Two years later she went back to Miss Wooler’s school as a teacher.

In the register of the Clergy Daughters’ School there are two immortal entries: 

“Charlotte Bronte....  Left school, June 1st, 1825—­Governess.”

“Emily Bronte....  Left, June 1st, 1825.  Subsequent career—­Governess.”

They did not question the arrangement.  They were not aware of any other destiny.  They never doubted that the boy, Branwell, was the child of promise, who was to have a glorious career.  In order that he should have it the sisters left Haworth again and again, forcing themselves to the exile that destroyed them, and the work they hated.  It was Charlotte and Anne who showed themselves most courageous and determined in the terrible adventure; Emily, who was courage and determination incarnate, failed.  Homesickness had become a disease with them, an obsession, almost a madness.  They longed with an immitigable longing for their Parsonage-house, their graveyard, and their moors.  Emily was consumed by it; Anne languished; Charlotte was torn between it and her passion for knowledge.

She took Emily back with her to Roe Head as a pupil, and Emily nearly died of it.  She sent Emily home, and little Anne, the last victim, took Emily’s place.  She and Charlotte went with the school when it was removed to Dewsbury Moor.  Then Emily, who had nearly died of Roe Head, shamed by Charlotte’s and Anne’s example, went to Halifax as a teacher in Miss Patchett’s Academy for Young Ladies.  She was at Halifax—­Halifax of all places—­for six months, and nearly died of Halifax.  And after that Charlotte and Anne set out on their careers as nursery-governesses.

It was all that they considered themselves fit for.  Anne went to a Mrs. Ingham at Blake Hall, where she was homesick and miserable.  Charlotte went to the Sidgwicks at Stonegappe near Skipton, where “one of the pleasantest afternoons I spent—­indeed, the only one at all pleasant—­was when Mr. Sidgwick walked out with his children, and I had orders to follow a little way behind”.  You have an impression of years of suffering endured at Stonegappe.  As a matter of fact, Charlotte was there hardly three months—­May, June, July, eighteen-thirty-nine.

And most of the time their brother Branwell was either at Bradford or at Haworth, dreaming of greatness, and drinking at the “Black Bull”.  The “Black Bull” stands disastrously near to the Parsonage, at the corner of the churchyard, with its parlour windows looking on the graves.  Branwell was the life and soul of every party of commercial travellers that gathered there.  Conviviality took strange forms at Haworth.  It had a Masonic Lodge of the Three Graces, with John Brown, the grave-digger, for Worshipful Master.  Branwell was at one and the same time secretary to the Three Graces and to the Haworth Temperance Society.  When he was not entertaining bagmen, he was either at Bradford painting bad portraits, or at Haworth pouring out verses, fearfully long, fatally fluent verses, and writing hysterical letters to the editor of Blackwood’s Magazine.