Brantwood

“ After changing and changing trains, and stopping at many a roadside station, at last you see, suddenly, over the wild undulating country, the Coniston Old Man and its crags, abrupt on the left, and the lake, long and narrow, on the right. Across the water, tiny in the distance and quite alone amongst forests and moors, there is Brantwood; and beyond it everything seems uncultivated, uninhabited, except for one grey farmhouse high on the fell, where gaps in the ragged larches show how bleak and storm-swept a spot it is. ”

“ With head erect, the strong-knit figure of the chief stands at repose. The eyes are mild and wide-set and about the lips a smile is playing. In the portrait we see, too, the resolute heart, the thoughtful mind, and the restless energy that made Joseph Brant a ruler of the native races.
On being asked as to the help he might render to the English arms in the New World, Brant asserted strongly that he and his people were loyal. He said that, as War Chief, he would lead three thousand of his warriors into the struggle, and that they would fight manfully as subjects of the king. ”

“ The former does what it likes, ’tis lord and master; the latter is, by its very nature, a creature of compromise.
Brantôme possesses all the verve and brightness of a genuine Frenchman. All the conditions of life are highly favourable for him; he is rich and noble, while intelligence and wit are stamped on his very face. He wins his first spurs under François de Guise, whose protégé he is; when he has had enough of war, he comes to Court. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV THE CHURCH BELL RINGS Joseph Brant had been a valiant warrior; he had dealt with the affairs of the Six Nations wisely and well. But he had never forgotten that one of the first duties of any ruler is to be, in some sense, a priest unto his people. From a lad, he seems to have been a devoted Christian. The alarms of war had drawn his mind for a period, it is true, to worldly considerations alone, but now that strife had ceased he became once more the friend of the missionary and sought to supply the spiritual needs of the tribes over which his influence was felt. ”

“ Two children, Isaac and Christiana, were born to him of this, his first, marriage. We may pass rapidly over these tranquil years of Brant's life. He did his domestic duties as a man should; and Sir William Johnson, finding him trustworthy, had constant work for him, and sent him on many important missions to the Indians, even to the far-western tribes. During this period Brant became a communicant in the Anglican Church, and, knowing well what hardships the missionaries had to endure, he gave them what help he could in their work among the red people. ”

“ As the younger family grew up, he became jealous of them, imagining that they received a larger share of parental favor than his sister and himself. Nothing could have been more groundless than were his suspicions, since from the concurrent testimony of the survivors of the family, and the aged contemporaries of the old Chief yet living at Grand River, no parent was ever more scrupulous in the impartial bestowment of his affection among all his children than Captain Brant. ”

“ You, my dear Miss W---, know, full as well as I do, the value of sisters’ affection to each other; there is nothing like it in this world, I believe, when they are nearly equal in age, and similar in education, tastes, and sentiments. You ask about Branwell; he never thinks of seeking employment, and I begin to fear that he has rendered himself incapable of filling any respectable station in life; besides, if money were at his disposal, he would use it only to his own injury; the faculty of self-government is, I fear, almost destroyed in him. ”

“ Branwell was with them; that was always a pleasure at this time; whatever might be his faults, or even his vices, his sisters yet held him up as their family hope, as they trusted that he would some day be their family pride. They blinded themselves to the magnitude of the failings of which they were now and then told, by persuading themselves that such failings were common to all men of any strength of character; for, till sad experience taught them better, they fell into the usual error of confounding strong passions with strong character. ”

“ Brant is an Indian by birth. In the American war he fought under the English banner, and he has since been in England, where he was most graciously received by the King, and met with a kind reception from all classes of people. His manners are semi-European. He is attended by two Negroes; has established himself in the English way; has a garden and a farm; dresses after the European fashion; and nevertheless possesses much influence over the Indians. He assists at present (1795) at the Miami Treaty, which the United States are concluding with the western Indians. ”

“ John Reed we have now seen was, like Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine's [Pg 79] brother, drawn by Charlotte Brontë from her brother Branwell Brontë. Always she wrote of him vindictively, and with a retributive justice, her strong characteristic. At about the period when Currer Bell was penning Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre Branwell was a source of considerable distress to her. He was disgraced; his habits were the reverse of temperate, and it was daily feared that in a fit of delirium he might make an attempt upon his own life. ”

“ Brant was not only trusted, consulted, and distinguished by several eminent British officers in America, but personally beloved by them. Now I could conceive men in power, for defensible reasons of state politics, to have officially trusted, and even publicly distinguished at courts or levees, an active and sagacious Indian chief, of whose private character they might nevertheless still entertain a very indifferent opinion. But I cannot imagine high-minded and high-bred British officers forming individual and fond friendships for a man of ferocious character. ”

“ In one of Brant's hostile incursions upon the settlements, during the war of the Revolution, Rose and his nephew, with others, were taken prisoners, and marched in the direction of Niagara. During the journey, Brant took Rose aside one morning, and admonished him not to move far away from himself (Brant,) but at all times on their march to keep within call. "I have reason to believe," said the Chief, "that that nephew of yours is plotting your death. He is endeavoring to bribe one of my Indians to kill you. ”

“ As Catherine, Charlotte Brontë calls Hindley "a tyrant" in this connection, and as Jane Eyre she calls John Reed "a tyrant" here. Branwell, as John Reed, is made to tell Jane in connection with this incident that "all this house belongs to me, or will do"; and as Hindley Earnshaw he tells his sister Catherine, "You forget you have a master here." By Charlotte Brontë's Method II., altering the age of a character portrayed, Branwell is represented in the Wuthering Heights scene as a man in years. ”

“ In wading through a narrow brook that obstructed their advance, their ranks became disordered, and Brant made effective use of the situation. His voice rose in a war-whoop and his warriors sprang into motion. After delivering one sharp, destructive volley, they seized their tomahawks and surged into the midst of their foe. From an hour before noon until sundown, sheltered by trees and rocks, both sides fought stubbornly. At last the whites gave way, and the battle closed with appalling slaughter. ”

“ The difficulties between the Mohawks and the Provincial Government, respecting the title to the lands of the former, which the elder Brant had so long labored, but in vain, to adjust, yet continuing unsettled, in the year 1821 John Brant, alias Ahyouwaeghs, was commissioned to proceed to England, as his father had been before him, to make one more appeal to the justice and magnanimity of the parent government. He urged his claim with ability, and enlisted in the cause of his people men of high rank and influence. ”

“ The hope of a great fortune was realized no more on the side of his king than on that of his beautiful, virtuous, and rich lady. He is, no doubt, “liked, known, and made welcome by the kings, his masters, by his queens and his princesses, and all the great seigneurs, who held him in such esteem that the name of Brantôme had great renown.” But he is not satisfied with the Court small-change in which his services are paid. He is vexed that his own lightheartedness is taken at its word ”

“ Every day the father gave a certain portion of his time to working with his boy; but a clergyman's time is not his own, and often he was called away on parish business. Doubtless Mr. Brontë thought these tutorless hours were spent, as he would have spent them, in earnest preparation of difficult tasks. But Branwell, with all his father's superficial charm of manner, was without the underlying strength of will, and he possessed, unchecked, the temptations to self-indulgence, to which his father seldom yielded, counteracting them rather by an ascetic regimen of life. ”

“ Brantôme’s keen enjoyment of the world pageantry was seldom disturbed by inconvenient reflexion. His only quarrel with society was that the ruling powers were blind to his own merits. He thought the duel, even in the treacherous and bloodthirsty fashion in which it was then carried on, an excellent institution, and at the end of his account of Coligny he inserts an elaborate disquisition on the material benefits which the religious wars had conferred on France. All classes had profited, nobles, clergy, magistrates, merchants, artisans. ”

“ Brontë encouraged a taste for reading in his girls; and though Miss Branwell kept it in due bounds, by the variety of household occupations, in which she expected them not merely to take a part, but to become proficients, thereby occupying regularly a good portion of every day, they were allowed to get books from the circulating library at Keighley; and many a happy walk, up those long four miles, must they have had, burdened with some new book, into which they peeped as they hurried home. ”

“ The very day of Charlotte's return a letter had come for Branwell from his employer. All had been found out. This letter commanded Branwell never to see again the mother of the children under his care, never set foot in her home, never write or speak to her. Branwell, who loved her passionately, had in that moment no thought for the shame, the black disgrace, he had brought on his father's house. He stormed, raved, swore he could not live without her; cried out against her next for staying with her husband. Then prayed the sick man might die soon; they would yet be happy. ”

“ Ain’t that rich?”
“Very rich,” said Brant grimly. Then he saw his advantage and made good use of it. “In fact, it is much too rich to spoil. Go find the fellow and tell him I’m in a bad humour, but that he is safe as long as he keeps away from me. Will you do that?”
“Sure,” assented the brakeman, getting upon his feet. “I’ll do better than that: I’ll scare him till he won’t get a good breath this side o’ the Missouri River.”
Brant’s eyes narrowed, and in the turning of a leaf the mantle of humility slipped from him and he became Brant the man-queller. ”

“ It was the household custom among these girls to sew till nine o’clock at night. At that hour, Miss Branwell generally went to bed, and her nieces’ duties for the day were accounted done. They put away their work, and began to pace the room backwards and forwards, up and down,—as often with the candles extinguished, for economy’s sake, as not,—their figures glancing into the fire-light, and out into the shadow, perpetually. ”

“ The termination of Brant's military life brought not therewith a state of inactivity. The proverbial indolence of his race in regard to all matters excepting the war-path and the chase, was not a characteristic of him. On the contrary, the history of man scarcely supplies a parallel instance of such active, unremitting, and unwearied public service, as well in the council as in the field, as was performed by this celebrated man, from the day when he first fleshed his youthful tomahawk at Lake George, until his death more than half a century afterward. ”

“ Miss Branwell went to bed early, and the young people were left alone in the curtainless clean parlour, with its grey walls and horse-hair furniture. But with good company no room is poorly furnished; and they had much to say, and much to listen to, on nights when Branwell was at home. Oftenest they must have missed him; since, whenever a visitor stayed at the "Black Bull," the little inn across the churchyard, the landlord would send up for "T' Vicar's Patrick" to come and amuse the guests with his brilliant rhodomontade. ”

“ Branwell declares that he neither can nor will do anything for himself. Good situations have been offered him more than once, for which, by a fortnight’s work, he might have qualified himself, but he will do nothing, except drink and make us all wretched. I had a note from Ellen Taylor a week ago, in which she remarks that letters were received from New Zealand a month since, and that all was well. I should like to hear from you again soon. I hope one day to see Brookroyd again, though I think it will not be yet—these are not times of amusement. Love to all. ”

“ Branwell, the father, according to his descendants' account, was a man of musical talent. He and his wife lived to see all their children grown up, and died within a year of each other—he in 1808, she in 1809, when their daughter Maria was twenty-five or twenty-six years of age. I have been permitted to look over a series of nine letters, which were addressed by her to Mr. Brontë, during the brief term of their engagement in 1812. They are full of tender grace of expression, and feminine modesty ”