Charlotte Brontë: A Monograph. T. Wemyss Reid

      Beside her sisters lay her down to rest,

      By the lone church that stands amid the moors;

      And let her grave be wet with moorland showers;

      Let moorland larks sing o'er her mouldering breast!

      Hers was the keen true spirit, that confest

      That she was nurtured in no garden bowers,

      Nor taught to deck her brow with cultured flowers,

      Nor by the soft and summer wind carest.

      Her words came o'er us, as in harvest-tide

      Come the swift rain-clouds o'er her native skies,

      Scattering the thin sheaves by the heather's side;

      So fared it with our tame hypocrisies:

      But lo! the clouds are past, and far and wide

      The purple ridges glow beneath our eyes.

      W. H. Charlton.

      Hesleyside, 1855.

      CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

I.

       Table of Contents

      INTRODUCTORY.

      It is just twenty years since one of the most fascinating and artistic biographies in the English language was given to the world. Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Brontë" no sooner appeared than it took firm possession of the public mind; and it has ever since retained its hold upon all who take an interest in the career of one who has been called, in language which is far less extravagant in reality than in appearance, "the foremost woman of her age." Written with admirable skill, in a style at once powerful and picturesque, and with a sympathy such as only one artist could feel for another, it richly merited the popularity which it gained and has kept. Mrs. Gaskell, however, laboured under one serious disadvantage, which no longer exists in anything like the same degree in which it did twenty years ago. Writing but a few months after Charlotte Brontë had been laid in her grave, and whilst the father to whom she was indebted for so much that was characteristic in her life and genius was still living, Mrs. Gaskell had necessarily to deal with many circumstances which affected living persons too closely to be handled in detail. Even as it was she involved herself in serious embarrassment by some of her allusions to incidents connected more or less nearly with the life of Charlotte Brontë; corrections and retractations were forced upon her, the later editions of the book differed considerably from the first, and at last she was compelled to announce that any further correspondence concerning it must be conducted through her solicitors. Thus she was crippled in her attempt to paint a full-length picture of a remarkable life, and her story was what Mr. Thackeray called it, "necessarily incomplete, though most touching