The attacks of ill health to which Mr. Bronte had been subject
of late years, rendered it not only necessary that he should take his
dinner alone (for the sake of avoiding temptations to unwholesome diet),
but made it also desirable that he should pass the time directly
succeeding his meals in perfect quiet. And this necessity, combined with
due attention to his parochial duties, made him partially ignorant how
his son employed himself out of lesson-time. His own youth had been
spent among people of the same conventional rank as those into whose
companionship Branwell was now thrown; but he had had a strong will, and
an earnest and persevering ambition, and a resoluteness of purpose which
his weaker son wanted.
It is singular how strong a yearning the whole family had towards the art
of drawing. Mr. Bronte had been very solicitous to get them good
instruction; the girls themselves loved everything connected with it--all
descriptions or engravings of great pictures; and, in default of good
ones, they would take and analyse any print or drawing which came in
their way, and find out how much thought had gone to its composition,
what ideas it was intended to suggest, and what it _did_ suggest. In the
same spirit, they laboured to design imaginations of their own; they
lacked the power of execution, not of conception.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173