Charlotte's deep thoughtful spirit appears
to have felt almost painfully the tender responsibility which rested upon
her with reference to her remaining sisters. She was only eighteen
months older than Emily; but Emily and Anne were simply companions and
playmates, while Charlotte was motherly friend and guardian to both; and
this loving assumption of duties beyond her years, made her feel
considerably older than she really was.
Patrick Branwell, their only brother, was a boy of remarkable promise,
and, in some ways, of extraordinary precocity of talent. Mr. Bronte's
friends advised him to send his son to school; but, remembering both the
strength of will of his own youth and his mode of employing it, he
believed that Patrick was better at home, and that he himself could teach
him well, as he had taught others before. So Patrick, or as his family
called him--Branwell, remained at Haworth, working hard for some hours a
day with his father; but, when the time of the latter was taken up with
his parochial duties, the boy was thrown into chance companionship with
the lads of the village--for youth will to youth, and boys will to boys.
Still, he was associated in many of his sisters' plays and amusements.
These were mostly of a sedentary and intellectual nature. I have had a
curious packet confided to me, containing an immense amount of
manuscript, in an inconceivably small space; tales, dramas, poems,
romances, written principally by Charlotte, in a hand which it is almost
impossible to decipher without the aid of a magnifying glass.
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