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CHAPTER V Branwell's ambitions - their failure - Emily at school - her dis- position - Charlotte as a governess and back at home again - the Brussels plan. MR. BRONTE'S stipend was about £200 a year. Though he lived rent free and wages were low, there could not have been much to spare for education. Mr. Bronte was " both liberal and charitable/3 Mrs. Gaskell says, and he sent money from time to time to his Irish relations. Never- theless, large families were brought up on incomes of this size in those days, families whom it would be an exaggeration to call " poverty-stricken,53 unless that word is used to describe all those who have very little left after providing for necessaries. The school fees for the four children at Cowan Bridge amounted to about £60 a year, and though relations and friends may have helped with this payment, Mr, Bronte was evidently prepared to squeeze something out of his income for educa- tion, or Branwell's career as a painter would not have been contemplated. The expenses of training Branwell do not, how- ever, seem to have been considered carefully. " Branwell is going to London," Charlotte tells Ellen in a letter (July 1835) ^n which she writes that she is returning to Roe Head as a teacher and that Emily is going with her as a pupil. There is an undated letter from Branwell to the 68