The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 2Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
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The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 2
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
She returned to her quiet home, and her noiseless daily duties. Her
father had quite enough of the spirit of hero-worship in him to make him
take a vivid pleasure in the accounts of what she had heard and whom she
had seen. It was on the occasion of one of her visits to London that
he had desired her to obtain a sight of Prince Albert's armoury, if
possible. I am not aware whether she managed to do this; but she went
to one or two of the great national armouries in order that she might
describe the stern steel harness and glittering swords to her father,
whose imagination was forcibly struck by the idea of such things; and
often afterwards, when his spirits flagged and the languor of old age
for a time got the better of his indomitable nature, she would again
strike on the measure wild, and speak about the armies of strange
weapons she had seen in London, till he resumed his interest in the old
subject, and was his own keen, warlike, intelligent self again.
CHAPTER V.
Her life at Haworth was so unvaried that the postman's call was the
event of her day. Yet she dreaded the great temptation of centring all
her thoughts upon this one time, and losing her interest in the smaller
hopes and employments of the remaining hours. Thus she conscientiously
denied herself the pleasure of writing letters too frequently, because
the answers (when she received them) took the flavour out of the rest
of her life; or the disappointment, when the replies did not arrive,
lessened her energy for her home duties.
The winter of this year in the north was hard and cold; it affected
Miss Brontë's health less than usual, however, probably because the
change and the medical advice she had taken in London had done her good;
probably, also, because her friend had come to pay her a visit, and
enforced that attention to bodily symptoms which Miss Brontë was too apt
to neglect, from a fear of becoming nervous herself about her own state
and thus infecting her father. But she could scarcely help feeling much
depressed in spirits as the anniversary of her sister Emily's death came
round; all the recollections connected with it were painful, yet there
were no outward events to call off her attention, and prevent them from
pressing hard upon her. At this time, as at many others, I find her
alluding in her letters to the solace which she found in the books sent
her from Cornhill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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