-which nothing
softens but his retreat, and a perfect subduing of his manner."
And again, "my conscience, I can truly say, does not _now_ accuse
me of having treated Mr. Taylor with injustice or unkindness ...
but with every disposition and with every wish, with every intention
even to look on him in the most favourable point of view at his last
visit, it was impossible to me in my inward heart to think of him as one
that might one day be acceptable as a husband." Could anything be _more_
explicit? There is a good deal more of it. After one very searching
criticism of Mr. Taylor: "One does not like to say these things, but one
had better be honest." And of her honesty Charlotte's letters on this
subject leave no doubt. There is not the smallest ground for supposing
that even for a moment had she thought of Mr. James Taylor as "one that
one day might be acceptable", much less is there for Mr. Clement
Shorter's suggestion that if he had come back from Bombay she would have
married him.

But Joe or James, it is all one to Mrs. Oliphant, with her theory of
Charlotte Bronte. "For her and her class, which did not speak of it,
everything depended upon whether the women married or did not marry.
Their thoughts were thus artificially fixed to one point in the
horizon." The rest is repetition, ending in the astounding verdict: "The
seed she thus sowed has come to many growths that would have appalled
Charlotte Bronte. But while it would be very unjust to blame her for the
vagaries that have followed, and to which nothing could be less
desirable than any building of the house or growth of the race, any
responsibility or service, we must still believe that it was she who
drew the curtain first aside and opened the gates to imps of evil
meaning, polluting and profaning the domestic hearth."

That is Mrs. Oliphant on Charlotte Bronte.

And even Mr. Clement Shorter, who has dealt so admirably with outrageous
legends, goes half the way with the detractor. He has a theory that
Charlotte Bronte was a woman of morbid mood, "to whom the problem of sex
appealed with all its complications", and that she "dwelt continually on
the problem of the ideal mate".

Now Charlotte may have dreamed of getting married (there have been more
criminal dreams); she may have brooded continually over the problem of
the ideal mate, only of all these dreams and broodings there is not one
atom of evidence--not one. Not a hint, not a trace, either in her
cha