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drawing master as Branwell; for me, it became an all-consuming passion. I spent countless hours huddled over my drawing-paper and Bristol boards with chalks, pencils, crayons, and cakes of colour, creating pictures from my imagination, or meticulously copying mezzotints and engravings of famous works that had been reproduced in books and Annuals. When I was eighteen, two of my pencil drawings were even selected for showing at a prestigious art exhibition in Leeds—but because Branwell was a boy, papa decided that he should be the one to continue study. I did not begrudge my brother the opportunity; but oh! How dearly I had wished that I, too, could have learned to paint with oils! Instead, my lessons ceased, and in time I gave up the pursuit. 7
    “Have you written anything new, Charlotte?”
    My brother’s voice broke into my thoughts; I blinked and refocused my gaze, aware that I must have missed part of the conversation. We had progressed beyond the factories now, and were passing the treeless open fields, divided like a draught-board 8 into parcels by endless stone fences. Funny, I thought with a smile, that Branwell should ask about writing, when I had been musing about art; but the two endeavours did, in a way, go hand in hand.
    Before I could reply, Emily said: “Charlotte has written not a word, as far as I can tell, in more than a year.”
    “Is that true?” asked Branwell in surprise.
    I considered my response. In fact, ever since my return from Belgium eighteen months before, I had written both poetry and prose in secret, late at night, in an attempt to unburden the misery which continued to weigh down my heart. This practice, I realised, could no longer go on undetected, now that Anne had come home and would share my bed. “I have written nothing of late to speak of,” said I, which was as close to the truth as I wished to go.
    “Why not?” asked Branwell. “Writing is as deeply entrenched in your blood as it is in mine, Charlotte. You once told me that to live a single day without putting pen to paper in some capacity or another was pure torture to your soul. Admit it: you must at least be thinking about Angria and your Duke of Zamorna.”
    Angria was the imaginary kingdom that Branwell and I had invented as children: a balmy African landscape, first called the “Confederacy of Glass Town,” which we had peopled with a roster of brilliant, wealthy characters who loved obsessively, waged wars, had great adventures, and were as real to us as life itself. My childhood hero had been the famous Duke of Wellington; when I outgrew him, I created an imaginary son for him, the Duke of Zamorna (alternately known as Arthur Augustus Adrian Wellesley, Marquis of Douro, and King of Angria). Zamorna was a poet, soldier, statesman, and passionate womanizer, who had captured my mind and heart over the course of countless stories—stories I was still writing with great pleasure in my mid-twenties, when I left for Belgium. I had not written a word about him or Angria since.
    “I think our professor in Brussels said something to discourage her,” said Emily.
    A heat rose to my face. “That is not true. Monsieur Héger was very supportive of my writing. He said I had talent, and helped me to hone and perfect my craft. I learned more from him than any other teacher; but he also forced me to re-evaluatethe type of writing I was doing and its place in the future course of my life.”
    “What future course is that?” asked Branwell.
    “I am twenty-nine years old. There is no point in scribbling any more of those silly, romantic stories that we penned in our youth. At my age, the imagination should be pruned and trimmed, the judgment cultivated, and the countless illusions of youth should be cleared away.”
    Branwell laughed. “Good God, Charlotte! You sound like you are a hundred and twenty-nine, not twenty-nine.”
    “It is nothing to joke about. I must be serious now. I must focus on what is practical and