Writing of Charlotte at this time “Mary” says the other girls “thought her very ignorant, for she had never learned grammar at all, and very little geography, but she would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range altogether.  She said she had never played, and could not play.  She used to draw much better and more quickly than we had seen before, and knew much about celebrated pictures and painters.  She made poetry and drawing very interesting to me, and then I got the habit I have yet of referring mentally to her opinion all matters of that kind, resolving to describe such and such things to her, until I start at the recollection that I never shall.”

This tribute to her influence was written eleven years after Mary had seen Charlotte, nearly all those years having been passed by Mary at the Antipodes.

“Her idea of self improvement,” continues Mary, “was to cultivate her tastes.  She always said there was enough of useful knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds, and she picked up every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture and music, as if it were gold.”

In spite of her unsociable habits, she was a favourite with her schoolfellows, and an invaluable story-teller, frightening them almost out of their lives as they lay in bed.

III.—­Her Life as a Governess

After a year and a half’s residence at Roe Head, beloved and respected by all, laughed at occasionally by a few, but always to her face, Charlotte returned home to educate her sisters, to practise household work under the supervision of her somewhat exacting aunt, and to write long letters to her girl friends, Mary and Ellen—­Mary, the Rose Yorke, and Ellen, the Caroline Helstone of “Shirley.”  Three years later she returned to Roe Head as a teacher, in order that her brother Branwell might be placed at the Royal Academy and her sister Emily at Roe Head.  Emily Bronte, however, only remained three months at school, her place being taken there by her younger sister, Anne.

“My sister Emily loved the moors,” wrote Charlotte, explaining the change.  “Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in the livid hillside her mind could make an Eden.  She found in the bleak solitude many a dear delight; and not the least and best loved was liberty.  Without it she perished.  Her nature proved here too strong for her fortitude.  In this struggle her health was quickly broken.  I felt in my heart that she would die if she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained her recall.”

Charlotte’s own life at Miss Wooler’s was a very happy one until her health failed, and she became dispirited, and a prey to religious despondency.  During the summer holidays of 1836, all the members of the family were occupied with thoughts of literature.  Charlotte wrote to Southey, and Branwell to Wordsworth, of their ambitions, and Southey replied that “literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and ought not to be.  The more she is engaged in her proper duties the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and recreation.”  To this Charlotte meekly replied:  “I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in print.”