“Haworth, July 6th, 1835.

“I had hoped to have had the extreme pleasure of seeing you at Haworth this summer, but human affairs are mutable, and human resolutions must bend to the course of events.  We are all about to divide, break up, separate.  Emily is going to school, Branwell is going to London, and I am going to be a governess.  This last determination I formed myself, knowing that I should have to take the step sometime, ’and better sune as syne,’ to use the Scotch proverb; and knowing well that papa would have enough to do with his limited income, should Branwell be placed at the Royal Academy, and Emily at Roe Head.  Where am I going to reside? you will ask.  Within four miles of you, at a place neither of us is unacquainted with, being no other than the identical Roe Head mentioned above.  Yes!  I am going to teach in the very school where I was myself taught.  Miss W—–­ made me the offer, and I preferred it to one or two proposals of private governess-ship, which I had before received.  I am sad—­very sad—­at the thoughts of leaving home; but duty—­necessity—­these are stern mistresses, who will not be disobeyed.  Did I not once say you ought to be thankful for your independence?  I felt what I said at the time, and I repeat it now with double earnestness; if anything would cheer me, it is the idea of being so near you.  Surely, you and Polly will come and see me; it would be wrong in me to doubt it; you were never unkind yet.  Emily and I leave home on the 27th of this month; the idea of being together consoles us both somewhat, and, truth, since I must enter a situation, ‘My lines have fallen in pleasant places.’  I both love and respect Miss W-.”

CHAPTER VIII

On the 29th of July, 1835, Charlotte, now a little more than nineteen years old, went as teacher to Miss W—–­’s.  Emily accompanied her as a pupil; but she became literally ill from home-sickness, and could not settle to anything, and after passing only three months at Roe Head, returned to the parsonage and the beloved moors.

Miss Bronte gives the following reasons as those which prevented Emily’s remaining at school, and caused the substitution of her younger sister in her place at Miss W—–­’s:—­

“My sister Emily loved the moors.  Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her;—­out of a sullen hollow in a livid hill-side, her mind could make an Eden.  She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was—­liberty.  Liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils; without it she perished.  The change from her own home to a school, and from her own very noiseless, very secluded, but unrestricted and unartificial mode of life, to one of disciplined routine (though under the kindest auspices), was what she failed in enduring.  Her nature proved here too strong for her fortitude.