An explanation ensued, and the publisher at once began to form plans for the amusement of the visitors during their three days' stay in London.
In September, 1848, her brother Branwell died. After the Sunday succeeding Branwell's death, Emily Brontë never went out of doors, and in less than three months she, too, was dead. To the last she adhered tenaciously to her habits of independence. She would suffer no one to assist her. On the day of her death she arose, dressed herself, and tried to take up her sewing.
Anne Brontë, too, drooped and sickened from this time in a similar consumption, and on May 28, 1849, died peacefully at Scarborough, pathetically appealing to Charlotte with her ebbing breath: "Take courage, Charlotte; take courage."
VI.--Charlotte Brontë's Closing Years
"Shirley" had been begun soon after the publication of "Jane Eyre." Shirley herself is Charlotte's representation of Emily as she would have been if placed in health and prosperity. It was published five months after Anne's death. The reviews, Charlotte admitted, were "superb."
Visits to London made Miss Brontë acquainted with many of the literary celebrities of the day, including Thackeray and Miss Martineau. In Yorkshire her success caused great excitement. She tells herself how "Martha came in yesterday puffing and blowing, and much excited. 'Please, ma'am, you've been and written two books--the grandest books that ever was seen. They are going to have a meeting at the Mechanics' Institute to settle about ordering them.' When they got the volumes at the Mechanics' Institute, all the members wanted them. They cast lots, and whoever got a volume was allowed to keep it two days, and was to be fined a shilling per diem for longer detention."
In the spring of 1850, Charlotte Brontë paid another visit to London, and later to Scotland, where she found Edinburgh "compared to London like a vivid page of history compared to a dull treatise on political economy; as a lyric, brief, bright, clean, and vital as a flash of lightning, compared to a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic."
She was in London again in 1851, and was dismayed by the attempts to lionise her. "Villette," written in a constant fight against ill-health, was published in 1853, and was received with one burst of acclamation. This brought to a close the publication of Charlotte's life-time.
The personal interest of the two last years of Charlotte Brontë's life centres on her relations with her father's curate, the Rev. A.B. Nicholls. In 1853, he asked her hand in marriage. He was the fourth man who had ventured on the same proposal. Her father disapproved, and Mr. Nicholls resigned his curacy. Next year, however, her father relented. Mr. Nicholls again took up the curacy, and the marriage was celebrated on June 29, 1854. Henceforward the doors of home are closed upon her married life.
On March 31, 1855, she died before she had attained to motherhood, her last recorded words to her husband being: "We have been so happy." Her life appeals to that large and solemn public who know how to admire generously extraordinary genius, and how to reverence all noble virtue.