On the school being removed to Dewsbury Moor, Charlotte, whose health and spirits had been affected by the change, and Anne returned home.  “I stayed at Dewsbury Moor,” she said in a letter to Ellen Nussey, “as long as I was able; but at length I neither could nor dare stay any longer.  My life and spirits had utterly failed me; so home I went, and the change at once roused and soothed me.”

At this time Charlotte received an offer of marriage from a clergyman having a resemblance to St. John Rivers in “Jane Eyre”—­a brother of her friend Ellen; but she refused him as she explains: 

“I had a kindly leaning towards him as an amiable and well-disposed man.  Yet I had not and could not have that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for him; and if ever I marry it must be in that light of adoration that I will regard my husband.”

Teaching now seemed to the three sisters to be the only way of earning an independent livelihood, though they were not naturally fond of children.  The hieroglyphics of childhood were an unknown language to them, for they had never been much with those younger than themselves; and they were not as yet qualified to take charge of advanced pupils.  They knew but little French, and were not proficient in music.  Still, Charlotte and Anne both took posts as governesses, and eventually formed a plan of starting a school on their own account, their housekeeping Aunt Branwell providing the necessary capital.  To fit them for this work Charlotte and Emily entered, in February, 1842, the Heger Pensionnat, Brussels, and meantime Anne came home to Haworth from her governess life.  The brother, Branwell, had now given up his idea of art, and was a clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railway.

In Brussels, Emily was homesick as ever, the suffering and conflict being heightened, in the words of Charlotte, “by the strong recoil of her upright, heretic, and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system.  She was never happy till she carried her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the old parsonage house, and desolate Yorkshire hills.”  “We are completely isolated in the midst of numbers.  Yet I think I am never unhappy; my present life is so delightful, so congenial to my own nature, compared with that of a governess,” was Charlotte’s further description.

The sisters were so successful with their study of French that Madame Heger proposed that both should stay another half year, Charlotte to teach English, and Emily music; but from Brussels the girls were brought hastily home by the illness and death of their aunt, who left to each of them independently a share of her savings—­enough to enable them to make whatever alterations were needed to turn the parsonage into a school.  Emily now stayed at home, and Charlotte (January, 1843) returned to Brussels to teach English to Belgian pupils, under a constant sense of solitude and depression, while she learned German.  A year later she returned to Haworth, on receiving news of the distressing conduct of her brother Branwell and the rapid failure of her father’s sight.  On leaving Brussels, she took with her a diploma certifying that she was perfectly capable of teaching the French language, and her pupils showed for her, at parting, an affection which she observed with grateful surprise.