This is perhaps a fitting time to give some personal description of Miss
Brontë. In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen
years of age, very small in figure—“stunted” was the word she applied to
herself—but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the slight,
fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity
could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick, brown hair, and
peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description, as
they appeared to me in her later life. They were large, and well-shaped;
their colour a reddish brown; but if the iris was closely examined, it
appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression
was of quiet, listening intelligence; but now and then, on some just
occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light would
shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled, which glowed
behind those expressive orbs. I never saw the like in any other human
creature. As for the rest of her features, they were plain, large, and
ill set; but, unless you began to catalogue them, you were hardly aware
of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance overbalanced every
physical defect; the crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten,
and the whole face arrested the attention, and presently attracted all
those whom she herself would have cared to attract. Her hands and feet
were the smallest I ever saw; when one of the former was placed in
mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my palm.
The delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of sensation, which
was one reason why all her handiwork, of whatever kind—writing, sewing,
knitting—was so clear in its minuteness. She was remarkably neat in her
whole personal attire; but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and
gloves.
I can well imagine that the grave serious composure, which, when I knew
her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no
acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found
herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children. But
in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be
called (to use a country phrase) “old-fashioned”; and in 1831, the period
of which I now write, we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated
girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for, besides the
influence exerted by her father’s ideas concerning the simplicity of
attire befitting the wife and daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt,
on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never
been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and
the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart.