ters, and if I saw my way to do anything which would add
to the public appreciation of the friend who from early childhood until
now has been the most absorbing interest of her life. A careful study of
the volume made it perfectly clear that there were still some letters
which might with advantage be added to the Bronte story. At the same
time arose the possibility of a veto being placed upon their publication.
An examination of Charlotte Bronte's will, which was proved at York by
her husband in 1855, suggested an easy way out of the difficulty. I made
up my mind to try and see Mr. Nicholls. I had heard of his
disinclination to be in any way associated with the controversy which had
gathered round his wife for all these years; but I wrote to him
nevertheless, and received a cordial invitation to visit him in his Irish
home.

It was exactly forty years to a day after Charlotte died--March 31st,
1895--when I alighted at the station in a quiet little town in the centre
of Ireland, to receive the cordial handclasp of the man into whose
keeping Charlotte Bronte had given her life. It was one of many visits,
and the beginning of an interesting correspondence. Mr. Nicholls placed
all the papers in his possession in my hands. They were more varied and
more abundant than I could possibly have anticipated. They included MSS.
of childhood, of which so much has been said, and stories of adult life,
one fragment indeed being later than the _Emma_ which appeared in the
_Cornhill Magazine_ for 1856, with a note by Thackeray. Here were the
letters Charlotte Bronte had written to her brother and to her sisters
during her second sojourn in Brussels--to 'Dear Branwell' and 'Dear E.
J.,' as she calls Emily--letters even to handle will give a thrill to the
Bronte enthusiast. Here also were the love-letters of Maria Branwell to
her lover Patrick Bronte, which are referred to in Mrs. Gaskell's
biography, but have never hitherto been printed.

'The four small scraps of Emily and Anne's manuscript,' writes Mr.
Nicholls, 'I found in the small box I send you; the others I found in
the bottom of a cupboard tied up in a newspaper, where they had lain
for nearly thirty years, and where, had it not been for your visit,
they must have remained during my lifetime, and most likely
afterwards have been destroyed.'

Some slight extracts from Bronte letters in _Macmillan's Magazine_,
signed 'E. Balmer Williams,' brought