For a short time, as we know, Emily was in a school at Law Hill near
Halifax--a Miss Patchet's. {145a} She was, for a still longer period, at
the Heger Pensionnat at Brussels. Mrs. Gaskell's business was to write
the life of Charlotte Bronte and not of her sister Emily; and as a result
there is little enough of Emily in Mrs. Gaskell's book--no record of the
Halifax and Brussels life as seen through Emily's eyes. Time, however,
has brought its revenge. The cult which started with Mr. Sydney Dobell,
and found poetic expression in Mr. Matthew Arnold's fine lines on her,
'Whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died,' {145b}
culminated in an enthusiastic eulogy by Mr. Swinburne, who placed her in
the very forefront of English women of genius.
We have said that Emily Bronte is a sphinx whose riddle no amount of
research will enable us to read; and this chapter, it may be admitted,
adds but little to the longed-for knowledge of an interesting
personality. One scrap of Emily's handwriting, of a personal character,
has indeed come to me--overlooked, I doubt not, by Charlotte when she
burnt her sister's effects. I have before me a little tin box about two
inches long, which one day last year Mr. Nicholls turned out from the
bottom of a desk.
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