judge it extraneous and external. If I have tried, cruelly, to take from
Charlotte the little beige gown that she wore at Mr. Thackeray's
dinner-party, it is because her home-made garments seem to suit her
better. She is more herself in skirts that have brushed the moors and
kept some of the soil of Haworth in their hem.

I may seem to have exaggerated her homesickness for Haworth. It may be
said that Haworth was by no means Charlotte's home as it was Emily's. I
am aware that there were moments--hours--when she longed to get away
from it. I have not forgotten how Mary Taylor found her in such an hour,
not long after her return from Brussels, when her very flesh shrank from
the thought of her youth gone and "nothing done"; nothing before her but
long, empty years in Haworth. The fact remains that she was never happy
away from it, and that in Haworth her genius most certainly found itself
at home. And this particular tone of misery and unrest disappeared from
the moment when her genius declared itself, so that I am inclined to see
in it a little personal dissatisfaction, if you will, but chiefly the
unspeakable restlessness and misery of power unrecognized and
suppressed. "Nothing done!" That was her reiterated cry.

Again, if I have overlooked the complexities of Charlotte's character,
it is that the great lines that underlie it may be seen. In my heart I
agree with M. Dimnet that the Brontës were not simple. All the same, I
think that his admirable portrait of Charlotte is spoiled by his
attitude of pity for "_la pauvre fille_", as he persists in calling her.
I think he dwells a shade too much on her small asperities and
acidities, and on that "_ton de critique mesquine_", which he puts down
to her provincialism. No doubt there were moments of suffering and of
irritation, as well as moments of uncontrollable merriment, when
Charlotte lacked urbanity, but M. Dimnet has almost too keen an eye for