Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Papersminds to behold and delight in masterpieces which poets’and artists’ minds have fathered and conceived only.With a feeling much akin to that with which I lookedupon the friend’s—the admirable artist’s—unfinishedwork, I can fancy many readers turning to the last pageswhich were traced by Charlotte Bronte’s hand. Of themultitude that have read her books, who has not knownand deplored the tragedy of her family, her own mostsad and untimely fate? Which of her readers has notbecome her friend? Who that has known her books hasnot admired the artist’s noble English, the burning loveof truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation atwrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence,the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman?What a story is that of that family of poets in theirsolitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors! At nineo’clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell tells, after evening prayers,when their guardian and relative had gone to bed, thethree poetesses—the three maidens, Charlotte, andEmily, and Anne—Charlotte being the “motherly friendand guardian to the other two”—”began, like restlesswild animals, to pace up and down their parlor, ‘makingout’ their wonderful stories, talking over plans andprojects, and thoughts of what was to be their futurelife.”One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nichollssat with her husband by the fire, listening to the howlingof the wind about the house, she suddenly said toher husband, “If you had not been with me, I must havebeen writing now.” She then ran up stairs, and broughtdown, and read aloud, the beginning of a new tale. Whenshe had finished, her husband remarked, “The criticswill accuse you of repetition.” She replied, “Oh! I shallalter that. I always begin two or three times before Ican please myself.” But it was not to be. The tremblinglittle hand was to write no more. The heart newly awakenedto love and happiness, and throbbing with maternalhope, was soon to cease to beat; that intrepidoutspeaker and champion of truth, that eager, impetuousredresser of wrong, was to be called out of the world’sfight and struggle, to lay down the shining arms, andto be removed to a sphere where even a noble indigna-316