nything more
false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style
I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is, the stage-system
altogether is hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough: the
actors comprehend their parts and do them justice. They comprehend
nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said
so; and by so saying produced a blank silence--a mute consternation.
I was, indeed, obliged to dissent on many occasions, and to offend by
dissenting. It seems now very much the custom to admire a certain
wordy, intricate, obscure style of poetry, such as Elizabeth Barrett
Browning writes. Some pieces were referred to about which Currer
Bell was expected to be very rapturous, and failing in this, he
disappointed.

'London people strike a provincial as being very much taken up with
little matters about which no one out of particular town-circles
cares much; they talk, too, of persons--literary men and women--whose
names are scarcely heard in the country, and in whom you cannot get
up an interest. I think I should scarcely like to live in London,
and were I obliged to live there, I should certainly go little into
company, especially I should eschew the literary coteries.

'You told me, my dear Miss Wooler, to write a long letter. I have
obeyed you.--Believe me now, yours affectionately and respectfully,

'C. BRONTE.'

TO MISS WOOLER

'HAWORTH, _March_ 12_th_, 1852.

'MY DEAR MISS WOOLER,--Your kind note holds out a strong temptation,
but one that _must be resisted_. From home I must not go unless
health or some cause equally imperative render a change necessary.
For nearly four months now (_i.e._ since I became ill) I have not put
pen to paper. My work has been lying untouched, and my faculties
have been rusting for want of exercise. Further relaxation is out of
the question, and I _will not permit myself to think of it_. My
publisher groans over my long delays; I am sometimes provoked to
check the expression of his impatience with short and crusty answers.

'Yet the pleasure I now deny myself I would fain regard as only
deferred. I heard something about your proposing to visit Scarbro'
in the course of t