It would not have been difficult
to compile a volume out of the papers left by my sisters, had I, in making
the selection, dismissed from my consideration the scruples and the wishes
of those whose written thoughts these papers held. But this was impossible:
an influence, stronger than could be exercised by any
motive of expediency, necessarily
regulated the selection. I have, then, culled from the mass only a little
poem here and there. The whole makes but a tiny nosegay, and the colour
and perfume of the flowers are not such as fit them for festal uses.
It has been already said
that my sisters wrote much in childhood and girlhood. Usually, it seems
a sort of injustice to expose in print the crude thoughts of the unripe
mind, the rude efforts of the unpractised hand; yet I venture to give three
little poems of my sister Emily's, written in her sixteenth year, because
they
illustrate a point in her
character.
At that period she was sent
to school. Her previous life, with the exception of a single half-year,
had been passed in the absolute retirement of a village parsonage, amongst
the hills bordering Yorkshire and Lancashire. The scenery of these hills
is not grand--it is not romantic it is scarcely striking. Long low
moors, dark with heath,
shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe
of stunted copse. Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these
valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors,
that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot: and even if
she finds it there, she
must be a solitude-loving raven--no gentle dove. If she demand beauty to
inspire her, she must bring it inborn: these moors are too stern to yield
any product so delicate. The eye of the gazer must ITSELF brim with a "purple
light," intense enough to perpetuate the brief flower-flush of
August on the heather, or
the rare sunset-smile of June; out of his heart must well the freshness,
that in latter spring and early summer brightens the bracken, nurtures
the moss, and cherishes the starry flowers that spangle for a few weeks
the pasture of the moor-sheep. Unless that light and freshness are
innate and self-sustained,
the drear prospect of a Yorkshire moor will be found as barren of poetic
as of agricultural interest: where the love of wild nature is strong, the
locality will perhaps be clung to with the more passionate constancy, because
from the hill-lover's self comes half its charm.
My sister Emily loved the
moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath
for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hill-side her mind could make
an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not
the least and best loved was--liberty.
Liberty was the breath of
Emily's nostrils; without it, she perished. The change from her own home
to a school, and from her own very noiseless, very secluded, but unrestricted
and inartificial mode of life, to one of disciplined routine (though under
the kindliest auspices), was what she failed in enduring.
Her nature proved here too
strong for her fortitude. Every morning when she woke, the vision of home
and the moors rushed on her, and darkened and saddened the day that lay
before her. Nobody knew what ailed her but me--I knew only too well. In
this struggle her health was quickly broken: her white face, attenuated
form, and failing strength, threatened rapid decline. I felt in my heart
she would die, if she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained
her recall. She had only been three months at school; and it was some years
before the experiment of sending her from home was again ventured on. After
the age of twenty, having meantime studied alone with diligence and perseverance,
she went with me to an establishment on the Continent: the same suffering
and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her upright, heretic
and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system.
Once more she seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere
force of resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on her
former failure, and resolved to conquer in this second ordeal. She did
conquer: but the victory cost her dear. She was never happy till she carried
her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the old parsonage-house,
and desolate Yorkshire hills. A very few years more, and she looked her
last on those hills, and breathed her last in that house, and under the
aisle of that obscure village church found her last lowly resting-place.
Merciful was the decree that spared her when she was a stranger in a strange
land, and guarded her dying bed with kindred love and congenial constancy.
The following pieces were
composed at twilight, in the school- room, when the leisure of the evening
play-hour brought back in full tide the thoughts of home. |
