Emily at home during Charlotte’s second sojourn in Brussels.
Emily was alone in the gray house, save for her secluded father and old Tabby now over seventy. She was not unhappy. No life could be freer than her own; it was she that disposed, she too that performed most of the household work. She always got up first in the morning, and did the roughest part of the day’s labor before frail old Tabby came down; since kindness and thought for others were part of the nature of this unsocial, rugged woman. She did the household ironing and most of the cookery. She made the bread; and her bread was famous in Haworth for its lightness and excellence. As she kneaded the dough, she would glance now and then at an open book propped up before her. It was her German lesson. But not always did she study out of books; those who worked with her in that kitchen, young girls called in to help in stress of business, remember how she would keep a scrap of paper, a pencil, at her side, and how, when the moment came that she could pause in her cooking or her ironing, she would jot down some impatient thought and then resume her work. With these girls she was always friendly and hearty—“pleasant, sometimes quite jovial, like a boy,” “so genial and kind, a little masculine,” say my informants; but of strangers she was exceedingly timid, and if the butcher’s boy or the baker’s man came to the kitchen door, she would be off like a bird into the hall or the parlor till she heard their hob-nails clumping down the path. Not easy getting sight of that rare bird. Therefore, it may be, the Haworth people thought more of her powers than of those of Anne or Charlotte, who might be seen at school any Sunday. They say: “A deal of folk thout her th’ clever’st o’ them a’, hasumiver shoo wur so timid, shoo cudn’t frame to let it aat.”
A. Mary F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Origin of the three-fold book of Poems.
Pseudonyms.
One day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse, in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of a demonstrative character, nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her, could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed: it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.... Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily’s had given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own.... We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of ‘Currer,’ ‘Ellis,’ and ‘Acton Bell’; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because,——without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called “feminine,”—we had a vague impression that authoresses are likely to be looked on with prejudice.
Charlotte Brontë: Biographical Preface to ‘Wuthering Heights.’ London, 1850.