dread of slipping off his own very fairly comfortable perch into
oceans of confusion and dismay.






XIII

CHARLOTTE BRONTE





I doubt if the records of intimate biography contain a finer
object-lesson against fear and all its obsessions than the life of
Charlotte Bronte. She was of a temperament which in many ways was
more open to the assaults of fear than any which could well be
devised. She was frail and delicate, liable to acute nervous
depression, intensely shy and sensitive, and susceptible as well;
that is to say that her shyness did not isolate her from her kind;
she wanted to be loved, respected, even admired. When she did love,
she loved with fire and passion and desperate loyalty.

Her life was from beginning to end full of sharp and tragic
experiences. She was born and brought up in a bleak moorland
village, climbing steeply and grimly to the edge of heathery
uplands. The bare parsonage, with its little dark rooms, looks out