Read Online Daphne by Justine Picardie - Free Book Online

continue, despite a faint nausea that rose in her throat and an odd feeling of weakness, as the day wore on. There was something exhausting about having Branwell so close at hand, his words in her hands, as she turned the pages. For as much as Branwell declared himself to be thwarted in love, his despairing frustration as a writer came spilling out of these letters in equal measure, or thus it seemed to Daphne. His voice, which remained cloaked in the pages of his childhood Angrian legends, was far clearer in the letters; so much so that she began to hear it in her head, drowning out her own thoughts, drowning out her thoughts of Tommy, and his silent presence in the nursing home. Branwell appeared to have no such need of silence; his was an anguished voice, sometimes plaintive, sometimes excitable, that demanded her attention, demanding not to be forgotten. Daphne made copious notes as she read, copying out quotes that seemed particularly relevant, trying to make sense of the tumbled unhappiness, the choked ambition and panicky self-importance. And amidst the confusion of his life, as told in these letters, Daphne began to trace his story, though gaping holes remained within it.
    Most intriguing of all, she thought, was the letter that Branwell wrote to his friend Leyland in September 1845, declaring, with a mixture of pride and melancholy, that he had 'devoted my hours of time snatched from downright illness, to the composition of a three-volume Novel - one volume of which is completed - and along with the two forthcoming ones has been really the result of half-a-dozen by-past years of thoughts about, and experience in, this crooked path of Life.' Yet by the following spring, the promised novel remained incomplete, as far as Daphne could tell from the letters, while Branwell was still professing himself to be broken-hearted over Mrs Robinson.
    She copied out a sentence from one of his letters, half-hoping that her act of writing Branwell's words might summon up his ghost for her, here in the little hut. 'Literary exertion would seem a resource,' he wrote in May 1846, and Daphne whispered his words out loud, 'but the depression attendant on it, and the almost hopelessness of bursting through the barriers of literary circles, and getting a hearing among publishers, makes me disheartened and indifferent; for I cannot write what would be thrown, unread, into a library fire.' He made no mention of his sisters' first venture into publishing, which presumably coincided with his letter that month, when their poems were printed, at their own expense, under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It was not clear whether he even knew about their book; or did he prefer to pretend not to know, wondered Daphne, given that he had not been asked to contribute to it by his sisters, who were formerly his collaborators and closest friends?
    There were so many unanswered questions; indeed, the letters seemed to add to them, rather than provide her with the answers she sought. Only two copies were sold of the Brontë sisters' book of poetry, so where could the others be? And did Branwell actually send a manuscript of his novel to his sisters' publishers, or indeed, to any publisher? Had his novel been rejected, or was it simply never finished? Certainly, if his letters to Leyland were any indication, Branwell appeared more preoccupied by the fact that Mrs Robinson, who had been widowed on 26 May 1846, did not (would not, could not?) marry him, even after a suitable period of mourning.
    Daphne kept reading the letters as the afternoon wore on, not stopping for her usual walk down to the beach, or out to the headland; and as she continued, it seemed to her that she was in the middle of a mystery with an unknown ending, rather than moving towards the outcome of a story that she already knew. Branwell informed his friend Leyland that Mrs Robinson had been prevented, under the terms of her husband's will, from remarrying: 'she is left quite