Would I could have ended the letter there, but a vision of Branwell’s baby face seemed to beseech me, his tears hanging like ripening fruit on his lashes, even thicker than Georgiana’s. Branwell had not yet accepted life’s capricious cruelties. For him, every pain demanded an explanation. But what could I write? Could I tell him that at Thorp Green, he’d been my distraction, just as, when a boy, he’d been in Charlotte’s shadow?
No. I could raise the knife but not deliver the final blow. So I libeled the man whose house I had sullied with shame, whose ring I still wore on my finger, whose corpse lay quiet in the anteroom below.
My husband’s will precludes our union.
That was what Edmund had said, wasn’t it? That some men wouldn’t surrender their monopoly over their wives’ bodies, even in death? They were the husbands who would wed you to the grave.
Choose you and I must relinquish all—the home I have created, the friends I have around me, and, worst of all, my children. I must choose and, Branwell, I choose my fortune and the world it represents, a world in which a man like you could never be my equal.
I pictured him, his face falling at every word, his hand running through his frizzing curls.
I needed to give him something, some small kindness to hold on to.
But know, I wrote on, that I will always be your princess in Angria. You will never know me as I am now—an old and unloved widow. There I will ever be young and always beautiful, accepting your arm at the Duke’s grand balls, running hand in hand with you, Northangerland, amongst the bluebells.
I reread my words and shuddered. They were designed only for effect, as transparent as a child’s first lie. And I had believed Branwell’s flatteries when he’d sworn he saw a musician and a poet in me, Charlotte’s equal, fighting against my chains and screaming at the very walls around me.
My convulsion turned to a retch. Nausea swept through me like the sickness I had suffered with Ned. My body’s rebellion, which, the doctor had told me, meant that this time, at last, I was growing a boy inside me. But there would be no more babies now.
I should go.
The paroxysm passed. I signed and sealed the letter.
Marshall was waiting for me when I reached my rooms. She didn’t look well herself. She was thin and wan from her exertions in the sickroom. But after taking one look at my face, she guided me to my bed.
“Marshall, you are very good to me,” I told her, slumping back. “I know that caring for me is not always easy.” I stroked the rough wool of her dress, a decades-old indigo thing of mine that she was trying to pass for mourning.
She unwound my fingers and wove them between hers, her grip light yet sure as a sparrow’s on a twig.
“Send William Allison to me when you go,” I said.
She nodded, with a furtive glance at the letter I still clutched in one hand.
“Only, do not leave me yet,” I whispered.
Her other arm slipped around me and I let her rock me, just as she had the children in their infancy. Once or twice she coughed, shaking me from near-sleep, but then she’d still and soothe me.
“Quiet now, madam,” she whispered. Her breasts were warm and soft for all that her hands were clammy and the rest of her was bony. “It is all over now.”
1st June 1846
Manchester
Mama, is it true? Has Papa left Henry and me with nothing, abandoning his eldest daughter at this time of my direst need?
He would not have done so without you at his ear.
You have always hated me. How could you? How could you, my mother, have despised me so when my heart aches with love for the child I might have held, although he never even had a chance to draw breath?
I loved him before I felt him kick. I loved him, or the thought of him and his siblings, from the day I first met my Henry’s eye. In the theater, in Scarborough, do you remember? Our eyes locked across the crowd and that was it. The course of my life was determined.
God punish you, even as He holds close my father’s soul.
Your daughter no more,
Lydia Roxby
2nd June 1846
The Parsonage, Haworth
My one, my only Lydia,
Your letter affected me so deeply that I was incapacitated for some days. Charlotte says they feared for my life. Oh, that unfeeling fiend, who once had the honor of calling you his wife! Lydia, must I abandon all hope? I penned the following poem when I recovered my powers of speech and thought to title it “Lydia Gisborne” in anticipation of the day when you will cast off the shackles of your husband’s name and tyrannous last will and testament.
Yours, even in the face of cruel rejection,
Branwell Brontë
LYDIA GISBORNE
On Ouse’s grassy banks—last Whitsuntide,
I sat, with fears and pleasures, in my soul
Commingled, as “it roamed without control,”
O’er present hours and through a future wide
Where love, me thought, should keep, my heart beside
Her, whose own prison home I looked upon:
But, as I looked, descended summer’s sun,
And did not its descent my hopes deride?
The sky though blue was soon to change to grey—
I, on that day, next year must own no smile—
And as those waves, to Humber far away,
Were gliding—so, though that hour might beguile
My Hopes, they too, to woe’s far deeper sea,
Rolled past the shores of Joy’s now dim and distant isle.
8th June 1846
Manchester
Mama,
I was too hasty in my last letter, forgive me. What could you have known of Papa’s will? Men do, I am learning now, often keep us in the dark.
Henry had told me all was well and that we were making ends meet, but he admitted tonight that, in attending to my doctor’s fees, we have missed several rent payments. If we cannot find the means to pay we will be evicted in one week.
Send money if you can, Mother, do.
Ever your darling daughter,
Lydia
11th June 1846
Great Barr Hall
My dear Mrs. Robinson,
I write to express my condolences on the death of your husband. I did not hear of it until after his interment last week, or else I would have written sooner.
Edmund Robinson was a good man and news of his untimely departure must, I think, affect all who hear of it.
My wife, Catherine, would also have written, but sadly her poor health does not allow for such exertions. She does bid me send you word of her cousinly affection.
I do not know what your future plans may hold. Do you intend to give up the house? Do not hesitate to write to me if there is any service, however small or large, I can render. And do know that you are always welcome at Great Barr Hall. Perhaps Catherine’s health will have improved by the time you grace us with a visit.
Yours, with regret,
Edward Scott
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DO YOU INTEND TO give up the house? The question haunted me over the next few months, lingering on the tips of my interlocutors’ tongues, although few voiced it as directly as Sir Edward Scott, that old hero of my girlish heart, had in the only letter he had ever written to me.
Edmund was gone. The carriage bearing his body had crunched over the gravel in our driveway, carrying him from his home one last time, and trundled down Thorp Green Lane, with all of us—Ned, as was to be expected, but also, breaking with convention, Bessy, Mary, and me—walking behind.