In his postscript Branwell says:  “Of course you won’t show this letter”, and of course John Brown showed it all round.  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.  Haworth, that schooled his sisters to a high and beautiful austerity, was bad for Branwell.

He stayed with Mr. Postlethwaite for a month longer than Charlotte stayed with the Sidgwicks.

Then, for a whole year, Charlotte was at Haworth, doing housemaid’s work, and writing poems, and amusing herself at the expense of her father’s curates.  She had begun to find out the extent to which she could amuse herself.  She also had had “her chance”.  She had refused two offers of marriage, preferring the bondage and the exile that she knew.  Nothing more exhilarating than a proposal that you have rejected.  Those proposals did Charlotte good.  But it was not marriage that she wanted.  She found it (for a year) happiness enough to be at Haworth, to watch the long comedy of the curates as it unrolled itself before her.  She saw most things that summer (her twenty-fifth) with the ironic eyes of the comic spirit, even Branwell.  She wrote to Miss Nussey:  “A distant relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, has set off to seek his fortune in the wild, wandering, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railroad.”  And she goes on to chaff Miss Nussey about Celia Amelia, the curate.  “I know Mrs. Ellen is burning with eagerness to hear something about W. Weightman, whom she adores in her heart, and whose image she cannot efface from her memory.”

Some of her critics, including Mrs. Oliphant (far less indulgent than the poor curates who forgave her nobly), have grudged Charlotte her amusement.  There is nothing, from her fame downwards, that Mrs. Oliphant did not grudge her.  Mr. Birrell sternly disapproves; even Mr. Swinburne, at the height of his panegyric, is put off.  Perhaps Charlotte’s humour was not her most attractive quality; but nobody seems to have seen the pathos and the bravery of it.  Neither have they seen that Miss Nussey was at the bottom of its worst development, the “curate-baiting”.  Miss Nussey used to go and stay at Haworth for weeks at a time.  Haworth was not amusing, and Miss Nussey had to be amused.  All this school-girlish jesting, the perpetual and rather tiresome banter, was a playing down to Miss Nussey.  It was a kind of tender “baiting” of Miss Nussey, who had tried on several occasions to do Charlotte good.  And it was the natural, healthy rebound of the little Irish gamine that lived in Charlotte Bronte, bursting with cleverness and devilry.  I, for my part, am glad to think that for one happy year she gave it full vent.