Cross Roads Inn

For years, a tiny pub on the road between the English villages of Haworth and Keighley has been home to a peculiar rumor. The Cross Roads Inn was one of Branwell Brontë’s favorite haunts. It was at the Cross Roads that two of Branwell’s friends claim he read from a manuscript that featured the characters who would later appear in the novel Wuthering Heights.
Despite Charlotte Brontë’s insistence that her sister Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, the rumor that their brother Branwell penned the novel has persisted. In their various biographies, Juliet Barker, Daphne du Maurier, Lucasta Miller, and Fannie Elizabeth Ratchford all considered the possibility that Branwell was the true author of Wuthering Heights. Barker claimed to have identified a story of Branwell’s that influenced the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff; du Maurier pointed to poems written by Emily and Branwell as evidence of an early collaboration between the two that could have blossomed into Wuthering Heights.
The persistence of the rumor reflects the curious, cloistered upbringing of the Brontës, but also the more universal experience of siblings. Collaboration and competition between brothers and sisters exists no matter their vocations, but literary siblings challenge our assumptions of lonely genius, isolated writers alone at their desks. Patrick Brontë, father to the four artists, who raised them himself after their mother died, wrote: “As they had few opportunities of being in learned and polished society, in their retired country situation, they formed a little society amongst themselves—with which they seem’d content and happy.” (Casey N. Cep) (Read more)
inns/crossroads

Newspapers and poems

During the 1840s Branwell Bronte saw the printing of about nineteen poems in local publications, including the Halifax Guardian, the Yorkshire Gazette, and the Leeds Intelligencer, most signed under the pseudonym “Northangerland.”
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Yorkshire Gazette: newspaper edited by James Lancelot Foster, in which Branwell published five poems in 1845. Only two of these (“The Emigrant” I & II) were recent compositions. blackwellreference

THE EMIGRANT.

'When sink from sight the landmarks of our home,

And,—all the bitterness of farewells o'er,—

We yield our spirit unto ocean's foam,

And in the new-born life which lies before,

On far Columbian or Australian shore,

Strive to exchange time past for time to come:

How melancholy, then, if morn restore—

(Less welcome than the night's forgetful gloom)

Old England's blue hills to our sight again,

When we, our thoughts seemed weaning from her sky,—

That pang which wakes the almost silenced pain!

Thus, when the sick man lies, resigned to die,

A well-loved voice, a well-remembered strain,

Lets Time break harshly in upon Eternity.

When, after his long day, consumed in toil,

'Neath the scarce welcome shade of unknown trees,

Upturning thanklessly a foreign soil,

The lonely exile seeks his evening ease,—

'Tis not those tropic woods his spirit sees;

Nor calms, to him, that heaven, this world's turmoil;

Nor cools his burning brow that spicy breeze.

Ah no! the gusty clouds of England's isle

Bring music wafted on their stormy wind,

And on its verdant meads, night's shadows lower,

While "Auld Lang Syne" the darkness calls to mind.

Thus, when the demon Thirst, beneath his power

The wanderer bows,—to feverish sleep consigned,

He hears the rushing rill, and feels the cooling shower.'

gutenberg

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Leyland was himself a poet, as I have said, and a literary critic of ability and judgment. Branwell submitted some poems to him for opinion, and he advised his friend to publish them with his name appended, rather than under the pseudonym of 'Northangerland,' for he considered them creditable to his genius. But Branwell, on July 12th, 1842, writing to Leyland, asking some technical questions, says, in a postscript, 'Northangerland has so long wrought on in secret and silence that he dare not take your kind encouragement in the light which vanity would prompt him to do.' .' brontefamily

Leeds Intelligencer: the “most excellent Tory newspaper” (CB, “History of the Year,” EW, v. 1, p. 4) which the Brontës read as children, and which Patrick still had read to him at the end of his life (Wemyss Reid, 1877, ch. 12). It was edited for a time (1822–5) by the poet Alaric Watts, but the driving force behind it was the proprietor John Hernaman. It published many letters from Patrick, including those on the Crow Hill bog eruption, and others on the reform of the criminal code, Catholic Emancipation, and the new Poor Law. Branwell probably got his job with Mr Postlethwaite through its advertisement pages, and it published (lifting it from Fraser’s ) Anne’s poem “The Narrow Way.” It praised Jane Eyre ’s “faculty of psychological analysis” and its “force and originality.” The editors conducted a weekly sparring match with the Leeds Mercury not unlike that between the Eatanswill Independent and Gazette in Pickwick Papers
gutenberg.org/files/Leyland/ Branwell Bronte
library.leeds
oxfordreference.=Branwell
 

Frobisher, John, friend of Branwell Bronte

Frobisher, John:

prominent figure in the musical life of Halifax.

 

He organised Liszt' t triumphant concert. He was the organist to the Parish Church, and conductor of the Choral Society. Branwell, knowing him from his Halifax days, wrote to him in March 1846 and sent him his poem “An Echo from Indian Cannon,” a patriotic piece inspired by an incident in the First Anglo-Sikh War, with the suggestion that he publish it to the tune of Gluck’s “mater divinae gratiae,” or in an arrangement of his own.

 

One of the best documented journeys was the long and arduous tour of the British Isles in 1840–41. It was arranged by the impresario and conductor Louis Lavenu, who assembled a small troupe of four or five musicians including the Welsh singer John Orlando Parry, whose diaries give a colourful account of those times. Liszt was the star attraction, and he was tempted by Lavenu’s invitation because he needed the money to cover the rising expenditures of his family in Paris. The party appeared in such places as Oxford, Chichester and Exeter in the south, and Manchester, Halifax, Preston, Rochdale and Darlington in the north. In November 1840 Lavenu took his group across the Irish Sea where they performed in Dublin, Cork and the smaller market towns of southern Ireland. The tour, which later encompassed Scotland, was dogged by misfortune, attracted small audiences and confronted out-of-tune pianos and other mishaps, all faithfully reported in Parry’s diaries. Lavenu lost more than £1000 on the venture (a small fortune in those days) and Liszt’s fees remained unpaid. 45 years elapsed before Liszt returned to Great Britain. lisztomania

Cross Roads Inn

William Dearden

[1808-1889]

Around 1842, he challenged Branwell Brontë to a poetry-writing contest which was to be held at the Cross Roads Inn between Haworth and Keighley, and judged by his associate, J. B. Leyland. Dearden recorded the event in a poem entitled  ""A Retrospect"".

history.rootsweb"

A Retrospect

The moon again was on the wane when I
Met at Cross Roads my Brontë challenger,
To speed to Shinar on our hippogriffs,
And break a lance in a poetic tilt,
In armour such as sons of Tubal-cain
Wrought for the "mighty men which were of old,
Men of renown," before the Deluge came.
Our censor, Leyland, with his meerschaum lit,
And goblet crowned, assumed the judgment-thrown,
And bade each combatant, with arms in rest,
Display the legend on his shield impressed,
For which he would "do battel" as true knight.
Brontë's read "Azrael or Destruction's Eve";
And mine the "Demon Queen." "The challenger,
Sir Patrick of the Thunder-bruit, begin
The onslaught!" cried the umpire. Brontë drew
(To sink the metaphor) from out his hat
A manuscript, which, when his eyes beheld,
He stood aghast; and turning rapidly
The quivering leaves, he said; "O friends, I've made
A strange mistake! This is a novel on which,
Some time ago, I tried my 'prentice hand,
And which, in my hot haste, I must have snatched
Instead of 'Azrael' from my private drawer."
"A ruse! A ruse! Pat!" Leyland thundered through
A cloud of smoke, as from a cannon's mouth;
"Thy spider-muse, if but the truth were known,
Has not from his own meagre bowels spun
A single line of his poetic web."

Read on:history.rootsweb

At Crossroads, between Haworth and Keighley. Branwell and William Dearden met here to have literary contests. Here Branwell, it was claimed, read from the manuscript of Wuthering Heights , giving rise to the belief that he was the novel’s author. This claim resurfaces regularly, but has never been given credence by any Brontë expert. 

blackwell reference

valendale/pubs

The Cross Roads Inn has the dubious honour of being the place where the 'was Wuthering Heights actually written by Branwell Brontë' question was born. Lucasta Miller, in The Brontë Myth (ch. 8), explains it very concisely:

Under the headline 'Who wrote Wuthering Heights?' Dearden described a meeting which had taken place in the summer of 1842 between himself, Branwell and their sculptor friend Joseph Leyland at the Cross Roads Inn between Haworth and Keighley. A month earlier, the two poets had each agreed to produce a verse composition set in the mythical time before the Deluge. But when Branwell arrived at the appointed pub to show off his handiwork, he found that he had accidentally picked up the wrong manuscript. What he read out was not the antediluvian poem 'Azrael or the Eve of Destruction' he had written in answer to Dearden's challenge, but a fragment whose scene and characters 'so far as then developed' were, according to Dearden, 'the same as those in Wuthering Heights, which Charlotte Bronté [sic] confidently asserts was the production of her sister Emily'. bronteblog/wuthering-heights-at-cross-roads-inn

Branwell Brontë and his friends. Enoch Thomas, the Innkeeper of the King's Arms

It sits squarely at the entrance to Church Street, which winds up to the Brontë Parsonage, past the church, graveyard and schoolrooms, where Charlotte taught.

In 1841 the Innkeeper of the King's Arms, Enoch Thomas, also ran The Black Bull and was a good friend and confident of Branwell Brontë. He suffered terrible bouts of depression, which Patrick Brontë referred to as "a very severe and great affliction". Branwell nicknamed him 'Devil's Thumb'.

A later Landlord, Joseph Fox, was a confectioner by profession and provided the fare for Emily Brontë's funeral feast.

jacksons.familytreeguide.com/

Branwell and his friends/ Francis Leyland

"WHY NOT LET THE POOR ERRING BROTHER REST IN PEACE?": THE LEGACY OF BRANWELL BRONTË.


Francis Leyland was a former bookseller and friend of Branwell Brontë's, having been introduced to him by his brother, the Halifax sculptor J.B. Leyland (probably Branwell's closest friend), at Sowerby Bridge Station in 1840 (see his letter to Woollven below). After his brother's death in 1851 he inherited his considerable collection of letters, sketches and poems by Branwell which he was keen on publishing. In 1886 he brought out The Brontë Family with Special Reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. In it, he "took up the idea that Emily had been particularly close to her brother but turned it into a means of bolstering and elaborating on William Dearden's and Francis Grundy's earlier claims aboutWuthering Heights, arguing that the novel was a work of joint authorship. Without Charlotte's knowledge, Branwell had, Leyland claimed, handed over the unfinished manuscript for his favourite sister, the sympathetic Emily, to complete" (Lucasta Miller The Brontë Myth, Anchor edition, 2005, p.242).

The present collection was largely assembled during the course of Leyland's research for the book. His speculations about Wuthering Heights notwithstanding, the book contains a good deal of information about his friend Branwell which is not available elsewhere and which has been analysed in depth by Juliet Barker in The Brontës (1994). The present collection, which was unknown to Juliet Barker when preparing her biography, is particularly valuable in that it allows us direct access to that evidence, without Leyland's intervention.

Leyland's advocacy of Branwell in the face of what he saw as Mrs Gaskell's vilification did not make him popular with either Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, or her friend Ellen Nussey. The collection contains a pair of autograph letters by each, written between 1884 and 1885. The two by Ellen Nussey are written at a high emotional pitch: "Your letter respecting Branwell Brontë & your intended publication of his letters &c is simply a grief for me - Why not let the poor erring brother rest in peace? What good can possibly arise from reviving the memory of him? It was unwise, it was unjust to his patient & enduring sisters to say what has been said of him.../...In your eagerness to defend the Brontës' Brother you are in danger of injuring his sisters. How can you know the exact truth?... How can any one dare to judge in such a case where blame begins & ends? Who has fathomed the depths of suffering he inflicted on his devoted sisters? If you gather that Charlotte was 'injudicious' it must certainly have been her brother's morbidmind to represent her as such... You did not know them - You only saw them once, I have been informed...". While the two by A.B. Nicholls are blunt to the point of rudeness. In both he refuses to have the portrait medallion of Branwell, which Leyland's brother had executed, photographed. When told by Leyland that he, Leyland, had given it to the family, Nicholls replies: "I was not aware that you had given the portrait to Mr Brontë - I always understood that it had been found in a Broker's shop in Halifax - I know that my late wife gave £5 for it". From the draft of Leyland's reply, it transpires that the rascally sexton John Brown, who had been entrusted with its carriage, sold it instead. For good measure, Nicholls twice refuses Leyland permission to publish "Mr Branwell Brontë's Manuscripts"; this partly on the advice of Richard Monckton Milnes (see Barker, p.817).

Equally evocative are letters by two of Branwell's fellow employees at Luddenden Foot railway station, the minor poet William Heaton and H. Woollven (as he signs himself here, rather than 'Woolven', the form more usually given). Heaton, writing in 1863, tells Leyland: "I knew Mr Bronte well he was the station Master at Luddenden foot but how long it is since I cannot tell at that time I frequented the Anchor and Shuttle Inn and so did he sometimes he was blyth and gay and at others he looked down cast and sad...tis true he loved his cup as he frequently called his glass of Brandy but I shall never forget his love for the sublime..." (for the text of this letter as printed by Leyland, see Barker, pp.370-1). The testimony of Woollven is especially important for its bearing on the question as to whether Branwell ever did in fact go to London, rather than merely acquire seeming familiarity with the capital through his reading, as Barker argues (pp.227-9). What had seemed a stumbling-block to Barker's case is that "Leyland's account... cites one 'Mr Woolven', who, while later working on the construction of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, met and remembered Branwell from the Castle tavern at Holborn" (p.229). However Woollven's original letter (which is on Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway headed paper) does not in point of fact describe such an encounter. What Woollven actually tells Leyland is that Branwell "was a very extraordinary character. I remember previous to my being engaged in the Railway Service, I one night visited the Castle Tavern in Holborne London then Kept by the once Champion Prize fighter Tom Spring. The parlour was full of sporting characters, Pugilists &c. One of the company, I believe was Mr Bronte, to whom was referred to decide many disputes about great battles that had been fought". Woollven is not claiming to have seen him. Merely that he was led to believe (no doubt by Branwell himself, long afterwards) that he was there. Woollven goes on to relate the story of Branwell's passion for Mrs Robinson, eliciting the shocked response from Leyland that "Branwell was indeed a very strange character... No man in his sound senses, entrusted with the heart, honour, and fair name of a married woman, would make a public talk of it everywhere...". (It is pleasing, also, to note that this correspondence confirms the corporeal reality of the enigmatic Woollven, of whose existence Juliet Barker can find no trace outside the pages of Leyland, see footnote 12, pp.881-2).

The collection also includes a letter by Patrick Brontë's friend the Halifax poet William Dearden written in August 1857, in which he discusses their joint visit to Patrick that year and the publication of Mrs Gaskell's biography five months earlier: "He [Patrick] said he did not know that he had an enemy in the world before Mrs Gaskell's publication of the life of his daughter, and he really could not tell from what source she had derived her information about himself except it might be from some discarded servant..." (see Barker, p.803). There is also Leyland's own account of his visit to Haworth on 28 January 1874 to interview John Brown's brother ("...Visited Haworth twenty-six years after the death of Branwell Bronte, and found, still living, William, the brother of John Brown late grave digger and sexton... The ardent, imaginative, and impulsive youth fell a victim to this man of coffins, graves, pickaxes, and spades...") with an autograph letter to him by William Brown, Haworth, 18 February 1874, and an autograph journal of his further visit to the Browns at Haworth in May 1874 ("...William Brown had been expecting me by the train and overtook me in the street. We passed the memorable 'Bull' in our way to his house where he introduced me to his niece Martha, late servant to the Brontës and now with Mr Nicholls the husband of the late Charlotte... Mrs Brown said that when Branwell was forbidden to approach Mrs R. he was in a state of frenzy walking round their table, clenching a knife in his hand, and wildly raving at the irrevocable decrees of damned fate!...").

As well as Leyland's retained copies or drafts of his outgoing letters (as for example to the editor of the Athenaeum, submitting "My brother's lyrics and ballads, of which I have found some in his old metallic books, where they were scribbled, are weird and beautiful"), the collection also comprises Leyland's transcripts of letters to William Dearden by Martha Brown ("...Mother says you asked her on Saturday whether Mrs Gaskell had any talk with me before she began to write the memoir of my late Mistress...") and Patrick Brontë ("...As Mr Nicholls has stated, I have given to him, all Branwell's writings and wish, earnestly that no one should write his life - enough, I think, has been said on that head. He was a young man of varied, and brilliant talents; but alas! his appetite, was stronger than his reason, and thus all his fair prospects were blighted, his life shortened, and great sorrow brought upon his sisters, and me...")
bonhams.com/eur/auction

Branwell Brontë and his friends.

John Brown was the sexton at Haworth church for a twenty year period during the Brontës' time. He was also a stonemason, carving headstones for the churchyard, and he lived, for many years, in the house adjoining the Sunday School - just beside the church. His daughter, Martha, worked as a servant at the Parsonage for over 30 years. John Brown became a very close friend, drinking companion, and confidant of Branwell, who painted this picture of him sometime between 1835 - 1839. Brown died in August 1855 (just 4 months after Charlotte) at the age of 51.

John Brown's Grave helen burrow pictures of haworth. grav

John Brown was the village Sexton and, although thirteen years older, he was a close friend of Branwell Brontë . The Browns lived in Sexton's House, which John himself had built on the eastern end of the Church School, shortly after the school was built in 1832. Sexton's House is directly opposite the Church, and about a hundred yards from the Parsonage. The Sexton was responsible for the fabric of the church and the maintenance of the burial ground, where he dug the graves and carved memorials. Most of John Brown's daughters worked at the Parsonage at one time or another, cleaning, washing and running errands, but Martha was the only one to live in. bronte.info

Parmi les noms souvent associés à la famille Brontë, celui de John Brown apparaît à de nombreuses reprises… Mais, que sait-on de l'homme ? Les liens qu'il a entretenus avec Patrick Branwell Brontë nous pousse, cette semaine, à écrire quelques lignes à son sujet…

John Brown avait 16 ans lorsque la famille Brontë vint s'installer à Haworth. Rapidement, il fascine Patrick Branwell Brontë qui le prend pour modèle et ami. En 1830, John Brown est initié à la franc-maçonnerie, et en à peine un an, il devient maître de la Loge des Trois Grâces. Il poussera ensuite Branwell à rejoindre la Loge et jouera un rôle important dans son initiation.

En 1835, à la mort de son père, John Brown prend sa suite et devient le fossoyeur et tailleur de pierre du village. Par son métier, il entre en contact avec Joseph B. Leyland, le sculpteur dont Branwell admirait l'œuvre. Les trois hommes deviennent de très proches amis. John Brown était reconnu à Haworth pour son sérieux. C'est pourquoi Patrick Brontë le laissa prendre en charge Branwell lorsque celui-ci sombrait dans l'alcool et l'opium. Néanmoins, il reste difficile de savoir aujourd'hui si l'influence qu'il a eu sur son jeune ami était bonne ou mauvaise…

John Brown et sa femme, Mary, eurent un fils qui mourut enfant et six filles, dont Martha Brown, qui entra au service du presbytère en 1845 et y resta jusqu'à la mort de Patrick Brontë. En 1861, elle suivit Arthur Bell Nicholls en Irlande. Le mari de Charlotte Brontë avait, par ailleurs, était logé par John et Mary Brown pendant son vicariat à Haworth, de mai 1845 jusqu'à son mariage en 1854.

John Brown était une figure importante dans la vie du village et reste une figure importante dans la vie de Patrick Branwell Brontë. Il resta l'un de ses plus fidèles amis, malgré la déchéance que Branwell connut. John Brown était avec lui quelques temps avant sa mort, l'aidant même à franchir pour la dernière fois vivant la porte du presbytère. brontefrancejohn-brown-biographie

Branwell Brontë's "honest and kindly friend": Dr John Crosby of Great Ouseburn

The cause of Branwell’s dismissal has long been a subject of debate, while in recent years there has been increasing interest in Anne and appreciation of her work. The lack of information about their time at Thorp Green has therefore been most unfortunate; the following account of Branwell’s ‘honest and kindly friend’¹ Dr John Crosby and his friends and neighbours, whose social life Branwell probably shared, may therefore be appreciated.


John Crosby - accomplice or dupe?
Moreover an unfortunate consequence of this interpretation is the reputation of the local surgeon, Dr John Crosby, who necessarily appears either as Mrs Robinson's accomplice or her dupe.  In fact Juliet Barker herself points out in a footnote that the inscription on the tablet in Great Ouseburn church erected in John Crosby's memory by "a large circle of friends who deeply lament his sudden removal", which speaks of "his universal kindness, professional ability, benevolent disposition & active usefulness", "suggests that he too may have been duped by the lady".
Crosby held dinner parties attended by John's elder siblings, his aunt, his cousins, and the Boroughbridge and Aldborough doctors; John went to tea there and stayed the night, and in turn Crosby's nephew stayed overnight with the Stubbs family; John and Crosby played whist at uncle Henlock's house, together with other male friends and family and the gamekeeper; John went to Crosby's for tea, and they played Bagatelle and cards; he called at Crosby's and met a young visitor, Miss Johnson ("She played & sang   I turned over the leaves   she has a very sweet voice").  Crosby was fond of company and evidently well-disposed to the young.

Branwell – like Mark Smallwood and Tom Johnson after him – will have been a welcome addition to this circle.  At the time of Branwell's arrival at Thorp Green in the neighbouring parish of Little Ouseburn, he was 25 years old and John Crosby was 46, twenty years younger than Branwell's father. In this small society, Crosby's friends spanned all ages – John Stubbs' aunt Ann, for example, was seven years older than Branwell.
Branwell was sociable and had (in Charlotte's words) a "strong turn for active life"; he was probably happy to join in Crosby's circle of friends. Moreover, there are several minor points about this social circle that might have seemed familiar or caught his interest.

We do not know what Crosby believed to be the situation between Branwell and Mrs Robinson – chaste mutual passion, unrequited longing, or unfortunate delusion.  Nevertheless, according to Branwell's surviving correspondence, Dr Crosby continued to take a sympathetic interest in him after his dismissal, as a source of kindly advice and some money. 

John Crosby's kindness to Branwell and others

Mrs Robinson may have been the source of the money, perhaps (ostensibly or in reality) as financial aid to employee(s) in need, but Dr Crosby may have assisted Branwell himself out of charity – especially if Branwell had also belonged to the local Oddfellows Lodge, in which case support for a fellow-member was a moral duty. His concern for Branwell must not only have derived from the emphasis he and his circle set on keeping up with friends and acquaintances, but also his undoubted sympathy for those in distress. 

John Crosby (1797-1859) and his family

Shocked by John Crosby's sudden death of a stroke at Euston railway station on 1 December 1859 at the age of 62, his friends not only erected a tablet in his memory in the church at Great Ouseburn, but also an obelisk in the graveyard.  The inscription on the latter has almost disappeared, but fortunately the Yorkshire Archaeological Society in Leeds holds a transcription taken before the weather obliterated much of the lettering.  It recorded that 

"the benevolence of his disposition, the urbanity of his manners, the sympathy he manifested for the suffering poor and the skill he evinced in the exercise of his professional duties left a name which is cherished in many abodes, that in health had been cheered by his genial spirits and in sickness had been solaced by his kindly aid."  Read more on the weblog of Alice Barrigan: North Yorkshire History

Branwell and his friends.

Grundy, Francis Henry

In the words of his friend, Francis Grundy: 

Patrick Branwell Brontë was no domestic demon – he was just a man moving 

in a mist, who lost his way.  More sinned against,  mayhap, than sinning,  at 

least he proved the reality of his sorrows.  They killed him …

Friend of Branwell from his Luddenden Foot days. He was himself a railway engineer, lodging at the time in Halifax with a nephew of George Stephenson. He was also the son of a minister, in his case a Unitarian, and was joyously kicking over the traces of his background and upbringing. He participated in Branwell’s excesses of the time, but he remained faithful to the friendship: it was he to whom Branwell appealed when he hoped for re-employment on the railways, and apparently it was he through whom Branwell approached the Martineau family and Leigh Hunt. He kept in touch during Branwell’s long decline, asking him to Skipton to meet him in the summer of 1846, and going to Haworth to see him, shockingly altered, in his last days. His book Pictures of the Past (1879) was in part an attempt to put the record straight, as he saw it, about Branwell. Marred by muddled memory and the misdating of Branwell’s letters, it nevertheless gives a lively and vivid picture of the younger man, with a strong pathos and sense of wasted talents in the account of their later contacts. Grundy was a very fallible human being, but on the whole a good friend. His claim that Branwell told him he had himself written “a great portion of Wuthering Heights ” is possible but extremely unlikely.

blackwell reference grundy
It was probably during the six weeks when Mr. Bronte and Charlotte were absent in Manchester that Mr. Grundy resolved to visit Branwell. He says: 'As he never came to see me, I shortly made up my mind to visit him at Haworth, and was shocked at the wrecked and wretched appearance he presented. Yet he still craved for an appointment of any kind, in order that he might try the excitement of change; of course uselessly.'
It must, it seems, have been on this occasion, in the course of conversation at the parsonage, that Branwell made a statement, respecting his novel, to Mr. Grundy, which has acquired considerable interest. I give it in the words in which Mr. Grundy recalls the incident. 'Patrick Bronte declared to me, and what his sister said bore out the assertion, that he wrote a great portion of "Wuthering Heights" himself.'the-bronte-family-

In late September, Francis Grundy came to Haworth.  He ordered dinner for two in a private room at the Black Bull and sent a messenger up to the parsonage for Branwell.  While he waited, Patrick came to warn him 
of the dramatic change in Branwell’s appearance. Grundy noted: He spoke of Branwell with more affection that I had ever heretofore heard him express, but he also spoke almost hopelessly.  He said that when my message 
came, Branwell was in bed, and had been almost too weak for the last few days to leave it, nevertheless, he had insisted upon coming, and would be there immediately. Despite the warning, Grundy was shocked when Branwell arrived: Presently, the door opened cautiously, and a head appeared. It was a mass of red, unkempt, uncut hair, wildly floating round a great, gaunt forehead:  the cheeks yellow and hollow, the mouth fallen, the thin white lips not trembling but shaking, the sunken eyes, once small, now glaring with the light of 
madness. Once Branwell was warmed by a glass or two of brandy, “he looked frightened – frightened of himself”.  Later, as Grundy took his leave, Branwell produced a carving knife and confessed that he had imagined the message was a call from Satan.  He had armed himself with the knife and come to the inn determined to rush into the room and stab its occupant.  Only the sound of Grundy’s voice and his manner had “brought him home to himself”.  Grundy “left him standing bare-headed in the road with bowed form and dropping tears.
maths.mq.edu.au/bronte

Branwell Brontë and his friends

I am going to search

for information

about the friends of 

Branwell Brontë

I  know the names 

and the stories

What can I find on internet

are there pictures of them?

J. B. Leyland

Joseph Bentley Leyland, born in Halifax 1811, sculpted Kilmeny. He started working in 1827 
Photograph of the sculpture of Kilmeny at Bankfield Museum, Halifax, West Yorkshire.

Leyland had visited London in the December of 1833
At the age of twenty-one, J. B. Leyland modelled a statue of great size. It was of Spartacus, the Thracian hero. The statue was displayed at the Manchester Exhibition of 1832. It was said to be the most striking work of art on display, and a work far beyond the sculptor's age. This praise heralded the arrival of a young genius. This youthful sculptor and poet was one of a group of young Yorkshire artists and writers who had emerged in the late Georgian and early Victorian period. They met regularly at the George Hotel, Bradford where they would discuss and criticize each other's literary and artistic offerings in a convivial atmosphere. Branwell Brontë was a member of this group. This article looks at the life and work of J. B. Leyland — 'flawed genius'.

 Read on: -the-bront family-v-leyland

-------------------------

Leyland visited Haworth
In the May of 1842, Leyland was commissioned to execute certain monuments for Haworth and its neighbourhood; and, on the 15th of that month, Branwell wrote to him, in reference to a design for a monument which he had sent for submission to a committee of which the Rev. P. Bronte was chairman, and invited him to the parsonage on the 20th of the month, being sure his father would be pleased to see him. Leyland visited Haworth and partook of Mr. Bronte's hospitality; and in the evening, accompanied by the incumbent and his son, appeared before the monument committee.

Read on: the-bronte family by-leyland

Lord Brotherton's collection of manuscripts by members of the Brontë family was strongest in those of the ill-fated Branwell. They include his Letters from an Englishman in six miniature volumes, Caractacus. A Dramatic Poem, his translation of Horace's Odes, numerous Angrian prose fragments and his extraordinary illustrated letters to J. B. Leyland.
.leeds/library/branwell
history.rootsweb/ biography

This 'life size' medallion portrait, created in 1845 by the Halifax sculptor and Branwell's friend, J. B. Leyland, remains to give us an accurate impression of Branwell's appearance. Leyland's brother stated that 'the likeness was perfect'. The original is on display in the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

mick-armitage/branwell