Portrait Gallery. In 1835, he wrote a letter to the Royal Academy of Arts seeking to be admitted. Earlier biographers reported a move to London to study painting, which quickly ended following Brontë's dissolute spending on drink. Other biographers speculated that he was too intimidated to present himself at the Academy. More recent scholarship suggests that Brontë did not send the letter or even make the trip to London. According to Francis Leyland, Brontë's friend and a future biographer of the family, his first job was as an usher at a Halifax school. More certainly, Brontë worked as a portrait painter in Bradford in 1838 and 1839. Though certain of his paintings, for example that of his landlady Mrs. Kirby and a portrait of Emily show talent for comedic and serious styles, other portraits lack life. He returned to Haworth in debt in 1839. Adulthood With his father, Brontë reviewed the classics with a view to future employment as a tutor. At the beginning of January 1840, he started his employment with the family of Robert Postlethwaite in Broughton-in-Furness. During this time he wrote letters to his pub friends in Haworth which give "a vivid picture of Branwell's scabrous humour, his boastfulness, and his need to be accepted in a man's world". According to Brontë, he started his job off with a riotous drinking session in Kendal. During this employment he continued his literary work, including sending poems and translations to Thomas De Quincey and Hartley Coleridge who both lived in the Lake District. At Coleridge's invitation, he visited the poet at his cottage who encouraged him to pursue his translations of Horace's Odes. In June 1840 he sent the translations to Coleridge, despite having been dismissed by the Postlethwaites. According to Juliet Barker's biography of the Brontës, he may have fathered an illegitimate child during time in the town, but others suspect that it may be more of Brontë's boasting. Coleridge began an encouraging letter about the quality of the translations in November–December 1840 but never finished it. In October 1840, Brontë moved near to Halifax, where he had many good friends including the sculptor Joseph Bentley Leyland and Francis Grundy. He obtained employment with the Manchester and Leeds Railway, initially as 'assistant clerk in charge' at Sowerby Bridge railway station, where he was paid £75 per annum (paid quarterly). Later, on 1 April 1841, he was promoted to