Though his life was dense with literary and other failures, he was a decisive influence on their work and his own story is worth hearing

We are currently in the middle of Brontë bicentenary mania. This year, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, we are diverting attention away from the famous sisters and focusing on the often-overlooked Brontë brother, Branwell.

We remember him as the failure of the family. Despite being a passionate poet, writer and artist, he failed to hold down conventional jobs, and repeatedly succumbed to vice. Finally, his world fell apart after the end of an affair with a married woman, Lydia Gisborne, which accelerated his dependence on opiates and alcohol. He died at the young age of 31 from the long-term effects of substance abuse.

Branwell’s legacy has been shaped by sensation, such as the story that he once set his own bed on fire, or the suggestion that he died standing up. His erratic, out-of-control behaviour has contributed to his legacy as the family’s black sheep.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Self-portrait in profile by Branwell Brontë, c1840, pencil on paper. Illustration: © The Brontë Society

This year, however, the Brontë Parsonage is trying to tone down the Branwell bashing, recognising his flaws but celebrating the merits of the brother with the salutary hashtag #TeamBranwell. The poet Simon Armitage is the museum’s creative partner for this bicentenary, curating an exhibition that pairs his own poetry with objects owned by Branwell; inviting us to reflect on the workings of his mind and our relationship with this problematic fellow. At the heart of the exhibition is a letter to the Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Branwell, then a earnest 19-year-old, encloses one of his own poems, and expresses his hopes and dreams of building “mansions in the sky”.

Wordsworth never replied. In the exhibition, Armitage responds to this event with his own poem:





William, It Was Really Nothing



The young pretender has cocked his hat

towards Westmorland. Picture the great bard,

mid-breakfast, letter in hand,

eyes on stalks and jaw hanging loose,

a loaded knife-blade of Dorothy’s damson preserve

stalled between lidded porcelain jam-pot and toast,

blood-scabs of red sealing wax crumbed

on the cloud-white tablecloth.

(Thinks: if Paul Pogba cost eighty nine million plus,

what am I worth?). Except

what glittered like charmed finches over Haworth Church

drifts as rain across Scafell Pike. No reply:

the parsonage clock patrols the night-shift

in jailors’ boots. Outside the moors play dead.





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Life threw repeated punches at Branwell, but within this series of unfortunate events there was happiness and worth. We must not forget that the Brontë brother grew up in the same literature-charged environment as his three siblings. For much of their young lives, they collaborated on fantasy sagas as complex as our modern-day Game of Thrones. Set in the worlds of Glass Town and Angria, the siblings wrote the tales in tiny books and acted them out together. But Branwell was at the centre of this universe, often dictating the events of the saga or writing long parliamentary speeches and war epics. As Armitage says: “He was driving the whole show. He had this flurried imagination and they seemed to be wildly encouraging of each other.”

Branwell’s imaginative terrain was vast and impressive. He had the ability to rework a variety of histories and literary genres, immersing himself in an imaginative world that showcases a sophisticated interpretation of the world around him. Yet, despite this engagement, his writings are often derivative and undisciplined, often degenerating into a rambling stream of consciousness. If nothing else, however, these early years saw Branwell as an instrumental figure that inspired his sisters to harness their own imaginations and opinions. Branwell’s contribution was influencing his sisters to become the perceptive, avant-garde writers we know.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A sketch of a tall building drawn from Branwell Brontë’s imagination, 15 November 1833, ink on paper. Illustration: © The Brontë Society

As each of the siblings worked on material for publication, Branwell remained an influential figure. Although later eclipsed, he was the first of the Brontës to be published, his poems appearing in local and national newspapers during the 1840s. And his sisters’ novels incorporate the shadow of their brother at every turn: as when Branwell’s Angrian characters, William and Edward Percy, were remodelled as the Crimsworth brothers in Charlotte’s The Professor.

Branwell himself even formed the basis of the sisters’ most sensational male characters, with Hindley Earnshaw in Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Arthur Huntingdon in Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall incorporating the more problematic elements of the brother’s personality. Armitage even suggests that he can see Branwell in Bertha Mason, the attic-dwelling madwoman in Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, with both possessing an “untamed wildness that is awkward and embarrassing”.

Although his influence was not always positive, Branwell remained a primary muse for his sisters, and we should remember him as a major cog in the Brontë writing machine – even if his own work was always “minor”. And the story of a young, talented fantasist failing to make his way in the world resonates with our experiences of hardship and lost dreams. The visitor’s book to the Parsonage’s exhibition testifies to this; it is filled with comments from people praising how much he reminds them of someone they know, someone in their family, even themselves.

There are more dimensions to the reprobate Brontë than previously thought and it’s high time we stopped treating him as a gothic antihero. Instead, think of him as a flawed but talented figure in his own right.

• Brontë 200: Mansions in the Sky, curated by Simon Armitage, is at the Brontë Parsonage museum until 1 January 2018.