EN,--I left Swarcliffe a week since. I never was so glad to
get out of a house in my life; but I'll trouble you with no
complaints at present. Write to me directly; explain your plans more
fully. Say when you go, and I shall be able in my answer to say
decidedly whether I can accompany you or not. I must, I will, I'm
set upon it--I'll be obstinate and bear down all
opposition.--Good-bye, yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.'

That experience with the Sidgwicks rankled for many a day, and we find
Charlotte Bronte referring to it in her letters from Brussels. At the
same time it is not necessary to assume any very serious inhumanity on
the part of the Sidgwicks or their successors the Whites, to whom
Charlotte was indebted for her second term as private governess. Hers
was hardly a temperament adapted for that docile part, and one thinks of
the author of _Villette_, and the possessor of one of the most vigorous
prose styles in our language, condemned to a perpetual manufacture of
night-caps, with something like a shudder. And at the same time it may
be urged that Charlotte Bronte did not suffer in vain, and that through
her the calling of a nursery governess may have received some added
measure of dignity and consideration on the part of sister-women.

A month or two later we find Charlotte dealing with the subject in a
letter to Ellen Nussey.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _January_ 24_th_, 1840.

'MY DEAR ELLEN,--You could never live in an unruly, violent family of
modern children, such for instance as those at Blake Hall. Anne is
not to return. Mrs. Ingham is a placid, mild woman; but as for the
children, it was one struggle of life-wearing exertion to keep them
in anything like decent order. 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 as they come, and of making oneself comfortable and at
home wherever we may chance to be--qualities in which all our family
are singularly deficient. I know I cannot live with a person like
Mrs. Sidgwick, but I hope all women are not like her, and my motto is
"try again." Mary Taylor, I am sorry to hear, is ill--have you seen
her or heard anything of her lately? Sickness seems very gene