went out of it at
twenty-nine years of age without leaving behind her one single
significant record which was any key to her character or to her mode of
thought, save only the one famous novel, _Wuthering Heights_, and a few
poems--some three or four of which will live in our poetic anthologies
for ever. And she made no single friend other than her sister Anne.
With Anne she must have corresponded during the two or three periods of
her life when she was separated from that much loved sister; and we may
be sure that the correspondence was of a singularly affectionate
character. Charlotte, who never came very near to her in thought or
sympathy, although she loved her younger sister so deeply, addressed her
in one letter 'mine own bonnie love'; and it is certain that her own
letters to her two sisters, and particularly to Anne, must have been
peculiarly tender and in no way lacking in abundant self-revelation.
When Emily and Anne had both gone to the grave, Charlotte, it is
probable, carefully destroyed every scrap of their correspondence, and,
indeed, of their literary effects; and thus it is that, apart from her
books and literary fragments, we know Emily only by two formal letters to
her sister's friend. Beyond these there is not one scrap of information
as to Emily's outlook upon life. In infancy she went with Charlotte to
Cowan Bridge, and was described by the governess as 'a pretty little
thing.' In girlhood she went to Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head; but
there, unlike Charlotte, she made no friends. She and Anne were
inseparable when at home, but of what they said to one another there is
no record. The sisters must have differed in many ways. Anne, gentle
and persuasive, grew up like Charlotte, devoted to the Christianity of
her father and mother, and entirely in harmony with all the conditions of
a parsonage. It is impossible to think that the author of 'The Old
Stoic' and 'Last Lines' was equally attached to the creeds of the
churches; but what Emily thought on religious subjects the world will
never know. Mrs. Gaskell put to Miss Nussey this very question: 'What
was Emily's religion?' But Emily was the last person in the world to
have spoken to the most friendly of visitors about so sacred a theme.
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 t