A Family of Genius

On an evening of a day in the year 1820, the people of the village of "Haworth"—in the north of England—were awaiting the arrival of the Reverend "Patrick Brontë," the church's new pastor, together with his family. And in that modest house, crouched among thick clouds of fog, with the graveyard surrounding it before and behind and the marshes on every side, the five girls grew up with their brother "Branwell": loneliness and hardship, silence and gloom—this was what hung over "Haworth."

And the girls awoke, at the dawn of a dreadful day, to a calamity that flooded those keen young hearts with grief and shook them to the depths, when their mother died—after a year—and oblivion enfolded her...

Alas for This Childhood:

When would it find noble ten-derness to enfold it like the falling of the dew? Who would toil that it might be happy?! Who would accept privation that it might be content?! Who would spread the wing of mercy and protection over the little ones, now that the mother's phantom had vanished as the phantoms of light vanish after sunset, while this stern father had none of that fatherly affection which surrounds childhood with an overflowing love—a love that in many men has soared and poured forth until it attains the strength of both loves together? ..

Those small hearts had been robbed of the light of companions, and here they were being robbed of the light of motherhood; but heaven—merciful and boun-tiful—lit them with brands of an immortal radiance, that they might be united in their sorrows, their hopes, and their longings as a single soul, and that those

geniuses might unfold—from the folds of pain—lofty and luminous, raising their lamp aloft for the generations...

A Tender Childhood

At this early age the girls took up the work of the house, an aged servant helping them, though the eldest of them had not passed her eighth year. In this house they received an ample share of mental and domestic training from their father and their aunt, Miss "Branwell." And when they were sent to the "Cowan Bridge" school, malnu-trition, harshness, and poverty roused the claws of disease—the deadly consumption—which after-ward overtook them all and carried off the two eldest sisters (Maria and Elizabeth); so the three who remained returned to "Haworth," and after a while "Charlotte" enrolled at the "Roe Head" school. There her literary gifts shone forth! Miss "Wooler," her schoolmistress, marveled when she saw the pupil who fell short in arithmetic, geography, and gram-mar filling page after page with stories of the utmost splendor, while she murmured: "I have writ-ten twenty-two stories at home..."

One day "Charlotte" became a teacher at Miss "Wooler's" school. But she loathed teaching and felt a strong pull toward literature. So she turned, with a few poems of her own composing, to the writer "Robert Southey," in hope of find-ing from him an encouragement that would fulfill her ambitions; and he answered her, saying: "Literature cannot be a profession for woman, and it ought not to be." She then had recourse to the great poet "Wordsworth," but was not blessed with a satisfying reply; so she resigned herself to working as a household governess in a family of middling means, and her

sister "Emily"—the family being in grinding poverty—was likewise compelled to take this path, only for the two to give it up after a while and return—their delicate feelings wounded—to "Haworth," with the clouds of failure closing over their two poets' hearts...

Struggle and Torment

And "Charlotte"—the eldest of the sisters—felt the burden of life wearing down her frail strength, and "Emily" strove at her side, sharing the harshness of work, of poverty, and of privation. But does struggle solve all the problems of life? No... Then let the two of them turn toward a path that would secure the family's livelihood; and here was a hope glimmering: let her go to Brussels to learn languages, and her sister likewise, to plant her foot firmly in letters and the arts, and let them return afterward to open a modern school in "Haworth."

And at the "Brussels" institute, the pupil of twenty-six came to hold a cherished place with her teacher, "Monsieur Héger," and she in her turn set him, in her own soul, upon a pedestal of sanctity! He unveiled to her a teeming world of philosophy, science, and art, and enabled her to gain a great measure of human experience; so she inclined toward him, though he was married, with five children, and a man of severity. Or do such bonds stand in the way of the meeting of two souls tied together by unbreakable cords of the heart's affection, harmony of thought, and kinship of taste? ...

"Charlotte" lived near her teacher for two years, a sea of conflicting emotions drowning her now in contentment, now in tor-ment.. And torment overwhelmed her when she returned—after com-pleting her studies—to Haworth; she took up the pen to write to her teacher, saying:

Sir: "The needy do not ask for much to sustain them in life; the crumbs that fall from the tables of the fortunate suffice