“As soon as they could read and write, Charlotte and her brother and sisters used to invent and act little plays of their own, in which the Duke of Wellington, my daughter Charlotte’s hero, was sure to come off conqueror; when a dispute would not unfrequently arise amongst them regarding the comparative merits of him, Buonaparte, Hannibal, and Cæsar. When the argument got warm, and rose to its height, as their mother was then dead, I had sometimes to come in as arbitrator, and settle the dispute according to the best of my judgment. Generally, in the management of these concerns, I frequently thought that I discovered signs of rising talent, which I had seldom or never before seen in any of their age.... A circumstance now occurs to my mind which I may as well mention. When my children were very young, when, as far as I can remember, the oldest was about ten years of age, and the youngest about four, thinking that they knew more than I had yet discovered, in order to make them speak with less timidity, I deemed that if they were put under a sort of cover I might gain my end; and happening to have a mask in the house, I told them all to stand and speak boldly from under cover of the mask. I began with the youngest (Anne, afterwards Acton Bell), and asked what a child like her most wanted; she answered, ‘Age and experience.’ I asked the next (Emily, afterwards Ellis Bell), what I had best do with her brother Branwell, who was sometimes a naughty boy; she answered, ‘Reason with him, and when he won’t listen to reason, whip him.’ I asked Branwell what was the best way of knowing the difference between the intellects of man and woman; he answered, ‘By considering the difference between them as to their bodies.’ I then asked Charlotte what was the best book in the world; she answered, ‘The Bible.’ What was the next best; she answered, ‘The Book of Nature.’ I then asked the next what was the best mode of education for a woman; she answered, ‘By laying it out in preparation for a happy eternity.’ I may not have given precisely their words, but I have nearly done so, as they made a deep and lasting impression on my memory.”
Soon after Mrs. Brontë’s death, an elder sister came from Penzance to superintend her brother-in-law’s household, and look after his six children. Miss Branwell taught her nieces sewing and the household arts, in which Charlotte became an adept. In 1823, a school was established for the daughters of clergymen, at a place called Cowan Bridge. Mr. Brontë took Maria and Elizabeth to Cowan Bridge, in July, 1824; and in September, he brought Charlotte and Emily to be admitted as pupils. Maria was untidy, but gentle, and intellectual. Elizabeth won much upon the esteem of the superintendent of the school by her exemplary patience. Emily was distinguished for fortitude. Charlotte was a “bright, clever, little child.” Maria died in May, and Elizabeth in June, 1825. Charlotte was thus early called upon to bear the responsibilities of an elder sister in a motherless family; both Charlotte and Emily returned to the school at the close of the midsummer holidays in this fatal year. But before the next winter they left that establishment.
In 1831, she was sent to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, where her remarkable talents were duly appreciated by her kind instructress, and friendships were formed with some of her fellow-pupils that lasted throughout life. One of these early friends thus graphically describes the impression she made upon her.
“I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She was coming to school at Miss Wooler’s. When she appeared in the schoolroom, her dress was changed, but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched it; and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still closer to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing.”
Towards the end of the year and half that she remained as a pupil at Roe Head, she received her first bad mark for an imperfect lesson. Charlotte wept bitterly, and her school-fellows were indignant. Miss Wooler withdrew the bad mark.
In 1835, she returned to Miss Wooler’s school as a teacher, and Emily accompanied her as a scholar. Charlotte’s life here was very happy. The girls were hardly strangers to her, some of them being younger sisters of those who had been her own playmates; and however trying the duties were she had to perform, there was always a thoughtful friend watching over her in the person of good Miss Wooler. But her life was too sedentary, and she was advised to return to the parsonage. She did so, and the change at once proved beneficial.
At Haworth she met the person who made the first proposal of marriage to her. Miss Brontë respected the young man very deeply, but as she did not really love him, she refused to marry him. Soon after, an Irish clergyman, fresh from Dublin University, whom she had only met once, sent her a letter, which proved to be a declaration of love and a proposal of matrimony. But although she had no hope of another offer, the witty, lively, and ardent Irishman was summarily rejected. Restored to health and strength, instead of remaining at Haworth to be a burden to her father, and to live on there in idleness perhaps for years, she determined, if everything else failed, to turn housemaid. Soon after, she became engaged as a governess in a family where she was destined to find an ungenial residence. The children all loved her, more or less, according to their different characters. But the mother was proud and pompous, and Miss Brontë as proud, though not so pompous, as she. In 1839, she left the family of the wealthy Yorkshire manufacturer; and in 1841, found her second and last situation as a governess. This time she became a member of a kind-hearted and friendly household. But her salary, after deducting the expense of washing, amounted to only £16; moreover, the career of a governess was to Miss Brontë a perpetual attempt to force her faculties into a direction for which her previous life had unfitted them. So at Christmas she left this situation.
Several attempts to open a school at the parsonage having proved futile, with the view of better qualifying themselves for the task of teaching, Miss Brontë and her sister Emily went to Brussels in 1842, and took up their abode in Madame Héger’s pensionnat. Towards the close of the year, word came from England that her aunt, Miss Branwell, was very ill. Before they got home, the funeral was over, and Mr. Brontë and Anne were sitting together in quiet grief for one who had done her part well in the household for nearly twenty years. About the end of January, 1843, Miss Brontë returned to Brussels alone for another six months.
In returning to England, in 1844, Miss Brontë determined to commence a school, and to facilitate her success in this plan, M. Héger, gave her a kind of diploma, sealed with the Athenée Royal, of which he was a professor. But no pupils made their appearance, and consequently the sisters abandoned the idea of school-keeping, and turned their thoughts to literature. Their volume of poems was published in 1846; their names being veiled under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, but it met with little or no attention. It is possible that the names of Emily and Anne may not survive the present generation; but certainly Charlotte’s writings have placed her in the highest rank of lady novelists.
The winter of 1848 was a dark one at Haworth. Her only brother, and the sister she so intensely loved, and whose genius she ever delighted to exalt above her own, died within a few weeks of each other. Miss Brontë was prostrate with fever; and Anne, always delicate, grew rapidly worse. The two went together to Scarborough the following spring. There the younger sister died, and the elder was left alone with her aged father in that dreary deserted home among the graves. In June, 1850, she visited London, saw her old hero the Duke of Wellington, at the Chapel Royal, had an interview with Lewes, and dined with Thackeray. The same summer she went on to Edinburgh to join the friends with whom she had been staying in town. In a letter to a correspondent, she says: “Do not think that I blaspheme, when I tell you that your great London, as compared to Dunedin, ‘mine own romantic town,’ is as prose compared to poetry; or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic compared to a lyric, brief, bright, clear, and vital as a flash of lightning. You have nothing like Scott’s monument; or, if you had that, and all the glories of architecture assembled together, you have nothing like Arthur’s seat, and above all, you have not the Scottish national character; and it is that grand character after all which gives the land its true charm, its true greatness.”