I can well imagine that the grave, serious composure, which, when I knew her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children. But in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be called, (to use a country phrase) “old-fashioned;” and in 1831 ... we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for, besides the influence exerted by her father’s ideas concerning the simplicity of attire befitting the daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt, on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Miss Nussey’s account of Charlotte at this period.
Combined ignorance and precocity.
She never seemed to me the unattractive little person others designated her, but certainly she was at this time anything but pretty; even her good points were lost, her naturally beautiful hair of soft silky-brown being then dry and frizzy-looking, screwed up in tight curls, showing features that were all the plainer from her exceeding thinness and want of complexion; she looked “dried in.” A dark, rusty green stuff dress of old-fashioned make detracted still more from her appearance; but let her wear what she might, or do what she would, she had ever the demeanor of a born gentlewoman; vulgarity was an element that never won the slightest affinity with her nature. Some of the elder girls, who had been years at school, thought her ignorant. This was true in one sense; ignorant she was indeed in the elementary education which is given in schools, but she far surpassed her most advanced school-fellows in knowledge of what was passing in the world at large, and in the literature of her country. She knew a thousand things in these matters unknown to them.
Near-sightedness.
Her hands.
Music she wished to acquire, for which she had both ear and taste, but her near-sightedness caused her to stoop so dreadfully in order to see her notes that she was dissuaded from persevering in the acquirement, especially as she had at this time an invincible objection to wearing glasses. Her very taper fingers, tipped with the most circular nails, did not seem very suited for instrumental execution; but when wielding the pen or the pencil, they appeared in the very office they were created for.