Haworth is a long, straggling village: one steep narrow street—so steep
that the flagstones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, that
the horses’ feet may have something to cling to, and not slip down
backwards; which if they did, they would soon reach Keighley. But if the
horses had cats’ feet and claws, they would do all the better. Well, we
(the man, horse, car, and I) clambered up this street, and reached the
church dedicated to St. Autest (who was he?); then we turned off into a
lane on the left, past the curate’s lodging at the Sexton’s, past the
school-house, up to the Parsonage yard-door. I went round the house to
the front door, looking to the church;—moors everywhere beyond and above.
The crowded grave-yard surrounds the house and small grass enclosure for
drying clothes.
I don’t know that I ever saw a spot more exquisitely clean; the
most dainty place for that I ever saw. To be sure, the life is like
clock-work. No one comes to the house; nothing disturbs the deep repose;
hardly a voice is heard; you catch the ticking of the clock in the
kitchen, or the buzzing of a fly in the parlour, all over the house.
Miss Brontë sits alone in her parlour; breakfasting with her father in
his study at nine o’clock. She helps in the housework; for one of their
servants, Tabby, is nearly ninety, and the other only a girl. Then I
accompanied her in her walks on the sweeping moors: the heather-bloom
had been blighted by a thunderstorm a day or two before, and was all
of a livid brown colour, instead of the blaze of purple glory it ought
to have been. Oh! those high, wild, desolate moors, up above the whole
world, and the very realms of silence! Home to dinner at two. Mr. Brontë
has his dinner sent in to him. All the small table arrangements had the
same dainty simplicity about them. Then we rested, and talked over the
clear, bright fire; it is a cold country, and the fires were a pretty
warm dancing light all over the house. The parlour had been evidently
furnished within the last few years, since Miss Brontë’s success had
enabled her to have a little more money to spend. Everything fits into,
and is in harmony with, the idea of a country parsonage, possessed by
people of very moderate means. The prevailing colour of the room is
crimson, to make a warm setting for the cold grey landscape without.
There is her likeness by Richmond, and an engraving from Lawrence’s
picture of Thackeray; and two recesses, on each side of the high, narrow,
old-fashioned mantel-piece, filled with books—books given to her, books
she has bought, and which tell of her individual pursuits and tastes;
_not_ standard books.
She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she
weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen,
she wanted much to draw; and she copied niminipimini copper-plate
engravings out of annuals (“stippling,” don’t the artists call it?),
every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced
an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to
express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to _draw_ stories, and
not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing; but in so small a
hand, that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this
time.
But now to return to our quiet hour of rest after dinner. I soon
observed that her habits of order were such that she could not go on
with the conversation, if a chair was out of its place; everything was
arranged with delicate regularity. We talked over the old times of her
childhood; of her elder sister’s (Maria’s) death—just like that of Helen
Burns in _Jane Eyre_; of those strange, starved days at school, of the
desire (almost amounting to illness) of expressing herself in some
way—writing or drawing; of her weakened eyesight, which prevented her
doing anything for two years, from the age of seventeen to nineteen;
of her being a governess; of her going to Brussels; whereupon I said I
disliked Lucy Snowe, and we discussed M. Paul Emanuel; and I told her
of ⸺’s admiration of _Shirley_, which pleased her, for the character of
Shirley was meant for her sister Emily, about whom she is never tired
of talking, nor I of listening. Emily must have been a remnant of the
Titans—great-granddaughter of the giants who used to inhabit earth. One
day, Miss Brontë brought down a rough, common-looking oil-painting,
done by her brother, of herself—a little rather prim-looking girl of
eighteen—and the two other sisters, girls of sixteen and fourteen, with
cropped hair, and sad, dreamy-looking eyes.… Emily had a great dog—half
mastiff, half bull-dog—so savage, etc.… This dog went to her funeral,
walking side by side with her father; and then, to the day of its death,
it slept at her room door, snuffing under it, and whining every morning.
We have generally had another walk before tea, which is at six; at
half-past eight, prayers; and by nine, all the household are in bed,
except ourselves. We sit up together till ten, or past; and after I go, I
hear Miss Brontë come down and walk up and down the room for an hour or
so.
We went, not purposely, but accidentally, to see various poor people in
our distant walks. From one we had borrowed an umbrella; in the house of
another we had taken shelter from a rough September storm. In all these
cottages, her quiet presence was known. At three miles from her home,
the chair was dusted for her, with a kindly “Sit ye down, Miss Brontë”;
and she knew what absent or ailing members of the family to inquire
after. Her quiet, gentle words, few though they might be, were evidently
grateful to those Yorkshire ears. Their welcome to her, though rough and
curt, was sincere and hearty.
We talked about the different courses through which life ran. She said,
in her own composed manner, as if she had accepted the theory as a fact,
that she believed some were appointed beforehand to sorrow and much
disappointment; that it did not fall to the lot of all—as Scripture
told us—to have their lives fall in pleasant places; that it was well
for those who had rougher paths, to perceive that such was God’s will
concerning them, and try to moderate their expectations, leaving hope to
those of a different doom, and seeking patience and resignation as the
virtues they were to cultivate. I took a different view: I thought that
human lots were more equal than she imagined; that to some happiness and
sorrow came in strong patches of light and shadow (so to speak), while
in the lives of others they were pretty equally blended throughout. She
smiled, and shook her head, and said she was trying to school herself
against ever anticipating any pleasure; that it was better to be brave
and submit faithfully; there was some good reason, which we should know
in time, why sorrow and disappointment were to be the lot of some on
earth. It was better to acknowledge this, and face out the truth in a
religious faith.