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 Brontë to become urgent. Branwell, a lad of great promise, had contracted some dangerous intimacies, and was known in the public-house parlour. He read 'Bell's Life,' took an interest in prize-fighting, and was anxious to see life in London. He had also read the classics, was fond of music, and could play the organ; while he was good-looking, though rather undersized, and had great powers of conversation. It is said that before going to London he could astonish bagmen at the 'Black Bull' by describing the topography of the metropolis. The whole family had certain artistic tastes, and Charlotte took infinite pains in minutely copying engravings until the practice injured her sight. Their father had procured them some drawing lessons from a Mr. W. Robinson of Leeds. Branwell had made acquaintance with some local artists and journalists, and contributed to the poets' corner of local journals. A special friend was Joseph Bentley Leyland, a rising sculptor, born at Halifax. Leyland went to London (December 1833) to study, and afterwards settled there as a sculptor. Branwell, stimulated by his example, made a short visit to London, went to the sights, saw Tom Spring at the Castle Tavern, Holborn, and soon returned, either from his own want of perseverance or because his father could not support him. This was apparently in the later months of 1835.

On 6 July 1835 Charlotte says that she is to be a governess in order to enable her father to pay for Branwell's education at the Royal Academy (, i. 147). On 29 July Charlotte went as teacher to Miss Wooler's school, taking Emily with her as pupil. After three months' stay, Emily became 'literally ill from home-sickness,' and returned to Haworth. It was about this time that an incident, the marriage of a girl to a man who, as it turned out, was already married to a wife of deranged intellect, suggested the plot of 'Jane Eyre' (, i. 151). Charlotte appears to have been happy at Miss Wooler's, though with occasional fits of depression caused by weak nerves. Her conscientious labour was too much for her strength. Miss Wooler moved her school to Dewsbury Moor, in a lower situation, where Charlotte's health suffered still more. Anne was also at the school, and apparently suffered from the change. In 1836 Emily again tried teaching, and passed six months at a school in Halifax, but soon found the burden of her duties and the absence from Haworth intolerable. Charlotte and Anne continued at Miss Wooler's till Christmas 1837, when symptoms of incipient consumption in Anne alarmed Charlotte, and caused the two girls to return. Charlotte had a temporary misunderstanding with Miss Wooler for supposed indifference to Anne's health; and though this was soon removed, and Charlotte was induced to return to her post in the spring of 1838, she found her health finally unequal to the task, and came back to Haworth.

For some time desultory attempts to find employment were the chief incidents of the sisters' lives. It had come to be agreed that Emily was to remain at home; Anne found a situation as governess in the spring of 1839, and spent the rest of her life in various places, where the frequent dependence upon coarse employers seems to have been the source of much misery; Charlotte was a governess for a short time in 1839, and again from March to December 1841, finding kindly and considerate employers on the second occasion. She declined two offers of marriage, one in March 1839 to the prototype of St. John in 'Jane Eyre,' and one in the same autumn from an Irish clergyman. Soon afterwards she wrote and sent to Wordsworth a fragment of a story mentioned in the preface to the 'Professor' as one in which she had got over her taste for the high-flown style. She had already sent some poems to Southey on 29 Dec. 1836, who replied, pointing out the objections to a literary career, in a letter of which she acknowledged the kindness and wisdom (, i. 162, 169-175;, Life and Correspondence, vi. 327-30). Branwell had written soon afterwards to Wordsworth (19 Jan. 1837), but apparently no answer was made. Southey's letter had led to Charlotte's abandonment of literature for the time, and it seems from her reply to Wordsworth (, i. 211) that his letter, though 'kind and candid,' was equally damping. Marriage and literature being renounced,she began to think of starting a school. The sisters thought that with the help of a loan from Miss Branwell's savings they might adapt the parsonage to the purpose. In 1841 Miss Wooler proposed to give up her school to the Brontes. The offer was eagerly accepted, but it seemed desirable that they should qualify themselves by acquiring some knowledge of foreign languages on the continent. After some inquiries they decided upon entering a school of eighty or a hundred pupils, kept by M. and Mme. Héger in the Rue d'Isabelle, Brussels. Charlotte and Emily went thither in February 1842, their father going with them, and staying one night at the Chapter coffee-house, Paternoster Row, and one night at Brussels. M. Héger was a man of ability and strong religious principles, choleric but benevolent, and an active member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. He was professor of