Unfortunately, illness attacked me at
the crisis when strength was most needed. I bore up for a day or
two, hoping to be better, but got worse. Fever, sickness, total loss
of appetite, and internal pain were the symptoms. The doctor
pronounced it to be bilious fever, but I think it must have been in a
mitigated form; it yielded to medicine and care in a few days. I was
only confined to my bed a week, and am, I trust, nearly well now. I
felt it a grievous thing to be incapacitated from action and effort
at a time when action and effort were most called for. The past
month seems an overclouded period in my life.
'Give my best love to Mrs. Nussey and your sister, and--Believe me,
my dear Miss Nussey, yours sincerely,
'C. BRONTE.'
_My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in
literature_--_he was not aware that they had ever published a line_.
Who that reads these words addressed to Mr. Williams can for a moment
imagine that Charlotte is speaking other than the truth? And yet we have
Mr. Grundy writing:
_Patrick Bronte declared to me that he wrote a great portion of_
'_Wuthering Heights_' _himself_.
And Mr. George Searle Phillips, {142} with more vivid imagination,
describes Branwell holding forth to his friends in the parlour of the
Black Bull at Haworth, upon the genius of his sisters, and upon the
respective merits of _Jane Eyre_ and other works.
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