them... And so I, likewise, need but a little of the affection of those I love." And she ended her letter with these outpourings: "A person suffers in silence so long as he has the strength to endure; but when that strength deserts him, he sends forth his complaint free and unfettered..." And since writing to him breathed into her rest and peace, she wrote to him a second time and a third, and won no answer! At last... she received from him a brief letter, and she wrote back to him, saying: "Your letter was food to me for six whole months, and now I am in need of another! You will send it to me—not from the motive of affection, for you do not feel that sentiment, but from the motive of pity, because you have a merciful heart that would not condemn a human being to prolonged torment when you are able to lift it from him by granting him a few minutes..." Then she ceased writing, lest passion consume her—to
pour out her torment instead into an immortal novel!
Troubles and Sorrows
And Charlotte sank anew into her sorrows and her troubles. Here was her father all but losing his sight; there the only brother, "Branwell," being struck down by disease and drink together; and there was Emily—who bore her sister a deep love—her heart filled with grief and wasted by it; sorrow had pierced it through and worked its way into her inmost being—only to be transmuted into immortal, heaven-sent raptures and gleams, whose rays reach out across time, bearing the name "Wuthering Heights"!
How Emily doted upon "Branwell" and watched over him!? How she forgave him his caprices and favored him with pure love through offense
and contentment alike—he who possessed literary and artistic gifts that were never destined to unfold!? All this is revealed in a poem of hers lamenting him:
"Yes, some may hate you and others despise you, and your beloved name may be effaced from the memory of some; but my sorrowing heart will remain faithful to your memory; it will weep in you the departed hopes, and the genius buried beneath the layers of the earth..."
And "Emily" folded herself about her sorrows, weaving them into poems—how it pained her that anyone should read them! And why? They were for her alone. Were they not the very melting of that wounded heart, the channel of her sorrows and her longings and her immortal love, as she used to say!?
Those poems, together with those far-off spots and the hills she used to roam, were her sole source of consolation. Were they not the homeland where hearts beat and memories meet!? She saw in them—as Charlotte says—a heavenly paradise; it is as though, with "Elizabeth Browning," she were communing with them in a sweeping longing: "O hills of my country: do you know what I endure for your sake!? How I burn and am consumed in you, O my beloved hills!? And in the darkness of night, do you feel the longing and the yearnings that blaze in my breast toward you!?"
And weeks passed after the death of "Branwell," and "Emily" followed him down the dark road; and after her the latent disease showed itself in "Anne," that youngest sister who was likewise a woman of letters and a poet, though she did not attain her sister's rank; and all she left of literary works were her novel "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and a few poems in the sisters' volume of verse.
Charlotte took her to the seashore
in the hope that she might find a cure there for her ailment—but in vain!... And on the evening of a day—thirty days after "Emily's" death—Charlotte stood upon the shore, her head bowed, imploring in deep sorrow, for the last of the sisters—laid out upon the bed of death—a greeting of farewell! And Charlotte came back to Haworth, sorrows storming about her. Where now was "Emily," that tender girl who tasted happiness only twice: the day their volume of poems was published, and the day her enduring work, "Wuthering Heights," appeared?
And let us see now: how did the sisters turn to the writing of novels after that failure in the publishing of their volume of verse, in the year 1846? Is it not strange that only two copies of it should have sold at the time, and that it should have been sent back from one publisher to another—when Emily has since been counted among the greatest poetesses of the nineteenth century!?
Failure renewed their resolve and clothed them with strength, and they threw themselves, with all the intelligence and genius that was in them, into the writing of novels; and the daughter of the "Yorkshire" parson, Charlotte—and she it was who had fostered in her sister the spirit of perseverance and work—swept the whole European continent into admiration with her book "Jane Eyre"...
After it she published two more novels of hers, "Shirley" in 1849 and "Villette" in 1852, and the two are a record of her sister's life and of her own: the first character in Shirley is "Emily," while the story of "Villette" is an account of her own life in Brussels...
Yet her fame, which spread to every horizon, rests upon her novel "Jane Eyre." Its opening chapters draw a speaking portrait of her