, notwithstanding
the singular property of seeing in the night-time, which the young ladies
at Roe Head used to attribute to me, I can scribble no longer."

To a visitor at the parsonage, it was a great thing to have Tabby's good
word. She had a Yorkshire keenness of perception into character, and it
was not everybody she liked.

Haworth is built with an utter disregard of all sanitary conditions: the
great old churchyard lies above all the houses, and it is terrible to
think how the very water-springs of the pumps below must be poisoned. But
this winter of 1833-4 was particularly wet and rainy, and there were an
unusual number of deaths in the village. A dreary season it was to the
family in the parsonage: their usual walks obstructed by the spongy state
of the moors--the passing and funeral bells so frequently tolling, and
filling the heavy air with their mournful sound--and, when they were
still, the "chip, chip," of the mason, as he cut the grave-stones in a
shed close by. In many, living, as it were, in a churchyard, and with
all the sights and sounds connected with the last offices to the dead
things of everyday occurrence, the very familiarity would have bred
indifference. But it was otherwise with Charlotte Bronte. One of her
friends says:--"I have seen her turn pale and feel faint when, in
Hartshead church, some one accidentally remarked that we were walking
over graves. Charlotte was certainly afraid of death. Not only of dead
bodies, or dying people. She dreaded it as something horrible. She
thought we did not know how long the 'moment of dissolution' might really
be, or how terrible. This was just such a terror as only hypochondriacs
can provide for themselves. She told me long ago that a misfortune was
often preceded by the dream frequently repeated which she gives to 'Jane
Eyre,' of carrying a little wailing child, and being unable to still it.
She described herself as having the most painful sense of pity for the
little thing, lying _inert_, as sick children do, while she walked about
in some gloomy place with it, such as the aisle of Haworth Church. The
misfortunes she mentioned were not always to herself. She thought such
sensitiveness to omens was like the cholera, present to susceptible
people,--some feeling more, some less."

About the beginning of 1834, "E." went to London for the first time. The
idea of her friend's visit seems to have stirred Charlotte strangely. She
appears to hav