ce was,
next to her genius, the largest, and at the same time the most delicate
part of her, and that her love for her own people was a sacred passion,
her words are sufficiently charged with meaning. A passion for M. Heger
is, psychologically speaking, superfluous. You can prove anything by
detaching words from their context. The letter from which that passage
has been torn is an answer to Ellen Nussey's suggestions of work for
Charlotte. Charlotte says "any project which infers the necessity of my
leaving home is impracticable to me. If I could leave home I should not
be at Haworth now. I know life is passing away, and I am doing nothing,
earning nothing--a very bitter knowledge it is at moments--but I see no
way out of the mist"; and so on for another line or two, and then:
"These ideas sting me keenly sometimes; but whenever I consult my
conscience it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home, and
bitter are its upbraidings when I yield to an eager desire for release."
And then, the passage quoted _ad nauseam_, to support the legend of M.
Heger.

A "total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of
mind". This letter is dated October 1846--more than two years since her
return from Brussels in January, eighteen-forty-four. In those two years
her father was threatened with total blindness, and her brother Branwell
achieved his destiny. The passage refers unmistakably to events at
Haworth. It is further illuminated by another passage from an earlier
letter. Ellen Nussey is going through the same crisis--torn between duty
to herself and duty to her people. She asks Charlotte's advice and
Charlotte gives judgment: "The right path is that which necessitates the
greatest sacrifice of self-interest." The sacrifice, observe, not of
happiness, not of passion, but of self-interest, the development of
self. It was self-development, and not passion, not happiness, that she
went to Brussels for.

And Charlotte's letters from Brussels--from the scene of passion in the
year of crisis, eighteen-forty-three--sufficiently reveal the nature of
the trouble there. Charlotte was alone in the Pensionnat without Emily.
Emily was alone at Haworth. The few friends she had in Brussels left
soon after her arrival. She was alone in Brussels, and her homesickness
was terrible. You can trace the malady in all its stages. In March she
writes: "I ought to consider myself well off, and to be thankful for my
good fortune. I h