A month ago, I watched the BBC biopic on the Brontë sisters, To Walk Invisible. What struck me the most was the stark contrast between Branwell Brontë and his sisters. Unlike his sisters whose ambition motivated them into writing novels to support themselves, Branwell fell into a cycle of addiction. Branwell’s addiction to laudanum and alcohol became a lethal combination which eradicated all potential for his growth as an artist and writer.
When I first heard the title of Daphne du Maurier’s biography on Branwell, I was instantly roped into wanting to read this book. The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë has such a perfect ring to it that it could be a novel. Only one problem, it is very dull for the most part. Du Maurier invests in details that are either irrelevant or uninteresting. While I understand that this is a sign of great research, when discussing the railroad company in which Branwell was employed, she loses track of her subject and embarks on a tangent. I appreciate du Maurier’s thoroughness for detail, however, I would have preferred if she kept a closer eye on her subject rather than place a large focus on Branwell’s acquaintances histories.
Another problem that I encountered when reading du Maurier’s biography of Branwell was her speculative guesses throughout the book. She argues that Branwell and Emily closely collaborated on Wuthering Heights. While it is true that the Brontë siblings had collaborated on many writing projects in their youth, it cannot be assumed that some or most of the story belongs to Branwell. There is not enough written evidence that suggests that this occurred. Perhaps du Maurier included this speculation in order to account for the rumours that Branwell wrote Wuthering Heights in its entirety. As of today, these rumours have been dispelled as myth.
Also, throughout the book, du Maurier’s attitude towards Branwell shifts from reverence in his writing endeavours to absolute frustraition at Branwell’s lack of growth in his writing. While reading I kept wondering, was he a genius in his own way? Was he a failed genius with just as much potential as his sisters? It appears as if for the most part that du Maurier would argue that Branwell did not possess the same literary gifts as his sisters as seen in his failure to get published. In my opinion after reading the biography, if Branwell had coping skills equivalent to that of his sisters, he would have accomplished many great things. Unlike his sisters, Branwell, as the only son, was kept mostly at home during his youth and sheltered from the world. Branwell also experienced the deaths of his two elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth at a young age which continued to haunt him throughout the rest of his life. In this case, the Brontë sisters may have had an advantage over Branwell as the expectations placed upon them were fundamentally different. Therefore, Branwell’s infernal world was not necessarily his literary world as du Maurier states over and over, rather his infernal world was his substance abuse issues due to a lack of coping skills.
What I did enjoy about this biography is the inclusion of letters from Branwell, his family, friends, and acquaintances. These letters provided a breath of life into an otherwise dead and dull biography. When I read Branwell’s letters, I truly had the sense of who he was as a person. Additionally, through Charlotte’s letters I was able to comprehend how Charlotte felt for her siblings. After their death, she says:
“Waking, I think, sleeping I dream of them – and I cannot recall them as they were in health; still they appear to me in sickness and suffering. Still my nights were worst after the first shock of Branwell’s death. They were terrible then, and the impressions experienced on waking were at that time such as we do not put into language…” Charlotte Brontë, letter to Mr. Williams, June 25th, 1849. The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, Daphne du Maurier
Although Charlotte was often worried and frustrated when it came to her brother as seen in her letters, her profound attachment to her siblings only adds to the tragedy surrounding Charlotte’s life.
I would recommend this book to those who are fascinated with the story of Branwell Brontë. The slow pace of this book and the conspiracy theories du Maurier added with little evidence made this book a slow and painful read. Therefore, be warned.

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I didn't find the old-fashioned style of this biography, first published 55 years ago, a problem, although I do feel that Ms du Maurier's writing elsewhere, for example in Rebecca, is superior. I was engaged by the subject matter & shed a tear at the end - & not for the first time - for poor Patrick & his huge losses. I also found that Branwell was portrayed in a more compassionate way than is sometimes the case, & this I thought appropriate; it's easy to be frustrated with the sheer waste of his talent, but Ms du Maurier strikes the right note in this respect in not being condemnatory of him.

However, I was concerned by the extent of conjecture in the book. Maybe this results partly from the period in which it was written, & later biographers have more material to draw on, but it wasn't clear to me whether the author was convinced that Branwell did have epilepsy, & the mention of schizophrenia was tantalisingly brief. A few judicious quotes from a neurologist & psychiatrist might have proved useful. I would also have preferred for the question about Branwell's knowing about his sisters' novels being published to have been explored more fully.

Another limitation that I believe stems from the attitudes of the time in which the book was written is the use of ideological presupposition that we would now see as ludicrous. Talking about Branwell 'not [being] a Yorkshireman at all', du Maurier claims:

'He had none of their determination, none of their strength of character', but instead 'belonged, by blood and by temperament, to the first feckless group from across the water'.

Ouch. I won't quote the passage in full because it is an ugly slur on the Irish, but sadly, it perhaps reflects the prevailing feeling of the mainland British of the time in which it was written (& tells us nothing about Branwell).

Nevertheless, the book was worth reading as an addition to the other works I've read about the family. I'll go back to the excellent 'The Brontes' by Juliet Barker for the many details I've forgotten, & look forward to Claire Harman's biography of Charlotte in paperback next year.

Although this is a biography it reads like a novel. There is, admittedly, a lot of guess work about Branwell's emotional motivation and personal responses in order to make the story more interesting and compelling, but the narrative is convincing none the less. It is interesting to see well-documented events in the Bronte family life from another point of view than that espoused by most fans of the sisters. DuMaurier's gothic tone matches the content well, and fleshes out the snippets of Branwell's writing without jarring, sometimes even lending a credibility and power his writing may not posses purely on it's own merit.

Daphne Du Maurier has written a very good and rather scholarly biographer of the little-lamented brother of the famous Brontë sisters. I tend to think that her labors might have been better spent elsewhere, on a more deserving and interesting subject, but apparently she was fascinated by this least-talented of the Brontë family. The book is somewhat over-stuffed with quotes drawn from Branwell's unpublished writings. Ordinarily, I enjoy hearing directly from a primary source in the context of a biography, but in this case, the less I hear from Branwell, the better. Not to put too fine a point on it, but his poetry in particular was longwinded, derivative, lugubrious and tiresome. Here's a sample:

When life's youth, overcast by gathering clouds
Of cares, that come like funeral-following crowds,
Wearying of that which is, and cannot see
A sunbeam burst upon futurity,
It tries to cast away the woes that are
And borrows further joys from times afar.

I'll spare you the remaining twenty lines. His writing remains unpublished for good reason, and even Du Maurier described this particular attempt as "lamentably lacking in inspiration." Why she devoted so much effort to immortalizing Branwell and what she calls his "lame couplets" remains unclear. She herself was a fine writer, even if her subject matter varied widely in terms of taste and interest, so the overall writing is good. Thankfully, the book - like its pathetic subject - does not last terribly long, and in fairness to its author, it is well-researched, including footnotes and an intriguing appendix listing Branwell's unpublished manuscripts, such as they are.

Here is where the appetite is whetted at last. Most of the works listed here were written (or possibly jointly-written) during Branwell and Charlotte and Emily and Anne's adolescence and early twenties, and are a mixture of poetry and elaborate histories of the imaginary lands which he and his sisters spent so many hours - years, really - populating and describing. Theirs was a kind of early home-grown role-playing game, a precursor of sorts to games like Dungeons and Dragons, entirely created by themselves, filled with characters of their own devising, many of which were loosely based upon local personages and places. Later on, his sisters drew very effectively upon these writings as fruitful source material for their famous novels, however their worlds of Angria and Gondal (which, interestingly, Du Maurier used as a private code word with her own sisters) existed in large part as a mutually-shared mental retreat that any or all of them could return to whenever they desired. It was kept strictly private and secret from even close friend and family, and was a source of consuming and greatly treasured excitement, a kind of wellspring of creativity and mental nourishment for all four siblings, each of whom had an alter ego or avatar that existed within this world of their devising.

Sadly, of the four, only Branwell was unable to translate this early hectic writing experience into anything lasting. His was a life of unfulfilled promise and blighted hopes, upon which Du Maurier speculates rather unprofitably. There may not be much mystery here after all.

The life of the Brontes is a captivating tale in itself.

Daphne du Maurier is mostly known for her novels (Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek and a lot of others), but she has actually written some non-fiction books as well. She was asked to write a new introduction to the new edition of Wuthering Heights in 1954 and so she went to Haworth. During her visit there she got intrigued by Branwell and could not understand why he had been ignored by Brontë researchers. From Margaret Forster's excellent biography of Dahpne du Maurier we find the following note:

(it) gave her the opportunity to test herself in a way she had, in fact, always wnated to do. There was a good deal of the scholar manqué in Daphne, in spite of her frequent claims to have a butterfly mind. As it was, she was prepared to teach herself by trial and error...




Du Maurier has a lot of sympathy for Branwell, which of course is a must if you are writing a biography. Having read some Brontë biographies (for example the excellently The Brontës by Juliet Barker) there was not that much new to me. Only one thing that I can not remember having read before and that is that Branwell at one point read from Wuthering Heights when it was still a manuscript and that he indicated that he had been part of writing it. I quote here from a letter written by William Dearden to the Halifax Guardian written only in 1867, when all four Brontës were dead. Some friends met at the Cross Roads Inn and read something they had written. Dearden read the first act of The Demon Queen,


"...but when Branwell dived into his hat - the usual receptacle of his fugitive scraps - where he supposed he had deposited his MS.poem, he found he had by mistake placed there a number of stray leaves of a novel on which he had been trying his 'prentice hand'. Chagrined at the disappointment he had caused, he was about to return the papers to his hat, when both friends earnestly pressed him to read them, as they felt a curiosity to see how he could wield the pen of a novelist. After some hesitation, he complied with the request, and riveted our attention for about an hour, dropping each sheet, when read, into his hat. The story broke off abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and he gave us the sequel 'viva voce' together with the real names of the prototypes of his characters; but as some of these personages are still living, I refrain from pointing them out to the public.
He said he had not yet fixed upon a title for his production, and was afraid he should never be able to meet with a publisher who would have the hardihood to usher it into the world. The scene of the fragment which Branwell read, and the characters introduced in it - so far as then developed - were the same as those in Wuthering Heights, which Charlotte Brontë confidently asserts was the production of her sister Emily."

Du Maurier continues to refer to how both Dearden and Leyland (the sculpture who was also present) had been shocked "by the character of Heathcliff in the fragment read, and had earnestly advised Branwell to throw his prospective novel into the fire. Branwell refused to do so, saying his hero should 'live a little longer yet', and that one day he might fill his 'empty exchequer'. If he should suit public taste, then Branwell would produce a 'female mate' and the pair of them would propagate 'a monster race' that might 'quell the heroes and the heroines effete that strut in tinsel through the fictive world'."

Branwell was a bad poet but not a liar. If it was the embryo to the classical book that he read aloud, the reason suggests that this was a first draft of the novel. It could either be a collaboration between the two or Branwell's own work. The siblings were used to collaborate in their Angrian series so they could have done the same here. Another possibility could be that, due to his short-sightedness, he grabbed a manuscript thinking it was his own. When he took it out of his hat he realised that it was a mistake but still read it out loud. It is interesting indeed, but we will never know for sure.

One can not stop thinking what might have gone wrong. Was it too much drinking and drugs, lack of self confidence or too much of it? From Du Maurier's view I get the feeling that Branwell was over confident in his own capabilities. Being spoiled from childhood, being the only boy in the family, might have given him the idea that he would always be nurtured by others and did not have to make an effort himself. When he tried to do something it was not good enough. The same happened to the sisters but they still continued and fought for the poems and novels and in the end became successful. Du Maurier hints that the attacks that repeatedly marred his later life might be due to epilepsy and she also questions why he was not examined by a specialist. When the father was becoming blind they went for eye surgery which must have been quite an operation method at the time. It seems though that Branwell's health was put in the hands of the local doctor and once being blamed on drinks and drugs, never left an opening for another cause.

The story of Branwell's life is a sad one on all accounts but du Maurier tells it with care and compassion. Since she is a story teller you sometimes forget that it is a non-fiction book and not a fiction. There are one or two places where she makes conclusions where she maybe shouldn't. All in all it is an interesting read, if not only because very few books on the Brontës concentrate on Branwell.

I thought this was so interesting to read. I was curious about Branwell since you usually only hear about the sisters and I ended up really enjoying this book even though it's hard to say what's true and what isn't.