The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë

"She was always fascinated by the Brontës, and used different aspects of the sisters’ work in her novels. Rebecca , for instance, is often considered a re-writing or response to Jane Eyre . The title of The Loving Spirit is a phrase from one of Emily Brontë’s poems, and the four books of The Loving Spirit are prefaced by quotations from Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights also provides some of the atmosphere in Jamaica Inn with its wild moors and extreme passions. So, she was always reading around and about the Brontës. A friend and fellow writer, Oriel Malet, sent her Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford’s The Brontës’ Web of Childhood (1941), which was published when the Angria and Gondal juvenilia was first discovered. Before that, nobody had really known that the Brontës as children collaborated on this kind of fantastic kingdom. Daphne was fascinated by both that and the fact that Branwell was such an important part of it, too. It wasn’t just the sisters; he was the driving force of the imaginary kingdoms, to some extent. One of the kingdoms is Gondal, one is Angria, and ‘gondalling’ quickly goes into du Maurier vocabulary meaning ‘to make believe’, ‘to fantasize’, ‘to pretend’. In the preface to her biography, du Maurier says the trouble with Branwell is that he couldn’t distinguish reality from fantasy. That’s why she calls the biography the ‘infernal world’ of Branwell Brontë, borrowing a phrase from Charlotte—he was completely taken over by this imaginative life and it ruined him. The dual power and danger of the imagination is a fascination of du Maurier’s. What went wrong with Branwell? Why the brother? He should have had everything in his favour, and yet it was the sisters who became successful. Why? Why not him? I think the catalyst for writing the Branwell biography is she’s asked to write an introduction to Wuthering Heights in 1954. She went back to the Fannie Ratchford book, and her introduction to Wuthering Heights ends up being as much about the imaginary kingdoms and Emily’s relationship with her siblings and Branwell as it actually is about Wuthering Heights , it’s a fascinating response to the novel. When writing the Wuthering Heights introduction in the mid-fifties, instead of just sitting at home and writing it, she went to the Brontë parsonage with her daughter, Flavia, and her friend Oriel Malet. They had a great time striding around on the moors and walking in the Brontës’ footsteps. Daphne did a lot of research in the parsonage museum and archives, and saw many of the original documents. It dawned on her that there was much more to be said about Branwell than she had initially thought. Then she started, and realised she was in a race against time versus Winifred Gérin, the great Brontë biographer. Gérin had already written a biography of Anne, published in 1959, and her next target was Branwell. They’d both go somewhere, and one would discover the other had gotten there before them. They had an exchange of letters in the TLS , too, which lit a fire under du Maurier to publish her biography quickly. She thought, ‘No one’s going to read mine when hers comes out, because she’s known as the real Brontë scholar.’ It is this story about the relationship between imagination and fantasy. He doesn’t always make the best of the opportunities he’s given and he allows himself to be taken over by his imaginative world. Daphne doesn’t really believe that Branwell had an affair with Mrs Robinson and that this was why he was fired from his role as a tutor, precipitating his ultimate decline. Whatever the true reason for his dismissal, du Maurier suggests that the love affair became ‘the ultimate excuse’ for Branwell, ‘the valid reason for failure’. To some extent, yes. He mythologises his own failure and lack of abilities. Branwell actually gets his poetry published before the sisters, but he is also retreating into alcohol and laudanum. Charlotte in particular becomes fed up with him, and the sisters ultimately close ranks against him. But Daphne’s sympathetic to his plight. She doesn’t shy away from the fact that he was a nightmare to live with when his demons took possession of him but there was talent there that he just didn’t take advantage of. He lacked discipline, which is something you really need as a writer. Daphne had it—she had what she called her ’routes’, her routines. Writing in the morning, lunch, big walk over the cliffs to the sea in the afternoon, a bit more writing before supper. Just keep going, just do it. She wanted to be published, to make a living. She was taken over by stories and loved writing, of course, but she’s also a proper working writer, a professional. By contrast, her sister Angela—who’s also a novelist, and has written some good stuff that should be more well-known—liked traveling and spending time with friends. She was much more of a socialite than Daphne. In Branwell and The Parasites there’s a real sense that talent must be nurtured. You have to put the work in, otherwise you’ll end up like Branwell. I think it’s a bit of both. It’s the thrill of discovery. In all her biographies, she finds stuff. She finds stuff out. She does have people who help her with the research. But in order to employ a researcher, you have to tell them what to look for, which is a skill in itself. She loved ‘finding things out and establishing the truth’, as she put it; she enjoyed telling the stories of other people’s lives and trying to find patterns in them. With the Francis and Anthony Bacon books, Golden Lads: Anthony Bacon, Francis and their Friends (1975) and The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall (1976), she makes a genuine contribution to 16th-century history. Even A L Rowse, the rude and curmudgeonly history don at All Souls College, Oxford, admitted she did a pretty good job of finding out new information about Anthony and he described her biography of Branwell Brontë as a ‘tour de force.’ The first biography du Maurier writes is of her father, Gerald: A Portrait (1934). She had written three novels— The Loving Spirit (1931), I’ll Never Be Young Again (1932), The Progress of Julius (1933)—and then Gerald died. He’d been such a big influence on her, and they had such an intense, close relationship. So, within a year of him dying, she wrote this fictionalised biography, in which she presented him as a kind of character. It was very candid, and portrayed Gerald as he truly was: always play-acting, quite mercurial, prone to melancholy towards the end of his life. A man who had various affairs, who was a witty practical joker. She put everything out there. In 1934, that wasn’t how it was done. It was quite controversial. Many of his friends were shocked and disapproving. But she had a conversation with him once about biography and he said he hoped if he ever wrote his own biography, that he’d have the courage to tell the truth. So she wrote it the way he would have done. You get a real sense of his character. The theme of biography intersects all the way through her career. She wrote Gerald: A Portrait , and then Jamaica Inn , and then The du Mauriers (1937), the fictionalised account of her French ancestors, and then Rebecca . She’s going back and forth between fiction and biography, but whatever she’s writing, just as with King’s General , she loves the research process. And she does often like to have real-life individuals as ‘pegs’ to hang the story on."