all pretty well. Remember me kindly to each
member of the household at Brookroyd.--Yours,

'C. B.'

The third curate of _Shirley_, Mr. Sweeting of Nunnely, was Mr. Richard
Bradley, curate of Oakworth, an outlying district of Keighley parish. He
is at this present time vicar of Haxby, Yorkshire, but far too aged and
infirm to have any memories of those old Haworth days.

Mr. Bronte's one other curate was Mr. De Renzi, who occupied the position
for a little more than a year,--during the period, in fact, of Mr.
Bronte's quarrel with Mr. Nicholls for aspiring to become his son-in-law.
After he left Haworth, Mr. De Renzi became a curate at Bradford. He has
been dead for some years. The story of Mr. Nicholls's curacy belongs to
another chapter. It is sufficient testimony to his worth, however, that
he was able to win Charlotte Bronte in spite of the fact that his
predecessors had inspired in her such hearty contempt. 'I think he must
be like all the curates I have seen,' she writes of one; 'they seem to me
a self-seeking, vain, empty race.'

CHAPTER XII: CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S LOVERS

Charlotte Bronte was not beautiful, but she must have been singularly
fascinating. That she was not beautiful there is abundant evidence.
When, as a girl of fifteen, she became a pupil at Roe Head, Mary Taylor
once told her to her face that she was ugly. Ugly she was not in later
years. All her friends emphasise the soft silky hair, and the beautiful
grey eyes which in moments of excitement seemed to glisten with
remarkable brilliancy. But she had a sallow complexion, and a large nose
slightly on one side. She was small in stature, and, in fact, the casual
observer would have thought her a quaint, unobtrusive little body. Mr.
Grundy's memory was very defective when he wrote about the Brontes; but,
with the exception of the reference to red hair--and all the girls had
brown hair--it would seem that he was not very wide of the mark when he
wrote of 'the daughters--distant and distrait, large of nose, small of
figure, red of hair, prominent of spectacles, showing great intellectual
development, but with eyes constantly cast down, very silent, painfully
retiring.'

Charlotte was indeed painfully shy. Miss Wheelwright, who saw much of
her during her visits to London in the years of her literary success,
says that she would never enter a room without shelteri