me into communication with a gifted
daughter of Mr. W. S. Williams. Mrs. Williams and her husband generously
placed the whole series of these letters of Charlotte Bronte to their
father at my disposal. It was of some of these letters that Mrs. Gaskell
wrote in enthusiastic terms when she had read them, and she was only
permitted to see a few. Then I have to thank Mr. Joshua Taylor, the
nephew of Miss Mary Taylor, for permission to publish his aunt's letters.
Mr. James Taylor, again, who wanted to marry Charlotte Bronte, and who
died twenty years afterwards in Bombay, left behind him a bundle of
letters which I found in the possession of a relative in the north of
London. {25} I discovered through a letter addressed to Miss Nussey that
the 'Brussels friend' referred to by Mrs. Gaskell was a Miss Laetitia
Wheelwright, and I determined to write to all the Wheelwrights in the
London Directory. My first effort succeeded, and _the_ Miss Wheelwright
kindly lent me all the letters that she had preserved. It is scarcely
possible that time will reveal many more unpublished letters from the
author of _Jane Eyre_. Several of those already in print are forgeries,
and I have actually seen a letter addressed from Paris, a city which Miss
Bronte never visited. I have the assurance of Dr. Heger of Brussels that
Miss Bronte's correspondence with his father no longer exists. In any
case one may safely send forth this little book with the certainty that
it is a fairly complete collection of Charlotte Bronte's correspondence,
and that it is altogether a valuable revelation of a singularly
interesting personality. Steps will be taken henceforth, it may be
added, to vindicate Mr. Nicholls's rights in whatever may still remain of
his wife's unpublished correspondence.

CHAPTER I: PATRICK BRONTE AND MARIA HIS WIFE

It would seem quite clear to any careful investigator that the Reverend
Patrick Bronte, Incumbent of Haworth, and the father of three famous
daughters, was a much maligned man. We talk of the fierce light which
beats upon a throne, but what is that compared to the fierce light which
beats upon any man of some measure of individuality who is destined to
live out his life in the quiet of a country village--in the very centre,
as it were, of 'personal talk' and gossip not always kindly to the
stranger within the gate? The view of Mr. Bronte, presented by Mrs.
Gaskell in the early editions of her biography of Charlott