Branwell's room

This installation, showing how Branwell's room might have looked in the 1830's when he was pursuing his art and writing, was produced by the production designer for the Sally Wainwright Brontë film To Walk Invisible.

One of the frequent criticisms of that film was that there was too much Branwell in it. Which I think is a fair comment—at times, it does feel as if you have to peek behind all the Branwell drama in the foreground to catch a glimpse of what his sisters were doing. But that's what it's like with an addict in the family; I know from sad experience how they act as a kind of black hole sucking all the life and energy around them into the vortex of their own endless neediness.

The story that Branwell set off for London to enroll in the Royal Academy of Art, spent all of his money getting drunk and then returned home claiming that he had been robbed, may not be true, but it is not implausible. He was a talented artist and writer (Charlotte cribbed part of her first novel The Professor from one of the Angrian stories Branwell wrote) but not as talented as he believed himself to be. He tried to make a living as a portrait painter in Bradford, but there were too many better painters in the area for him to succeed. He worked for a time at an isolated railway station but was fired, and then lost the job Anne got for him as tutor to the eldest son in the family where she had been a governess for several years after having an affair with his employer's wife (costing Anne her job as well—she felt she had no choice but to resign.)

But even before the horrors of the last few years of his life, the frequent raging arguments begging money from Patrick so he could buy gin, passing out and setting his bedclothes on fire so that Patrick was forced to sleep with him every night, there was the anger and resentment his sisters must have felt at seeing the opportunities and privilege he had enjoyed as the only son squandered. And knowing they could never rely on him if their father died and they lost their home.

After the book of poems they published anonymously only sold two copies, they turned to writing novels. It was as much a practical decision as an artistic one, if not exactly a guarantee of success. Their only other option was being teachers or governesses, and both Charlotte and Emily had already failed to make a success at that. But it turned out that writing novels was something they were very, very good at.