could have been. Let us not be too sentimental in this matter. Figures
in literature are notable and valuable to us for what they give us. The
more personal and intense and definite that is, the greater the gift,
the more strenuous the toil and the more severe the initiation which
lead to its expression. The Brontës had a certain thing to learn to
give; what that was we shall presently try to note. But whatever we find
it to be, we start with allowing that it was extremely and boldly
original. It was not to be mastered by lying upon padded sofas and
toying with a little Berlin wool-work. It involved pain, resistance, a
stern revision of things hitherto taken for granted. The secrets which
they designed to wring from nature and from life were not likely to be
revealed to the self-indulgent and the dilettante. The sisters had a
message from the sphere of indignation and revolt. In order that they
should learn it as well as teach it, it was necessary that they should
arrive on the scene at an evil hour for their own happiness. _Jane Eyre_
and _Shirley_ and _Villette_ could not have been written unless, for
long years, the world had been "a poisoned place" for Charlotte Brontë.

It has been excellently said by Mrs. Humphry Ward that in many respects,
and to the very last, the Brontës challenge no less than they attract
us. This is an aspect which, in the midst of rapturous modern
heroine-worship, we are apt to forget. Thackeray, who respected the
genius of the family, and was immensely kind to the author of _Jane
Eyre_, never really felt comfortable in her company. We know how he
stole out of his own front-door, and slipped away into the night to
escape her. "A very austere little person," he called her, and we may
put what emphasis on the austerity we will. I feel sure that any
maladroit "white-washing of Charlotte" will tend, sooner or later,
good-natured though it may be, in a failure to comprehend what she
really was, in what her merit consisted, what the element in her was