Many abusing me. I should think seven or
eight of this kind from the Carus Wilson clique.'
The Branwell matter was more serious. Here Mrs. Gaskell had, indeed,
shown a singular recklessness. The lady referred to by Branwell was Mrs.
Robinson, the wife of the Rev. Edmund Robinson of Thorp Green, and
afterwards Lady Scott. Anne Bronte was governess in her family for two
years, and Branwell tutor to the son for a few months. Branwell, under
the influence of opium, made certain statements about his relations with
Mrs. Robinson which have been effectually disproved, although they were
implicitly believed by the Bronte girls, who, womanlike, were naturally
ready to regard a woman as the ruin of a beloved brother. The
recklessness of Mrs. Gaskell in accepting such inadequate testimony can
be explained only on the assumption that she had a novelist's
satisfaction in the romance which the 'bad woman' theory supplied. She
wasted a considerable amount of rhetoric upon it. 'When the fatal attack
came on,' she says, 'his pockets were found filled with old letters from
the woman to whom he was attached. He died! she lives still--in May
Fair. I see her name in county papers, as one of those who patronise the
Christmas balls; and I hear of her in London drawing-rooms'--and so on.
There were no love-letters found in Branwell Bronte's pockets.
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