"Your poor mother is like Tabby, Martha and Papa; all these fancy I am somehow, by some mysterious process, to be married in London, or to engage myself to matrimony. How I smile internally! How groundless and improbable is the idea! Papa seriously told me yesterday, that if I married and left him he should give up housekeeping and go into lodgings!"
I copy the following, for the sake of the few words describing the appearance of the heathery moors in late summer.
TO SYDNEY DOBELL, ESQ.
"May 24th, 1851.
"My dear Sir,—I hasten to send Mrs. Dobell the autograph. It was the word 'Album' that frightened me I thought she wished me to write a sonnet on purpose for it, which I could not do.
"Your proposal respecting a journey to Switzerland is deeply kind; it draws me with the force of a mighty Temptation, but the stern Impossible holds me back. No! I cannot go to Switzerland this summer.
"Why did the editor of the 'Eclectic' erase that most powerful and pictorial passage? He could not be insensible to its beauty; perhaps he thought it profane. Poor man!
"I know nothing of such an orchard-country as you describe. I have never seen such a region. Our hills only confess the coming of summer by growing green with young fern and moss, in secret little hollows. Their bloom is reserved for autumn; then they burn with a kind of dark glow, different, doubtless, from the blush of garden blossoms. About the close of next month, I expect to go to London, to pay a brief and quiet visit. I fear chance will not be so propitious as to bring you to town while I am there; otherwise, how glad I should be if you would call. With kind regards to Mrs. Dobell,—Believe me, sincerely yours,
C. BRONTË."
Her next letter is dated from London.