I may here introduce a quotation from a letter which I have received from “Mary” since the publication of the previous editions of this memoir.

“Soon after leaving school she admitted reading something of Cobbett’s.  ‘She did not like him,’ she said; ’but all was fish that came to her net.’  At this time she wrote to me that reading and drawing were the only amusements she had, and that her supply of books was very small in proportion to her wants.  She never spoke of her aunt.  When I saw Miss Branwell she was a very precise person, and looked very odd, because her dress, &c., was so utterly out of fashion.  She corrected one of us once for using the word ‘spit’ or ‘spitting.’  She made a great favourite of Branwell.  She made her nieces sew, with purpose or without, and as far as possible discouraged any other culture.  She used to keep the girls sewing charity clothing, and maintained to me that it was not for the good of the recipients, but of the sewers.  ’It was proper for them to do it,’ she said.  Charlotte never was ‘in wild excitement’ that I know of.  When in health she used to talk better, and indeed when in low spirits never spoke at all.  She needed her best spirits to say what was in her heart, for at other times she had not courage.  She never gave decided opinions at such times . . .

“Charlotte said she could get on with any one who had a bump at the top of their heads (meaning conscientiousness).  I found that I seldom differed from her, except that she was far too tolerant of stupid people, if they had a grain of kindness in them.”

It was about this time that Mr. Bronte provided his children with a teacher in drawing, who turned out to be a man of considerable talent, but very little principle.  Although they never attained to anything like proficiency, they took great interest in acquiring this art; evidently, from an instinctive desire to express their powerful imaginations in visible forms.  Charlotte told me, that at this period of her life, drawing, and walking out with her sisters, formed the two great pleasures and relaxations of her day.

The three girls used to walk upwards toward the “purple-black” moors, the sweeping surface of which was broken by here and there a stone-quarry; and if they had strength and time to go far enough, they reached a waterfall, where the beck fell over some rocks into the “bottom.”  They seldom went downwards through the village.  They were shy of meeting even familiar faces, and were scrupulous about entering the house of the very poorest uninvited.  They were steady teachers at the Sunday-School, a habit which Charlotte kept up very faithfully, even after she was left alone; but they never faced their kind voluntary, and always preferred the solitude and freedom of the moors.

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