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Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. Years and years ago, when I was a child, hunting forlornly in my father's bookshelves, I came upon a small, shabby volume, bound in yellow linen. The title-page was adorned with one bad wood-cut that showed a grim, plain house standing obliquely to a churchyard packed with tombstones tombstones upright and flat, and slanting at all angles.
His story brought out the insignificance of Charlotte Bronte's aspect, and the bluff rejection of her by Mr. , much more strongly than Mrs. Gaskell's narrative. Chorlton Road, August 9th.
Gaskell's "Cranford"; upon yonder settee, Francis Mahony Methuen, the oldest son, was deep in the perusal of Wilson's "Tales of the Border"; his brother, Russell Lowell, was equally absorbed in the pathetic tale of "The Man without a Country"; Letitia Landon Methuen, the daughter, was quietly sobbing over the tragedy of "Evangeline"; in his high chair sat the chubby baby boy, Beranger Methuen, crowing gleefully over an illustrated copy of that grand old classic, "Poems for Infant Minds by Two Young Persons."
Gaskell's part there was an ardent desire to maintain their former intimacy, yet the two young men saw less and less of one another, until their intercourse was confined to an accidental greeting in the street. I believe that during all this time my brother played very frequently on the Stradivarius violin, but always alone.
Accordingly, I wrote a lecture which was the foundation of the little book I subsequently published on the same subject. Miss Nussey, Charlotte's schoolfellow and bosom friend, and the "dear E." of Mrs. Gaskell's "Life," was then living at Birstall, near Leeds. She heard of my lecture through some mutual friend, and expressed a desire to be allowed to read it.
So completely has she been passed over that when Madame Duclaux came to write the Life of Emily Brontë she found little to add to Mrs. Gaskell's meagre record beyond that story, which she tells with an incomparable simplicity and reticence, of Emily in her mortal illness, sitting by the hearth, combing her long hair till the comb slips from her fingers.
Gaskell's narrative, as though these traditions were in some way connected with the lives of the Brontes. Finally, she declared that she would not rest satisfied until a book had been written about Charlotte which toned down the over-colouring of Mrs. Gaskell's narrative, and she asked me if I was prepared to write such a book. It was a flattering proposal, but I felt compelled to decline it.
It was far too good to be kept to himself; John Brown's brother thought it so excellent that he committed it to memory. This was hard on Branwell. The letter is too fantastic to be used against him as evidence of his extreme depravity, but it certainly lends some support to Mrs. Gaskell's statements that he had begun already, at two-and-twenty, to be an anxiety to his family.
But what is that in a city in which, according to Gaskell's calculation, three-fourths of the population need medical aid every year? English doctors charge high fees, and working-men are not in a position to pay them. They can therefore do nothing, or are compelled to call in cheap charlatans, and use quack remedies, which do more harm than good.
Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Brontë" is one of the great biographies of literature, but like other works on the same theme, it is really a history of the Brontë family during the period of Charlotte's life. The individuals of this family were for many years as closely associated with one another as they were closely hidden from the outside world.
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