A. M. F. ROBINSON: ‘Emily Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Emily’s personal resemblance to G. H. Lewes.]
I have seen Lewes.... I could not feel otherwise to him than half-sadly, half-tenderly--a queer word that last, but I use it because the aspect of Lewes’s face almost moves me to tears; it is so wonderfully like Emily--her eyes, her features, the very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, the forehead--even, at moments, the expression.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Letter_, 1850, quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.
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[Sidenote: Death of Emily Brontë.]
The days drew on towards Christmas; it was already the middle of December, and still Emily was about the house, able to wait upon herself, to sew for the others, to take an active share in the duties of the day. She always fed the dogs herself. One Monday evening, it must have been about the 14th of December, she rose as usual to give the creatures their supper. She got up, walking slowly, holding out in her thin hands an apronful of broken meat and bread. But when she reached the flagged passage the cold took her; she staggered on the uneven pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, who had been sadly following her, unseen, came forward much alarmed and begged her to desist; but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss and Keeper their last supper from her hands.
The next morning she was worse. Before her waking, her watching sisters heard the low, unconscious moaning that tells of suffering continued even in sleep; and they feared for what the coming year might hold in store. Of the nearness of the end they did not dream. Charlotte had been out to the moors, searching every glen and hollow for a sprig of heather, however pale and dry, to take to the moor-loving sister. But Emily looked on the flower laid on her pillow with indifferent eyes. She was already estranged and alienated from life.
Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing herself alone, and doing everything for herself. A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat on the hearth to comb her hair. She was thinner than ever now--the tall, loose-jointed, “slinky” girl--her hair in its plenteous dark abundance was all of her that was not marked by the branding finger of death. She sat on the hearth combing her long brown hair. But soon the comb slipped from her feeble grasp into the cinders. She, the intrepid, active Emily, watched it burn and smoulder, too weak to lift it.... At last the servant came in: “Martha,” she said, “my comb’s down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up.”
She finished her dressing, and came very slowly, with dizzy head and tottering steps, down stairs into the little, bare parlor where Anne was working and Charlotte writing a letter. Emily took up some work and tried to sew. Her catching breath, her drawn and altered face, were ominous of the end. But still a little hope flickered in those sisterly hearts. “She grows daily weaker,” wrote Charlotte, on that memorable Tuesday morning; seeing surely no portent that this--this! was to be the last of the days and the hours of her weakness.
The morning grew on to noon, and Emily grew worse. She could no longer speak, but--gasping in a husky whisper--she said: “If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now!” Alas, it was too late. The shortness of breath and rending pain increased; even Emily could no longer conceal them. Towards two o’clock her sisters begged her, in an agony, to let them put her to bed. “No, no,” she cried, tormented with the feverish restlessness that comes before the last, most quiet peace. She tried to rise, leaning with one hand upon the sofa. And thus the chord of life snapped. She was dead.
She was twenty-nine years old.
They buried her, a few days after, under the church pavement; under the slab of stone where the mother lay, and Maria and Elizabeth and Branwell.... And though no wind ever rustles over the grave on which no scented heather springs, nor any bilberry bears its sprigs of greenest leaves and purple fruit, she will not miss them now; she who wondered how any could imagine unquiet slumbers for them that sleep in the quiet earth.
A. M. F. ROBINSON: ‘Emily Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Charlotte alone on the moors.]
“I am free to walk on the moors; but when I go out there alone, everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heath, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry-leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence, their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it; now I dare not read it.”
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Letter_, quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.
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Wearied out by the vividness of her sorrowful recollections, she sought relief in long walks on the moors. A friend of hers gives an anecdote which may well come in here.
[Sidenote: Anecdote of the old woman’s “cofe.”]
“They are mistaken in saying that she was too weak to roam the hills for the benefit of the air. I do not think any one, certainly not any woman in this locality, went so much on the moors as she did, when the weather permitted. Indeed, she was so much in the habit of doing so, that people, who live quite away on the edge of the common, knew her perfectly well. I remember on one occasion an old woman saw her at a little distance, and she called out ‘How! Miss Brontë! Hey yah (have you) seen aught o’ my cofe (calf)?’ Miss Brontë told her she could not say, for she did not know it. ‘Well!’ she said, ‘Yah know, it’s getting up like nah (now), between a cah (cow) and a cofe--what we call a stirk, yah know, Miss Brontë; will yah turn it this way if yah happen to see’t, as yah’re going back, Miss Brontë; nah _do_, Miss Brontë.’”
MRS. GASKELL: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Mrs. Gaskell’s first impression.]
A little lady in a black silk gown, whom I could not see at first for the dazzle in the room; she came up and shook hands with me at once.... She is (as she calls herself) _undeveloped_, thin, and more than half a head shorter than I am; soft brown hair, not very dark; eyes (very good and expressive, looking straight and open at you), of the same color as her hair; a large mouth; the forehead square, broad, and rather overhanging. She has a very sweet voice; rather hesitates in choosing her expressions, but when chosen they seem without an effort admirable, and just befitting the occasion; there is nothing overstrained, but perfectly simple.
MRS. GASKELL: _Letter_, published in ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Charlotte at home.]
Miss Brontë put me in mind of her own ‘Jane Eyre.’ She looked smaller than ever, and moved about so quietly and noiselessly, just like a little bird, as Rochester called her, barring that all birds are joyous, and that joy can never have entered that house since it was first built.... There is something touching in the sight of that little creature entombed in such a place, and moving about herself like a spirit, especially when you think that the slight still frame encloses a force of strong fiery life, which nothing has been able to freeze or extinguish.
_Letter from a Visitor_: Quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.
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[Sidenote: The Rev. Patrick Brontë.]
[Sidenote: Charlotte’s appearance and manner.]
[Sidenote: Her eyes.]
I knocked at the door, and presently a tall, not uncourtly, but ancient and venerable man, with a gray head, and the most notable Milesian features, opened it, and smiling kindly upon me as I told my name, invited me in; and asking pardon for leaving me alone, vanished into a room on the right hand of the door, telling me he would ring for his daughter. The bell had hardly sounded before the door opened, and Miss Brontë stood before me. I was agreeably disappointed at her appearance. I had always heard that she was very plain and unprepossessing, with bashful manners. Instead of this, I found her exceedingly agreeable, from the first moment of her entrance to the last of the interview, and, instead of being plain, I thought her uncommonly attractive. She had the slightest, fairy-like figure, and very small hands and feet. Her head was superb, and her forehead broad and deep and square, appearing so more especially in her profile. Her eyes had, for me, a strange fascination, so weird, mystical, unfathomable they seemed; and this expression was deepened by a slight obliquity in them. She had over-worked herself, she said, and was tired, and her eyes were very weary and painful; all which was evident in her appearance; and I saw that the light was painful to her, although the room was darkened by the drawn blinds. She was dressed very simply, but neatly, and with taste.