character," happens to sum up very well the impression left by her life
both on kindred and friends. What Miss Bronte exactly meant by it it is
difficult to say. But the widowed mother of nine children, five of them
sons, and all of them possessed of strong wills and quick intelligence,
who was able so to guide their young lives that to her last hour, thirty
years after her husband's death had left her alone with her task, she
possessed their passionate reverence and affection, and that each and
all of them would have acknowledged her as among the dearest and noblest
influences in their lives, can hardly be denied "completeness of
character." Many of her letters lie before me. Each son and daughter, as
he or she went out into the world, received them with the utmost
regularity. They knew that every incident in their lives interested
their mother; and they in their turn were eager to report to her
everything that came to them, happy or unhappy, serious or amusing. And
this relation of the family to their mother only grew and strengthened
with years. As the daughters married, their husbands became so many new
and devoted sons to this gentle, sympathetic, and yet firm-natured
woman. Nor were the daughters-in-law less attached to her, and the
grandchildren who in due time began to haunt Fox How. In my own life I
trace her letters from my earliest childhood, through my life at school,
to my engagement and marriage; and I have never ceased to feel a pang of
disappointment that she died before my children were born. Matthew
Arnold adored her, and wrote to her every week of his life. So did her
other children. William Forster, throughout his busy life in Parliament,
vied with her sons in tender consideration and unfailing loyalty. And
every grandchild thought of a visit to Fox How as not only a joy, but an
honor. Indeed, nothing could have been more "complete," more rounded,
than my grandmother's character and life as they developed through her
eighty-three years. She made no conspicuous intellectual claim, though
her quick intelligence, her wide sympathies, and clear judgment,