. . .No wonder that Miss Brontë's one and only "pleasant afternoon" was when
Mr. Sidgwick went out walking in his fields with his children and his
Newfoundland dog, and Charlotte (by order) followed and observed him
from behind.

Of course, all these old tales should have gone where Mrs. Sidgwick's old muslin caps went; but they have not, and so it has got about that Charlotte Brontë was not fond of children. Even Mr. Swinburne, at the height of his magnificent eulogy, after putting crown upon crown upon her head, pauses and wonders: had she any love for children? He finds in her "a plentiful lack of inborn baby-worship"; she is unworthy to compare in this with George Eliot, "the spiritual mother of Totty, of Eppie, and of Lillo". "The fiery-hearted Vestal of Haworth," he says, "had no room reserved in the palace of her passionate and high-minded imagination as a nursery for inmates of such divine and delicious quality." There was little Geor. . . Read More