I have, with all this, made time—or it has been made for me—to write half a dozen books in the last ten years.
Where Ghosts Walk (1898) was a joy in the writing, as was the collection of material. It reproduces for me—as I turn the pages, in maternal fashion, lingering upon a scene here, and snatching a phrase there—our strayings in storied climes, rambles into enchanted nooks untrodden by the conventional tourist, but full of mystery and charm for us. In those dim paths I still walk with the ghosts that were once visible and sentient things like ourselves.
Literary Hearthstones (1899-1902) was, even more emphatically, a labor of delight. I had made studies of Charlotte Brontë and Hannah More, of John Knox and William Cowper, in the homes and haunts they glorified into shrines for the reading and the religious world. Other hallowed names are yet on my memorandum-book, and in my portfolio are the notes made in other homes and haunts, and pictures collected for the illustrations of four more volumes of the series.
If I live and hold my strength and health of body and of mind, I shall, please God, complete the tale of worthies I have singled out for study. If not—they are yet mine own brain-children. None may rob me of the pleasure of having and of holding them—until death us do part.
I should be ungrateful, and do my own feelings a wrong, were I to fail, in this connection, to acknowledge my obligations to those who kindly seconded my efforts to accumulate the material for the Hearthstones.
Our pilgrimages to Haworth, Olney, Wrington, and Edinburgh, are starred in the reminiscence by hospitable intent and deed, by such real sympathy in my mission, and friendly aid in the prosecution of my design, that I cannot pass them over with casual mention.
For Charlotte Brontë I had, since my early girlhood, nourished admiration that ripened into reverence, as I read with avidity every page and line relating to the marvellous sisters. I had conned her books until I knew them, from cover to cover. Her dramatis personæ were friends more familiar to the dreaming girl than our next-door neighbors. It was a bitter disappointment to me that the unforeseen miscarriage of our plans frustrated my longing to go to Haworth, at our first visit to the Old World. So, when my son and I set out for our Eastern trip, Haworth stood first upon our memorandum of places that must be seen in England. I had letters from four men who had engaged to facilitate my attempts to enter the Parsonage. One and all, they assured me that I would find the door inhospitably closed in my face. Nevertheless, they advised me to go to Haworth, and put up at “that resort of the thirsty—the Black Bull.” Thus one of the quartette, and who had lately published a book on the Brontës:
“The present incumbent of the parish is an ogre, a veritable dragon!” he went on to say. “He savagely refused to let me set foot upon his threshhold, and he turns hundreds of pilgrims away empty every year. But go to Haworth, by all means! Put up at the ancient hostelry; walk about the old stone house and tell well its windows, and take pleasure in Emily’s moors. The dragon has restored (?) the Brontë church, and consigned the remains of the wonderful family to a genteel crypt under the renovated pavement. All the same, go to Haworth! The hills and the moors and the heather are unchanged.”
In my Life of Charlotte Brontë, I have related how I fared in the pilgrimage that stands out clearly in my memory as one of the sunniest spots of that memorable seven months’ tour. I have not told how simple and direct were the means by which I gained the fulfilment of my desires. Within an hour after we had registered our names in the shabby book kept for guests and transients at the Black Bull, I wrote a note to Mr. Wade, the rector of Haworth Church, asking permission to “stand, for a few minutes, within the doors of the house that had been the home of Charlotte and Emily Brontë.” I added that I should not blame him if he objected to the intrusion of strangers upon domestic privacy.