Branwell Brontë was born on a day like today in 1817. All men in the Brontës' lives - excepting perhaps William Weightman and very few others - have been misunderstood and vilified over time, and Branwell undoubtably so.
Patrick Brontë educated his children in a very modern way, but that is not to say he didn't feel especially proud of his only son, or that he hadn't special hopes for him. The sisters themselves seem to have been in awe of him until he was obviously in no fit state to be admired. And yet he did have a privileged mind, which was sadly wasted through bad connections and wrong choices.
Patrick Branwell Brontë had winning ways about him, was talkative, friendly, could trick well-travelled people into believing he had been to London when all he had was a book on London and could write with both his hands in Latin and Greek at the same time.
A few good mysteries remain about his life which will probably never be solved now. But we hope he will be looked in a more sympathetic light and valued for what he did. He might be known nowadays thanks to his connection to his sisters, but good things did come out of his pen. Hartley Coleridge himself congratulated him on his translations of Horace's Odes and encouraged him to work further on them. He got a few poems published in local newspapers as well.
So we encourage you to look for the real Branwell, through his writings and through his biographies. You will learn that he wasn't just the mischievous, drunkard, adulterous brother of the Brontë sisters'.
This is a good year to start doing so, as you can see by the recent new edition of
Daphne Du Maurier's The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (introduced by Justine Picardie), the
fictional account of his life by Douglas A. Martin, and the forthcoming edition of
his selected poems in September 2006.
Categories: Reminder, Branwell_Brontë
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