committed it to memory. This was hard on Branwell. The letter is too
fantastic to be used against him as evidence of his extreme depravity,
but it certainly lends some support to Mrs. Gaskell's statements that he
had begun already, at two-and-twenty, to be an anxiety to his family.
Haworth, that schooled his sisters to a high and beautiful austerity,
was bad for Branwell.

He stayed with Mr. Postlethwaite for a month longer than Charlotte
stayed with the Sidgwicks.

Then, for a whole year, Charlotte was at Haworth, doing housemaid's
work, and writing poems, and amusing herself at the expense of her
father's curates. She had begun to find out the extent to which she
could amuse herself. She also had had "her chance". She had refused two
offers of marriage, preferring the bondage and the exile that she knew.
Nothing more exhilarating than a proposal that you have rejected. Those
proposals did Charlotte good. But it was not marriage that she wanted.
She found it (for a year) happiness enough to be at Haworth, to watch
the long comedy of the curates as it unrolled itself before her. She saw
most things that summer (her twenty-fifth) with the ironic eyes of the
comic spirit, even Branwell. She wrote to Miss Nussey: "A distant
relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, has set off to seek his fortune
in the wild, wandering, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the
Leeds and Manchester Railroad." And she goes on to chaff Miss Nussey
about Celia Amelia, the curate. "I know Mrs. Ellen is burning with
eagerness to hear something about W. Weightman, whom she adores in her
heart, and whose image she cannot efface from her memory."

Some of her critics, including Mrs. Oliphant (far less indulgent than
the poor curates who forgave her nobly), have grudged Charlotte her
amusement. There is nothing, from her fame downwards, that Mrs. Oliphant
did not grudge her. Mr. Birrell sternly disapproves; even Mr. Swinburne,
at the height of his panegyric, is put off. Perhaps Charlotte's humour
was not her most attractive quality; but nobody seems to have seen the
pathos and the bravery of it. Neither have they seen that Miss Nussey
was at the bottom of its worst development, the "curate-baiting". Miss
Nussey used to go and stay at Haworth for weeks at a time. Haworth was
not amusing, and Miss Nussey had to be amused. All this school-girlish
jesting, the perpetual and rather tiresome banter, was a playing down to
Miss Nussey. It was a kind of