The story of Jane Eyre was my first introduction to the Bronte family. Charlotte’s famous novel has been serialised on television many times, and I think this would be the 1963 adaptation starring Richard Leech and Ann Bell, shown on Sunday afternoons, as that fits in with my life and being age eight or nine at the time. I was spellbound. I cried when Jane’s school friend, Helen died. I was scared by Bertha, Mr Rochester’s wife and the house fire. My mother bought me the book and encouraged my interest in the Brontes. An interest which remains. I love my visits to Haworth Parsonage.
It isn’t only the novels and poetry that mean so much to me. I’m fascinated by the family and the tragedies they endured. The author Lynne Reid Banks tells their story very well in her books, ‘Dark Quartet’ and ‘Path to the Silent Country’. Writer Sally Wainwright’s drama, ‘To Walk Invisible’ is a written work of art and I believe is as close to the truth as it is possible to be. Branwell’s downfall, Emily’s impatience with him, Charlotte’s forthright dynamics in pushing for publication for all of them and Anne, gentle mannered and sweet natured; all of them incredibly talented in their pursuits. It is so sad that they had such short lives and they have no descendants, unless it should come to pass that Branwell actually did father a child in Kendal c.1840. It might be a rumor based on his boasting and we may never know.
Poor Branwell, a troubled soul, poet and artist. His poems are melancholic and he painted himself out of the famous painting he did of himself with his sisters. I don’t think he felt like he was living in the shadow of his sisters, as it has been suggested. He was equally talented, but enjoyed being ‘a lad’ a lazy one, and pushing boundaries too far. It seems he was his own worst enemy in allowing distractions to prevent him from reaching his potential success.
This quartet was once a group of six siblings. Two elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth died aged eleven and ten, around the same time as each other, of consumption, when Charlotte was nine. Imagine, had they lived, what they might have written.
My poem,
Patrick Branwell Bronte
Poet and artist, your fallen talents go to waste
And are trapped within the torment of your mind.
Forbidden love, so heavenly to taste
Now haunts and disturbs; no beauty left to find.
The call of temptation and no wish to be chaste,
But to be drunk on the perfume of bodies entwined.
Oh Branwell! Your vision clouded by opium and gin
And the burdening weight of adulterous sin…
Pamela Winning2010
Thanks for reading, Pam x
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