The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 2 of 2 — John Shaqi
The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 2 of 2Leyland, Francis A.
History
The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 2 of 2
Leyland, Francis A.
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Brontë family; Brontë, Patrick Branwell, 1817-1848
So was Charlotte to be disillusioned. But what a fairyland had she
fashioned to herself of that gay Belgian capital, and what painful
memories she brought thence! For, according to Mr. Wemyss Reid,--and
doubtless he is right--her stay in Brussels with Emily, and afterwards
alone, was the turning-point in Charlotte's career, and the record of
it in 'Villette' was wrung from her as her heart's blood, amid
paroxysms of positive anguish. But of these things she knew nothing in
the January of 1842; then the future slept in sunny calm, so sunny,
indeed, that to part from Haworth, and those she knew there, her
father and her brother and sister, gave her scarcely a pang; and
afterwards, so far as one can trace, from her letters, and from
'Villette,' which expresses even more, the troubles of the parsonage
were never acute troubles to her. Her joys and troubles abroad were in
fact her own, and they were borne and suffered alone.
But, with Emily, Haworth was no wilderness, a paradise rather, and
with bitter pain she left the moors that the coming summer should
cover with purple billows. For Emily Brontë was inspired far more than
her sister with the influences of locality and of her home. Amidst the
distant Yorkshire hills dwelt, too, her father, with Branwell and
Anne, whom she loved more than all else in the world; and many an
hour, sitting in the bare rooms of the _pensionnat_, she pondered
on their hopes and their sorrows. We cannot say that Emily's sojourn
in Brussels changed her in any way whatever, nor that she was made by
it of any nearer kinship with the outside world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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