Clement King Shorter

“ Ellen Nussey, as we have seen, accompanied Anne Brontë to Scarborough, and was at her death-bed. She attended Charlotte’s wedding, and lived to mourn over her tomb. For forty years she has been the untiring advocate and staunch champion, hating to hear a word in her great friend’s dispraise, loving to note the glorious recognition, of which there has been so rich and so full a harvest. ”

“ No matter how amiable the disposition, how strong the sense of duty, how active the desire to please; no matter how brilliant and varied the accomplishments; if the governess has not the power to win her young charge, the secret to instil gently and surely her own knowledge into the growing mind intrusted to her, she will have a wearing, wasting existence of it. To educate a child, as I daresay Mrs. Williams has educated her children, probably with as much pleasure to herself as profit to them, will indeed be impossible to the teacher who lacks this qualification. ”

“ It will shame literary people into some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical home life is consistent with high imaginative genius; and it will shame, too, the prudery of a not over cleanly though carefully white-washed age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now) quite compatible with the knowledge of evil. I confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself. Jane Eyre I hardly looked into, very seldom reading a work of fiction—yours, indeed, and Thackeray’s, are the only ones I care to open. ”

“ Don’t conjecture, dear Nell, for it is too soon yet, though I certainly never before felt as I have done lately. But keep the matter wholly to yourself, for I can come to no decided opinion at present. I am rather mortified to lose my good looks and grow thin as I am doing just when I thought of going to Brookroyd. Dear Ellen, I want to see you, and I hope I shall see you well. My love to all.—Yours faithfully,
‘C. B. Nicholls.’
There were three more letters, but they were written in pencil from her deathbed. ”

“ Smith and her daughters seemed to look upon me with a mixture of respect and alarm. But all this is changed—that is to say, the attention and politeness continues as great as ever, but the alarm and estrangement are quite gone. She treats me as if she liked me, and I begin to like her much; kindness is a potent heart-winner. I had not judged too favourably of her son on a first impression; he pleases me much. I like him better even as a son and brother than as a man of business. Mr. Williams, too, is really most gentlemanly and well-informed. ”

“ One should never tell a gentleman that one has commenced a task till it is nearly achieved. Currer Bell, even if he had no let or hindrance, and if his path were quite smooth, could never march with the tread of a Scott, a Bulwer, a Thackeray, or a Dickens. I want you and Mr. Smith clearly to understand this. I have always wished to guard you against exaggerated anticipations—calculate low when you calculate on me. An honest man—and woman too—would always rather rise above expectation than fall below it. ”

“ It seems Ellen has told you that I am become a governess again. As you say, it is indeed a hard thing for flesh and blood to leave home, especially a good home—not a wealthy or splendid one. My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world—the profound, the intense affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other when their minds are cast in the same mould, their ideas drawn from the same source—when they have clung to each other from childhood, and when disputes have never sprung up to divide them. ”

“ Papa and aunt are continually adducing you as an example for me to shape my actions and behaviour by. Emily and Anne say “they never saw any one they liked so well as Miss Nussey,” and Tabby talks a great deal more nonsense about you than I choose to report. You must read this letter, dear Ellen, without thinking of the writing, for I have indited it almost all in the twilight. It is now so dark that, notwithstanding the singular property of “seeing in the night-time” which the young ladies at Roe Head used to attribute to me, I can scribble no longer. ”

“ Vyner strikes one as a portrait from the life; and it equally strikes one that the artist hated his original model with a personal hatred. She is made so bad that one cannot in the least degree sympathise with any of those who love her; one can only despise them. She is a fiend, and therefore not like Mr. Thackeray’s Rebecca, where neither vanity, heartlessness, nor falsehood have been spared by the vigorous and skilful hand which portrays them, but where the human being has been preserved nevertheless, and where, consequently, the lesson given is infinitely more impressive. ”

“ A single evening’s acquaintance does not suffice with me to form an opinion, it only leaves on my mind an impression. They impressed me, then, as pleasing in manners and appearance: Ellen’s is a character to which I could soon attach myself, and Fanny and Louisa have each their separate advantages. I can, however, read more in a face like Mrs. Williams’s than in the smooth young features of her daughters—time, trial, and exertion write a distinct hand, more legible than smile or dimple. ”

“ Care of papa and Anne is necessarily my chief present object in life, to the exclusion of all that could give me interest with my publishers or their connections. Should Anne get better, I think I could rally and become Currer Bell once more, but if otherwise, I look no farther: sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
‘Anne is very patient in her illness, as patient as Emily was unflinching. I recall one sister and look at the other with a sort of reverence as well as affection—under the test of suffering neither has faltered. ”

“ But here my sisters will come no more. Keeper may visit Emily’s little bed-room—as he still does day by day—and Flossy may look wistfully round for Anne, they will never see them again—nor shall I—at least the human part of me. I must not write so sadly, but how can I help thinking and feeling sadly? In the daytime effort and occupation aid me, but when evening darkens, something in my heart revolts against the burden of solitude—the sense of loss and want grows almost too much for me. ”

“ I do not think I shall write again, for the reasons I before mentioned to you; but the note moved me much, it was almost all about her dear Ellen, a kind of gentle enthusiasm of affection, enough to make one smile and weep—her feelings are half truth, half illusion. No human being could be altogether what she supposes you to be, yet your kindness must have been very great. If one were only rich, how delightful it would be to travel and spend the winter in climates where there are no winters. ”

“ A woman who works is by that alone better than one who does not; and a woman who does not happen to be rich and who still earns no money and does not wish to do so, is guilty of a great fault, almost a crime—a dereliction of duty which leads rapidly and almost certainly to all manner of degradation. It is very wrong of you to plead for toleration for workers on the ground of their being in peculiar circumstances, and few in number or singular in disposition. Work or degradation is the lot of all except the very small number born to wealth.
‘Ellen is with me, or I with her. ”

“ I feel much more uneasy about my sisters than myself just now. Emily’s cold and cough are very obstinate. I fear she has pain in the chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in her breathing, when she has moved at all quickly. She looks very, very thin and pale. Her reserved nature occasions me great uneasiness of mind. It is useless to question her—you get no answers. It is still more useless to recommend remedies—they are never adopted. Nor can I shut my eyes to the fact of Anne’s great delicacy of constitution. ”

“ Papa, thank God! continues to improve much. He preached twice on Sunday and again on Wednesday, and was not tired; his mind and mood are different to what they were, so much more cheerful and quiet. I trust the illusions of ambition are quite dissipated, and that he really sees it is better to relieve a suffering and faithful heart, to secure its fidelity, a solid good, than unfeelingly to abandon one who is truly attached to his interest as well as mine, and pursue some vain empty shadow.
‘I thank you, dear Ellen, for your kind invitation to Mr. Nicholls. ”

“ I saw a criticism on the preface to the second edition of Wuthering Heights. I saw it among the notables who attended Thackeray’s lectures. I have seen it somehow connected with Sir J. K. Shuttleworth. Did he want to marry you, or only to lionise you? or was it somebody else?
‘Your life in London is a “new country” to me, which I cannot even picture to myself. You seem to like it—at least some things in it, and yet your late letters to Mrs. J. Taylor talk of low spirits and illness. “What’s the matter with you now?” as my mother used to say, as if it were the twentieth time in a fortnight. ”

“ If I know anything of myself, I am incapable of making an ungenerous return to the smallest degree of kindness, much less to you whose attentions and conduct have been so particularly obliging. I will frankly confess that your behaviour and what I have seen and heard of your character has excited my warmest esteem and regard, and be assured you shall never have cause to repent of any confidence you may think proper to place in me, and that it will always be my endeavour to deserve the good opinion which you have formed, although human weakness may in some instances cause me to fall short. ”

“ She looks beyond this life, and regards her home and rest as elsewhere than on earth. May God support her and all of us through the trial of lingering sickness, and aid her in the last hour when the struggle which separates soul from body must be gone through!
‘We saw Emily torn from the midst of us when our hearts clung to her with intense attachment, and when, loving each other as we did—well, it seemed as if (might we but have been spared to each other) we could have found complete happiness in our mutual society and affection. ”

“ I doubt not, my dear Ellen, that amidst your many trials, amidst the sufferings that you have of late felt in yourself, and seen in several of your relations, you have still been able to look up and find support in trial, consolation in affliction, and repose in tumult, where human interference can make no change. I think you know in the right spirit how to withdraw yourself from the vexation, the care, the meanness of life, and to derive comfort from purer sources than this world can afford. ”

“ The character you sketch belongs to a class I peculiarly esteem: one in which endurance combines with exertion, talent with goodness; where genius is found unmarred by extravagance, self-reliance unalloyed by self-complacency. It is a character which is, I believe, rarely found except where there has been toil to undergo and adversity to struggle against: it will only grow to perfection in a poor soil and in the shade; if the soil be too indigent, the shade too dank and thick, of course it dies where it sprung. But I trust this will not be the case with Miss Kavanagh. ”

“ I thought of my own Ellen—I wished she had been near me that I might have told her how happy I was, how bright and glorious the pages of God’s holy word seemed to me. But the “foretaste” passed away, and earth and sin returned. I must see you before you go, Ellen; if you cannot come to Roe Head I will contrive to walk over to Brookroyd, provided you will let me know the time of your departure. Should you not be at home at Easter I dare not promise to accept your mother’s and sisters’ invitation. ”

“ I feel to my deep sorrow, to my humiliation, that it is not in my power to bear the canker of constant solitude. I had calculated that when shut out from every enjoyment, from every stimulus but what could be derived from intellectual exertion, my mind would rouse itself perforce. It is not so. Even intellect, even imagination, will not dispense with the ray of domestic cheerfulness, with the gentle spur of family discussion. ”

“ Do not let them waste their young lives in trying to attain manifold accomplishments. Let them try rather to possess thoroughly, fully, one or two talents; then let them endeavour to lay in a stock of health, strength, cheerfulness. Let them labour to attain self-control, endurance, fortitude, firmness; if possible, let them learn from their mother something of the precious art she possesses—these things, together with sound principles, will be their best supports, their best aids through a governess’s life. ”

“ Besides, no husband ought to be an object of charity to his wife, as no wife to her husband. No, dear Ellen; it is doubtless pleasant to marry well, as they say, but with all pleasures are mixed bitters. I do not wish for my friend a very rich husband. I should not like her to be regarded by any man ever as “a sweet object of charity.” Give my sincere love to all.—Yours,
‘C. Brontë.’
Many years were to elapse before Charlotte Brontë received her third offer of marriage. ”

“ It would seem quite clear to any careful investigator that the Reverend Patrick Brontë, Incumbent of Haworth, and the father of three famous daughters, was a much maligned man. We talk of the fierce light which beats upon a throne, but what is that compared to the fierce light which beats upon any man of some measure of individuality who is destined to live out his life in the quiet of a country village—in the very centre, as it were, of ‘personal talk’ and gossip not always kindly to the stranger within the gate? ”