Branwell Bronte V

 Branwell's return to Haworth coincided with his sisters starting to write for publication.  While they were involved in writing their great novels  He was miserably drinking and complaining about how unhappy he was.  The family were sympathetic to an extent.  They believed that Mrs Robinson had seduced him and that he was the victim of her selfishness.  

He got into debt, continued drinking and taking opium and once set his bed on fire, which caused old Mr Bronte to have to take him into his own room at night.  Branwell seems to have recieved small amounts of money from Mrs Robinson via servants, so its possible that there had been some kind of affair and she was afraid of his talking about it.  However, when Mr Robinson died, she did not as he claimed she would come to him and marry him.   Branwell then claimed that Mrs Robinson would lose all her money if she married him.  This was not true- the will did stipulate that she would lose a certain amount if she remarried, but there was no mention of Branwell in the Will and it was a normal stipulation that a widow would lose her income if she married again.  

Branwell's behaviour was very distressing to his family who tried to excuse him for his affair.  Mr Bronte believed that his son was an innocent who had been seduced by a sophisticated and wicked older woman... However it was upsetting to them to have to put up with his drunkenness, his moaning and his getting into debt.  The three girls went on with their writing, keeping it a secret from their brother so as not to upset him with the reminders that he had been considered the family genius who had writing ability.  Branwell did try his hand at a novel, in the last years of his life.. but it was not very readable and he did not write all that much.  He read some of it to one of his friends, and it had a bible quoting servant in it.. which led to rumours that he had written Wuthering Heights  or at least helped Emily with it.. because Wuthering Heights also had Joseph, a villainous old Yorkshire servant who quoted the Bible...

As Branwell drank more, his health declined.  Eventually in 1848 he became ill with TB which was very common at the time due to poor hygiene and a lack of understanding of how the disease was passed on.  He died somewhat repentant of his earlier atheism and selfish behaviour and his family in spite of his faults were heart broken.  Emily caught a cold at his funeral, which also turned into TB and died soon afterwards.....