The ideas of Rousseau and Mr. Day on education had filtered down through
many classes, and spread themselves widely out. I imagine Mr. Brontë must
have formed some of his opinions on the management of children from these
two theorists. His practice was not half so wild or extraordinary as
that to which an aunt of mine was subjected by a disciple of Mr. Day’s.
She had been taken by this gentleman and his wife to live with them as
their adopted child, perhaps about five-and-twenty years before the time
of which I am writing. They were wealthy people and kind-hearted, but
her food and clothing were of the very simplest and rudest description,
on Spartan principles. A healthy merry child, she did not much care for
dress or eating; but the treatment which she felt as a real cruelty
was this. They had a carriage, in which she and the favourite dog were
taken an airing on alternate days; the creature whose turn it was to
be left at home being tossed in a blanket—an operation which my aunt
especially dreaded. Her affright at the tossing was probably the reason
why it was persevered in. Dressed-up ghosts had become common, and she
did not care for them, so the blanket exercise was to be the next mode
of hardening her nerves. It is well known that Mr. Day broke off his
intention of marrying Sabrina, the girl whom he had educated for this
purpose, because, within a few weeks of the time fixed for the wedding,
she was guilty of the frivolity, while on a visit from home, of wearing
thin sleeves. Yet Mr. Day and my aunt’s relations were benevolent people,
only strongly imbued with the crotchet that by a system of training might
be educed the hardihood and simplicity of the ideal savage, forgetting
the terrible isolation of feelings and habits, which their pupils would
experience, in the future life which they must pass among the corruptions
and refinements of civilisation.
Mr. Brontë wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the
pleasures of eating and dress. In the latter he succeeded, as far
as regarded his daughters; but he went at his object with unsparing
earnestness of purpose. Mrs. Brontë’s nurse told me that one day when
the children had been out on the moors, and rain had come on, she
thought their feet would be wet, and accordingly she rummaged out some
coloured boots which had been given to them by a friend—the Mr. Morgan,
who married “Cousin Jane,” she believes. These little pairs she ranged
round the kitchen fire to warm; but, when the children came back, the
boots were nowhere to be found; only a very strong odour of burnt leather
was perceived. Mr. Brontë had come in and seen them; they were too gay
and luxurious for his children, and would foster a love of dress; so he
had put them into the fire. He spared nothing that offended his antique
simplicity.