Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (610 page)

‘I hope Mrs. Williams’s state of health may soon improve and her anxieties lessen.  Blameable indeed are those who sow division where there ought to be peace, and especially deserving of the ban of society.

‘I thank both you and your family for keeping our secret.  It will indeed be a kindness to us to persevere in doing so; and I own I have a certain confidence in the honourable discretion of a household of which you are the head. — Believe me, yours very sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
October
18
th
, 1848.

‘My dear Sir, — Not feeling competent this evening either for study or serious composition, I will console myself with writing to you.  My malady, which the doctors call a bilious fever, lingers, or rather it returns with each sudden change of weather, though I am thankful to say that the relapses have hitherto been much milder than the first attack; but they keep me weak and reduced, especially as I am obliged to observe a very low spare diet.

‘My book, alas! is laid aside for the present; both head and hand seem to have lost their cunning; imagination is pale, stagnant, mute.  This incapacity chagrins me; sometimes I have a feeling of cankering care on the subject, but I combat it as well as I can; it does no good.

 
‘I am afraid I shall not write a cheerful letter to you.  A letter, however, of some kind I am determined to write, for I should be sorry to appear a neglectful correspondent to one from whose communications I have derived, and still derive, so much pleasure.  Do not talk about not being on a level with Currer Bell, or regard him as “an awful person”; if you saw him now, sitting muffled at the fireside, shrinking before the east wind (which for some days has been blowing wild and keen over our cold hills), and incapable of lifting a pen for any less formidable task than that of writing a few lines to an indulgent friend, you would be sorry not to deem yourself greatly his superior, for you would feel him to be a poor creature.

‘You may be sure I read your views on the providence of God and the nature of man with interest.  You are already aware that in much of what you say my opinions coincide with those you express, and where they differ I shall not attempt to bias you.  Thought and conscience are, or ought to be, free; and, at any rate, if your views were universally adopted there would be no persecution, no bigotry.  But never try to proselytise, the world is not yet fit to receive what you and Emerson say: man, as he now is, can no more do without creeds and forms in religion than he can do without laws and rules in social intercourse.  You and Emerson judge others by yourselves; all mankind are not like you, any more than every Israelite was like Nathaniel.

‘“Is there a human being,” you ask, “so depraved that an act of kindness will not touch — nay, a word melt him?”  There are hundreds of human beings who trample on acts of kindness and mock at words of affection.  I know this though I have seen but little of the world.  I suppose I have something harsher in my nature than you have, something which every now and then tells me dreary secrets about my race, and I cannot believe the voice of the Optimist, charm he never so wisely.  On the other hand, I feel forced to listen when a Thackeray speaks.  I know truth is delivering her oracles by his lips.

‘As to the great, good, magnanimous acts which have been
 
performed by some men, we trace them up to motives and then estimate their value; a few, perhaps, would gain and many lose by this test.  The study of motives is a strange one, not to be pursued too far by one fallible human being in reference to his fellows.

‘Do not condemn me as uncharitable.  I have no wish to urge my convictions on you, but I know that while there are many good, sincere, gentle people in the world, with whom kindness is all-powerful, there are also not a few like that false friend (I had almost written
fiend
) whom you so well and vividly described in one of your late letters, and who, in acting out his part of domestic traitor, must often have turned benefits into weapons wherewith to wound his benefactors. — Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
April
2
nd
, 1849.

‘My dear Sir, — My critics truly deserve and have my genuine thanks for the friendly candour with which they have declared their opinions on my book.  Both Mr. Williams and Mr. Taylor express and support their opinions in a manner calculated to command careful consideration.  In my turn I have a word to say.  You both of you dwell too much on what you regard as the
artistic
treatment of a subject.  Say what you will, gentlemen — say it as ably as you will — truth is better than art.  Burns’ Songs are better than Bulwer’s Epics.  Thackeray’s rude, careless sketches are preferable to thousands of carefully finished paintings.  Ignorant as I am, I dare to hold and maintain that doctrine.

‘You must not expect me to give up Malone and Donne too suddenly — the pair are favourites with me; they shine with a chastened and pleasing lustre in that first chapter, and it is a pity you do not take pleasure in their modest twinkle.  Neither is that opening scene irrelevant to the rest of the book, there are other touches in store which will harmonise with it.

‘No doubt this handling of the surplice will stir up such
 
publications as the
Christian Remembrancer
and the
Quarterly
— those heavy Goliaths of the periodical press; and if I alone were concerned, this possibility would not trouble me a second.  Full welcome would the giants be to stand in their greaves of brass, poising their ponderous spears, cursing their prey by their gods, and thundering invitations to the intended victim to “come forth” and have his flesh given to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field.  Currer Bell, without pretending to be a David, feels no awe of the unwieldy Anakim; but — comprehend me rightly, gentlemen — it would grieve him to involve others in blame: any censure that would really injure and annoy his publishers would wound himself.  Therefore believe that he will not act rashly — trust his discretion.

‘Mr. Taylor is right about the bad taste of the opening apostrophe — that I had already condemned in my own mind.  Enough said of a work in embryo.  Permit me to request in conclusion that the MS. may now be returned as soon as convenient.

‘The letter you inclosed is from Mary Howitt.  It contained a proposal for an engagement as contributor to an American periodical.  Of course I have negatived it.  When I
can
write, the book I have in hand must claim all my attention.  Oh! if Anne were well, if the void Death has left were a little closed up, if the dreary word
nevermore
would cease sounding in my ears, I think I could yet do something.

‘It is a long time since you mentioned your own family affairs.  I trust Mrs. Williams continues well, and that Fanny and your other children prosper. — Yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
July
3
rd
, 1849.

‘My dear Sir, — You do right to address me on subjects which compel me, in order to give a coherent answer, to quit for a moment my habitual train of thought.  The mention of your healthy-living daughters reminds me of the world where other people live — where I lived once.  Theirs are cheerful
 
images as you present them — I have no wish to shut them out.

‘From all you say of Ellen, the eldest, I am inclined to respect her much.  I like practical sense which works to the good of others.  I esteem a dutiful daughter who makes her parents happy.

‘Fanny’s character I would take on second hand from nobody, least of all from her kind father, whose estimate of human nature in general inclines rather to what
ought
to be than to what
is
.  Of Fanny I would judge for myself, and that not hastily nor on first impressions.

‘I am glad to hear that Louisa has a chance of a presentation to Queen’s College.  I hope she will succeed.  Do not, my dear sir, be indifferent — be earnest about it.  Come what may afterwards, an education secured is an advantage gained — a priceless advantage.  Come what may, it is a step towards independency, and one great curse of a single female life is its dependency.  It does credit both to Louisa’s heart and head that she herself wishes to get this presentation.  Encourage her in the wish.  Your daughters — no more than your sons — should be a burden on your hands.  Your daughters — as much as your sons — should aim at making their way honourably through life.  Do not wish to keep them at home.  Believe me, teachers may be hard-worked, ill-paid, and despised, but the girl who stays at home doing nothing is worse off than the hardest-wrought and worst-paid drudge of a school.  Whenever I have seen, not merely in humble, but in affluent homes, families of daughters sitting waiting to be married, I have pitied them from my heart.  It is doubtless well — very well — if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the peevishness of disappointment and the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade their nature.

‘Should Louisa eventually go out as a governess, do not be uneasy respecting her lot.  The sketch you give of her character leads me to think she has a better chance of happiness than one in a hundred of her sisterhood.  Of pleasing exterior (that is always an advantage — children like it), good
 
sense, obliging disposition, cheerful, healthy, possessing a good average capacity, but no prominent master talent to make her miserable by its cravings for exercise, by its mutiny under restraint — Louisa thus endowed will find the post of governess comparatively easy.  If she be like her mother — as you say she is — and if, consequently, she is fond of children, and possesses tact for managing them, their care is her natural vocation — she ought to be a governess.

‘Your sketch of Braxborne, as it is and as it was, is sadly pleasing.  I remember your first picture of it in a letter written a year ago — only a year ago.  I was in this room — where I now am — when I received it.  I was not alone then.  In those days your letters often served as a text for comment — a theme for talk; now, I read them, return them to their covers and put them away.  Johnson, I think, makes mournful mention somewhere of the pleasure that accrues when we are “solitary and cannot impart it.”  Thoughts, under such circumstances, cannot grow to words, impulses fail to ripen to actions.

‘Lonely as I am, how should I be if Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career — perseverance to plead through two long, weary years with publishers till they admitted me?  How should I be with youth past, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where there is not a single educated family?  In that case I should have no world at all: the raven, weary of surveying the deluge, and without an ark to return to, would be my type.  As it is, something like a hope and motive sustains me still.  I wish all your daughters — I wish every woman in England, had also a hope and motive.  Alas! there are many old maids who have neither. — Believe me, yours sincerely,

‘C. Brontë.’

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

‘
July
26
th
, 1849.

‘My dear Sir, — I must rouse myself to write a line to you, lest a more protracted silence should seem strange.

‘Truly glad was I to hear of your daughter’s success.  I trust its results may conduce to the permanent advantage both of herself and her parents.

 
‘Of still more importance than your children’s education is your wife’s health, and therefore it is still more gratifying to learn that your anxiety on that account is likely to be alleviated.  For her own sake, no less than for that of others, it is to be hoped that she is now secured from a recurrence of her painful and dangerous attacks.  It was pleasing, too, to hear of good qualities being developed in the daughters by the mother’s danger.  May your girls always so act as to justify their father’s kind estimate of their characters; may they never do what might disappoint or grieve him.

‘Your suggestion relative to myself is a good one in some respects, but there are two persons whom it would not suit; and not the least incommoded of these would be the young person whom I might request to come and bury herself in the hills of Haworth, to take a church and stony churchyard for her prospect, the dead silence of a village parsonage — in which the tick of the clock is heard all day long — for her atmosphere, and a grave, silent spinster for her companion.  I should not like to see youth thus immured.  The hush and gloom of our house would be more oppressive to a buoyant than to a subdued spirit.  The fact is, my work is my best companion; hereafter I look for no great earthly comfort except what congenial occupation can give.  For society, long seclusion has in a great measure unfitted me, I doubt whether I should enjoy it if I might have it.  Sometimes I think I should, and I thirst for it; but at other times I doubt my capability of pleasing or deriving pleasure.  The prisoner in solitary confinement, the toad in the block of marble, all in time shape themselves to their lot. — Yours sincerely,