Part 2 (2/2)

I have been waiting for an opportunity of sending a letter to you as you wished; but as no such opportunity offers itself, I have at length determined to write to you by post, fearing that if I delayed any longer you would attribute my tardiness to indifference. I can scarcely realise the distance that lies between us, or the length of time which may elapse before we meet again.

Now, Ellen, I have no news to tell you, no changes to communicate.

My life since I saw you last has pa.s.sed away as monotonously and unvaryingly as ever--nothing but teach, teach, teach, from morning till night. The greatest variety I ever have is afforded by a letter from you, a call from the T----s, or by meeting with a pleasant new book. The ”Life of Oberlin,” and Legh Richmond's ”Domestic Portraiture,” are the last of this description I have perused. The latter work strongly attracted and strangely fascinated my attention. Beg, borrow, or steal it without delay, and read the ”Memoir of Richmond.” That short record of a brief and uneventful life I shall never forget. It is beautiful, not on account of the language in which it is written, not on account of the incidents it details, but because of the simple narration it gives of the life and death of a young, talented, sincere Christian. Get the book, Ellen (I wish I had it to give you), read it, and tell me what you think of it. Yesterday I heard that you had been ill since you were in London. I hope you are better now.

Are you any happier than you were? Try to reconcile your mind to circ.u.mstances, and exert the quiet fort.i.tude of which I know you are not dest.i.tute. Your absence leaves a sort of vacancy in my feelings which nothing has as yet offered of sufficient interest to supply. I do not forget ten o'clock. I remember it every night, and if a sincere pet.i.tion for your welfare will do you any good you will be benefited. I know the Bible says: ”The prayer of the _righteous_ availeth much,” and I am _not righteous_. Nevertheless I believe G.o.d despises no application that is uttered in sincerity.

My own dear E----, good-bye. I can write no more, for I am called to a less pleasant avocation.

Dewsbury Moor, Oct. 2, 1836.

I should have written to you a week ago, but my time has of late been so wholly taken up that till now I have really not had an opportunity of answering your last letter. I a.s.sure you I feel the kindness of so early a reply to my tardy correspondence. It gave me a sting of self-reproach.... My sister Emily is gone into a situation as teacher in a large school of near forty pupils, near Halifax. I have had one letter from her since her departure. It gives an appalling account of her duties. Hard labour from six in the morning till near eleven at night, with only one half-hour of exercise between. This is slavery. I fear she will never stand it.

It gives me sincere pleasure, my dear Ellen, to learn that you have at last found a few a.s.sociates of congenial minds. I cannot conceive a life more dreary than that pa.s.sed amidst sights, sounds, and companions all alien to the nature within us. From the tenor of your letters it seems that your mind remains fixed as it ever was, in no wise dazzled by novelty or warped by evil example.

I am thankful for it. I could not help smiling at the paragraphs which related to ----. There was in them a touch of the genuine unworldly simplicity which forms part of your character. Ellen, depend upon it, all people have their dark side. Though some possess the power of throwing a fair veil over the defects, close acquaintance slowly removes the screen, and one by one the blots appear; till at last we see the pattern of perfection all slurred over with stains which even affection cannot efface.

The affectionate commendations of her friend are constantly accompanied by references of a very different character to herself.

If I like people--she says in one of her letters--it is my nature to tell them so, and I am not afraid of offering incense to your vanity. It is from religion that you derive your chief charm, and may its influence always preserve you as pure, as una.s.suming, and as benevolent in thought and deed as you are now. What am I compared to you? I feel my own utter worthlessness when I make the comparison. I'm a very coa.r.s.e, commonplace wretch! I have some qualities that make me very miserable, some feelings that you can have no partic.i.p.ation in--that few, very few people in the world can at all understand. I don't pride myself on these peculiarities. I strive to conceal and suppress them as much as I can, but they burst out sometimes, and then those who see the explosion despise me, and I hate myself for days afterwards.

All my notes to you, Ellen, are written in a hurry. I am now s.n.a.t.c.hing an opportunity. Mr. J---- is here; by his means it will be transmitted to Miss E----, by her means to X----, by his means to you. I do not blame you for not coming to see me. I am sure you have been prevented by sufficient reasons; but I do long to see you, and I hope I shall be gratified momentarily, at least, ere long. Next Friday, if all be well, I shall go to G----. On Sunday I hope I shall at least catch a glimpse of you. Week after week I have lived on the expectation of your coming. Week after week I have been disappointed. I have not regretted what I said in my last note to you. The confession was wrung from me by sympathy and kindness, such as I can never be sufficiently thankful for. I feel in a strange state of mind; still gloomy, but not despairing. I keep trying to do right, checking wrong feelings; repressing wrong thoughts--but still, every instant I find myself going astray. I have a constant tendency to scorn people who are far better than I am. A horror at the idea of becoming one of a certain set--a dread lest if I made the slightest profession I should sink at once into Phariseeism, merge wholly in the ranks of the self-righteous. In writing at this moment I feel an irksome disgust at the idea of using a single phrase that sounds like religious cant. I abhor myself; I despise myself. If the doctrine of Calvin be true, I am already an outcast. You cannot imagine how hard, rebellious, and intractable all my feelings are. When I begin to study on the subject I almost grow blasphemous, atheistical in my sentiments.

Don't desert me--don't be horrified at me. You know what I am. I wish I could see you, my darling. I have lavished the warmest affections of a very hot, tenacious heart upon you. If you grow cold it is over.

You will excuse a very brief and meagre answer to your kind note when I tell you that at the moment it reached me, and that just now whilst I am scribbling a reply, the whole house is in the bustle of packing and preparation, for on this day we all _go home_. Your palliation of my defects is kind and charitable, but I dare not trust its truth. Few would regard them with so lenient an eye as you do. Your consolatory admonitions are kind, Ellen; and when I can read them over in quietness and alone, I trust I shall derive comfort from them. But just now, in the unsettled, excited state of mind which I now feel, I cannot enter into the pure scriptural spirit which they breathe. It would be wrong of me to continue the subject. My thoughts are distracted and absorbed by other ideas.

You do not mention your visit to Haworth. Have you spoken of it to the family? Have they agreed to let you come? But I will write when I get home. Ever since last Friday I have been as busy as I could be in finis.h.i.+ng up the half-year's lessons, which concluded with a terrible fog in geographical problems (think of explaining that to Misses ---- and ----!), and subsequently in mending Miss ----'s clothes. Miss ---- is calling me: something about my _protegee's_ nightcap. Good-bye. We shall meet again ere many days, I trust.

Here it will be seen that the religious struggle was renewed. The woman who was afterwards to be accused of ”heathenism” was going through tortures such as Cowper knew in his darkest hours, and, like him, was acquiring faith, humility, and resignation in the midst of the conflict. But such letters as this are only episodical; in general she writes cheerfully, sometimes even merrily.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROE HEAD SCHOOL.]

What would the _Quarterly_ reviewer and the other charitable people, who openly declared their conviction that the author of ”Jane Eyre” was an improper person, who had written an improper book, have said had they been told that she had written the following letter on the subject of her first offer of marriage--written it, too, at the time when she was a governess, and in spite of the fact that the offer opened up to her a way of escape from all anxiety as to her future life?

You ask me whether I have received a letter from T----. I have about a week since. The contents I confess did a little surprise me; but I kept them to myself, and unless you had questioned me on the subject I would never have adverted to it. T---- says he is comfortably settled at ----, and that his health is much improved.

He then intimates that in due time he will want a wife, and frankly asks me to be that wife. Altogether the letter is written without cant or flattery, and in common-sense style which does credit to his judgment. Now there were in this proposal some things that might have proved a strong temptation. I thought if I were to marry so ---- could live with me, and how happy I should be. But again I asked myself two questions: Do I love T---- as much as a woman ought to love her husband? Am I the person best qualified to make him happy? Alas! my conscience answered ”No” to both these questions. I felt that though I esteemed T----, though I had a kindly leaning towards him, because he is an amiable, well-disposed man, yet I had not and never could 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. Ten to one I shall never have the chance again; but _n'importe_. Moreover, I was aware he knew so little of me he could hardly be conscious to whom he was writing. Why, it would startle him to see me in my natural home character. He would think I was a wild, romantic enthusiast indeed. I could not sit all day long making a grave face before my husband. I would laugh and satirise, and say whatever came into my head first; and if he were a clever man and loved me, the whole world weighed in the balance against his smallest wish would be light as air. Could I, knowing my mind to be such as that, conscientiously say that I would take a grave, quiet young man like T----? No; it would have been deceiving him, and deception of that sort is beneath me. So I wrote a long letter back in which I expressed my refusal as gently as I could, and also candidly avowed my reasons for that refusal. I described to him, too, the sort of character I thought would suit him for a wife.

The girl who could thus calmly decline a more than merely ”eligible”

offer, and thus honestly state her reasons for doing so to the friend she trusted, was strangely different from the author of ”Jane Eyre”

pictured by the critics and the public. Perhaps the full cost of the refusal related in the foregoing letter is only made clear when it is brought into contrast with such a confession as the following, made very soon afterwards:

I am miserable when I allow myself to dwell on the necessity of spending my life as a governess. The chief requisite for that station seems to me to be the power of taking things easily when they come, and of making oneself comfortable and at home wherever one may chance to be--qualities in which all our family are singularly deficient. I know I cannot live with a person like Mrs.

----; but I hope all women are not like her, and my motto is ”Try again.”

How thoroughly at all times she could sympathise alike with the joys and sorrows of others, is proved by many letters extending over the whole period of her life. The following is neither the earliest nor the most characteristic of those utterances of a tender and heartfelt sympathy with her special friend, which are to be found in her correspondence, but as Mrs. Gaskell has not made use of it, I may quote it here:

1838.

<script>