He always went to bed at nine
o'clock, and Miss Nussey well remembers his stentorian tones as he called
out as he left his study and passed the dining-room door--'Don't be up
late, children'--which they usually were. Between these two front rooms
upstairs, and immediately over the passage, with a door facing the
staircase, was a box room; but this was the children's nursery, where for
many years the children slept, where the bulk of their little books were
compiled, and where, it is more than probable, _The Professor_ and _Jane
Eyre_ were composed.
Of the work of the Bronte children in these early years, a great deal
might be written. Mrs. Gaskell gives a list of some eighteen booklets,
but at least eighteen more from the pen of Charlotte are in existence.
Branwell was equally prolific; and of him, also, there remains an immense
mass of childish effort. That Emily and Anne were industrious in a like
measure there is abundant reason to believe; but scarcely one of their
juvenile efforts remains to us, nor even the unpublished fragments of
later years, to which reference will be made a little later. Whether
Emily and Anne on the eve of their death deliberately destroyed all their
treasures, or whether they were destroyed by Charlotte in the days of her
mourning, will never be known. Meanwhile one turns with interest to the
efforts of Charlotte and Branwell.
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