Gaskell tells, after evening prayers, when their
guardian and relative had gone to bed, the three poetesses--the three
maidens, Charlotte, and Emily, and Anne--Charlotte being the "motherly
friend and guardian to the other two"--"began, like restless wild
animals, to pace up and down their parlor, 'making out' their wonderful
stories, talking over plans and projects, and thoughts of what was to be
their future life."
One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat with her
husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the wind about the
house, she suddenly said to her husband, "If you had not been with me,
I must have been writing now." She then ran up stairs, and brought down,
and read aloud, the beginning of a new tale. When she had finished,
her husband remarked, "The critics will accuse you of repetition." She
replied, "Oh! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times
before I can please myself." But it was not to be. The trembling
little hand was to write no more. The heart newly awakened to love and
happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, was soon to cease to beat;
that intrepid outspeaker and champion of truth, that eager, impetuous
redresser of wrong, was to be called out of the world's fight and
struggle, to lay down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere
where even a noble indignation cor ulterius nequit lacerare, and where
truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage war.
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