Maria was twenty-nine years old, petite and elegant though not pretty; pious and something of a blue-stocking but also of a bright, cheerful and witty disposition. She was the daughter of a successful, property-owning grocer and tea merchant of Penzance, Thomas Branwell, who had died in 1808; her mother, Anne Carne, the daughter of a silversmith in the town, had died a year after her husband. Maria had grown up in a totally different world from Patrick. The eighth of eleven children, at least three of whom had not survived infancy, Maria had enjoyed all the benefits of belonging to a
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