All three Brontë sisters had spent time working as governesses or teachers, and all had experienced problems controlling their charges, gaining support from their employers, and coping with home-sickness - but Anne was the only one who persevered and made a success of the work.

Anne experienced much home-sickness and depression during the five years she spent with the Robinsons, but there was one aspect of her position that was a sheer delight. She was obliged to accompany the family on their annual holidays to Scarborough. Between 1840 and 1844, she spent around five weeks each summer at the resort, and fell totally in love with the place. 

Spa Bridge and the Grand Hotel - Scarborough

The Robinsons stayed in the prestigious Wood's Lodgings, an establishment patronised by only the very rich, and situated at the best location in the resort - on the top of St. Nicholas Cliff at the centre of the bay (today, this site is occupied by the giant Grand Hotel). Its rear windows gave spectacular views over the bay and across to the castle, which crowned the headland - jutting out to sea at the northern end of the bay. It is evident from her novels that Anne explored almost every corner of Scarborough. She visited the castle grounds,  took walks across the South Cliff,  and particularly enjoyed strolling across the towering 'Spa Bridge' which stood just beside Wood's Lodgings, running parallel to the beach, and spanning the gorge down which ran, at that time, the 'Mill beck' - a small stream running from the southern inland area of Scarborough down to the sea. Like Wood's Lodgings, it provided spectacular views of the South Bay and castle; but with the added benefit of the fresh sea breeze that would frequently blow across it. She engaged in bathing in the nearby indoor baths,  and almost certainly tried sea-bathing.  She would certainly have visited the 'Rotunda', a small circular museum located just below the Spa Bridge: possibly taking her charges there as an educational exercise.

Over the period Anne was working for the Robinsons, the three sisters several times considered the possibility of setting-up their own school. Various locations, including their own home, the Parsonage, were considered as places to establish it: on one occasion Charlotte suggested siting it at the seaside resort of Bridlington, where she and Ellen Nussey had taken a few weeks holiday several years earlier: Anne dreamed of locating the school at Scarborough.

In 1843, Anne secured a position for Branwell at Thorp Green: he was to take over from her as tutor to the Robinson's son, Edmund (jnr.), who was now growing too old to be under Anne's care. Like Anne, Branwell also made a success of his post, but he was soon enticed into a secret relationship with his employers wife, Lydia Robinson. The affair continued for two and a half years before their proceedings were discovered by her husband (Anne and Branwell's employer), Edmund Robinson. It seems Mrs. Robinson laid all the blame on Branwell for initiating, and taking the leading role in all stages of the affair, though all the evidence suggests otherwise. In the event, Mr. Robinson stood by his wife, and Branwell was sternly dismissed, being warned 

'on pain of exposure to break off instantly and for ever all communication with every member of his family'. 

He was devastated: Branwell had become besotted with Lydia Robinson, foolishly believing she would one day marry him. He sank into a deep depression, turned heavily to drink and became increasingly dependent on opium, a situation from which he never recovered. The Robinson incident is believed to have been the primary cause of his subsequent decline in health which, a few years later, led to his death.

In 1846, the three sisters made their first venture into the literary world by having, at their own expense, a book of their combined poems published. The book appeared under their three chosen pseudonyms - or 'pen-names', the initials of which were the same as their own. Charlotte became 'Currer Bell', Emily became 'Ellis Bell' and Anne became 'Acton Bell'. The sisters had chosen male pen-names as it was generally believed that female writers were unfairly treated by the critics. The book was a dismal failure, with only two copies being sold during the first year. However, even before the fate of the book of poems became apparent, the three sisters were working on a new project. 

The three novels were Charlotte's 'The Professor', Emily's 'Wuthering Heights' and Anne's 'Agnes Grey'. The publishers wrote back advising that they did not deal in works of fiction, but sent the sisters a list of publishers that did: and so, the manuscripts of the three novels were soon sent 'the rounds' of the various publishers. After a number of rejections, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were accepted by one Thomas Cautley Newby; a publisher in London, but Charlotte's novel was rejected by Newby, and by every other publisher to whom it was sent. However, Charlotte was not long in completing her second novel, the now famous Jane Eyre, and this was immediately accepted by Smith, Elder & Co., a different publisher to Anne's and Emily's though also located in London. As it transpired, Jane Eyre was the first to appear in print. While Anne and Emily's novels 'lingered in the press', Charlotte's second novel hit the literary world like a bombshell: it became an immediate and resounding success. This story had been constructed using writing techniques that were unorthodox and very different to those she had used in her previous novel, and indeed, any of her juvenile writings; and these have won Charlotte much acclaim over the years; however, attentive examination reveals that they closely follow techniques that were innovated by Anne nine months earlier in the writing of Agnes Grey.  Anne and Emily's publisher was urged on by the success of Jane Eyre, and their novels soon followed. These too sold exceptionally well, and although Agnes Grey has since been described by one author as 

'the most perfect prose narrative in English Literature', 

it was distinctly outshone by Emily's much more dramatic Wuthering Heights. Within a year, however, Anne fired back with her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which was an instant phenomenal success and rapidly outsold Emily's all-time classic. Within six weeks Wildfell Hall was sold out, and by July 1848, Anne was writing her now famous preface to the second edition.

Things were looking very rosy for the sisters; a highly successful literary career appeared a certainty for them all. There was no hint of the impending tragedy that was to befall the family: within the next ten months, three of the siblings, including Anne, would be dead.

The first blow fell on the 24 September 1848: Branwell's health had gradually deteriorated over the previous two years, but its seriousness was half disguised by his persistent drunkenness. His death, which occurred on that morning, came as a shock to the family. He was aged just thirty one. The cause was recorded as 'Chronic bronchitis - Marasmus'; though, through his recorded symptoms, it is now believed that he was also suffering from consumption (tuberculosis).

By the end of October, Charlotte was writing to her friend, Ellen Nussey:

'I feel much more uneasy about my sisters than myself just now. Emily's cold and cough are very obstinate; I fear she has pain in the chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in her breathing when she has moved at all quickly. She looks very, very thin and pale. Her reserved nature occasions one great uneasiness of mind - it is useless to question her - you get no answers - it is still more useless to recommend remedies - they are never adopted. Nor can I shut my eyes to the fact of Anne's great delicacy of constitution.'

By this time, Emily was firmly in the grip of consumption, which, being contagious, could well have been caught from Branwell. She deteriorated rapidly over a two month period, persistently refusing all medical aid until the morning of 19 December, when, being so weak, she declared: 

"if you will send for a doctor, I will see him now."  

The local doctor was immediately sent for, but it was far too late: there was nothing he could do. At about two o'clock that afternoon, after 

'a hard, short conflict' 

in which she struggled desperately to hang on to life, she died on the dining room sofa: she was aged just thirty.

Anne had already been suffering from what was believed to be a cold for the previous few weeks. Over Christmas, her symptoms intensified, and in early January, her father, Patrick sent for a Leeds physician 'who was an expert in consumptive cases'. On January 5th Dr. Teale examined Anne at the Parsonage. He diagnosed her condition as consumption, and intimated that it was quite advanced leaving little hope of a recovery. Unlike Emily, Anne took all the recommended medicines, and responded to all the advice she was given. Her health fluctuated as the months passed, but she progressively grew thinner and weaker. On 1 May, Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey, to report on Anne's condition:

She is very much emaciated, far more so than when you were with us; 
her arms are no thicker than a little child's. The least exertion brings a shortness of breath. 
She goes out a little every day, but we creep rather than walk. . .' 

By this time Anne had decided to make a return visit to Scarborough in the hope that the change of location and fresh sea air might initiate a recovery, and give her a chance to live: indeed, the doctors of the time had said that a 

'change of air or removal to a better climate would hardly ever
fail of success in consumptive cases if the remedy were taken in time', 

"If finite power can do this, what is the . . . ?" 

when emotion stayed her speech, and her companions quickly moved her to a less exciting scene.

The small party arrived at Scarborough on the Friday afternoon. Anne was now very weak and frail, but she appeared somewhat revived on being back in the place she so much loved. She gained great pleasure in pointing out the delights of the resort to Charlotte and Ellen. The party had booked rooms in Wood's Lodgings - the establishment where Anne had stayed with the Robinsons some five to nine years earlier. The morning after her arrival, she attended the nearby Indoor Sea-water Baths,  and at her own insistence, was left to bathe there alone. However, on her return, she collapsed with exhaustion outside her lodgings. Not to alarm Charlotte and Ellen, Anne did not inform them of this incident until some considerable time later. In the afternoon, she drove herself in a donkey cart on the South Sands, and when Ellen arrived to meet her, she found Anne giving the donkey-boy a lecture on treating the animal well. 

'She was ever fond of dumb things, and would give up her own comfort for them' 

reported Ellen later.

Sunrise in Scarborough

On the Sunday afternoon, Anne enthusiastically chaperoned Charlotte and Ellen along the Spa Bridge, and the three enjoyed the spectacular open view of the bay from there. Later, overcome with exhaustion, she sat on a seat near the beach and urged her companions to walk on further. It was later this evening that she realised there was no hope left, and that she did not have long to live. She begun discussing, with Charlotte, the propriety of returning to Haworth. Not that she wanted to return for her own sake, she said, but she did not want to leave her companions with the problems, and distress of having to return her lifeless remains home. She spent the rest of the evening sat by her lodgings room window - looking out over the bay, and watching  'the most glorious sunset ever witnessed'.

The night passed without incident, but the following morning she was so weak that Ellen had to carry her, like a baby, down the stairs for breakfast, which, for Anne, was a bowl of boiled milk that had been especially prepared for her.

The three spent the rest of the morning in their lounge; Anne sat in her easy chair by the window, looking out over the bay once more; the weather was glorious and the sea as 'calm as glass': she looked 'so serene and reliant', reported Ellen. 

'Nothing occurred to incite alarm until about 11 a.m. when Anne announced that she felt a change: she believed she did not have long to live.' 

A doctor was called, and Anne asked him 

'how long he thought she might live - not to fear speaking the truth, for she was not afraid to die'. 

The doctor admitted 

'that the angel of death had already arrived and that life was ebbing fast. 
She thanked him for his truthfulness . . . 
and reverently invoked a blessing from on high, first on her sister, 
then upon her friend, to whom she said, "be a sister in my stead. 
Give Charlotte as much of your company as you can."

When she became restless as death approached, she was carried across to the sofa, and asked if she were easier: she replied 

"It is not you who can give me ease, but soon all will be well through the merits of our Redeemer." 

Seeing Charlotte was barely able to restrain her grief, she whispered her last words: 

"Take courage, Charlotte; take courage". 

A few moments later, at two o'clock in the afternoon of Whit Monday, 28 May 1849, Anne quietly died.

At this time, and over the previous few months - throughout the greatest trial of her life, Anne had shown astounding fortitude and courage. Emily's famous line 'no coward soul is mine' befitted Anne far more than it ever befitted Emily. The doctor who attended Anne during her last hours 

'wondered at her fixed tranquillity of spirit and settled longing to be gone': 

in all his experience, he later told Charlotte and Ellen, 

'he had never seen such a deathbed and it gave evidence of no common mind'.  

Remarking on Anne's final hours, one of her biographers says, 

'Anne is almost awesomely in command. She rises supremely to her last occasion, and as long as she is conscious, she directs it.'

Over the following few days, Charlotte made the decision to 

'lay the flower where it had fallen': 

She later wrote: 

'I wanted her to die where she would be happiest. . . . She loved Scarborough.' 

At the time of Anne's death, major restoration work was being carried out at St. Mary's Church, where Charlotte had chosen to bury Anne. For this reason the funeral was conducted at Christ Church, which was situated near the top of Vernon Place (now Vernon Road) - only a few minutes walk from Wood's Lodgings, the place where Anne had died. This seems inadvertently appropriate, as it was in this church where Anne had worshipped with the Robinson family on their annual visits to Scarborough some five to nine years earlier. (Christ Church was demolished in 1979, the site being next to the current Scarborough Library - close to the centre of Westborough). It is interesting to note the entry in the 'Register of Burials' - stating Anne was 'from near York'. Obviously this information would not have been obtained from Charlotte or Ellen Nussey who were with Anne at Scarborough when she died; proving that the clergyman of Christ Church had remembered her from her attendances with the Robinsons. Anne had spent five years as governess to the Robinson children at Thorp Green, which is located just ten miles north-west of York!

A year later, further editions of the sisters' novels were required; however, Charlotte prevented re-publication of Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This act was the predominant cause of Anne's relegation to the back-seat of the Brontë bandwagon. In writing this novel, Anne had presented themes that were very daring for the Victorian era. She gave them bold treatment, and pulled no punches in her depiction of scenes of mental and physical cruelty: many critics had accused her of having 

'a morbid love of the coarse, not to say of the brutal'.  

Charlotte told her publishers that its subject matter was totally alien to Anne's nature: and it was reputedly to prevent any further attacks on Anne's character that Charlotte suppressed her book. Curiously, Wuthering Heights had brought similar accusations on Emily, but Charlotte did not take the same action on Emily's behalf - the sister to whom she had always seemed to be closest. The consequence was that Charlotte's novels, along with Emily's Wuthering Heights, continued to be published, firmly launching these two sisters into literary stardom, while Anne's masterpiece had been 'consigned to oblivion'. Elizabeth Langland writes: 

'It is worth pausing briefly to reflect on what might have been Anne's fate had the Tenant of Wildfell Hall been re-published with Agnes Grey so that critics could take that opportunity to measure the substantial artistic growth between the two novels. Charlotte herself never accomplished Anne's imaginative range. Further, Anne was only twenty-eight when she wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; at a comparable age, Charlotte had produced only The Professor. And yet, despite the disadvantages in representation Anne suffered at Charlotte's hands'.

Charlotte only re-visited the grave once - on 4 June 1852 - a few days after the third anniversary of Anne's death. She did not stay in Scarborough - the memories being too painful, but spent the following three - four weeks in a cottage at the southern end of Filey - a smaller, more reserved resort, situated about eight miles further down the coast. On her arrival at Scarborough she discovered five errors in the inscription on Anne's gravestone, and had to arrange for it to be refaced. It still carries one error today - stating Anne 'died Aged 28': she was, in fact, 29.

In recent years, a re-appraisal of Anne's work has begun, gradually leading to her acceptance, 'not as a minor Brontë, but as a major literary figure in her own right'. Indeed, her last piece of prose to be published - the preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - has recently been regarded as 

'one of the most awesome and powerful defenses of a novel in literature by an author.' 

It seems it is, at last, only a matter of time before Anne takes her rightful place in the literary hall-of-fame - right alongside her two legendary sisters.

Text attributed and used with consent from Michael Armitage - Website Biography of Ann Bronte.

Website hosted by Complete Internet Services Ltd

Other Websites at Whitby, Scarborough, York, Filey and Bridlington.