Patrick Branwell Bronte...His Life

Branwell Brontë (1817-1848)

Patrick Branwell Brontë was the fourth of six children and

the only son of the Brontë family. He was born in Thornton and

moved with his family to Haworth in 1820. Of the four Brontë

siblings who survived into adulthood, Branwell seems to have been

regarded within the family as the most talented, at least during his

childhood and youth. While four of his five sisters were sent to

Cowan Bridge boarding school (resulting in the death of his two

oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth), Branwell was kept at home to be

privately educated by his father, who gave him a classical education

suitable for admission to Oxford or Cambridge. Branwell

collaborated as a writer with his sisters in childhood and adolescence, creating fictional

worlds. His surviving juvenilia shows that he collaborated most closely with Charlotte on

their imaginary world of Angria.

As a young man, Branwell was trained as a portrait painter in Haworth, and

worked as a portrait painter in Bradford in 1838 and

1839. His most famous portrait is of his three sisters, in

which he seems to have painted himself out. (pictured,

left) In 1840, Branwell became a tutor to a family of

young boys in Broughton-in-Furness but was dismissed

within six months. During this time he wrote a translation

of Horace. He was then employed on the Luddenden Foot

railway station in 1841 but was dismissed in 1842 due to

a deficit of eleven pounds in the accounts attributed to

incompetence rather than theft. During his period of

employment both as a tutor and on the railways he

harbored literary ambitions and published poetry under

various pseudonyms in the Yorkshire press.

In 1843 Branwell took up another tutoring

position in Thorp Green, appointed as the tutor to the

Robinson family's young son. He gained this position

through his sister Anne, who was the governess to the Robinsons' two older daughters.

During this time he corresponded with a number of old friends about his increasing

infatuation with Lydia Robinson. He was dismissed on unspecified charges in 1845. It is

thought, according to his account to his own family, the Robinson family's silence on the

reason for his dismissal, and subsequent gifts of money from Mrs. Robinson through her

servants, that he had an affair with Mrs. Robinson and that the affair had been discovered

by her husband.

Branwell returned home to his family at the Haworth parsonage. Devastated by

Mrs. Robinson's abandonment and the increasing unlikelihood of a reunion, he turned to

alcohol. He became an alcoholic and was thought to be addicted to laudanum. His

behavior became irrational and dangerous as he developed delirium tremens. Charlotte's

letters from this time demonstrate that she was angered by his behavior, but that her

father was patient with his broken son.

Although it was at this time that his sisters' first

novels were being accepted for publication, it is not known whether he was even

informed.

Branwell's severe addictions masked the onset of tuberculosis, and his family did

not realize that he was seriously ill until he collapsed outside the house and a local doctor

identified him as being in the disease's terminal stages. Not long after, in 1848, Branwell

dies, allegedly while standing up and leaning against a mantelpiece, purely in order to

prove that it could be done. His sister Emily died of the disease in December of that year,

while Anne followed the next May.