And certainly not Mrs. Robinson, the lady for whom he conceived that
insane and unlawful passion which has been made to loom so large in the
lives of the Brontës. After all the agony and indignation that has
gathered round this episode, it is clear enough now, down to the last
sordid details. The feverish, degenerate, utterly irresponsible Branwell
not only declared his passion, but persuaded himself, against the
evidence of his senses, that it was returned. The lady (whom he must
have frightened horribly) told her husband, who instantly dismissed
Branwell.

Branwell never got over it.

He was destined to die young, and, no doubt, if there had been no Mrs.
Robinson, some other passion would have killed him. Still, it may be
said with very little exaggeration that he died of it. He had not
hitherto shown any signs of tuberculosis. It may be questioned whether
without this predisposing cause he would have developed it. He had had
his chance to survive. _He_ had never been packed, like his sisters,
first one of five, then one of three, into a closet not big enough for
one. But he drank harder after the Robinson affair than he had ever
drunk before, and he added opium to drink. Drink and opium gave
frightful intensity to the hallucination of which, in a sense, he died.

It took him more than three years, from July, eighteen-forty-five, the
date of his dismissal, to September, eighteen-forty-eight, the date of
his death.

The Incumbent of Haworth has been much blamed for his son's
shortcomings. He has been charged with first spoiling the boy, and then
neglecting him. In reality his only error (a most unusual one in an