Charlotte was certainly afraid of death. Not only of dead
bodies, or dying people. She dreaded it as something horrible. She
thought we did not know how long the 'moment of dissolution' might really
be, or how terrible. This was just such a terror as only hypochondriacs
can provide for themselves. She told me long ago that a misfortune was
often preceded by the dream frequently repeated which she gives to 'Jane
Eyre,' of carrying a little wailing child, and being unable to still it.
She described herself as having the most painful sense of pity for the
little thing, lying _inert_, as sick children do, while she walked about
in some gloomy place with it, such as the aisle of Haworth Church. The
misfortunes she mentioned were not always to herself. She thought such
sensitiveness to omens was like the cholera, present to susceptible
people,--some feeling more, some less."
About the beginning of 1834, "E." went to London for the first time. The
idea of her friend's visit seems to have stirred Charlotte strangely. She
appears to have formed her notions of its probable consequences from some
of the papers in the "British Essayists," "The Rambler," "The Mirror," or
"The Lounger," which may have been among the English classics on the
parsonage bookshelves; for she evidently imagines that an entire change
of character for the worse is the usual effect of a visit to "the great
metropolis," and is delighted to find that "E.
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