Chapter XI: Part 11

"When if I think but deep enough
You are wont to answer prompt as rhyme,
And you too find without a rebuff
The response your soul seeks, many a time
Piercing its fine flesh stuff."

Their perfect union he describes thus:--

"My own, see where the years conduct.
At first 't was something our two souls
Should mix as mists do; each is sucked
Into each now, on the new stream rolls,
Whatever rocks obstruct.

"Think when our one soul understands
The great Word which makes all things new,
When earth breaks up and heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you
In the house not made with hands?

"Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,
You must be just before in fine,
See and make me see for my part
New depths of the Divine."

The whole poem "By the Fireside" should be quoted to tell the story from his side; but we will select only the close for our purpose. After describing how their love had led on to its own consummation, he says:--

"I am named and known by that hour's feat,
There took my station and degree.
So grew my own small life complete
As Nature obtained her best of me--
One born to love you, sweet!

"And to watch you sit by the fireside now,
Back again, as you mutely sit
Musing by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it
Yonder, my heart knows how!

"So the earth has gained by one man more,
And the gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too,
And the whole is well worth thinking o'er
When the autumn comes; as I mean to do
One day, as I said before."

The autumn time has come now to Browning, and he has had ample time to think it o'er; for the "perfect wife," the "Leonor," has lain under the grasses and violets of the English burying-ground in Florence for twenty-five years. In the same poem from which we have quoted, he says:--

"How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark autumn evenings come!
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices dumb
In life's November, too!

"I shall be found by the fire, suppose,
O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age,
While the shutters flap as the cross wind blows,
And I turn the page, and I turn the page,
Not verse now, only prose!"

It is sad to think that he should be left solitary by his fire and with his books, but he has much that is beautiful to look back upon,--much, too, that is beautiful to look forward to, let us hope; and he is surrounded by many friends, and devotedly attached to the one son who was the only fruit of this royal marriage of genius.

The house where the poets lived together for fourteen years in Florence has been thus described:--

"Those who have known 'Casa Guidi' as it was can never forget the
square anteroom with its great picture and piano-forte at which the
boy Browning passed many an hour,--the little dining-room covered
with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and
Robert Browning,--the long room filled with plaster casts and
studies, which was Mr. Browning's retreat,--and dearest of all, the
large drawing-room where _she_ always sat. It opens upon a balcony
filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray church of
Santa Felice.

"There was something about this room which seemed to make it a
proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued
light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced by the
tapestry-covered walls and the old pictures of saints that looked
out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large bookcases
constructed of specimens of Florentine carving were brimming over
with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gayly-bound
volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante's grave profile, a
cast of Keats's face and brow taken after death, a pen-and-ink
sketch of Tennyson, little paintings of the boy Browning, all
attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A
quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings, which
always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room.
But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in
a low arm-chair near the door. A small table strewn with
writing-materials, books, and newspapers, was always by her side."

Here Mrs. Browning held her small court, and here she entertained in the course of these years many of the most famous men and women of her time. Almost all visitors to Florence, especially English and American, sought her acquaintance, and all were kindly received by her. The conversation was always earnest there; she demanded a great deal of a person,--one felt it instinctively; and few came to waste her time upon trifles. Her own conversation was especially earnest, sometimes vivid, and lighted up by a humor peculiarly her own. She cared nothing for talk about people. Books and humanity, great deeds, and the great questions of the day, were the staple of her conversation. Religion, too, was an ever present topic. She was one of the most religious women of her day, and she interwove it in all her conversation, as she did in her writings. Indeed, her religion was a part of herself, and whoever knew her must know of this strong, deep feeling. One cannot conceive of Mrs. Browning apart from her religion. She would not have been herself, but another. It was a rare sight, indeed, to see this frail, spiritual-looking woman, when she talked upon some phase of her favorite theme, with her great expressive eyes fairly glowing with the intensity of her feeling, and a light shining through her face, as from the soul beyond. Her other great theme was Italy, and upon this she was always eloquent. Indeed, both Mr. and Mrs. Browning may almost be said to have adopted Italy for their home, and to have transferred their home affections to her soil. Many great Englishmen have loved Italy, but none more warmly than the Brownings. They suffered with her through all those dark hours which preceded her final emancipation from the foreign yoke, and they aided by their strong, brave words in bringing about that emancipation. Their pens were used in her behalf, perhaps too much for their own fame, because many of the subjects on which they wrote were of somewhat transient interest and more political than poetical. They were both friends and helpers to the great statesman Cavour in all his labors for the reconstruction of Italy, and one of the deepest interests of their lives was that reconstruction. Mrs. Browning's frail health was really injured at times by the serious grief she felt for temporary reverses, and by the absorbing interest she took in the cause.

The dream of her life, a free and united Italy, was fulfilled in Napoleon's formal recognition of Italian freedom and unity, the very week she died. It is given to few in this world thus to see the fruition of their fondest desires, and to pass away just as the clear morning light is dispelling the shadows of a long night of watching and waiting. The Napoleonic poems added nothing to her reputation as a poet, and were much regretted by some of her friends; but her literary reputation was nothing to her compared with her love for Italy, and she at least had faith in Napoleon's promises.

Mr. Hilliard, in his "Six Months in Italy," says of the home behind the Casa Guidi windows:--

"A happier home and a more perfect union than theirs it is not easy
to imagine; and this completeness arises not only from the rare
qualities which each possesses, but from their perfect adaptation
to each other. . . . As he is full of manly power, so she is a type
of the most sensitive and delicate womanhood. . . . I have never
seen a human frame which seemed so nearly a transparent veil for a
celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a
shell of pearl. . . . Nor is she more remarkable for genius and
learning than for sweetness of temper, tenderness of heart, depth
of feeling, and purity of spirit. It is a privilege to know such
beings singly and separately; but to see their powers quickened and
their happiness rounded by the sacred tie of marriage, is a cause
for peculiar and lasting gratitude."

The boy Browning was very beautiful in his childhood, and occupied a large place in the lives of his parents, who felt great pride in showing him to their visitors. It is a pleasant story told of the street beggars who walked through the Via Maggio in those days, under the windows of Casa Guidi, that they always spoke of Mrs. Browning, simply and touchingly, as "the mother of the beautiful child." But her love for this one beautiful darling taught her the whole possibility of motherhood. It made her heart go out in deepest sympathy to all mothers, as "to the friends unknown, and a land unvisited over the sea," to whom she writes:--

"Shall I speak like a poet, or run
Into weak woman's tears for relief?
Ah, children! I never lost one,--
Yet my arm's round my own little son,
And love knows the secret of grief."

In the Italian poem "Mother and Poet," she has expressed a mother's feelings as truthfully and vividly as any writer who has ever touched that great theme. She can describe, too, in language that almost blisters the page on which it is written, that other class of mothers which it is bitter to feel that the earth does contain,--the monsters who would sell their daughters for gold. In that most powerful story of Marian in "Aurora Leigh," she writes thus:--

"The child turned round
And looked up piteous in the mother's face
(Be sure that mother's death-bed will not want
Another devil to damn, than such a look).
'Oh, mother!' then with desperate glance to heaven,
'God free me from my mother,' she shrieked out,
'These mothers are too dreadful.' And with force
As passionate as fear, she tore her hands,
Like lilies from the rocks, from hers and his,
And sprang down, bounded headlong down the steep,
Away from both, away if possible,
As far as God--away. They yelled at her
As famished hounds at a hare,
She heard them yell,
And felt her name hiss after her from the hills
Like shot from guns."

The whole of that wonderful poem of "Aurora Leigh" is full of such impassioned sympathy with womanhood, and shows the great heart of the poet as perhaps none of her other poems do. Written in the maturity of her powers, and after she had learned much of life in all its intricate depths, it contains perhaps more passion and power and fiery-burning eloquence than any other poem in the English language. Only an inspired womanly hand, which had sounded all the deeps of the world's scanty wisdom, could have penned it.

But Mrs. Browning shows great wealth of human sympathy in all her poems. Oppression and wrong sink into the very depths of her nature, and she cannot bear that they shall go unreproved in the universe while she exists. Her sympathy with our labors for the emancipation of the slaves was well known, in a time when little sympathy was to be found among the English, and her feeling for the poor and oppressed of her native land was always deep and strong. Her "Cry of the Children" will never be forgotten while there are suffering children in the world, and while there are human hearts to listen to their wail. It is as sacred a piece of inspiration as the Psalms of David; and the need for such an expression of the woe of the outcast poor of England is almost as great to-day as when the immortal poem was written. Still can we ask of the English people:--

"Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in their nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west.
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly;
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free."

This poem, Hood's "Song of the Shirt," and a few others, have added their mite to the influence of Dickens in benefiting a little the poorest of England's poor; yet how much remains to be done is shown in the present deplorable condition of the lower orders in that country. What might not such a poet as Robert Browning have done, could he have emancipated himself from his involved and difficult style, and written in a manly and straightforward way of the world of men and women around him, instead of going off in his exasperating manner into the Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, to tell us of Prince Hohenstiel Tebwangan Saviour of Society. The pity of it is beyond expression, when so great a poet as Browning makes himself so needlessly unintelligible, and loses the vast influence he might exert over the minds of his generation and the minds of posterity. But the thoughts hidden in his rugged verse are worth delving for, and already societies are being formed in England and America to study them. These societies will do something to popularize him, but he can never be made what he was really capable of being, the poet of the people. His circle of readers will always be small, but it will be of the world's best. The thinkers will never make a vast throng in this world, while the highways of folly will always swarm with a great multitude which no man can number. But there is a day after to-day, and sometime, when the thought of the world shall have risen to a higher level, the name of Robert Browning will be oftener than now upon the lips of men.

Personally, Browning is almost unknown to his countrymen; his name even has never been heard by the multitude. He is never pointed out to strangers, as are other men of letters, and never attracts any notice in a public place. But he is well known to a select circle, where he is a favorite, and he goes a good deal into society in London these later years. He is a great favorite with women everywhere; and he deserves to be, for he has always shown himself capable of sympathizing with what is truest and best in womanhood. He has been loyal to the memory of his wife during all his long years of solitude, and it still seems that she holds her old place in his heart. He is now seventy-four years old,--a fine, well-preserved man, with a light step and an easy carriage. He was a handsome man in his prime, with a charmingly expressive face and a good figure. His hair is now snow-white, but otherwise he is not old in his looks. His manners are somewhat precise, and after the old school. He is fond of admiration, and is accounted egotistical, although reserved in general society. His talk, like his writings, is a good deal upon out-of-the-way subjects, and is often deemed unintelligible by those unfamiliar with his thought. To his enthusiastic admirers it seems like inspiration. He is still busy with his pen, although his volumes of poetry now number twenty or more. He has really created a literature of his own. How life appears to him now, from the vantage-ground of his almost fourscore years, it would be interesting to know. Many years ago he wrote, a little wearily:--

"There's a fancy some lean to and others hate,--
That when this life is ended begins
New work for the soul in another state,
Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins,--
Where the strong and the weak this world's congeries
Repeat in large what they practised in small,
Through life after life in an infinite series,--
Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.

"Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen
By the means of Evil that Good is best,
And through earth and its noise what is heaven's serene,--
When its faith in the same has stood the test,--
Why, the child grown man, we burn the rod;
The uses of labor are surely done.
There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
And I have had troubles enough for one."

CHARLOTTE BRONTE.

In the crowded little churchyard at Haworth, in the wild, bleak Yorkshire region, are eight mounds which mark the extinction of a family whose genius and sorrows have made them known the world over. In the little church there is a mural tablet which tells the names of this illustrious group, and the many visitors to this little out-of-the-way house of worship read with a melancholy interest these sad inscriptions. First we are told of Maria Bronte, the mother, who died in 1821, when only thirty-nine years old, leaving the six children whose names follow, all in the helplessness of early childhood. Next to her come Maria and Elizabeth, both of whom followed her in 1825; then Branwell and Emily, who died in 1848, and Anne, who lived one year longer. But it is to the last of the inscriptions that all eyes are turned with the greatest interest, for there we read--

CHARLOTTE,
WIFE OF THE REV. ARTHUR BELL NICHOLS, A. B.
AND DAUGHTER OF THE REV. E. P. BRONTE, A. M., INCUMBENT.
SHE DIED MARCH 31ST, 1855, IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HER AGE.

There is no sadder history in all literature than the history of this gifted family and their early doom. A pathos clings about it which is really painful, so few are the gleams of light which are thrown upon the dark picture. From the time when the Rev. Patrick Bronte (himself a gifted but somewhat erratic man) brought his young wife into the solitude of this moorland parsonage and shut her up in a seclusion from which she was only removed by death, all the way down through the lonely childhood of the little motherless children, and on into their no less lonely and more afflicted womanhood, even to the deaths of all the gifted group, there is a depth of sombre gloom from which the sympathetic heart must turn away with a bitter pain and almost a feeling of hot rebellion against Fate.

The utter loneliness of that part of Yorkshire at the time when Mr. Bronte settled there can hardly be imagined to-day. In winter all communication with the outside world was cut off by almost impassable mud or entirely impassable snow. Travellers whom actual necessity compelled to start forth were often snowed in for a week or ten days within a few miles of home, and nobody thought of stirring from that shelter except through the pressure of absolute necessity. Isolated as were the little hill villages like Haworth, they were in the world, compared with the loneliness of the gray ancestral houses to be seen here and there in the dense hollows of the moors.

The inhabitants of this rough country were themselves of wild, turbulent nature, much given to deadly feuds and really dangerous in their enmities. Their amusements were all of the lowest order, and hard riding and deep drinking were the characteristics of all the male population, while cock-fighting and bull-baiting were thought refined amusements for both sexes.

The ministers were not much above their flocks in general culture, and the incumbents of Haworth had been noted for their eccentricities for generations. Many of them attended the horse-racings and the games of football which were played on Sunday afternoons, and took as deep a part as any of the flock in the drunken carouse which always followed a funeral. Mr. Bronte was a very different man from his predecessors, but was many years in subduing his congregation to an even nominal observance of common moralities. He was, however, a man of high spirit and imperious will, and, bending himself to the task with all his powers, made a decided impression upon the life around him. The gentle mother soon passed away, and Mr. Bronte became a stern and silent man who kept his children at a distance from himself and allowed them little intercourse with the outside world. They were allowed to walk out on the wild heathery moors, but not down in the village street; and they acquired a passionate love of those purple moors, which remained with them through life. When angry, Mr. Bronte would say nothing, but they could hear him out at the door firing pistol-shots in quick succession as a relief to his feelings. The children were unnaturally quiet and well-behaved. The old nurse says:--

"You would never have known there was a child in the house, they
were such noiseless, good little creatures. I used to think them
spiritless, they were so different from any children I had ever
seen."

They used to read the newspapers, write little stories, and act plays, and at one time conducted a magazine of their own. Like all imaginative children, they played in stories, each one taking part in the stirring romances they invented. They were great believers in the supernatural, too, and the denizens of the adjoining churchyard played quite a prominent part in their childish lives. This churchyard, which was so near the parsonage, added much to the gloom and unhealthiness of the old manse, and many people have attributed the ill health of all the girls to its close proximity. It was depressing, to say the least, to such imaginative children as those of Mr. Bronte.

It was not long after the mother's death that the two older girls, Maria and Elizabeth, were taken to a school at Cowan's Bridge, a small hamlet in the north of England, and the younger children were left more lonely than ever. This school, which had been selected on account of its cheapness, had been established for the daughters of clergymen, and the entire expenses were fourteen pounds a year. Cowan's Bridge is prettily situated, just where the Leck-fells sweep into the plain; and by the course of the beck, alders and willows and hazel bushes grow. This little shallow, sparkling stream runs through long green pastures, and has many little falls over beds of gray rocks. The school-house had been made from an old bobbin-mill, and the situation proved to be remarkably unhealthy. This is the school so realistically described by Charlotte in "Jane Eyre." "Helen Burns" is an exact transcript of Maria Bronte, and every scene is a literal description of events which took place at this school. The whole thing was burned into Charlotte's memory so indelibly that she reproduced it with photographic exactness. Emily and Charlotte had followed the other sisters there, after a year or two, so that all of them suffered to a greater or less extent from the privations and abuses they underwent in that female Dotheboys Hall. The eldest sister died, and the second became very ill; yet still Mr. Bronte, who believed in the hardening process for children, kept them there until the health of each one failed in turn, and they were permanently injured by their privations. The food, which would perhaps have been wholesome enough if properly cooked, was ruined by a dirty and careless woman, who served it up in such disgusting messes that many a time the fastidious little Brontes could not eat a mouthful, though faint with hunger. There was always the most delicate cleanliness in the frugal Bronte household, and the children had early learned to be dainty in such matters. Their fare at home was of the simplest nature, but always well cooked; and they simply fasted themselves ill at Cowan's Bridge because they could not eat what was set before them.

There was another trial of health to the girls, and that was being obliged in all kinds of weather to attend church, which was two miles away. The road was a very bleak and unsheltered one, where cutting winds blew in winter and where the snows were often deep. The church was never warmed, as there was no provision made for any heating apparatus; and when the ill-fed and half-clothed girls had reached its shelter, they were often in actual chills from the exposure, and could not hope to gain any additional warmth there. Colds were taken in this way, from which the girls never recovered. They also suffered from cold in the school itself, and from the tyranny of one of the teachers, whom Charlotte has mercilessly depicted as Miss Scatcherd in "Jane Eyre." To the day of Miss Bronte's death, she would blaze with indignation at any mention of this school; and who can wonder?

After the death of the second daughter, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Emily were taken from Cowan's Bridge, and spent some time at another school, where they were much happier, and where they made a few life-long friends, particularly Miss Woolner, the principal. One of her schoolmates gives this description of Charlotte's arrival at the school:--

"I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very
old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. When
she appeared in the school-room 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
close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing."

She was a close student here, and a favorite with the girls, whom she would frighten half out of their senses by her wonderful stories. So great was their effect at times, that her listeners were thrown into real hysterics. After leaving this school, Charlotte returned home, and began keeping house and teaching her sisters. Here several quiet years were passed, busy but monotonous. The girls spent their time in study, in household tasks, walking, and drawing, of which they were very fond. They also read very thoroughly the few books which were accessible to them. At nineteen Charlotte went as a teacher to Miss Woolner's school, where she was very happy, and remained until her health failed. It was a nervous trouble, which seemed at one time like a complete breaking down, but from which she gradually recovered after her return home. Emily now took her turn in teaching, going to a school at Halifax, where she came near literally dying from homesickness. Emily could never live away from Haworth and her moors; and in this school she labored incessantly from six in the morning till eleven at night, with only one half-hour for exercise between. To a free, wild, untamable spirit like Emily's, this was indeed slavery. She returned home after a time, and Charlotte again went out to teach. They felt the necessity of earning money, as their father's stipend was small, and he was both liberal and charitable,--and there was their brother Branwell to be provided for. Of this brother we have not before spoken; but he occupied an important place in their home and in their lives. He had been the pride and the hope of the family from early youth. He was possessed of brilliant talents, and was full of noble impulses, but was very fond of pleasure, and soon formed irregular habits, which were the ruin of his life and the source of unmeasured grief to his whole family. They had desired to send him to study at the Royal Academy, as he had the family's fondness for drawing, and they fancied he would develop great talent as an artist. Had his habits been good, their hopes might have been realized; but he fell so early into profligacy, that the idea of becoming an artist was given up, and he took a place as a private tutor. He had formed his intemperate habits when a mere boy, at the public house in Haworth village, where he was esteemed royal company,--as no doubt he was, with his brilliant conversational powers,--and was often sent for to entertain chance guests, in whom he delighted, as they could tell him so much of that distant world beyond the confining hills, for which he yearned. The pity of it was infinite; for had he been kept in regular courses for a few years longer, his own ambition and love of the good opinion of others might have restrained him altogether from excess. As it was, before his judgment was matured or he had any real knowledge of the fatal effect of the habits he was forming, he was firmly fixed in the chains of a degrading habit from which death alone could free him. His struggles with this fatal fascination, and his sufferings, were cruel in the extreme, and inflicted pangs bitterer than death on all who loved him. He was rather weak of will, and had been allowed to grow up self-indulgent, through the over-fondness of his family, who were almost ascetic in their own habits, but could deny him nothing. He had great power of attracting people and of attaching them to him,--a power almost wanting in other members of the family, and which might have been of great advantage to him through life, had he started on the right course. As it was, it only helped to drag him down. He had enough of Irish blood in him to make his manners frank and genial, with a kind of natural gallantry about them. He was generally esteemed handsome. His forehead was massive, his eyes good, his mouth pleasant though somewhat coarse, his hair and complexion sandy. Mrs. Gaskell, in her life of Charlotte Bronte, thus tells of the second great grief he caused his family:--

"Branwell, I have mentioned, had obtained a situation as a private
tutor. Full of available talent, a brilliant talker, a good writer,
apt at drawing, ready of appreciation, and with a not unhandsome
person, he took the fancy of a married woman twenty years older
than himself. It is no excuse for him to say that she began the
first advances, and 'made love' to him. She was so bold and
hardened that she did it in the very presence of her children, fast
approaching maturity; and they would threaten her that if she did
not grant them such and such indulgences, they would tell their
bed-ridden father how she went on with Mr. Bronte. He was so
beguiled by this mature and wicked woman that he went home for his
holiday reluctantly, stayed there as short a time as possible,
perplexing and distressing them all by his extraordinary
conduct,--at one time in the highest spirits, at another in deepest
depression,--accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery,
without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing an
irritability of disposition bordering on insanity. Charlotte and
her sister suffered acutely from his mysterious behavior. They
began to lose all hope in his future career. He was no longer the
family pride; an indistinct dread was creeping over their minds
that he might turn out the family disgrace.

"After a time the husband of the woman with whom he had intrigued,
died. Branwell had been looking forward to this with guilty hope.
After her husband's death his paramour would be free; strange as it
seems, the young man still loved her passionately, and now imagined
the time had come when they might look forward to being married,
and might live together without reproach or blame. She had offered
to elope with him; she had written to him perpetually; she had sent
him money, twenty pounds at a time,--he remembered the criminal
advances she had made; she had braved shame and her children's
menaced disclosures for his sake; he thought she must love him; he
little knew how bad a depraved woman can be. Her husband had made a
will, in which he left her his property solely on the condition
that she should never see Branwell Bronte again. At the very time
the will was read, she did not know but that he might be on his way
to her, having heard of her husband's death. She despatched a
servant in hot haste to Haworth. He stopped at the Black Bull, and
a messenger was sent to the parsonage for Branwell. He came down to
the little inn, and was shut up with the man some time. Then the
groom went away, and Branwell was left in the room alone. More than
an hour elapsed before sign or sound was heard; then those outside
heard a noise like the bleating of a calf, and on opening the door
he was found in a kind of fit, succeeding to the stupor of grief
which he had fallen into on hearing that he was forbidden by his
paramour ever to see her again, as, if he did, she would forfeit
her fortune. . . . Let her live and flourish. He died, his pockets
filled with her letters, which he carried about his person
perpetually in order that he might read them as often as he
pleased. He lies dead, and his doom is only known to God's mercy."

But he did not die at once. He lived as an abiding care and sorrow and disgrace to his family for three years. He began taking opium, and drank more than ever. "For some time before his death he had attacks of delirium tremens, of the most frightful character; he slept in his father's room, and he would sometimes declare that either he or his father would be dead before morning." The trembling sisters, sick with fright, watched the night through before the door, in such agony as only loving hearts can feel at the ruin of a loved one. The scenes at the old manse at this time would serve to answer the question so often asked, Where did three lonely women like the Bronte sisters ever form their conceptions of such characters as they depicted? How their pure imaginations could conceive of such beings as Heathcote and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall may perhaps be guessed by those who learn what sort of a man Branwell Bronte had grown to be. But the long agony was over at last, and Branwell found his rest; and the sisters, although they could not but feel the relief of his death, mourned for him with passionate sorrow.

Let us turn to pleasanter glimpses of the life at Haworth, some of them preceding the events of which we have been writing. Charlotte had spent a year or two in Brussels, teaching in a school there, and gaining some of those experiences which she afterwards embodied in her novels. Then she had returned home, and the sisters had talked of establishing a school. None of the famous books had yet been written. To show some of Charlotte's ideas at this time, one or two extracts from her letters may be of interest. She writes in 1840:--

"Do not be over-persuaded to marry a man you can never respect,--I
do not say _love_; because I think if you can respect a person
before marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to
intense _passion_, I am convinced that that is no desirable
feeling. In the first place it seldom or never meets with a
requital; and in the second place, if it did, the feeling would be
only temporary; it would last the honeymoon, and then perhaps give
place to disgust. Certainly this would be the case on the man's
part; and on the woman's--God help her if she be left to love
passionately and alone.

"I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry at all.
Reason tells me so, and I am not so utterly the slave of feeling
but that I can _occasionally_ hear her voice."

This does not sound much like the woman who could write of Jane Eyre and Rochester; but there were depths of passion in the little woman, probably unsuspected by herself.

Again she writes, in 1845:--

"I know that if women wish to escape the stigma of husband-hunting,
they must act and look like marble or clay,--cold, expressionless,
bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, sorrow,
friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike construed
by the world into an attempt to hook a husband. Never mind!
well-meaning women have their own consciences to comfort them,
after all. Do not therefore be too much afraid of showing yourself
as you are, affectionate and good-hearted; do not harshly repress
sentiments and feelings excellent in themselves, because you fear
that some puppy may fancy you are letting them come out to
fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves,
because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in
breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you desired to
dedicate your life to inanity. Write again soon, for I feel rather
fierce and want stroking down."

That the sisters were not without their own perturbations and heart troubles, even in the deep seclusion of their lonely home, may be judged by some extracts from a poem written by Emily, who never confided anything to any friend but her own sombre muse.

"Cold is the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave.
Have I forgot, my only love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

"Now, when removed, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover
Thy noble heart forever, evermore?

"Cold in the grave, and fifteen wild Decembers
From these brown hills have melted into spring;
Faithful indeed the love is that remembers
After such years of change and suffering."

That Charlotte had some admirers among her father's curates is well known, and that Mr. Nichols paid court to her eight years previous to the time of her marriage with him. That she was capable of intense and passionate devotion there can be no doubt, but we have no hint as to whom she had lavished it upon, in any of her letters.

She was always extremely sensitive about her personal appearance, considering herself irredeemably ugly, and always thinking that people must be disgusted with her looks. She purposely made her heroine in "Jane Eyre" unattractive, as she felt it an injustice that a woman must always be judged by her looks, and she felt that novelists were somewhat to blame in the matter, as they always made their heroines beautiful in person, however unattractive in mind or character. She was extremely short,--"stunted," as she herself calls it,--never having grown any after the days of her starvation at Cowan's Bridge. She had soft brown hair, and good and expressive eyes, though she was so near-sighted; a large mouth; and a broad, square, somewhat overhanging forehead. Her voice was very sweet, and she was not at all the unattractive person she fancied herself, though by no means beautiful. She was exquisitely neat in her dress, and dainty about her gloves and shoes. She had a keen and delicate touch, and could do any difficult work with her hands, which were the smallest perhaps ever seen upon a grown woman. Her needlework was marvellous, and she was an exquisite housekeeper, attending to the minutest details herself. Her circle of friends and acquaintances was a very narrow one all her life, though after the publication of "Jane Eyre" it of course widened and improved.

Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Gaskell proved themselves warm and enthusiastic friends to Charlotte; and Thackeray, who met her in London, where she visited her publishers, was much pleased with her, and wrote very kindly of her after her death. Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth became much interested in her, and she enjoyed her visits to them in Westmoreland very highly. The Lake country was a revelation to her, though she was somewhat oppressed by seeing it all in company. She writes:--

"If I could only have dropped unseen out of the carriage, and gone
away by myself in amongst those grand hills and sweet dales, I
should have drunk in the full power of this glorious scenery. In
company, this can hardly be."

Again she writes to another:--

"Decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search
for the picturesque in a carriage. A wagon, a spring-cart, even a
post-chaise might do; but a carriage upsets everything. I longed to
slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and
dales. Erratic and vagrant instincts tormented me; and these I was
obliged to control, or rather suppress, for fear of growing in any
degree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to 'the lioness,'
the authoress."

The fact of her having sprung into sudden fame immediately after she was known as the author of "Jane Eyre"--the most wonderful book of her day--was a matter of great surprise to her, and would doubtless have afforded her very keen pleasure, only that she was so overburdened with home cares and sorrows at that time. Even the sweetness of her literary triumph was embittered by the sadness of the home life. "Jane Eyre" had been written during their worst trials with Branwell, and "Shirley" just after his death and during the illness of Emily and Anne, both works being the product of the very darkest hours of her darkened life. If these works are morbid and unhealthy, as has been asserted, is it any wonder, when we consider what must have been the state of her mind while writing them? She was most devotedly attached to her sisters; indeed, her very life may be said to have been bound up in theirs; and it was peculiarly hard for her to lose them just when success appeared to be at hand, and they might have looked forward to something of happiness during the remainder of their lives. Charlotte gives her own affecting account of Emily's death, which throws some light upon the character of that remarkable woman, as remarkable perhaps as Charlotte herself, although she did not live to do any work as lasting as that of her elder sister. She says:--

"But a great change approached. Affliction came in that shape which
to anticipate is dread; to look back on, grief. In the very heat
and burden of the day the laborers failed over their work. My
sister Emily first declined. . . . Never in all her life had she
lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger
now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Day by day, when
I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with an
anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but indeed
I have never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man,
simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was
that, while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity;
the spirit was inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hands,
the unnerved limbs, the fading eyes, the same service was exacted
as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and
not dare to remonstrate, was a pain no words can render."

Emily never left the house after Branwell's death. She made no complaint, but her friends could see that she was deadly ill. Yet she would have no doctor, and insisted upon going on with her work as usual. This she did until she was actually dying. Branwell had insisted upon standing up to die; and poor Emily had scarcely consented to lie down, when she was gone. Their will-power in their last agonies was something almost fearful to contemplate. As the old bereaved father and Charlotte and Anne followed the coffin to the grave, Emily's old, fierce, faithful bull-dog, to which she had been so much attached, came out and walked beside them. When they returned he lay down by Emily's door, and howled pitifully for many days. Charlotte recurred to this death-scene continually. In one letter she says:--

"I cannot forget Emily's death-day; it becomes a more fixed, a
darker, a more frequently recurring idea in my mind than ever. It
was very terrible. She was torn, conscious, panting, reluctant,
though resolute, out of a happy life. But it will not do to dwell
on these things."

Anne Bronte did not long survive her sister, and Charlotte was now alone except that she had the care of her aged father, who was feeble and nearly blind. The awful loneliness of the old house almost crazed her, but she went faithfully to work, and bore up with unheard of fortitude. Two or three solitary years went by, when Mr. Nichols, her father's curate, renewed his suit to Miss Bronte. Mrs. Gaskell tells us that he was one who had known her intimately for years, and was not a man to be attracted by any kind of literary fame. He was a grave, reserved, conscientious man, with strong religious feeling. In silence he had watched and loved her long.

She thus describes the meeting:--

"Instead I heard a tap, and like lightning it flashed upon me what
was coming. He entered. He stood before me. What his words were you
can imagine; his manner you can hardly realize, nor can I forget
it. He made me for the first time feel what it costs a man to
declare affection when he doubts response.... The spectacle of one
ordinarily so statue-like, thus trembling, stirred, and overcome,
gave me a strange shock. I could only entreat him to leave me then,
and promise a reply on the morrow."

Mr. Bronte, when consulted, was so displeased with the whole proceeding, and was so weak at this time, that Charlotte, fearing ill consequences to him, gave Mr. Nichols a refusal, whereupon he resigned his curacy and left the country. But a year or two after, seeing that Charlotte was unhappy, and fearing for her health, her father withdrew his opposition; Mr. Nichols was recalled, and the marriage finally took place. Mrs. Gaskell says:--

"She expressed herself as thankful to One who had guided her
through much difficulty and much distress and perplexity of mind;
and yet she felt what most thoughtful women do, who marry when the
first flash of careless youth is over, that there was a strange,
half-sad feeling in making announcements of an engagement, for
cares and fears come mingled inextricably with hopes. One great
relief to her mind at this time was derived from the conviction
that her father took a positive pleasure in all the thoughts about
and preparations for her wedding. He was anxious that things should
be expedited, and much interested in preparations for Mr. Nichols's
reception into the household."

Again:--

"The news of the wedding had slipt abroad before the little party
came out of the church, and many old and humble friends were there,
seeing her look 'like a snowdrop' as they say. Her dress was white
embroidered muslin, with a lace mantle, and white bonnet trimmed
with green leaves, which perhaps might suggest the resemblance to
the pale wintry flower."

Her married love and happiness were of very brief duration; a few short months, and she lay upon the bed from which she would rise no more. Waking for an instant, we are told, "from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband's woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare her. 'Oh,' she whispered forth, 'I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.'" But love or prayer could not stay the hand of death, which had marked all of this family for an early doom, and she passed sweetly away in the arms of her devoted husband. Thank God for the little glimpse of womanly happiness which He gave her at the last, and for the faithful mourner who held her memory so sacred for many years in the old gray manse. Mr. Nichols watched faithfully over the old father in his last days, and only left Haworth when duty held him there no longer, although the place had grown inexpressibly sad to him after his affliction. To the graves of the gifted women who sleep there, pilgrimages are made to this day. The Yorkshire region has changed much; and many now seek its wild heathery moors, not only for its own sake, but for the sake of those who loved and suffered in the little gray parsonage among its bleak hills. Long will the genius which created "Jane Eyre" and "Villette" and "Shirley" delight the world; but the remembrance of the writer's womanly virtues will linger when all these shall have passed away.

MARGARET FULLER.

There was little in the life of the people of New England in the early part of the present century upon which to feed the imagination of a precocious and romantic child like Margaret Fuller; and her childhood, though outwardly fortunate and well placed, was one of labor and repression, and far from happy, if we may judge by her own account of it. The theology of the people was gloomy. They made everything connected with religion unlovely, and this austerity was particularly distasteful to one of Margaret's imaginative temperament and heroic disposition. Her ungratified imagination brought her early into conflict with the circumstances and surroundings of her life.

All the poetry of her nature cried out against the lives of toil and care by which she was surrounded,--lives at that time lighted up by little of art or literature or music, but held to a stern standard of duty and self-abnegation. Margaret's nature craved beauty and poetry and art and lavish affection, and it was nursed on a somewhat grim diet of hard work and little expressed affection, although her parents were both loving and intelligent. Her father himself educated her, being a Harvard graduate, and a lawyer and politician of that day. He taught her Latin at the age of six years; and she says that the lessons set for her were as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond her age. These lessons were recited to her father after office hours, which kept the poor tired child up till late in the evening, and as a result the youthful prodigy was terrified at night by dreams and illusions, and given to sleep-walking. The result of such over-tension of a childish mind was a morbid and unhealthy state of both body and mind; and though she loved study, these great demands made upon her powers almost overcame her with their weight. She had a natural passion for reading, and when a mere child singled out Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Moliere, from all the books in the library, for her especial favorites.

She was but eight years old when she took a passionate interest in "Romeo and Juliet," and was disgraced in the family for perusing it on Sunday; and the imaginative child was always seeking for the heroic figures of her Shakespearian world in the every-day life about her, and was always disappointed. Altogether, we must call it an unhappy and unfortunate childhood, and cannot but think much finer intellectual as well as moral results would have followed a different treatment in her home.

In her early girlhood she mixed much in the college society at Cambridge, and would have been taken for a much older person than she really was. She was not handsome, but her animated countenance made its own impression, and awakened interest in almost all who saw her. She made some of her life-long friends at this time. Dr. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing were among them. With Emerson she made acquaintance a little later, through Miss Martineau, then visiting in this country. She was not at this time an agreeable person. She was much derided for her self-esteem by people who knew her slightly, and was also accused of hauteur and arrogance. Even Lowell was thus impressed by her, and put her in the pillory in the "Fable for Critics." He proposes to establish new punishments for criminals, thus:--

"I propose to shut up every doer of wrong
With these desperate books, for such terms, short or long,
As by statute in such cases made and provided
Shall be by our wise legislators decided:
Thus:--Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler,
At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ----."

And again:--

"For a woman must surely see well, if she try,
The whole of whose being's a capital I."

And still further:--