 Volume 2, Section 7 of the Life of Charlotte Bronte. The tale of Shirley had been begun soon after the publication of Jane Eyre, if the reader will refer to the account I have given of Miss Bronte's school days at Roehead. He will there see how every place surrounding that house was connected with the Luddite riots, and will learn how stories and anecdotes of that time were rife among the inhabitants of the neighboring villages. How Miss Wooler herself and the elder relations of most of her school fellows must have known the actors in those grim disturbances. What Charlotte had heard there as a girl came up in her mind when, as a woman, she sought a subject for her next work, and she sent to Leeds for a file of the Mercury's of 1812, 13, and 14, in order to understand the spirit of those eventful times. She was anxious to write of things she had known and seen, and among the number was the West Yorkshire character, for which any tale laid among the Luddites would afford full scope. In Shirley she took the idea of most of her characters from life, although the incidents and situations were of course fictitious. She thought that if these last were purely imaginary she might draw from the real without detection, but in this she was mistaken. Her studies were too closely accurate. This occasionally led her into difficulties. People recognized themselves or were recognized by others in her graphic descriptions of their personal appearance and modes of action and turns of thought. Though they were placed in new positions and figured away in scenes far different to those in which their actual life had been passed, Miss Bonte was struck by the force or peculiarity of the character of someone whom she knew. She studied it and analyzed it with subtle power, and having traced it to its germ she took that germ as the nucleus of an imaginary character and worked outwards. Thus reversing the process of analyzing and unconsciously reproducing the same external development. The three curates were real living men, Haunting, Howarth, and the neighboring district. And so up to some perception that after the first burst of anger at having their ways and habits chronicled was over, they rather enjoyed the joke of calling each other by the name she had given them. Mrs. Pryor was well known to many who loved the original dearly. The whole family of the Yorks were, I have been assured, almost deguerro types. Indeed Miss Bronte told me that before publication she had sent those parts of the novel in which these remarkable persons are introduced to one of the sons, and his reply after reading it was simply that she had not drawn them strong enough. From those many-sided sons I suspect she drew all that there was of truth in the characters of the heroes in her first two works. They indeed were almost the only young men she knew intimately besides her brother. There was much friendship and still more confidence between the Bronte family and them, although their intercourse was often broken and irregular. There was never any warmer feeling on either side. The character of Shirley herself is Charlotte's representation of Emily. I mention this because all that I, a stranger, have been able to learn about her has not tended to give either me or my readers a pleasant impression of her. But we must remember how little we are acquainted with her, compared to that sister, who out of her more intimate knowledge says that she was genuinely good and truly great, and who tried to depict her, her character in Shirley Kildar, as what Emily Bronte would have been had she been placed in health and prosperity. Ms. Bronte took extreme pains with Shirley. She felt that the fame she had acquired imposed upon her a double responsibility. She tried to make her novel like a piece of actual life. Feeling sure that if she but represented the product of personal experience and observation truly, good would come of it in the long run. She carefully studied the different reviews and criticisms that had appeared on Jane Eyre, in hopes of extracting precepts and advice from which to profit. Down into the very midst of her writing came the bolts of death. She had nearly finished the second volume of her tale, when Branwell died. After him Emily, after her Anne, the pen, laid down when there were three sisters living and loving, was taken up when one alone remained. While might she call the first chapter that she wrote after this, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I knew in part what the unknown author Shirley must have suffered when I read those pathetic words which occur at the end of this and the beginning of the succeeding chapter. Till break of day, she wrestled with God in earnest prayer. Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after night, the sweat of agony may burst stark on the forehead. The supplicant may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the invisible. Spare my beloved, it may implore. Heal my life's life. Wrench not for me what long affection entwines with my whole nature. God of heaven, bend, hear, be clement. And after this cry and strife, the sun may rise and see him worsten. That opening mourn which used to salute him with the whispers of Zephyrs, the carol of Skylarks, may breathe as its first accents from the dear lips which color and heat have quitted. Oh, I have had a suffering night. This morning I am worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have troubled me. Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow and sees a new and strange molding of the familiar features. Feels at once that this insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is God's will his idol should be broken, and bends his head and subdues his soul to the sentence he cannot avert, and scares can bear. No piteous, unconscious moaning sound, which so wastes our strength, that, even if we have sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps away the oath, preceded her waking. No space of death apathy followed. The first words spoken were not those of one the coming estranged from this world, and already permitted to stray at times into realms foreign to the living. She went on with her work steadily, but it was dreary to write without anyone to listen to the progress of her tale, to find fault or to sympathize, while pacing the length of the parlor in the evenings as in the days that were no more. Three sisters had done this, then two, the other sister dropping off from the walk, and now one was left desolate to listen for echoing steps that never came, and to hear the wind sobbing at the windows with an almost articulate sound. But she wrote on, struggling against her own feelings of illness, continually recurring feelings of slight cold, slight soreness in the throat and chest, of which, do what I will, she writes, I cannot get rid. In August there arose a new cause for anxiety, happily but temporary. August 23, 1849. Papa has not been well at all lately. He has had another attack of bronchitis. I felt very uneasy about him for some days, more wretched indeed than I care to tell you. After what has happened, one trembles at any appearance of sickness, and when anything else, Papa, I feel too keenly that he is the last, the only near and dear relative I have in the world. Yesterday and today he has seemed much better, for which I am truly thankful. From what you say of Mr., I think I should like him very much. Once shaken we put out about his appearance, what does it matter whether her husband dines in a dress coat or a market coat provided there be worth and honesty and a clean shirt underneath? September 10, 1849. My piece of work is at last finished and dispatched to its destination. You must now tell me when there is a chance of you being able to come here. I fear it will now be difficult to arrange as days so near the marriage day. Note well it would spoil all my pleasure if you put yourself or anyone else to inconvenience to come to Hayworth. But when it is convenient, I shall be truly glad to see you. Papa, I am thankful to say, is better, though not strong. He is often troubled with the sensation of nausea. My cold is very much less troublesome. I am sometimes quite free from it. A few days since, I had a severe bilious attack, the consequence of sitting too closely to my writing, but it is gone now. It is the first from which I have suffered since my return from the seaside. I had them every month before. September 13, 1849. If duty and the well-being of others require that you should stay at home, I cannot permit myself to complain. Still, I am very, very sorry that circumstances will not permit us to meet just now. I would, without hesitation, come to, if Papa were stronger, but uncertain as are both his health and spirits, I could not possibly prevail on myself to leave him now. Let us hope that when we do see each other, our meeting will be all the more pleasurable for being delayed. Dear E, you certainly have a heavy burden laid on your shoulders, but such burdens, if well-born, benefit the character. Only we must take the greatest, closest, most watchful care not to grow proud of our strength, in case we should be enabled to bear up under the trial. That pride indeed would be sign of radical weakness. The strength, if strength we have, is certainly never in our own selves, it is given us. To W. S. Williams, Esquire, September 21, 1849. My dear sir, I am obliged to you for preserving my secret, being at least as anxious as ever, more anxious I cannot well be, in parenthesis, to keep quiet. You asked me in one of your letters lately whether I thought I should escape identification at Yorkshire. I am so little known that I think I shall. Besides, the book is far less founded on the real than perhaps appears. It would be difficult to explain to you how little actual experience I have had of life, how few persons I have known, and how very few have known me. As an instance, how the characters have been managed, take that of Mr. Hellstone. If this character had an original, it was in the person of the clergyman who died some years since, at the advanced age of eighty. I never saw him except once, at the consecration of a church, when I was a child of ten years old. I was then struck with his appearance, and stern, martial air. At a subsequent period I heard him talked about in the neighborhood where he had resided. Some mention him with enthusiasm, others with detestation. I listened to various anecdotes, balanced evidence against evidence, and drew an inference. The original of Mr. Hall I have seen. He knows me slightly, but he would have soon think I had closely observed him or taken him for a character. He would have soon indeed suspect me of writing a hook, a novel, as he would his dog-prince. Margaret Hall called Jane Eyre a wicked book, on the authority of the Quarterly. An expression which, coming from her, I will here confess, struck somewhat deep. It opened my eyes to the harm the Quarterly had done. Margaret would not have called it wicked if she had not been told so. No matter, whether known or unknown, misjudged or the contrary, I am resolved not to write otherwise. I shall bend as my powers tend. The two human beings who understood me, and whom I understood, are gone. I have some that love me yet, and whom I love, without expecting, or having a right to expect, that they shall perfectly understand me. I am satisfied, but I must have my own way in the matter of writing. The loss of what we possess, nearest and dearest to us in this world, produces an effect upon the character we search out, what we have yet left, that can't support, and when found we cling to it with a hold of new, strong tenacity. The faculty of imagination lifted me when I was sinking, three months ago. Its active exercise has kept my head above water since. Its results cheer me now, for I feel they have enabled me to give pleasure to others. I am thankful to God, who gave me the faculty, and it is for me a part of my religion to defend this gift, and to profit by its possession. Yours sincerely, Charlotte Bronte. At the time when this letter was written, both Tappy and the young servant, whom they had to assist her, were ill in bed. And with the exception of occasional aid, Miss Bronte had all the household work to perform, as well as to nurse the two in the lids. The serious illness of the younger servant was at its height, when a cry from Tappy called Miss Bronte into the kitchen, and she found the poor old woman of 80, laid on the floor, with her head under the kitchen grate. She had fallen from her chair and attempting to rise. When I saw her two years later, she described to me that tender care which Charlotte had taken of her at this time, and wound up her account of how her own mother could not have had more thought for her, nor Miss Bronte had, by saying, eh, she's a good one she is. But there was one day when the strong nerves gave way, when, as she says, I fairly broke down for ten minutes, sad and cried like a fool. Tappy could neither stand nor walk. Papa had just been declaring that Martha was in imminent danger. I was myself depressed with headache and sickness. That day I hardly knew what to do, or where to turn. Thank God Martha is now convalescent. Tappy, I trust, will be better soon. Papa is pretty well. I have the satisfaction of knowing that my publishers are delighted with what I sent them. This supports me, but life is a battle. May we all be enabled to fight it well. The kind friend to whom she thus wrote, saw how the poor overtack system needed bracing, and accordingly sent her a shower bath, a thing for which she had long been wishing. The receipt of it was acknowledged as follows. September 28, 1849. Martha is now almost well, and Tappy much better. A huge monster package from Nelson, Leeds, came yesterday. You want chastising roundly and soundly. Such are the things you get for all your trouble. Whenever you come to Hayworth, you shall certainly have a thorough drenching in your own shower bath. I have not yet unpacked the wretch. Yours as you deserve, C.B. There was misfortune of another kind impending over her. There were some railway shares which, so early as 1846, she had told Miss Wooler she wished to sell, but had kept because she could not persuade her sisters to look upon the affair as she did, and so preferred running the risk of loss, to hurting Emily's feelings, by acting in opposition to her opinion. The depreciation of these same shares was now verifying Charlotte's soundness of judgment. They were in the York and North Midland Company, which was one of Mr. Hudson's pet lines, and had the full benefit of his peculiar system of management. She applied to her friend and publisher, Mr. Smith, for information on the subject, and the following letter is in answer to his reply. October 4, 1849. My dear sir, I must not thank you for, but acknowledge the receipt of your letter. The business is certainly very bad, worse than I thought, and much worse than my father has any idea of. In fact, the little railway property I possessed, according to original prices, formed already a small competency for me, with my views and habits. Now, scarcely any portion of it can, with security, be calculated upon. I must open this view of the case to my father by degrees, and, meanwhile, wait patiently till I see how affairs are likely to turn. However, the matter may terminate. I ought perhaps to be rather thankful than dissatisfied. When I look at my own case, and compare it with that of thousands besides, I scarcely see room for a murmur. Many, very many, are by the late strange railway system, deprived almost of their daily bread. Such thinness have only lost provision, laid up for the future, should take care, how they complain. The thought that surely, has given pleasure, at Cornhill, yields me much quite comfort. No doubt, however, you are, as I am, prepared for critical severity. But I have good hopes that the vessel is sufficiently sound of construction, to weather a gale or two, and to make a prosperous voyage for you in the end. Towards the close of October in this year, she went to play a visit, to her friend, but her enjoyment in the holiday, which she had so long promised herself when her work was completed, was deadened by a continual feeling of ill health. Either the change of air, or the foggy weather, produced constant irritation at the chest. Moreover, she was anxious about the impression, which her second work would produce on the public mind. For obvious reasons, an author is more susceptible to opinions, pronounced on the book, which follows a great success, than he has ever been before. Whatever be the value of fame, he has it, in his possession, and is not willing to have it dimmed or lost. Surely was published on October 26. When it came out, but before reading it, Mr. Lewis wrote to tell her of his intention of reviewing it in the Edinburgh. Her correspondence with him, had ceased for some time, much had occurred since. 2 G. H. Lewis, Esquire November 1st, 1849 My dear sir, it is about a year and a half since you wrote to me, but it seems a longer period, because since then it has been my lot to pass some black milestones in the journey of life. Since then there have been intervals when I have ceased to care about literature, and critics, and fame. When I have lost sight of whatever was prominent in my thoughts at the first publication of Jane Eyre. But now I want these things to come back, vividly, if possible. Consequently it was a pleasure to receive your note. I wish you did not think me a woman. I wish all reviewers believed Kerr Bell to be a man. They would be more just to him. You will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex, where I am not what you consider graceful. You will condemn me. All mouths will be open against that first chapter, and that first chapter is true as the Bible, nor is it exceptional. Come what will, I cannot, when I write, think always of myself and of what is elegant and charming in femininity. It is not on those terms. Or with such ideas, I ever took pen in hand. And if it is only on such terms my writing will be tolerated, I shall pass away from the public and trouble it no more. Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can easily return. Standing afar off, I now watch to see what will become of Shirley. My expectations are very low, and my anticipations somewhat sad and bitter. Still, I earnestly conjure you to say honestly what you think. Flattery would be worse than vain. There is no consolation in flattery. As for condemnation, I cannot, on reflection, see why I should much fear it. There is no one but myself to suffer therefrom, and both happiness and suffering in this life soon pass away. Wishing you all success in your Scottish expedition, I am, dear sir, your sincerely. See, bell. Miss Bronte, as we have seen, had been as anxious as ever to preserve her incognito in Shirley. She even fancied that there were fewer traces of a female pen in it than in Jane Eyre. And thus, when the earliest reviews were published and asserted that the mysterious writer must be a woman, she was much disappointed. She especially disliked the lowering of the standard by which to judge a work of fiction. If it proceeded from a feminine pen. And praise, mingled with pseudo-gallant allusions to her sex, mortified her far more than actual blame. But the secret so jealously preserved was oozing out at last. The publication of Shirley seemed to fix the conviction that the writer was an inhabitant of the district where the story was laid. And a clever Hayworth man, who had somewhat risen in the world and gone to settle in Liverpool, read the novel and was struck with some of the names of places mentioned and knew the dialect in which parts of it were written. He became convinced that it was the production of someone in Hayworth, but he could not imagine who in that village could have written such a work except Miss Bronte. Proud of his conjecture, he divulged the suspicion, which was almost certainty, in the columns of the Liverpool paper. Thus the heart of the mystery came slowly creeping out, and a visit to London which Miss Bronte paid towards the end of the year, 1849, made it distinctly known. She had been all along on most happy terms with her publishers, and their kindness had beguiled some of those weary, solitary hours, which had so often occurred of late. By sending for her perusal boxes of books more suited to her taste than any she could procure from the circulating library at Cayley, she often writes such sentences as the following in her letters to Cornhill. I was indeed very much interested in the book she sent, Ackerman's Conversations with Gerta, Guesses as Truth, Friends in Council, and the little work on English social life, please me particularly, and the last, not least. We sometimes take a partiality to books as to characters, not an account of any brilliant intellect or striking peculiarity they boast, but for the sake of something good, delicate, and genuine. I thought that small book, The Production of a Lady, and an amiable, sensible woman, and I liked it. You must not think of selecting any more works for me yet. My stock is still far from exhausted. I accept your offer respecting the Athenaeum. It is a paper I should like much to see, providing that you can send it without trouble. It shall be punctually returned. In a letter to her friend, she complains of the feelings of illness from which she was seldom or never free. November 16, 1849. You are not to suppose any of the characters in Shirley intended as literal portraits. It would not suit the rules of art, nor of my own feelings, to write in that style. We only suffer reality to suggest never to dictate. The heroines are abstractions and the heroes also. Qualities I have seen, loved, and admired are here and there put in as decorative gems to be preserved in that sitting. Since you say you could recognize the originals of all except the heroines, pray whom do you suppose the two mores to represent. I send you a couple of reviews. The one is the examiner, written by Albany von Blank, who is called the most brilliant political writer of the day, a man whose dictum is much thought of in London. The other, in the standard of freedom, is written by William Poet, a Quaker. I should be pretty well if it were not for headaches and indigestion. My chest has been better lately. In consequence of this long, protracted state of linger, headache and sickness, to which the slightest exposure to cold added sensations of hoarseness and soreness at the chest, she determined to take the evil in time, as much for her father's sake as for her own, and to go up to London and consult some physician there. It was not her first intention to visit anywhere, but the friendly urgency of her publishers prevailed, and it was decided that she was to become the guest of Mr. Smith. Before she went, she wrote two characteristic letters about Shirley, from which I shall take a few extracts. Shirley makes her way, the reviewers' shower in fast. The best critique, which has yet appeared, is in the Revue des Dumans, a sort of European cosmopolitan periodical, whose headquarters are at Paris. Comparatively few reviewers, even in their praise, advance a just comprehension of the author's meaning. Eugène Fourcade, the reviewer in question, follows Curre Bell through every winding, discerns every point, discriminates every shade, proves himself master of the subject, and lord of the aim. With that man, I would shake hands if I saw him. I would say, You know me, mesheur, I shall deem it an honour to know you. I could not say so much of the mass of the London critics. Perhaps I could not say so much to five hundred men and women in all the millions of Great Britain. That matters little, my own conscience, I satisfy first, and having done that, if I further content and delight a four-sard, a foam-blanc, and a thackery, my ambition has had its ration, it is fed, it lies down for the present satisfied. My faculties have wrought a day's task and earned a day's wages. I am no teacher. To look on me in that light is to mistake me. To teach is not my vocation. What I am, it is useless to say. Those whom it concerns, feel and find it out. To others, I wish only to be an obscure, steady-going, private character. To you, dearie, I wish to be a sincere friend. Give me your faithful regard, I will only dispense with admiration. November 26th. It is like you to pronounce the reviews not good enough and belong to that part of your character which will not permit you to bestow unqualified, approbation on any dress, decoration, etc., belonging to you. Know that the reviews are superb and where I dissatisfied with them I should be a conceited ape. Nothing higher is ever said from perfectly disinterested motives of any living authors. If all be well, I go to London this week, Wednesday I think. The dressmaker has done my small matters pretty well, but I wish she could have looked them over and given a dictum. I insisted on the dresses being made quite plainly. At the end of November she went up to the big Babylon and was immediately plunged into what appeared to her a world. For changes in scenes and stimulus, which would have been a trifle to others, were much to her. As was always the case with strangers, she was a little afraid at first of the family into which she was now received, fancying that the ladies looked on her with a mixture of respect and alarm. But in a few days, if this state of feeling ever existed, her simple, shy, quiet manners, her dainty personal and household ways, had quite done away with it, and she says that she thinks they began to like her and that she likes them much, for kindness is a potent heart-winner. She had stipulated that she should not be expected to see many people. The recluse life she had led was the cause of a nervous shrinking from meeting any fresh face, which lasted all her life long. Still she longed to have an idea of the personal appearance and manners of some of those whose writings or letters had interested her. Mr. Thackeray was accordingly invited to meet her, but it so happened that she had been out of the greater part of the morning and in consequence missed the lunch an hour at her friend's house. This brought on a severe and depressing headache and one accustomed to the early regular hours of a Yorkshire parsonage. Besides, the excitement of meeting, hearing, and sitting next to a man to whom she looked up with such admiration as she did to the author of Vanity Fair was of itself overpowering to her frail nerves. She writes about this dinner as follows. December 10th, 1849 As to being happy, I am under scenes and circumstances of excitement, but I suffer acute pain sometimes. Mental pain, I mean. At the moment Mr. Thackeray presented himself, I was thoroughly faint from an inhibition, having eaten nothing since a very slight breakfast, and it was then seven o'clock in the evening. Excitement and exhaustion made savage work of me that evening. What do you thought of me? I cannot tell. She told me how difficult she found it, this first time of meeting Mr. Thackeray, to decide whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest and that she had, she believed, completely misunderstood an inquiry of his made on the gentlemen's coming into the drawing-room. He asked her if she had perceived the secret of their cigars, to which she replied literally, discovering in a minute afterwards by the smile on several faces, that he was alluding to a passage in Jane Eyre. Her host took pleasure in showing her the sights of London. On one of the days which had been set apart for some of these pleasant excursions, a severe review of Shirley had been published in The Times. She had heard that her book would be noticed by it and guessed that there was some particular reason for the care with which her host mislated on that particular morning. She told him that she was aware why she might not see the paper. Mrs. Smith at once admitted that her conjecture was right and said that they had wished her to go to the day's engagement before reading it. But she quietly persisted in her request to be allowed to have the paper. Mrs. Smith took her work and tried not to observe the countenance which the other tried to hide between the large sheets. But she could not help becoming aware of tears, stealing down the face and dropping on the lap. The first remark Miss Bronte made was to express her fear lest so severe a notice should check the sale of the book and injuriously affect her publishers. Wounded as she was, her first thought was for others. Later on, I think that very afternoon, Mr. Thackeray called. She suspected, she said, that he came to see how she bore the attack on Shirley. But she had recovered her composure and conversed very quietly with him. He only learned from the answer to his direct inquiry that she had read the Times article. She acquiesced, in the recognition of herself as the authoress of Jane Eyre, because she perceived that there were some advantages to be derived from dropping her pseudonym. One result was an acquaintance with Miss Martino. She had sent her the novel just published with a curious note in which Kerr Bell offered a copy of Shirley to Miss Martino as an acknowledgement of the gratification he had received from her works. From Dearbrook, he had derived a new and keen pleasure and experienced a genuine benefit. In his mind, Dearbrook, etc. Miss Martino, in acknowledging this note and the copy of Shirley, dated her letter from a friend's house in the neighborhood of Mr. Smith's residence. And when a week or two afterwards, Miss Bonte found how near she was to her correspondent. She wrote, in the name of Kerr Bell, to propose a visit to her. Six o'clock on a certain Sunday afternoon, December 10th, was the time appointed. Miss Martino's friends had invited the unknown Kerr Bell to their early tea. They were ignorant whether the name was that of a man or a woman, and had had various conjectures as to sex, age, and appearance. Miss Martino had indeed expressed her private opinion pretty distinctly by beginning her reply to the professively masculine note referred to above with Dear Madam. But she had addressed it to Kerr Bell, Esquire. At every ring the eyes of the party turned towards the door. Some stranger, a gentleman, I think, came in. For an instant they fancied he was Kerr Bell and indeed an Esquire. He stayed some time, went away. Another ring. Miss Bronte was announced, and in came a young looking lady, almost childlike in stature, in a deep morning dress, neat as a Quakers, with her beautiful hair smooth and brown, her fine eyes blazing with meaning, and her sensible face, indicating a habit of self-control. She came, hesitated one moment at finding four or five people assembled, then went straight to Miss Martino with intuitive recognition and with the free masonry of good feeling and gentle breeding, she soon became as one of the family seated round the tea-table. And before she left she told them, in a simple touching manner, of her sorrow and isolation, and a foundation was laid for her intimacy with Miss Martino. After some discussion on the subject and a stipulation that she should not be specially introduced to anyone, some gentlemen were invited by Mr. Smith to meet her at dinner, the evening before she left town. Her natural place would have been at the bottom of the table by her host, and the places of those who were to be her neighbors were arranged accordingly. But on entering the dining room she quickly passed up so as to sit next to the lady of the house, anxious to shelter herself near someone of her own sex. The same womanly, seeking after-protection on every occasion, when there was no moral duty involved in asserting her independence, that made her about this time right as follows. Mrs. watches me very narrowly when surrounded by strangers. She never takes her eye from me. I like the surveillance. It seems to keep guard over me. Respecting this particular dinner party, she thus wrote to the Brussels School Fellow of former days, whose friendship had been renewed during her present visit to London. The evening after I left you, past better than I expected, thanks to my substantial lunch and cheering cup of coffee, I was able to wait the eight o'clock dinner with complete resignation and to endure its length quite courageously, nor was I too much exhausted to converse. And of this I was glad, for otherwise I know my kind host and hostess would have been much disappointed. There were only seven gentlemen at dinner besides Mr. Smith, but if these five were critics, men more dreaded in the world of letters than you can conceive. I did not know how much their presence in conversation had excited me till they were gone. And the reaction commenced. When I had retired for the night, I wished to sleep. The effort to do so was vain. I could not close my eyes. Night passed, morning came, and I rose without having known a moment slumber. So utterly worn out was I when I got to Derby that I was again obliged to stay there all night. December 17. Here I am at Hayworth once more. I feel as if I had come out of an exciting whirl. Not that the hurry and stimulus would have seen much to one accustomed to society and change, but to me they were very marked. My strength and spirits too often proved quite insufficient to the demand on their exertions. I used to bear up as long as I possibly could, for when I flied I could see Mr. Smith became disturbed. He always thought that something had been said or done to annoy me, which never once happened, for I met with perfect good-breeding, even from antagonists, men who had done their best or worst to write me down. I explained to him over and over again that my occasional silence was only failure of the power to talk, never of the will. Thackeray is a titan of mind. His presence and powers impress one deeply, in an intellectual sense. I do not see him, or know him as a man. All the others are subordinate. I have esteem for some, and I trust courtesy for all. I do not, of course, know what they thought of me, but I believe most of them expected me to come out in a more marked, eccentric, striking light. I believe they desired more to admire and more to blame. I felt sufficiently at my ease with all but Thackeray. With him I was fearfully stupid. She returned to her quiet home and her noiseless, daily duties. Her father had quiet enough of the spirit of hero worship in him to make him take a vivid pleasure in the accounts of what she had heard and whom she had seen. It was on the occasion of one of her visits to London that he had desired her to obtain the sight of Prince Albert's armory, if possible. I'm not aware whether she managed to do this, but she went to one or two of the great national armories in order that she might describe the stern steel harness and glittering swords to her father, whose imagination was forcibly struck by the idea of such things. And often afterwards, when his spirits flagged and the languor of old age for a time got the better of his indomitable nature, she would again strike on the measure wild and speak about the armies of strange weapons she had seen in London till he resumed his interest in the old subject and was his own keen, warlike, intelligent self again. End of Section 7 Volume 2, Section 8 of The Life of Charlotte Bronte This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Claycorn-Goskell Volume 2, Section 8 Chapter 5 Her life at Hayworth was so unburied that the postman's call was the event of her day. Yet she dreaded the great temptation of centering all her thoughts upon this one time and losing her interest in the smaller hopes and employments of the remaining hours. Thus she conscientiously denied herself the pleasure of writing letters too frequently because the answers, when she received them, took the flavor out of the rest of her life or the disappointment when the replies did not arrive, lessened her energy for her home duties. The winter of this year in the north was hard and cold. It affected Miss Bronte's health less than usual, however, probably because the change and the medical advice she had taken in London had done her good. Probably also because her friend had come to pay her a visit and enforced that attention to bodily symptoms which Miss Bronte was too apt to neglect from a fear of becoming nervous herself about her own state and thus infecting her father. But she could scarcely help feeling much depressed in spirits as the anniversary of her sister Emily's death came round. All the recollections connected with it were painful, yet there were no outward events to call off her attention and prevent them from pressing hard upon her. At this time, as at many others, I find her looting in her letters to the solace which she found in the book sent her from Cornhill. What, I sometimes ask, could I do without them? I have recourse to them as to friends. They shorten and cheer many an hour that would be too long and too desolate otherwise. Even when my tired sight will not permit me to continue reading, it is pleasant to see them on the shelf or on the table. I am still very rich, for my stock is far from exhausted. Some other friends have sent me books lately. The perusal of Harriet Martinot's eastern life has afforded me great pleasure. And I have found a deep and interesting subject of study in Newman's work on the soul. Have you read this work? It is daring. It may be mistaken, but it is pure and elevated. Frode's nemesis of faith I did not like. I thought it morbid. Yet in its pages, too, are found sprinklings of truth. By this time, Airdell, Warfdale, Calderdale, and Rimbelsdale all knew the place of residence of Kerr Bell. She compared herself to the ostrich hiding its head in the sand and says that she still buries hers in the heath of Hayworth Moors. But the concealment is but self-delusion. Indeed it was. Far and wide in the west riding had spread the intelligence that Kerr Bell was no other than a daughter of the venerable clergyman of Hayworth. The village itself caught up the excitement. Mr., having finished Jane Eyre, is now crying out for the other book. He is to have it next week. Mr. R. has finished Shirley. He is delighted with it. John's wife seriously thought him gone wrong in the head as she heard him giving venture roars of laughter as he sat alone, clapping and stamping on the floor. He would read all the scenes about the curates allowed to Papa. Martha came in yesterday, puffing and blowing, and much excited. I've heard such news, she began. What about? Please, ma'am, you've been and written two books, the grandest books that ever was seen. My father has heard it at Halifax and Mr. GT and Mr. G and Mr. M at Bradford, and they are going to have a meeting at the Mechanics Institute and to settle about ordering them. Hold your tongue, Martha, and be off. I fell into a cold sweat. Jane Eyre will be read by J. B., by Mrs. T. and B. Heaven help keep and deliver me. The Hayworth people have been making great fools of themselves about Shirley. They've taken it in an enthusiastic light. When they got the volumes at the Mechanics Institute, all the members wanted them. They cast lots for the whole three, and whoever got a volume was only allowed to keep it two days and was to be fined a shilling per diem for longer detention. It would be mere nonsense and vanity to tell you what they say. The tone of these extracts is thoroughly consonant with the spirit of Yorkshire and Lancashire people, who try as long as they can to conceal their emotions of pleasure under a bantering exterior, almost as if making fun of themselves. Miss Bronte was extremely touched in the secret places of her warm heart by the way in which those who had known her from her childhood were proud and glad of her success. All round about the news had spread. Strangers came from beyond Burnley to see her, as she went quietly and unconsciously into church, and the sexton gained many a half crown for pointing her out. But there were drawbacks to this hardy and kindly appreciation which was so much more valuable than fame. The January number of the Edinburgh Review had contained the article on Shirley, of which her correspondent, Mr. Lewis, was the writer. I have said that Miss Bronte was especially anxious to be criticized as the writer, without relation to her sex as a woman. Whether right or wrong, her feeling was strong on this point. Now in this review of Shirley, the heading of the first two pages ran thus, Mental Equality of the Sexes, Female Literature, and through the whole article, the fact of the author's sex is never forgotten. A few days after the review appeared, Mr. Lewis received the following note, rather than the style of Anne Countess of Penbroke, Dorset, and Montgomery, to G. H. Lewis, Esquire. I can be on my guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends, Kerr Bell. In some explanatory notes on her letters to him, with which Mr. Lewis has favoured me, he says, Seeing that she was unreasonable, because angry, I wrote to remonstrate with her on Coraline with a severity or frankness of a review, which certainly was dictated by real admiration and real friendship. Even under its objections, the friend's voice could be heard. The following letter is her reply to G. H. Lewis, Esquire, January 19th, 1850. My dear sir, I will tell you why I was so hurt by that review in the Edinburgh. Not because its criticism was keen, or its blame sometimes severe. Not because its praise was stinted, for indeed I think you give me quite as much praise as I deserve. But because after I had said earnestly that I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman, you so roughly, I even thought so cruelly handled the question of sex. I dare say you met no harm, and perhaps you will not now be able to understand why I was so grieved at what you will probably deem such a trifle. But grieved I was, and indignant too. There was a passage or two which you did quite wrong to write. However, I will not bear malice against you for it. I know what your nature is. It is not a bad or unkind one, though you would often jar terribly on some feelings with whose recoil and quiver you could not possibly sympathize. I imagine you are both enthusiastic and implacable, as you are at once sagacious and careless. You know much and discover much, but you are in such a hurry to tell it all, you never give yourself time to think how your reckless eloquence may affect others. And what is more, if you knew how it did affect them, you would not much care. However, I shake hands with you. You have excellent points. You can be generous. I still feel angry and I think I do well to be angry, but it is the anger one experiences for rough play rather than for foul play. I am yours, with a certain respect, and more chagrin. Kerr Bell. As Mr. Lewis says, the tone of this letter is cavalier, but I thank him for having allowed me to publish what is so characteristic of one phase of Miss Bronte's mind. Her health too was suffering at this time. I don't know what heaviness of spirit has beset me of late, she writes, in pathetic words, rung out of the sadness of her heart. Made my faculties dull. Made rest weariness. And occupation burdensome. Now and then the silence of the house, the solitude of the room, has pressed on me with the way that I found it difficult to bear, and recollection has not failed to be as alert, poignant, obtrusive as other feelings were languid. I attribute this state of things partly to the weather. Quicksilver invariably falls low in storms and high winds, and I have ere this been warned of approaching disturbance in the atmosphere by a sense of bodily weakness and deep, heavy mental sadness, such as some would call presentment, presentment indeed it is, but not at all supernatural. I cannot help feeling something of the excitement of expectation till the post-hour comes, and when day after day it brings nothing, I get low. This is a stupid, disgraceful, unmeaning state of things. I feel bitterly vexed at my own dependence and folly, but it is so bad for the mind to be quite alone, and to have none with whom to talk over little crosses and disappointments, and to laugh them away. If I could write, I dare say I should be better, but I cannot write a line. However, by God's help I will contend against this folly. I had rather a foolish letter the other day from—some things in it netled me, especially in unnecessarily earnest assurance that, in spite of all, I had done in the writing-line, I still retained a place in her esteem. My answer took strong and high ground at once. I said I had been troubled by no doubts on the subject, that I neither did her nor myself the injustices to suppose there was anything in what I had written to incur, the just forfeiture of esteem. A few days since, a little incident happened which curiously touched me. Papa put into my hands a little packet of letters and papers, telling me that they were mamas, and that I might read them. I did read them, in a frame of mind I cannot describe. The papers were yellow with time. All having been written before I was born, it was strange now to peruse for the first time the records of a mind whence mine own sprang. And most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to Papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable. I wished that she had lived, and that I had known her. All through this month of February, I have had a crushing time of it. I could not escape from or rise above certain, most mournful recollections. The last days, the sufferings, the remembered words, most sorrowful to me, of those who, faith-ishers me, are now happy. At evening, and bedtime, such thoughts would haunt me, bringing a weary heartache. The reader may remember the strange prophetic vision, which dictated a few words, written on the occasion of the death of a pupil of hers in January, 1840. Wherever I seek for her now in this world, she cannot be found, no more than a flower or a leaf, which withered twenty years ago. A bereavement of this kind gives one a glimpse of the feeling those must have, who have seen all drop around them, friend after friend, in our left to end their pilgrimage alone. Even in persons of naturally robust health and with no recordarsi di tempo felice nella miseria, to where, with slow dropping but perpetual pain upon their spirits, the nerves and appetite will give way in solitude. How much more must it have been so with Miss Bronte, delicate and frail in constitution, tried by much anxiety and sorrow in early life, and now left to face her life alone. Owing to Mr. Bronte's great age and long-formed habits of solitary occupation, when in the house, his daughter was left to herself for the greater part of the day. Ever since his serious attacks of illness, he had dined alone. A portion of her dinner regulated by strict attention to the diet most suitable for him, being taken in his room by herself. After dinner she read to him for an hour or so, as the sight was too weak, to allow of his reading long to himself. He was out of doors among his parishioners for a good part of each day, often for a longer time than his strength would permit. Yet he always liked to go alone, and consequently her affectionate care could be no check upon the length of his walks to the more distant hamlets which were in his cure. He would come back occasionally, utterly fatigued, and be obliged to go to bed, questioning himself sadly as to where all his former strength of body had gone to. His strength of will was the same as ever. That which he resolved to do he did, at whatever cost of weariness. But his daughter was all the more anxious from seeing him, so regardless of himself and his health. The hours of retiring for the night had always been early in the parsonage. Now family pairs were at eight o'clock, directly after which Mr. Bonte and Old Tabby went to bed, and Martha was not long in following. But Charlotte could not have slept if she had gone, could not have rested on her desolate couch. She stopped up. It was very tempting, late and later, striving to beguile the lonely night with some employment, till her weak eyes failed to read or to sew, and could only weep in solitude over the dead that were not. No one on earth can even imagine what those hours were to her. All the grim superstitions of the North had been implanted in her during her childhood by the servants, who believed in them. They recurred to her now, with no shrinking from the spirits of the dead, but with such an intense longing once more to stand face to face with the souls of her sisters. And no one but she could have felt. It seemed as if the very strength of her yearning should have compelled them to appear. On windy nights, cries and sobs and wailings seemed to go round the house, as of the dearly beloved striving to force their way to her. Someone conversing with her once objected, in my presence, to that part of Jane Eyre, in which she hears Rochester's voice crying out to her in a great crisis of her life, she being many, many miles distant at the time. I do not know what incident was in Miss Bronte's recollection when she replied, in a low voice, drawing in her breath, but it is a true thing, it really happened. The reader, who has even faintly pictured to himself her life at this time, the solitary days, the waking, watching nights, may imagine to what a sensitive pitch her nerves were strong, and how such a state was sure to affect her health. It was no bad thing for her that about this time various people began to go over to Hayworth, curious to see the scenery described in Shirley, if a sympathy with the writer of a more generous kind than it be called mere curiosity, did not make them wish to know whether they could not in some way serve or cheer one, who had suffered so deeply. Among this number were Sir James and Lady Kay Shuddleworth. Their house lies over the crests of the moors, which rise above Hayworth, at about a dozen miles distance as the crow flies, though much further by the road. But according to the acceptation of the word, in that uninhabited district they were neighbors, if they so willed it. Accordingly Sir James and his wife drove over one morning, at the beginning of March, to call upon Miss Bronte and her father. Before taking leave they pressed her to visit them at Gothorp Hall, their residence, on the borders in East Lancashire. After some agitation and at the urgency of her father, who was extremely anxious to procure for her any change of scene in society that was offered, she consented to go. On the whole she enjoyed her visit very much, in spite of her shyness and the difficulties she always experienced in meeting the advances of those strangers, whose kindness she did not feel herself in a position to repay. She took great pleasure in the quiet drives to old ruins and old halls, situated among older hills and woods, the dialogues by the old fireside in the antique oak panel drawing room, while they suited him did not too much oppress and exhaust me. The house, too, is much to my taste, near three centuries old, grey, stately, and picturesque. On the whole, now that the visit is over, I do not regret having paid it. The worst of it is that there is now some menace hanging over my head of an invitation to go to them in London during the season. This, which would be a great enjoyment to some people, is a perfect terror to me. I should highly prize the advantages to be gained in an extended range of observation, but I tremble at the thought of the price I must necessarily pay in mental distress and physical wear and terror. On the same day on which she wrote the above, she sent the following letter to Mr. Smith. March 16, 1850 I return Mr. H's note after reading it carefully. I tried very hard to understand all he says about art, but, to speak truth, my efforts were crowned with incomplete success. There is a certain jargon in use amongst critics on this point, through which it is physically and morally impossible to me to see daylight. One thing, however, I see plainly enough, and that is Mr. Kerabelle needs improvement and ought to strive after it. And this, DV, he honestly intends to do, taking his time, however, and following as his guides, nature, and truth. If these lead to what the critics call art, it is all very well. But if not, that grand desideratum has no chance of being run after or caught. The puzzle is that while the people of the South object to my delineation of northern life and manners, the people of Yorkshire and Yankeshire approve. They say it is precisely the contrast of rough nature with highly artificial cultivation, which forms one of their main characteristics. Such, or something very similar, has been the observation made to me lately. Willst I have been from home by members of some of the ancient East Yankeshire families, whose mansions lie on the hilly borderline between the two counties? The question arises, whether do the London critics or old northern squires understand the matter best? Any promise you require respecting the books shall be willingly given, provided only I am allowed the judgment's principle of a mental reservation, giving license to forget and promise whenever oblivion shall appear expedient. The last two or three numbers of pendentis will not, I dare say, be generally thought sufficiently exciting, yet I like them. Though the story lingers, for me, the interest does not flag. Here and there we feel that the pen has been guided by a tired hand, that the mind of the writer has been somewhat chafed and depressed by his recent illness, or by some other cause. But Thakri still proves himself greater when he is weary than other writers are when they are fresh. The public, of course, will have no compassion for his fatigue and make no allowance for the ebb of inspiration. But some true-hearted readers here and there, while grieving that such a man should be obliged to write when he is not in the mood, will wonder that, under such circumstances, he should write so well. The parcel of books will come, I doubt not, at such time as it shall suit the good pleasure of the railway officials to send it on, or rather to yield it up to the repeated and humble solicitations of hay-worth carriers. Till when I wait, in all reasonable patience and resignation, looking with drossility to that model of active, self-helpfulness, punch, friendly offers, the women of England, in his unprotected female, the books lent her by her publishers were, as I have before said, a great solace and pleasure to her. There was much interest in opening the Corn Hill parcel, but there was pain, too. For as she untied the cords and took out the volumes one by one, she could scarcely fail to be reminded of those who once, on similar occasions, looked on so eagerly. I miss familiar voices, commenting mirthfully and pleasantly. The room seems very still, very empty, but yet there is consolation in remembering that Papa will take pleasure in some of the books. Happiness, quite unshared, can scarcely be called happiness. It has no taste. She goes on to make remarks upon the kind of books sent. I wonder how you can choose so well. On no account would I forestall the choice. I am sure any selection I might make for myself would be less satisfactory than the selection others so kindly and judiciously make for me. Besides, if I knew all that was coming, it would be comparatively thought. I would much rather not know. Amongst the especially welcome works are Southeast Life, The Woman of France, Haslitz Essays, Emerson's Representative Men, but it seems invidious to particularize when all are good. I've took up a second small book, Scots' Suggestions on Female Education. That, too, I read, and with unalloyed pleasure. It is very good, justly thought and clearly and felicitously expressed. The girls of this generation have great advantages. It seems to me that they receive much encouragement in the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of their minds. In these days women may be thoughtful and well-read without being universally stigmatized as blues and pedants. Men begin to approve and aid instead of ridiculing or checking them in their efforts to be wise. I must say that, for my own part, whenever I've been so happy as to share the conversation of a really intellectual man, my feeling has been not that the little I knew was accounted a superfluity and impertinence, but that I did not know enough to satisfy just expectation. I have always to explain. In me you must not look for great attainments, what seems to you the result of reading and studies, chiefly spontaneous and intuitive, against the teaching of some even clever men, one instinctively revolts. They may possess attainments, they may boast very knowledge of life and of the world, but if, of the finer perceptions, of the more delicate phases of feeling, they be destitute and incapable, of what avail is the rest. Believe me, while hints, well worth consideration may come from unpretending sources, from minds not highly cultured, but naturally fine and delicate, from hearts kindly, feeling and unenvious. Learning dictums, delivered with pomp and sound, may be perfectly empty, stupid and contemptible. No man ever yet, by aid of Greek, climbed Parnassus, or taught others to climb it. I enclose for your prusel a scrap of paper which came into my hands without the knowledge of the writer. He is a poor working man of this village, a thoughtful reading, feeling being, whose mind is too keen for his frame, and wears it out. I have not spoken to him about thrice in my life, for he is a dissenter, and has rarely come in my way. The document is a sort of record of his feelings after the prusel of Jane Eyre. It is artless and earnest, genuine and generous. You must return it to me, for I value it more than testimonies from higher sources. He said, Miss Bronte, if she knew he had written it, would scorn him. But indeed Miss Bronte does not scorn him. She only agrees that a mind of which this is the emanation should be kept crushed by the lead in hand of poverty, by the trials of uncertain health and the claims of a large family. As to the times, as you say, the acrimony of its critique has proved in some measure its own antidote. To have been more effective, it should have been juster. I think it has had little weight up here in the north. It may be that annoying remarks, if made, are not suffered to reach my ear. But certainly, while I have heard little condemnatory of Shirley, more than once have I been deeply moved by manifestations of even enthusiastic approbation. I deem it unwise to dwell much on these matters. But from once I must permit myself to remark that the generous pride many of the Yorkshire people have taken in the matter has been such as to awake and claim my gratitude, especially since it has afforded a source of reviving pleasure to my father in his old age. The very curious, poor fellows, show no resentment. Each characteristically finds solace for his own wounds and in crowing over his brethren. Mr. Dunn was at first a little disturbed. For a week or two he was in disquietude. But he is now soot down. Only yesterday I had the pleasure of making him a comfortable cup of tea and seeing him sip it with revived complacency. It is a curious fact that, since he read Shirley, he has come to the house oftener than ever and been remarkably meek and assiduous to please. Some people's natures are veritable enigmas. I quite expected to have had one good scene at least with him. But as yet, nothing in the sort has occurred. End of Section 8 Volume 2, Section 9 of the Life of Charlotte Bronte This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Claighorn Gaskell Volume 2, Section 9 Chapter 6 During the earlier months of this spring, Hayworth was extremely unhealthy, the weather was damp, low fever was prevalent, and the household at the parsonage suffered along with its neighbors. Charlotte says, I felt it, the fever, infrequent thirst and infrequent appetite. Papa too and even Martha have complained. This depression of health produced depression of spirits and she grew more and more to dread a proposed journey to London with Sir James and Lady Kaye Shuttleworth. I know what the effect and what the pain will be, how wretched I shall often feel and how thin and haggard I shall get, but he who shuns suffering will never win victory. If I mean to improve, I must strive and endure. Sir James has been a physician and looks at me with a physician's eye. He saw it once that I could not stand much fatigue nor bear the presence of many strangers. I believe you would partly understand how soon my stalk of animal spirits was brought to willow ebb. But none, not the most skillful physician, can get it more than the outside of these things. The heart knows its own bitterness and the frame its own poverty and the mind its own struggles. Papa is eager and restless for me to go. The idea of a refusal quite hurts him. But the sensations of illness in the family increased. The symptoms were probably aggravated, if not caused, by the immediate vicinity of the churchyard, paved with rain-blackened tombstones. On April 29th, she writes, We have had but a poor week of it at Hayworth. Papa continues far from well. He is often very sickly in the morning. A symptom which I have remarked before in his aggravated attacks of bronchitis. Unless he should get much better, I shall never think of leaving him to go to London. Martha suffered from tick-doloru, with sickness and fever, just like you. I have a bad cold and a stubborn sore throat. In short, everybody but old Tappy is out of sorts. When, was here, he complained of a sudden headache and the night after he was gone, I had something similar, very bad, lasting about three hours. A fortnight later, she writes, I do not think Papa well enough to be left, and accordingly begs Sir James and Lady K. Shuddleworth to return to London without me. It was a range that we were to stay at several of their friends and relatives' houses on the way. A week or more would have been taken up on the journey. I cannot say that I regret having missed this ordeal. I would as leaf have walked among red-hot plowshares, but I do regret one great treat which I shall now miss. Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the World Literary Fund Society held in Freemasons Hall, Octavian Bluette. The secretary offered me a ticket for the ladies' gallery. I should have seen all the great literati and artists gathered in the hall below and heard them speak. Thackery and Dickens are always present among the rest. This cannot now be. I don't think all London can afford another site to me so interesting. It became requisite, however, before long, that she should go to London on business and as Sir James K. Shuddleworth was detained in the country by indisposition, she accepted Mrs. Smith's invitation to stay quietly at her house while she transacted her affairs. In the interval between the relinquishment of the first plan and the adoption of the second, she wrote the following letter to one who was much valued among her literary friends. May 22nd. I had thought to bring the leader and the Athenaeum myself this time and not to have to send them by post, but it turns out otherwise. My journey to London is again postponed and this time indefinitely. Sir James K. Shuddleworth's state of health is the cause, a cause I fear not likely to be soon removed. Once more, then, I settled myself down in the quietude of Hayworth Parsonage with books for my household companions and an occasional letter for a visitor. A mute society, but neither quarrelsome nor vulgarizing nor unimproving. One of the pleasures I had promised myself consisted in asking you several questions about the leader, which is really, in its way, an interesting paper. I wanted, amongst other things, to ask you the real names of some of the contributors and also what Lewis writes besides his apprenticeship of life. I always think the article headed literature is his. Some of the communications in the Open Council department are odd productions, but it seems to be very fair and right to admit them. It's not the system of the paper altogether a novel one. I do not remember seeing anything precisely like it before. I have just received yours of this morning. Thank you for the enclosed note. The longings for liberty and leisure, which may, sunshine wakens in you, stir my sympathy. I'm afraid Cornhill is little better than a prison for its inmates on warm spring or summer days. It is a pity to think of you all toiling at your desk, and such genial weather is this. For my part, I am free to walk on the moors, but when I go out there alone, everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne's delight, and when I look around, she is in the blue tints, the pale mist, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill country, silence, their poetry comes by lines and standards into my mind. Once I loved it, now I dare not read it, and am driven often to wish I could taste one draft of oblivion, and forget much that, while mine remains, I never shall forget. Many people seem to recall their departed relatives with a sort of melancholy complacency, but I think these have not watched them through lingering sickness, nor witnessed their last moments. It is these reminiscences that stand by your bedside at night and rise at your pillow in the morning. At the end of all, however, exists the great hope. Eternal life is theirs now. She had to write many letters about this time to authors who sent her their books and strangers who expressed their aberration of her own. The following was in reply to one of the latter class and was addressed to a young man at Cambridge, May 23rd, 1850. Apologies are indeed unnecessary for a reality of feeling for a genuine, unaffected impulse of the spirit, such as prompted you to write the letter which I now briefly acknowledge. Certainly, it is something to me that what I write should be acceptable to the feeling heart and refined intellect. Undoubtedly, it is much to me that my creations, such as they are, should find harborage, appreciation, indulgence at any friendly hand, or for many generous mind. You are very welcome to take Jane, Caroline, and Shirley for your sisters, and I trust they will often speak to their adoptive brother when he is solitary and soothe him when he is sad. If they cannot make themselves at home in a thoughtful, sympathetic mind and diffuse through its twilight a cheering domestic glow, it is their fault. They are not in that case so amiable, so benignant, not so real as they ought to be. If they can and can find household altars in human hearts, they will fulfill the best design of their creation. In therein maintaining a genial flame, which shall warm but not scorch, light but not dazzle. What does it matter that part of your pleasure in such beings has its source in the poetry of your own youth rather than any magic of theirs? What that perhaps ten years hence you may smile to remember your present recollections and view under another light both Curr Bell and his writings. To me this consideration does not detract from the value of what you now feel. Youth has its romance and maturity its wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own season. Your letter gave me pleasure and I thank you for it. Curr Bell. Miss Bronte went up to town at the beginning of June and much enjoyed her stay there, seeing very few persons according to the agreement she made before she went and limiting her visit to a fortnight, dreading the feverishness and exhaustion which were the inevitable consequences of the slightest excitement upon her susceptible frame. June 12. Since I wrote to last I have not had many moments to myself except such as it was absolutely necessary to give to rest. On the whole however I have thus far gone on very well, suffering much less from exhaustion than I did last time. Of course I cannot give you in a letter a regular chronicle of how my time has been spent. I can only just notify. When I deemed three of its chief incidents, I cited the Duke of Wellington at the Chapel Royal. He is a real grand old man. A visit to the House of Commons which I hope to describe to you someday when I see you. And last, not least, an interview with Mr. Thackery. He made a morning call and sat above two hours. Mr. Smith only was in the room the whole time. He described it afterwards as a queer scene, and I suppose it was. The giant sat before me. I was moved to speak to him of some of his shortcomings, literary of course. One by one the faults came into my head and one by one I brought them out and sought some explanation or defense. He did defend himself, like a great Turk and heathen. That is to say, the excuses were often worse than the crime itself. The matter ended in indecent amity. If all be well, I am to dine at this house this evening. I have seen Lewis too. I could not feel otherwise to him than half sadly, half tenderly. A queer word that last, but I use it because the aspect of Lewis' face almost moves me to tears. It is so wonderfully like Emily. Her eyes, her features, the very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, the forehead, even at moments the expression. Whatever Lewis says, I believe I cannot hate him. Another likeness I have seen to that touched me sorrowfully. You remember my speaking of a Miss Kay, a young authoress who supported her mother by writing. Hearing that she had the longing to see me, I called on her yesterday. She met me half frankly, half tremblingly. We sat down together and, when I had talked with her five minutes, her face was no longer strange but mournfully familiar. It was Martha in every lineament. I shall try to find a moment to see her again. I do not intend to stay here at the furthest more than a week longer, but at the end of that time I cannot go home for the house that Hayworth is just now unroofed. Repairs were become, were become necessary. She soon followed her letter to the friend to whom it was written, but her visit was a very short one. For in accordance with the plan made before leaving London, she went on to Edinburgh to join the friends with whom she had been staying in town. She remained only a few days in Scotland and those were principally spent in Edinburgh, with which she was delighted, calling London a dreary place in comparison. My stay in Scotland, she wrote some weeks later, was short and what I saw was chiefly comprised in Edinburgh and the neighbourhood, in Abbotsford and in Melrose, for I was obliged to relinquish my first intention of going to Glasgow to Oben and thence through a portion of the Highlands. But though the time was brief and the view of objects limited, I found such a charmer situation, association and circumstance that I think the enjoyment experienced in that little space equalled in degree and excelled in kind, all which London yielded during a month's sojourn. Edinburgh, compared to London, is like a vivid page of history compared to a large dual treaty some political economy. And as to Melrose and Abbotsford, the very names possess music and magic. And again in a letter to a different correspondent, she says, I would not write to you immediately on my arrival at home because each return to this old house brings within a phase of feeling which it is better to pass through quietly before beginning to indict letters. The six weeks of change and enjoyment are passed, but they are not lost. Memory took a sketch of each as it went by and especially a distinct deguero type of the two days I spent in Scotland. Those were two very pleasant days. I always liked Scotland as an idea, but now as a reality I like it far better. It furnished me with some hours as happy almost as any I ever spent. Do not fear, however, that I am going to bore you with description. You will before now have received a pithy and pleasant report of all things to which any addition of mine would be superfluous. My present endeavors are directed towards recalling my thoughts, cropping their wings, drilling them into correct discipline, and forcing them to settle to some useful work. They are idle and keep taking the train down to London or making a foray over the border. Especially are they prone to perpetrate that last excursion and who indeed that has once seen Edinburgh with its couch and crag lion, but must see it again in dreams, waking or sleeping. Dear Sir, do riot. Think I blaspheme when I tell you that you're a great London as compared to Dunnington. Mine own romantic town. Is as prose compared to poetry or as a great rumbling, rambling heavy epic compared to a lyric, brief, bright, clear and vital, as a flash of lightning. You have nothing like Scots Monument or if you had that and all the glories of architecture assembled together, you have nothing like Arthur's Seat. And above all, you have riot. The Scotch national character. And it is that grand character after all which gives the land its true charm, its true greatness. On her return from Scotland she again spent a few days with her friends and then made her way to Hayworth. July 15th. I got home very well and full glad was I that no insupportable obstacle had deferred my return one single day longer. Just at the foot of Bridge House Hill I met John, staff in hand. He was fortunately saw me in the cab, stopped and informed me he was setting off to be by Mr. Bronte's orders to see how I was for that he had been quite miserable ever since he got Miss Letter. I found on my arrival that Papa had worked himself up to a sad pitch of nervous excitement and alarm in which Martha and Tabby were but too obviously joining him. The house looks very clean and I think is not damp. There is however still a great deal to do in the way of settling and arranging enough to keep me disagreeably busy for some time to come. I was truly thankful to find Papa pretty well but I fear he is just beginning to show symptoms of a cold. My cold continues better. An article in a newspaper I found awaiting me on my arrival amused me. It was a paper published while I was in London. I enclose it to give you a laugh. It professes to be written by an author jealous of authorises. I do not know who he is but he must be one of those I met. The ugly men giving themselves Rochester airs is not bad. Is no bad hit. Some of those alluded to will not like it. While Miss Bronte was staying in London she was induced to sit for her portrait to Richmond. It is a crown drawing in my judgment an admirable likeness though of course there is some difference of opinion on the subject and as usual the most acquainted with the original were least satisfied with the resemblance. Mr. Bronte thought that it looked older than Charlotte did and that her features had not been flattered but he acknowledged that the expression was wonderfully good and lifelike. She sent the following amusing account of the arrival of the portrait to the donor. August 1st. The little box for me came at the same time as the large one for Papa who first told me that you had had the Duke's picture framed and had given it to me. I felt half-provoked with you for performing such a work of super-irrigation but not when I see it again. I cannot but acknowledge that in so doing you were felicitously inspired. It is his very image. And as Papa said when he saw it scarcely in the least like the ordinary portraits not only the expression but even the form of the head is different and of a far nobler character. I esteem it a treasure. The lady who left the parcel for me was it seems Mrs. Gore. The parcel continued one of her works The Hamilton's and a very civil and friendly note in which I find myself addressed as Dear Jane. Papa seems much pleased with the portrait as do the few other persons who have seen it notable exception the our old serpent who tenaciously maintains that it is not like that it is too old looking but is she with equal tenacity asserts that the Duke of Wellington's picture is a portrait of the master, meaning Papa I'm afraid not much weight is to be ascribed to her opinion doubtless she confuses her recollections of me as I was in childhood with present impressions requesting always to be very kindly remembered to your mother and sisters I am yours very thanklessly according to desire see Bronte it may be easily conceived that two people living together as Mr. Bronte and his daughter did almost entirely dependent on each other for society and loving each other deeply although not demonstratively that these two last members of the family would have their moments of keen anxiety respecting each other's health there is not one letter of hers which I have read that does not contain some mention of her father's state in this respect either she thanks God with simple earnestness that he is well or some infirmities of age beset him and she mentions the fact and then winces away from it as from a sore that will not bear to be touched he in his turn noted every and disposition of his one remaining child exaggerated its nature and sometimes worked himself up into a miserable state of anxiety as in the case she refers to when her friend having named a letter to him that his daughter was suffering from a bad cold he could not rest till he dispatched a messenger to go staff in hand a distance of 14 miles and see with his own eyes what was her real state and report she evidently felt that this natural anxiety on the part of her father and friend increased the nervous depression of her own spirits whenever she was ill and in the following letter she expresses her strong wish that the subject of her health should be as little alluded to as possible August 7th I am truly sorry that I allowed the words to which you refer to escape my lips since their effect to you has been unpleasant but try to chase every shadow of anxiety from your mind and unless the restraint be very disagreeable to you permit me to add an earnest request that you will broach the subject to me no more it is the undisguised and most harassing anxiety of others that is fixed in my mind thoughts and expectations which must canker wherever they take root against which every effort of religion or philosophy must at times totally fail and subjugation to which is a cruel terrible fate the fate indeed of him whose life was passed under a sword suspended by a horsehair I've had to entree Papa's consideration on this point my nervous system is soon wrought on I should wish to keep it in rational strength and coolness but to do so I must determinately resist the kindly meant but too irksome expression of an apprehension for the realization or defeat of which I have no possible power to be responsible at present I am pretty well thank God Papa I trust is no worse but he complains of weakness end of section 9 volume 2 section 10 of the life of Charlotte Bronte this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Clegghorn Gaskell volume 2 section 10 chapter 7 her father was always anxious to procure every change that was possible for her seeing as he did the benefit which she derived from it however reluctant she might have been to leave her home and him beforehand this August she was invited to go for a week to the neighborhood of Bowness where Sir James K. Shuttleworth had taken a house but she says I consented to go with reluctance chiefly to please Papa whom a refusal on my part would much have annoyed but I dislike to leave him I trust he is not worse but his complaint is still weakness it is not right to anticipate evil and to be always looking forward with an apprehensive spirit but I think grief is a two-edged sword it cuts both ways the memory of one loss is the anticipation of another it was during this visit at the briary Lady K. Shuttleworth having kindly invited me to meet her there that I first made acquaintance with Miss Bronte if I could copy out part of a letter which I wrote soon after to this friend who was deeply interested in her writings I shall probably convey my first impressions more truly and freshly then by amplifying what I then said into a longer description dark when I got to Windmere station I drive along the level road to Lowwood then a stoppage at a pretty house and then a pretty drawing room in which were Sir James and Lady K. Shuttleworth and a little lady in a black silk gown whom I could not see at first for the dazzle in the room she came up and shook hands with me at once I went to unbonnet etc. came down to tea the little lady worked away and hardly spoke but I had time for a good look at her later she is, as she calls herself undeveloped thin and more than half a head shorter than I am soft brown hair not very dark eyes very good and expressive looking straight and open at you of the same color as her hair a large mouth the forehead square broad and rather overhanging she has a very sweet voice rather hesitates in choosing her expressions but when chosen they seem without an effort admirable and just befitting the occasion there is nothing overstrained but perfectly simple after breakfast we four went out on the lake and Miss Bronsy agreed with me in liking Mr. Newman's soul and in liking modern painters and the idea of the seven lamps and she told me about Father Newman's lecture at the oratory in a very quiet, concise graphic way she is more like Miss Blank than any one in her ways if you can fancy Miss Blank to have gone through suffering enough to have taken out every spark of merriment and to be shy and silent from the habit of extreme intense solitude such a life as Miss Bronte's had never heard of before Blank described her home to me as in a village of gray stone houses perched up on the north side of a bleak moor looking over sweeps of bleak moors etc etc we were only three days together the greater part of which was spent in driving about in order to show Miss Bronte the Westmoreland scenery as she had never been there before we were both included in an invitation to drink tea quietly at Fox Howe and I then saw how severely her nerves were taxed by the effort of going amongst strangers we knew beforehand that the number of the party would not exceed twelve but she suffered the whole day from an acute headache brought on by apprehension of the evening brierly clothes was situated high above low wood and of course commited an extensive view and wide horizon I was struck by Miss Bronte's careful examination of the shape of the clouds and the signs of the heavens in which she read, as from a book what the coming weather would be I told her that I saw she must have a view equal in extent at her own home she said that I was right but that the character of the prospect was very different that I had no idea what a companion the sky became to any one living in solitude more than any inanimate object on earth more than the moors themselves the following extracts convey some of her own impressions and feelings respecting this visit you said I should stay longer than a week in Westmoreland you ought by this time to know me better is it my habit to keep dawdling at a place long after the time I first fixed on for departing I have got home and I am thankful to say Papa seems, to say the least no worse than when I left him yet I wish you were stronger my visit passed off very well I am glad I went the scenery is of course grand could I have wondered amongst those hills alone I could have drank in all their beauty even in a carriage with company it was very well Sir James was all the while as kind and friendly as he could be he is in much better health Miss Martin knew was from him she always leaves her house at ambleside during the lake season to avoid the influx of visitors to which she would otherwise be subject if I could only have dropped unseen out of the carriage and gone away by myself in amongst those grand hills and sweet dales I should have drank in the full power of this glorious scenery in company this can hardly be sometimes while blank was warning me against the faults of the artist class all the while vagrant artist instincts were busy in the mind of his listener I forget to tell you that about a week before I went to Westmorelands there came an invitation to harden Grange which of course I declined two or three days after a large party made their appearance here consisting of Mrs. F and sundry other ladies and two gentlemen one tall and stately black haired and whiskered who turned out to be Lord John Manners the other not so distinguished looking shy and a little queer who was Mr. Smythe the son of Lord Strangford I found Mrs. F a true lady in manners and appearance very gentle and unassuming Lord John Manners brought in his hands a brace of grouse for Papa which was a well-timed present a day or two before Papa had been wishing for some to these extracts I must add one other from a letter referring to this time it is addressed to Miss Wooler the kind friend of both her girlhood and womanhood who had invited her to spend a fortnight with her at her cottage lodgings Howard September 27th 1850 when I tell you that I have already been to the lakes this season and that it is scarcely more than a month since I returned you will understand that it is no longer within my option to accept your kind invitation I wish I could have gone to you I have already had my excursion and there is an end of it Sir James K. Shudderworth is residing near Windmere at a house called the Briary and it was there I was staying for a little time this August he very kindly showed me the neighborhood as it can be seen from a carriage and I discerned that the Lake Country is a glorious region which I had only seen the similitude in dreams, waking or sleeping decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search of the picturesque in a carriage a wagon a sprint cart even a post-chase might do but the carriage upsets everything I longed to slip out unseen and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and dales erratic and vagrant instincts and these I was obliged to control or rather suppress for fear of growing in any degree enthusiastic and thus drawing attention to the lioness the authoress you say that you suspect I have formed a large circle of acquaintance by this time no I cannot say that I have I doubt whether I possess either the wish or the power to do so a few friends I should like to have and these few I should like to know well if such knowledge brought proportionate regard I could not help concentrating my feelings dissipation I think appears synonymous with dilution however I have as yet scarcely been tried during the month I spent in London in the spring I kept very quiet having the fear of lionizing for my eyes I only went out once to dinner and once was present at an evening party and the only visits I have paid have been to Sir James K. Shuttleworth and my publishers from this system I should not like to depart as far as I can see indiscriminate visiting tends only to a waste of time and a vulgarizing of character besides papa often he is now in his 75th year the infirmities of age begin to creep upon him during the summer he has been much harassed by chronic bronchitis but I am thankful to say that he is now somewhat better I think my own health has derived benefit from change and exercise somebody in D. professes to have authority for saying that when Miss Bronte was in London she neglected to attend divine service on the Sabbath and in the week spent her time in going about to balls theaters and operas on the other hand the London quidnocks make my seclusion a matter of wonder and devise 20 romantic fictions to account for it formerly I used to listen to report with interest and a certain credulity but I am now grown deaf and skeptical experience has taught me how absolutely devoid of foundation her stories may be I must now quote from the first letter I had the privilege of receiving from Miss Bronte it is dated August the 27th papa and I have just had tea he is sitting quietly in his room and I in mine storms of rain are sweeping over the garden and churchyard as to the moors they are hidden in thick fog though alone I am not unhappy I have a thousand things to be thankful for and among the rest that this morning I received a letter from you and that this evening I have the privilege of answering it I do not know the life of Sidney Taylor whenever I have the opportunity I will get it the little French book you mention shall also take its place on the list of books as soon as possible it treats a subject interesting to all women perhaps more especially to single women though indeed mothers like you study it for the sake of their daughters the Westminster review is not a periodical I see regularly but sometimes since I got a hold of a number for last January I think in which there was an article entitled women's mission the phrase is hackneyed containing a great deal that seemed to me just insensible men begin to regard the position of women in another light than they used to do and a few men whose sympathies are fine and whose sense of justice is strong think and speak of it with a candor that commands my admiration they say however and to an extent truly that the amelioration of our condition depends on ourselves certainly there are evils which our own efforts will best reach but as certainly there are other evils deeper did in the foundation of the social system which no efforts of ours can touch of which we cannot complain of which it is advisable not too often to think I have read Tennyson's in memoriam or rather part of it I closed the book when I had got about halfway it is beautiful it is mournful it is monotonous many of the feelings expressed bear in their utterance the stamp of truth yet if Arthur Hallam had been somewhat nearer Alfred Tennyson his brother instead of his friends I should have distrusted this rhymes and measured and printed monument of grief what change the lapse of years may work I do not know but it seems to me that bitter sorrow while recent does not flow out in verse I promise to send you Wordsworth's prelude and accordingly dispatch it by this post the other little volume shall follow in a day or two I shall be glad to hear from you whenever you have time to write to me but you are never on any account to do this except when inclination, promise and leisure permits I should never thank you for a letter which you had felt it a task to write a short time after we had met at the briary she sent me the volume of Kerr, Ellis and Acton Bell's poems and thus alludes to them in the note that accompanied the parcel the little book of rhymes was sent by way of fulfilling of rashly made promise and the promise was made to prevent you from throwing away for shillings in an injudicious purchase I do not like my own share of the work nor care that it should be read Ellis Bell's I think good and vigorous and Acton's have the merit of truth and simplicity mine are chiefly juvenile productions the restless effervescence of a mind that would not be still in those days the sea too often wrought and was tempetuous and weed, sand, shingle all turn up in the tumult this image is much too magniliquent for the subject but you will pardon it another letter of some interest was addressed about this time to a literary friend on September 5th the reappearance of the athenium is very acceptable not merely for its own sake though I esteem the opportunity of its perusal of privilege but because as a weekly token of the remembrance of friends it cheers and gives pleasure I only fear that its regular transmission may become a task to you in that case discontinue it at once I did indeed enjoy my trip to Scotland and yet I saw little of the face of the country and of the wonder or fine scenic features but Edinburgh Melrose, Abbotsford these three in themselves suffice to stir feelings of deep interest and admiration that neither at the time did I regret nor have I since regretted the want of wider space over which to diffuse the sense of enjoyment there was room and variety enough to be very happy and as good as a feast the Queen indeed was right to climb Arthur's seat with her husband and children I shall not soon forget how I felt when, having reached its summit we all sat down and looked over the city towards the sea and Leith and the Pentland Hills no doubt you were proud of being a native of Scotland proud of your country her capital her children and her literature the article in the Palladium is one of those notices over which an author rejoices trembling he rejoices to find his work finally, fully, fervently appreciated and trembles under the responsibility such appreciation seems to devolve upon him I am counseled to wait and watch DV I will do so yet it is harder to wait with the hands bound and the observant of their respective faculties at their silent and unseen work than to labor mechanically I need not say how I felt the remarks on weathering heights they woke the saddest yet most grateful feelings they are true they are discriminating they are full of late justice but it is very late alas in one sense, too late of this, however of regret for a light prematurely extinguished it is not wise to speak much whoever the author of this article may be I remain his debtor yet, you see, even here Shirley is disparaged in comparison with Jane Eyre and yet I took great pains with Shirley I did not hurry I tried to do my best and my own impression was that it was not inferior to the former work indeed, I had bestowed on it more time, thought, and anxiety but great part of it was written under the shadow of impending calamity and the last volume I cannot deny was composed in the eager restless endeavour to combat mortal sufferings that were scarcely tolerable you sent the tragedy of Galileo Galilee by Samuel Brown in one of the Cornhill parcels it contains, I remember passages of very great beauty whenever you send any more books but that must not be till I return what I now have I should be glad if you would include amongst them the life of Dr. Arnold do you know also the life of Sydney Taylor I am not familiar even with the name but it has been recommended to me as a work mariting perusal of course when I name any book it is always understood that it should be quite convenient to send it End of section 10 Recording by Katie Riley June 2009