Ebook wait

{19} When
Mrs. Gaskell's husband came post-haste to Haworth to ask for proofs of
Mrs. Robinson's complicity in Branwell's downfall, none were obtainable.
I am assured by Mr. Leslie Stephen that his father, Sir James Stephen,
was employed at the time to make careful inquiry, and that he and other
eminent lawyers came to the conclusion that it was one long tissue of
lies or hallucinations. The subject is sufficiently sordid, and indeed
almost redundant in any biography of the Brontes; but it is of moment,
because Charlotte Bronte and her sisters were so thoroughly persuaded
that a woman was at the bottom of their brother's ruin; and this belief
Charlotte impressed upon all the friends who were nearest and dearest to
her. Her letters at the time of her brother's death are full of censure
of the supposed wickedness of another. It was a cruel infamy that the
word of this wretched boy should have been so powerful for mischief.
Here, at any rate, Mrs. Gaskell did not show the caution which a
masculine biographer, less prone to take literally a man's accounts of
his amours, would undoubtedly have displayed.
Yet, when all is said, Mrs. Gaskell had done her work thoroughly and
well. Lockhart's _Scott_ and Froude's _Carlyle_ are examples of great
biographies which called for abundant censure upon their publication; yet
both these books will live as classics of their kind.


Pages:
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46