His sudden removal
An even longer eulogy appears on the obelisk that marks his grave in the churchyard. Despite becoming a widower at age twenty-eight, he never remarried, although he appears to have had the resources to support siblings, nephews, and nieces. According to Branwell, he acted as a go-between following the end of the Brontë/Robinson affair. This has led some scholars to suggest that Dr. Crosby was a second victim of the femme fatale, Lydia. This didn’t fit with my vision for the novel, and so I conceived of Dr. Crosby as Lydia’s one true friend, sympathetic to her attraction to Branwell due to secrets of his own.
Branwell and Dr. Crosby were both Freemasons, suggesting a basis for their intimacy. Branwell even held office at the Lodge in Haworth. During my visit to Yorkshire, I noticed that the quote on Edmund’s memorial plaque in Holy Trinity Church (“When the shore is won at last, Who will count the billows past?”) was from a poem in John Keble’s The Christian Year (1828) for St. John’s Day—an important milestone in the Masonic calendar. And so I made the local Freemasons’ Lodge (a room above an inn in York) the center of the educated Great and Little Ouseburn men’s social lives, from which Lydia is naturally excluded.
THE AFFAIR
What, then, about the all-important question: Did Branwell and Lydia conduct an affair? Generations of Brontë academics have tried to answer this question, and I’m happy to offer a perspective.
Branwell wrote to a friend, “My mistress is damnably too fond of me,” in May 1843, and by that November, he claimed to have a lock of her hair (the inspiration behind the events of Chapter 7 in my novel). Something caused Anne Brontë to resign on 11th June 1845 (Chapter 12) and Edmund Robinson to dismiss Branwell by letter on 17th July 1845 (Chapter 13). Following this, it seems certain that Branwell told the Brontë family that he and Lydia had an illicit relationship and likely that the coachman, William Allison, took news of Edmund Robinson’s death to Haworth in 1846 (Chapter 15). We also know for sure that Edmund’s will did not preclude Lydia’s remarriage (you can read the document in the archives at the Brontë Parsonage Museum), although Branwell told his family that it did. The conclusion? Branwell, Lydia, or both of them lied.
Key to the debate about the affair has been tracing the movements of all parties in June and July 1845. Why was Branwell alone at Thorp Green Hall, rather than with the Robinsons, as usual, in Scarborough, or home with the Brontës in Haworth? My novel provides a tentative solution. The opening of the railway line between York and Scarborough—a huge public spectacle, with plenty of celebratory champagne—was a potential connector between the lovers in this crucial period and one that felt in keeping with my characters, given Branwell’s interests in locomotives and drinking.
Brontë’s Mistress is a work of fiction. I don’t pretend that it records what happened between Lydia and Branwell, but given the facts at our disposal, it imagines what could have happened.
LOOSE ENDS
Finally, a few notes on what happened next to some of the main characters after the end of my novel.
The fates of the Brontë siblings are well known. After Branwell’s death in September 1848, Emily’s and Anne’s followed in quick succession, on 19th December 1848 and 29th May 1849, respectively. Charlotte enjoyed literary celebrity when her identity became known and lived until March 1855, when she died in the early stages of pregnancy. The Reverend Brontë outlived all his children. He died in 1861.
Lydia and Sir Edward were married for only three years, meaning Sir Edward didn’t live to hear Mrs. Gaskell’s allegations against his wife. He died at Great Barr Hall on 27th December 1851, leaving Lydia (Lady Scott) a widow once more. In his will, he left her an annuity of £600 a year, a house in London, and the family diamonds. His sons inherited the rest of his property. Lydia herself died, aged fifty-nine, in London on 19th June 1859.
The younger Lydia had two sons with her actor husband, Henry Roxby. The pair moved from city to city due to his career, presumably under somewhat straitened circumstances, given Edmund’s excision of them from his will. At some point, Lydia too was widowed, as she married a Henry Lincoln Simpson in Islington in 1877. Her first son was a journalist who never married. Her second immigrated to Brooklyn. He and several of his descendants are buried in Evergreens Cemetery, not far from my current apartment.
Bessy’s lot seems to have been the happiest of the three sisters. She and her husband, William Jessop, enjoyed considerable wealth and lived in Butterley Hall in Ripley, Derbyshire. They went on to have five children and eventually retired to the Isle of Wight, where William was vice commodore of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. They are buried together in Ryde Cemetery.
Mary was widowed in the seventh year of her marriage, when her husband, Henry Clapham, was only twenty-eight. She and her one daughter continued to live with her father-in-law until she married her second husband, Reverend George Hume Innes Pocock, in 1862. She had no further children and died in Florence in 1877.
Ned’s early death is described above. Following this, Thorp Green Hall was sold to the Thompson family.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WHEN I BEGAN TO work on the novel that would become Brontë’s Mistress, I had no idea I’d end up with as many people to thank as I did characters. Writing can be a lonely pastime, but writing this novel has brought me closer to so many people. I am grateful to you all.
First and foremost, thank you to my editor, Daniella Wexler, and my agent, Danielle Egan-Miller, for bringing this novel into the world with me. I couldn’t have asked for better guides. Thank you too to the wider teams at Atria Books and Browne & Miller Literary Associates for transforming my manuscript into a book. Special thanks to Ellie Roth and Loan Le for fielding my many emails!
Thank you to the scholars, alive and departed, whose work was invaluable to me in researching this novel—especially to Helier Hibbs, dedicated local historian of the Ouseburn area; Juliet Barker and Edward Chitham, Brontë academics; Mick Armitage, blogger and Brontë fanatic; Richard Horton, chronicler of Yorkshire graveyards; and Daphne du Maurier, whose novels and biography of Branwell inspire me with their scholarship and humanity. Thank you too to Julian Crabb, chairman of the Poppleton History Society, and to Deborah at Poppleton Library, who furnished me with information on the poetry of the curate, Edward Greenhow, which references Edmund Robinson, and to Neil Adams, archive assistant at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, for his investigation into the York Medical Society.
Thank you to those I met on my Yorkshire pilgrimage, including Sarah Laycock and the team at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth; Margaret and Dave Hillier, who invited me into their home to have tea in Dr. Crosby’s living room; the staff at Saint Ethelburga’s School, which is on the site of the former Thorp Green Hall; and the Reverend Sarah Feaster and her congregation (including Mick Lofthouse, June Sanderson, and Alison Smith).
Thank you to my prompt and thoughtful past and present beta readers—Alexandra Da Cunha, Elizabeth (Lily) Barker, Kathleen Flynn, Valerie Gatignon, Alec Macdonald, Alison Pincus, Kathryn (Katy) Moyle, Emily Rutherford, Raya Sadledein, and Henry Ward.
Thank you to my two writers’ groups for critiquing this novel and others—the “Panera Collective” (Sarah Archer, Adina Bernstein, Megan Corrarino, Christina Cox, Joe Fisher, Harry Huang, Virginia Kettles, Vicki Kleinman, Sara Lord, David Marino, Alexander Milne, Lindsey Milne, G. M. Nair, Boyd Perez, Sophie Schiller, and Karen Sesterhenn) and my historical fiction group (Gro Flatebo, Barbara Lucas, Laura Schofer, and Susan Wands). And thank you to my fellow writers Kiri Blakeley and Leanne Sowul for their critiques, companionship, and advice.