And most of the time their brother Branwell was either at Bradford or at
Haworth, dreaming of greatness, and drinking at the "Black Bull". The
"Black Bull" stands disastrously near to the Parsonage, at the corner of
the churchyard, with its parlour windows looking on the graves. Branwell
was the life and soul of every party of commercial travellers that
gathered there. Conviviality took strange forms at Haworth. It had a
Masonic Lodge of the Three Graces, with John Brown, the grave-digger,
for Worshipful Master. Branwell was at one and the same time secretary
to the Three Graces and to the Haworth Temperance Society. When he was
not entertaining bagmen, he was either at Bradford painting bad
portraits, or at Haworth pouring out verses, fearfully long, fatally
fluent verses, and writing hysterical letters to the editor of
_Blackwood's Magazine_.

One formidable letter (the third he sent) is headed in large letters:
"Sir, read what I write." It begins: "And would to Heaven you would
believe in me, for then you would attend to me and act upon it", and
ends: "You lost an able writer in James Hogg, and God grant you may get
one in Patrick Branwell Brontë." Another followed, headed: "Sir, read
now at last", and ending, "Condemn not unheard". In a final letter
Branwell inquires whether Mr. Blackwood thinks his magazine "so perfect
that no addition to its power would be either possible or desirable",
and whether it is pride that actuates him, or custom, or prejudice, and
conjures him: "Be a man, sir!"

Nothing came of it. Mr. Blackwood refused to be a man.

Yet Branwell had his chance. He went to London, but nothing came of it.
He went to Bradford and had a studio there, but nothing came of it. He
lived for a brief period in a small provincial Bohemia. It was his best