“——the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.”
Personal courage.
Love of home.
One instance of her remarkable personal courage is related in ‘Shirley,’ where she herself is sketched under the character of the heroine. It is her adventure with the mad dog which bit her at the door of the parsonage kitchen while she was offering it water. The brave girl took an iron from the fire, where it chanced to be heating, and immediately cauterized the wound on her arm, making a broad, deep scar, which was there until the day of her death. Not until many weeks after this did she tell her sisters what had happened. Passionately fond of her home among the hills, and of the rough Yorkshire people among whom she had been reared, she sickened and pined away when absent from Haworth. A strange, untamed and untamable character was hers; and none but her two sisters ever seem to have appreciated her remarkable merits.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
Emily in 1833.
In 1833 Emily was nearly fifteen, a tall, long-armed girl, full grown, elastic of tread; with a slight figure that looked queenly in her best dresses, but loose and boyish when she slouched over the moors whistling to her dogs, and taking long strides over the rough earth. A tall, thin, loose-jointed girl—not ugly, but with irregular features and a pallid, thick complexion. Her dark-brown hair was naturally beautiful, and in later days looked well loosely fastened with a tall comb at the back of her head; but in 1833 she wore it in an unbecoming tight curl and frizz. She had very beautiful eyes of hazel color.... She had an aquiline nose, a large expressive, prominent mouth. She talked little. No grace or style in dress belonged to Emily, but under her awkward clothes her natural movements had the lithe beauty of the wild creatures that she loved.... Never was a soul with a more passionate love of Mother Earth, of every weed and flower, of every bird, beast and insect that lived. She would have peopled the house with pets had not Miss Branwell kept her niece’s love of animals in due subjection. Only one dog was allowed, who was admitted into the parlor at stated hours, but out of doors Emily made friends with all the beasts and birds. She would come home carrying in her hands some young bird or rabbit, and softly talking to it as she came. “Ee, Miss Emily,” the young servant would say, “one would think the bird could understand you.” “I am sure it can,” Emily would answer. “Oh, I am sure it can.”
A dual life.
Two lives went on side by side in her heart, neither ever mingling with or interrupting the other. Practical housewife with capable hands, dreamer of strange horrors: each self was independent of the companion to which it was linked by day and night. People in those days knew her but as she seemed—“t’ Vicar’s Emily”—a shy, awkward girl, never teaching in the Sunday-school like her sisters, never talking with the villagers like merry Branwell, but very good and hearty in helping the sick and distressed: not pretty in the village estimation—a “slinky lass,” no prim, trim little body like pretty Anne, nor with Charlotte Brontë’s taste in dress; just a clever lass with a spirit of her own. So the village judged her. At home they loved her with her strong feelings, untidy frocks, indomitable will and ready contempt for the commonplace; she was appreciated as a dear and necessary member of the household. Of Emily’s deeper self, her violent genius, neither friend nor neighbor dreamed in those days.