudy gloom,

Piled boding round the firmament;

By all its presages of doom,

Children of men-Repent! Repent!'

This poem has also the impress of sadness, but the onward sweep and dignity of its verse are not ruffled by the turbulent undercurrents of Branwell's mood. The idea of the piece is well borne out in majestic and suitable language, though some instances of that incoherence and indefiniteness which, at intervals, distinguish the earlier poems of his sisters, may be noticed in it.

In the latter part of the year 1842 the state of Miss Branwell's health became a cause of anxiety to the Bront? family. Acquainted as they had been, in years gone by, with sickness and death, they sorrowed, in anticipation of the inevitable loss of the lady, who had been for long years as a mother to them. Under the shadow which spread over their home, Branwell wrote to his friend-Mr. Grundy-referring to it, saying that he was attending the death-bed of his aunt who had been for twenty years as his mother. In another letter to Mr. Grundy, of the 29th of October, Branwell thus alludes in affectionate terms to her death:

'I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonizing suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the pride and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood. I have suffered such sorrow since I last saw you at Haworth, that I should not now care if I were fighting in India or --, since, when the mind is depressed, danger is the most effectual cure. But you don't like croaking, I know well, only I request you to understand from my two notes that I have not forgotten you, but myself.'[1]

Charlotte and Emily hurried home from Brussels on the death of their aunt, as is stated in the last chapter, to find her already interred.

Mrs. Gaskell, alluding to the death of Miss Branwell, has given the following version of that lady's will. She says:

'The small property which she (Miss Branwell) had accumulated, by dint of personal frugality and self-denial, was bequeathed to her nieces. Branwell, her darling, was to have had his share; but his reckless expenditure had distressed the good old lady, and his name was omitted in her will.'[2]

Miss Robinson, implicitly, and without reflection, following this author, says:

'Miss Branwell's will had to be made known. The little property that she had saved out of her frugal income was all left to her three nieces. Branwell had been her darling, the only son, called by her name; but his disgrace had wounded her too deeply. He was not even mentioned in her will.'[3]

Miss Elizabeth Branwell had made her will in the year 1833 (when her nephew was about fifteen years of age), by which she left the following items to the children of Mr. Bront?:-

To Charlotte, an Indian Workbox.

To Emily Jane, a Workbox with China top, and an Ivory Fan.

To Branwell, a Japanese Dressing-case.

To Anne, her Watch, Eye Glass, and Chain.

Amongst these three nieces, her rings, silver spoons, books, clothes, &c., were to be divided as their father should think proper. Her money, arising from various sources, she left in trust for the benefit of her nieces, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bront?, and Elizabeth Jane, the daughter of her sister, Jane Kingston, to be equally divided among them, when the youngest should have attained the age of twenty-one years. But, if these died, all was to go to her niece, Anne Kingston, and if she died, the accumulated money was to be divided between the children of her 'dear brother and sisters.' Had Branwell, who was one of these 'children,' survived his own sisters, and the cousin referred to in the will, he would have been one, if not the sole, recipient of the accumulated money in question. This contingency was present to Miss Branwell's mind when she made the bequest, and it was never either altered or revoked.

It is amazing that so much ignorance should have been displayed on a subject so easily capable of being correctly stated; but it is lamentable that this ignorance should have led the biographers of the Bront?s, by erroneous statements, to inflict additional and unmerited injury on Branwell.