Anne Bronte Part III

 Anne returned home to look for another job, and met Willie Weightman her father’s new curate. Willie was a lively but sweet-tempered young man.  Mostly, the girls didn’t like their father’s curates, finding them narrow minded, and pompous, but all of them liked Weightman.  He was pleasantly flirtatious and sent the sisters their first Valentines….  It seems that Anne was attracted to him and may have fallen a little  in love with him. Its not clear if he was interested in her but he was a poor curate and not in a a position to marry.  He seems to have been the only young man that Anne was interested in. Sadly he died young.

Anne found another position as governess with the Robinson family, in Yorkshire.  She seems to have been happier in this job than in her previous one.. although the children were not easy to manage.  She persevered and began to get on well with them, and became fond of the young daughters of the house and respected by their parents.  However, Branwell then secured a position as tutor to Edmund the son of the family and during his time there, he fell in love with Mrs Robinson, who was 17 years his senior.  Its not clear if Mrs Robinson returned his love or if they engaged in an actual affair but when Mr Robinson found out that something was going on, he dismissed Branwell.  Always prone to violent emotion and somewhat unstable, Branwell went to pieces after his dismissal, drinking and moaning about his love to everyone.

Anne left her job having inherited a little money from Miss Branwell.. She was unhappy about her brothers relationship with Mrs Robinson, and she now had some money to keep her while she remained at home.  She and her sisters published a book of poetry but it failed.  However it spurred them on to try to publish novels.

They all worked on serious pieces of fiction..  Emily was writing Wuthering Heights, Charlotte was working first on the Professor and then on Jane Eyre.. and Anne contributed a slighter novel called Agnes Grey. It was a short work, which would be published in a 3 volume set with Wuthering Heights and was based on Anne’s first experiences as a governess.