Gaskell's
biography, but have never hitherto been printed.
'The four small scraps of Emily and Anne's manuscript,' writes Mr.
Nicholls, 'I found in the small box I send you; the others I found in
the bottom of a cupboard tied up in a newspaper, where they had lain
for nearly thirty years, and where, had it not been for your visit,
they must have remained during my lifetime, and most likely
afterwards have been destroyed.'
Some slight extracts from Bronte letters in _Macmillan's Magazine_,
signed 'E. Balmer Williams,' brought me into communication with a gifted
daughter of Mr. W. S. Williams. Mrs. Williams and her husband generously
placed the whole series of these letters of Charlotte Bronte to their
father at my disposal. It was of some of these letters that Mrs. Gaskell
wrote in enthusiastic terms when she had read them, and she was only
permitted to see a few. Then I have to thank Mr. Joshua Taylor, the
nephew of Miss Mary Taylor, for permission to publish his aunt's letters.
Mr. James Taylor, again, who wanted to marry Charlotte Bronte, and who
died twenty years afterwards in Bombay, left behind him a bundle of
letters which I found in the possession of a relative in the north of
London. {25} I discovered through a letter addressed to Miss Nussey that
the 'Brussels friend' referred to by Mrs.
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