Цитаты из книги Selected Letters

Yet - hear my protest! Why should she die? Why are we to shut up the book weeping? My heart fails me already at the thought of the pang it will have to undergo. (On Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Ruth')

Is the 1st № of "Bleak House" generally admired? I liked the Chancery part - but where it passes into the autobiographic form and the young woman who announces that she is not "bright" begins her history - it seems to me too often weak and twaddling - an amiable nature is caricatured - not faithfully rendered in Miss Esther Summerson.

I am reminded of the "Economist". The literary critic of that paper praised the book if written by a man - and pronounced it "odious" if the work of a woman. To such critics I would say - "to you I am neither Man nor Woman - I come before you as an Author only - it is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me - the sole ground on which I accept your judgment."

I got home a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright waiting for me - Papa and the servants were well - and all received me with an affection which should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange ecstasy. I am certain they regarded me as the harbinger of others - the dumb creatures thought that as I was returned - those who had been so long absent were not far behind.

Mrs Robinson and her family had finally left Thorp Green in Mar. 1847, and had gone to live with relatives. Mrs Robinson chose to stay at Great Barr Hall, near Birmingham, the home of her cousing Catherine Juliana, wife of the wealthy Sir Edward Dolman Scott (?1797-1851). Catherine, already ill, had died in Aug. 1848. Mrs Robinson and Sir Edward married in Bath on 8 Nov. the same year, and returned to live at Great Barr Hall.

Not that I have read either 'Amymone' or 'Azeth' - but I have seen extracts from them which I found it literally impossible to digest. They presented to my imagination Lytton Bulwer in petticoats - an overwhelming vision.

'Jane Eyre' is praised as 'very pathetic', 'very singular; and so like truth', uniting 'the strongest passion and the strongest principle'. 'It is not a book for Prudes... it is for the enjoyment of a feeling hear and vigorous understanding.'

...it is mentioned as a matter of wonder that such displays of intellect should emanate from the Village of Haworth "situated amongst the bogs and Mountains and until very lately supposed to be in a state of Semi-barbarism." Such are the words of the newspaper.

It is fair to assume that none of Charlotte's own family read the letters to Heger during her lifetime, though her father and A. B. Nicholls were to read Mrs Gaskell's excerpts from them in the Life. But they could read Villette before her death and The Professor after it; and one wonders what they made of the master-pupil relationship in those novels - one ending in brief bliss destroyed by the dividing sea, and the other in the wish-fulfilment of perfect marriage.