‘My dear Sir, — Not feeling competent this evening either for study or serious composition, I will console myself with writing to you. My malady, which the doctors call a bilious fever, lingers, or rather it returns with each sudden change of weather, though I am thankful to say that the relapses have hitherto been much milder than the first attack; but they keep me weak and reduced, especially as I am obliged to observe a very low spare diet.
‘My book, alas! is laid aside for the present; both head and hand seem to have lost their cunning; imagination is pale, stagnant, mute. This incapacity chagrins me; sometimes I have a feeling of cankering care on the subject, but I combat it as well as I can; it does no good.
‘I am afraid I shall not write a cheerful letter to you. A letter, however, of some kind I am determined to write, for I should be sorry to appear a neglectful correspondent to one from whose communications I have derived, and still derive, so much pleasure. Do not talk about not being on a level with Currer Bell, or regard him as “an awful person”; if you saw him now, sitting muffled at the fireside, shrinking before the east wind (which for some days has been blowing wild and keen over our cold hills), and incapable of lifting a pen for any less formidable task than that of writing a few lines to an indulgent friend, you would be sorry not to deem yourself greatly his superior, for you would feel him to be a poor creature.
‘You may be sure I read your views on the providence of God and the nature of man with interest. You are already aware that in much of what you say my opinions coincide with those you express, and where they differ I shall not attempt to bias you. Thought and conscience are, or ought to be, free; and, at any rate, if your views were universally adopted there would be no persecution, no bigotry. But never try to proselytise, the world is not yet fit to receive what you and Emerson say: man, as he now is, can no more do without creeds and forms in religion than he can do without laws and rules in social intercourse. You and Emerson judge others by yourselves; all mankind are not like you, any more than every Israelite was like Nathaniel.
‘“Is there a human being,” you ask, “so depraved that an act of kindness will not touch — nay, a word melt him?” There are hundreds of human beings who trample on acts of kindness and mock at words of affection. I know this though I have seen but little of the world. I suppose I have something harsher in my nature than you have, something which every now and then tells me dreary secrets about my race, and I cannot believe the voice of the Optimist, charm he never so wisely. On the other hand, I feel forced to listen when a Thackeray speaks. I know truth is delivering her oracles by his lips.
‘As to the great, good, magnanimous acts which have been performed by some men, we trace them up to motives and then estimate their value; a few, perhaps, would gain and many lose by this test. The study of motives is a strange one, not to be pursued too far by one fallible human being in reference to his fellows.
‘Do not condemn me as uncharitable. I have no wish to urge my convictions on you, but I know that while there are many good, sincere, gentle people in the world, with whom kindness is all-powerful, there are also not a few like that false friend (I had almost written fiend) whom you so well and vividly described in one of your late letters, and who, in acting out his part of domestic traitor, must often have turned benefits into weapons wherewith to wound his benefactors. — Believe me, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘April 2nd, 1849.
‘My dear Sir, — My critics truly deserve and have my genuine thanks for the friendly candour with which they have declared their opinions on my book. Both Mr. Williams and Mr. Taylor express and support their opinions in a manner calculated to command careful consideration. In my turn I have a word to say. You both of you dwell too much on what you regard as the artistic treatment of a subject. Say what you will, gentlemen — say it as ably as you will — truth is better than art. Burns’ Songs are better than Bulwer’s Epics. Thackeray’s rude, careless sketches are preferable to thousands of carefully finished paintings. Ignorant as I am, I dare to hold and maintain that doctrine.
‘You must not expect me to give up Malone and Donne too suddenly — the pair are favourites with me; they shine with a chastened and pleasing lustre in that first chapter, and it is a pity you do not take pleasure in their modest twinkle. Neither is that opening scene irrelevant to the rest of the book, there are other touches in store which will harmonise with it.
‘No doubt this handling of the surplice will stir up such publications as the Christian Remembrancer and the Quarterly — those heavy Goliaths of the periodical press; and if I alone were concerned, this possibility would not trouble me a second. Full welcome would the giants be to stand in their greaves of brass, poising their ponderous spears, cursing their prey by their gods, and thundering invitations to the intended victim to “come forth” and have his flesh given to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field. Currer Bell, without pretending to be a David, feels no awe of the unwieldy Anakim; but — comprehend me rightly, gentlemen — it would grieve him to involve others in blame: any censure that would really injure and annoy his publishers would wound himself. Therefore believe that he will not act rashly — trust his discretion.
‘Mr. Taylor is right about the bad taste of the opening apostrophe — that I had already condemned in my own mind. Enough said of a work in embryo. Permit me to request in conclusion that the MS. may now be returned as soon as convenient.
‘The letter you inclosed is from Mary Howitt. It contained a proposal for an engagement as contributor to an American periodical. Of course I have negatived it. When I can write, the book I have in hand must claim all my attention. Oh! if Anne were well, if the void Death has left were a little closed up, if the dreary word nevermore would cease sounding in my ears, I think I could yet do something.
‘It is a long time since you mentioned your own family affairs. I trust Mrs. Williams continues well, and that Fanny and your other children prosper. — Yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘July 3rd, 1849.
‘My dear Sir, — You do right to address me on subjects which compel me, in order to give a coherent answer, to quit for a moment my habitual train of thought. The mention of your healthy-living daughters reminds me of the world where other people live — where I lived once. Theirs are cheerful images as you present them — I have no wish to shut them out.
‘From all you say of Ellen, the eldest, I am inclined to respect her much. I like practical sense which works to the good of others. I esteem a dutiful daughter who makes her parents happy.
‘Fanny’s character I would take on second hand from nobody, least of all from her kind father, whose estimate of human nature in general inclines rather to what ought to be than to what is. Of Fanny I would judge for myself, and that not hastily nor on first impressions.
‘I am glad to hear that Louisa has a chance of a presentation to Queen’s College. I hope she will succeed. Do not, my dear sir, be indifferent — be earnest about it. Come what may afterwards, an education secured is an advantage gained — a priceless advantage. Come what may, it is a step towards independency, and one great curse of a single female life is its dependency. It does credit both to Louisa’s heart and head that she herself wishes to get this presentation. Encourage her in the wish. Your daughters — no more than your sons — should be a burden on your hands. Your daughters — as much as your sons — should aim at making their way honourably through life. Do not wish to keep them at home. Believe me, teachers may be hard-worked, ill-paid, and despised, but the girl who stays at home doing nothing is worse off than the hardest-wrought and worst-paid drudge of a school. Whenever I have seen, not merely in humble, but in affluent homes, families of daughters sitting waiting to be married, I have pitied them from my heart. It is doubtless well — very well — if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give their existence some object, their time
some occupation, or the peevishness of disappointment and the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade their nature.
‘Should Louisa eventually go out as a governess, do not be uneasy respecting her lot. The sketch you give of her character leads me to think she has a better chance of happiness than one in a hundred of her sisterhood. Of pleasing exterior (that is always an advantage — children like it), good sense, obliging disposition, cheerful, healthy, possessing a good average capacity, but no prominent master talent to make her miserable by its cravings for exercise, by its mutiny under restraint — Louisa thus endowed will find the post of governess comparatively easy. If she be like her mother — as you say she is — and if, consequently, she is fond of children, and possesses tact for managing them, their care is her natural vocation — she ought to be a governess.
‘Your sketch of Braxborne, as it is and as it was, is sadly pleasing. I remember your first picture of it in a letter written a year ago — only a year ago. I was in this room — where I now am — when I received it. I was not alone then. In those days your letters often served as a text for comment — a theme for talk; now, I read them, return them to their covers and put them away. Johnson, I think, makes mournful mention somewhere of the pleasure that accrues when we are “solitary and cannot impart it.” Thoughts, under such circumstances, cannot grow to words, impulses fail to ripen to actions.
‘Lonely as I am, how should I be if Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career — perseverance to plead through two long, weary years with publishers till they admitted me? How should I be with youth past, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where there is not a single educated family? In that case I should have no world at all: the raven, weary of surveying the deluge, and without an ark to return to, would be my type. As it is, something like a hope and motive sustains me still. I wish all your daughters — I wish every woman in England, had also a hope and motive. Alas! there are many old maids who have neither. — Believe me, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘July 26th, 1849.
‘My dear Sir, — I must rouse myself to write a line to you, lest a more protracted silence should seem strange.
‘Truly glad was I to hear of your daughter’s success. I trust its results may conduce to the permanent advantage both of herself and her parents.
‘Of still more importance than your children’s education is your wife’s health, and therefore it is still more gratifying to learn that your anxiety on that account is likely to be alleviated. For her own sake, no less than for that of others, it is to be hoped that she is now secured from a recurrence of her painful and dangerous attacks. It was pleasing, too, to hear of good qualities being developed in the daughters by the mother’s danger. May your girls always so act as to justify their father’s kind estimate of their characters; may they never do what might disappoint or grieve him.
‘Your suggestion relative to myself is a good one in some respects, but there are two persons whom it would not suit; and not the least incommoded of these would be the young person whom I might request to come and bury herself in the hills of Haworth, to take a church and stony churchyard for her prospect, the dead silence of a village parsonage — in which the tick of the clock is heard all day long — for her atmosphere, and a grave, silent spinster for her companion. I should not like to see youth thus immured. The hush and gloom of our house would be more oppressive to a buoyant than to a subdued spirit. The fact is, my work is my best companion; hereafter I look for no great earthly comfort except what congenial occupation can give. For society, long seclusion has in a great measure unfitted me, I doubt whether I should enjoy it if I might have it. Sometimes I think I should, and I thirst for it; but at other times I doubt my capability of pleasing or deriving pleasure. The prisoner in solitary confinement, the toad in the block of marble, all in time shape themselves to their lot. — Yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘September 13th, 1849.
‘My dear Sir, — I want to know your opinion of the subject of this proof-sheet. Mr. Taylor censured it; he considers as defective all that portion which relates to Shirley’s nervousness — the bite of the dog, etc. How did it strike you on reading it?
‘I ask this though I well know it cannot now be altered. I can work indefatigably at the correction of a work before it leaves my hands, but when once I have looked on it as completed and submitted to the inspection of others, it becomes next to impossible to alter or amend. With the heavy suspicion on my mind that all may not be right, I yet feel forced to put up with the inevitably wrong.
‘Reading has, of late, been my great solace and recreation. I have read J. C. Hare’s Guesses at Truth, a book containing things that in depth and far-sought wisdom sometimes recall the Thoughts of Pascal, only it is as the light of the moon recalls that of the sun.
‘I have read with pleasure a little book on English Social Life by the wife of Archbishop Whately. Good and intelligent women write well on such subjects. This lady speaks of governesses. I was struck by the contrast offered in her manner of treating the topic to that of Miss Rigby in the Quarterly. How much finer the feeling — how much truer the feeling — how much more delicate the mind here revealed!
‘I have read David Copperfield; it seems to me very good — admirable in some parts. You said it had affinity to Jane Eyre. It has, now and then — only what an advantage has Dickens in his varied knowledge of men and things! I am beginning to read Eckermann’s Goethe — it promises to be a most interesting work. Honest, simple, single-minded Eckermann! Great, powerful, giant-souled, but also profoundly egotistical, old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe! He was a mighty egotist — I see he was: he thought no more of swallowing up poor Eckermann’s existence in his own than the whale thought of swallowing Jonah.
‘The worst of reading graphic accounts of such men, of seeing graphic pictures of the scenes, the society, in which they moved, is that it excites a too tormenting longing to look on the reality. But does such reality now exist? Amidst all the troubled waters of European society does such a vast, strong, selfish, old Leviathan now roll ponderous! I suppose not. — Believe me, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘March 19th, 1850.
‘My dear Sir, — The books came yesterday evening just as I was wishing for them very much. There is much interest for me in opening the Cornhill parcel. I wish there was not pain too — but so it is. As I untie the cords and take out the volumes, I am reminded of those who once on similar occasions looked on eagerly; I miss familiar voices commenting mirthfully and pleasantly; the room seems very still, very empty; but yet there is consolation in remembering that papa will take pleasure in some of the books. Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness — it has no taste.
‘I hope Mrs. Williams continues well, and that she is beginning to regain composure after the shock of her recent bereavement. She has indeed sustained a loss for which there is no substitute. But rich as she still is in objects for her best affections, I trust the void will not be long or severely felt. She must think, not of what she has lost, but of what she possesses. With eight fine children, how can she ever be poor or solitary! — Believe me, dear sir, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO W. S. WILLIAMS
‘April 12th, 1850.
‘My dear Sir, — I own I was glad to receive your assurance that the Calcutta paper’s surmise was unfounded. It is said that when we wish a thing to be true, we are prone to believe it true; but I think (judging from myself) we adopt with a still prompter credulity the rumour which shocks.
‘It is very kind in Dr. Forbes to give me his book. I hope Mr. Smith will have the goodness to convey my thanks for the present. You can keep it to send with the next parcel, or perhaps I may be in London myself before May is over. That invitation I mentioned in a previous letter
is still urged upon me, and well as I know what penance its acceptance would entail in some points, I also know the advantage it would bring in others. My conscience tells me it would be the act of a moral poltroon to let the fear of suffering stand in the way of improvement. But suffer I shall. No matter.
‘The perusal of Southey’s Life has lately afforded me much pleasure. The autobiography with which it commences is deeply interesting, and the letters which follow are scarcely less so, disclosing as they do a character most estimable in its integrity and a nature most amiable in its benevolence, as well as a mind admirable in its talent. Some people assert that genius is inconsistent with domestic happiness, and yet Southey was happy at home and made his home happy; he not only loved his wife and children though he was a poet, but he loved them the better because he was a poet. He seems to have been without taint of worldliness. London with its pomps and vanities, learned coteries with their dry pedantry, rather scared than attracted him. He found his prime glory in his genius, and his chief felicity in home affections. I like Southey.
‘I have likewise read one of Miss Austen’s works — Emma — read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable. Anything like warmth or enthusiasm — anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood. Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition — too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress. Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death — this Miss Austen ignores. She no more, with her mind’s eye, beholds the heart of her race than each man, with bodily vision, sees the heart in his heaving breast. Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman. If this is heresy, I cannot help it. If I said it to some people (Lewes for instance) they would directly accuse me of advocating exaggerated heroics, but I am not afraid of your falling into any such vulgar error. — Believe me, yours sincerely,
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