“ It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world; and her black ringlets cluster down into her neck, and make her face look the whiter by their sable confusion. I could not form any judgment about her age; it may range anywhere within the limits of human life or elfin life. When I met her in London, at Lord Houghton’s breakfast-table, she did not impress me so singularly; for the morning light is more prosaic than the dim illumination of their great tapestried drawing-room ”

“ More’s pen and read of the works of her helping hands among the poor, is as though, in some old-time garden where the untrimmed box-borders have grown into sad confusion, and the old flowers with the odd names have ceased to bloom, we came suddenly upon the fresh wild-rose that is never out of fashion. The story of the sturdy struggles of this delicate woman with the squalor, ignorance, and indifference of that barbarous rural England of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, brings her near to us to-day, claiming a respectful admiration which modern taste hardly accords to her writings. ”

“ All the wildness of that moorland, all the secrets of those lonely farms, all the capabilities of the one tragedy of passion and weakness that touched her solitary life, she divined and appropriated: but not the life of the village at her feet, not the bustle of the mills, the riots, the sudden alternation of wealth and poverty, not the incessant rivalry of church and chapel; and while the West Riding has known the proto-type of nearly every person and nearly every place in ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Shirley,’ not a single character in ‘Wuthering Heights’ ever climbed the hills round Haworth. ”

“ Miss M. is truly a “little body,” and as unlike as possible to the faces we have seen of her in the magazines, which all have a broad humor bordering on coarseness. She has a pale-gray, soul-lit eye, and hair as white as snow; a wintry sign that has come prematurely upon her, as like signs come upon us while the year is yet fresh and undecayed. Her voice has a sweet, low tone, and her manner a natural frankness and affectionateness that we have been so long familiar with in their other modes of manifestation that it would have been indeed a disappointment not to have found them. ”

“ Had I only poverty to fear, I should not shrink from life. Forgive me then, if I say, that I shall consider any direct or indirect attempt to supply my necessities, as an insult which I have not merited, and as rather done out of tenderness for your own reputation, than for me.
My child may have to blush for her mother’s want of prudence, and may lament that the rectitude of my heart made me above vulgar precautions; but she shall not despise me for meanness. You are now perfectly free. God bless you!
Mary Wollstonecraft: ‘Letters to Imlay.’ (London: November, 1795.)
She meets Godwin. ”

“ Charlotte had been out to the moors, searching every glen and hollow for a sprig of heather, however pale and dry, to take to the moor-loving sister. But Emily looked on the flower laid on her pillow with indifferent eyes. She was already estranged and alienated from life.
Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing herself alone, and doing everything for herself. A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat on the hearth to comb her hair. ”

“ In spite of the repugnance which I sometimes experience, despite the days of idleness and fatigue which cause me to break off my work, in spite of the life, more than quiet, which I lead here, I feel that henceforth my existence has an aim. I have a purpose in view, a task before me, and, if I may use the word, a passion. For the profession of writing is nothing else but a violent, indestructible passion. When it has once entered people’s heads it never leaves them.
Aurore Dudevant: Letter to M. Jules Boucoiran, March, 1831, in ‘Letters of George Sand.’ ”

“ His face was singularly beautiful; the finest black eyes, very bright, and yet sweet, and fond and tender—eyes that seemed to speak; a beautiful, complacent mouth, which used sometimes to show one of the long, white teeth at the side; a jet-black nose; a brow which was bent and flexible ... and gave great sweetness of expression, and a look of thought to his dear face. There never was such a dog! His temper was, beyond comparison, the sweetest ever known. Nobody ever saw him out of humor. And his sagacity was equal to his temper.
Mary Russell Mitford: Quoted in her ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange. ”

“ As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely—of that passion for truth—of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable, history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame—of this one among the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth—this great earth?—this little speck in the infinite universe of God—with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! ”

“ She wore a delicate lavender satin bonnet; and Mrs. J—— says she is fond of dress, and knows what every one has on. Her taste is certainly exquisite in dress. I more than ever admired the harmony of expression and tint, the silver hair and silvery gray eye, the pale skin, and the look which speaks of a mind that has had much communing with high imagination, though such intercourse is only perceptible now by the absence of everything which that lofty spirit would not set his seal upon.... Age has slackened the active part of genius, and yet is in some sort a substitute for it. ”

“ In the sombre web of Charlotte’s existence there shone one thread of silver, all the brighter and more blessed for the contrast—it was the warm, steady, unfailing friendship of her school-fellow “E.” (Ellen Nussey) . “Ma bien aimée, ma précieuse E., mon amie chère et chérie,” she calls her in one of her earlier letters. “If we had but a cottage and a competency of our own, I do think we might live and love on till death, without being dependent on any third person for happiness.” “What am I compared to you?” she exclaims; “I feel my own utter worthlessness when I make the comparison. ”

“ There is a sort of freemasonry among women, by which they understand at once those with whom they have any intellectual sympathy. A few words, and all reserve was gone. “Come, sit by me on this sofa,” she said; and instantly, seated side by side, we were deep in conversation. It is in such intimacy that one feels the magnetism of a large mind informed by a true woman’s heart; then, as the [Pg 285] soul shines through the face, one perceives its intellectual beauty. No portrait can give the full expression of the eye, any more than of the voice. ”

“ 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. A union so complete as theirs, in which the mind has nothing to crave nor the heart to sigh for, is cordial to behold and soothing to remember. ”

“ Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second. But among the writers who, in the point which we have noticed, [the difficult art of portraying characters in which no single feature is extravagantly overcharged,] have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. ”

“ Therefore, George Eliot wished Godspeed to the women’s colleges. It was often in her mind and on her lips that the only worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is, that human beings should love one another better. Culture merely for culture’s sake can never be anything but a sapless root, capable of producing at best a shrivelled branch. ”

“ She was all her life-time the victim of disease and pain. She read and wrote in bed, and believed that she could understand anything better when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle to give tension to her powers. A lady who was with her one day during a terrible attack of nervous headache, which made Margaret totally helpless, assured me that Margaret was yet in the finest vein of humor, and kept those who were assisting her in a strange, painful excitement, between laughing and crying, by perpetual brilliant sallies. ”

“ People whom all the world knows, and yet more, people of whom I have never heard, send to me whatever they think I shall like, call at my door, ... come at any hour that I may appoint, if I be well enough to see them, and never take offence at a refusal. There is a reality about this when it has lasted above two years.... It has pleased Providence to preserve to me my calmness of mind and clearness of intellect, and also my powers of reading by day and by night, and, which is still more, my love of poetry and literature, my cheerfulness and my enjoyment of little things. ”

“ Her features are regular, and her mouth, the most expressive of them, has a ripe fullness and freedom of play peculiar to the Irish physiognomy, and expressive of the most unsuspicious good-humor. Add to all this a voice merry and sad by turns, but always musical, and manners of the most unpretending elegance, yet even more remarkable for their winning kindness, and you have the most prominent traits of one of the most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen. ”

“ Monsieur Héger, indeed, considered that they knew no French at all. Their manners, even among English people, were stiff and prim; the hearty, vulgar, genial expansion of their Belgian school-fellows must have made them seem as lifeless as marionettes. Their dress—Haworth had permitted itself to wonder at the uncouthness of those amazing leg-of-mutton sleeves (Emily’s pet whim in and out of fashion) , at the ill-cut lankness of those skirts, clumsy enough on round little Charlotte, but a very caricature of mediævalism on Emily’s tall, thin, slender figure. ”

“ With George Eliot acquaintance ripened slower into friendship. In spite of her warm human sympathies and the keenness of her desire to enter into the feelings of others, her manner at first awed, perhaps even repelled. It was so much more difficult for her than for Mr. Lewes to quit her own world of thought and speculation, and enter into that of the common joys and sorrows and aspirations of humanity. Yet few delighted more in gathering her friends together. ”

“ Nevertheless the play of expression and the wonderful mobility of the mouth, which increased with age, gave a womanly softness to the countenance in curious contrast with its frame-work. Her eyes, of a gray-blue, constantly varying in color, striking some as intensely blue, others as of a pale, washed-out gray, were small and not beautiful in themselves, but when she grew animated in conversation, those eyes lit up the whole face, seeming in a manner to transfigure it. ”

“ Her exuberant fancy demanded outlets which the restraints of boarding-school life would not allow. The unwonted excitement produced by contact with other young people vented itself in fantastic acts and freaks amusing but tormenting. The art of living with one’s kind had not formed a part of Margaret’s home education. Her nervous system had already, no doubt, been seriously disturbed by overwork.
Some plays were devised for the amusement of the pupils, and in these Margaret found herself entirely at home. ”

“ Nothing is earthly, though all is human; a spirit is passing before our eyes, yet of like passions with ourselves, and encased in a frame so delicate that every fibre is alive with feeling and tremulous with radiant thought. Her genius certainly may be compared to those sensitive, palpitating flames, which harmonically rise and fall in response to every sound-vibration near them. ”

“ Charlotte saw Emily’s whitening face, and set mouth, but dared not speak to interfere: no one dared when Emily’s eyes glowed in that manner out of the paleness of her face, and when her lips were so compressed into stone. She went up-stairs, and Tabby and Charlotte stood in the gloomy passage below, full of the dark shadows of coming night. Down the stairs came Emily, dragging after her the unwilling Keeper, his hind legs set in a heavy attitude of resistance, held by the “scaft of his neck,” but growling low and savagely all the time. ”