The strange and quaint simplicity of the mode taken by the father to ascertain the hidden characters of his children, and the tone and character of these questions and answers, show the curious education which was made by the circumstances surrounding the Brontes.  They knew no other children.  They knew no other modes of thought than what were suggested to them by the fragments of clerical conversation which they overheard in the parlour, or the subjects of village and local interest which they heard discussed in the kitchen.  Each had their own strong characteristic flavour.

They took a vivid interest in the public characters, and the local and the foreign as well as home politics discussed in the newspapers.  Long before Maria Bronte died, at the age of eleven, her father used to say he could converse with her on any of the leading topics of the day with as much freedom and pleasure as with any grown-up person.

CHAPTER IV

About a year after Mrs. Bronte’s death, an elder sister, as I have before mentioned, came from Penzance to superintend her brother-in-law’s household, and look after his children.  Miss Branwell was, I believe, a kindly and conscientious woman, with a good deal of character, but with the somewhat narrow ideas natural to one who had spent nearly all her life in the same place.  She had strong prejudices, and soon took a distaste to Yorkshire.  From Penzance, where plants which we in the north call greenhouse flowers grow in great profusion, and without any shelter even in the winter, and where the soft warm climate allows the inhabitants, if so disposed, to live pretty constantly in the open air, it was a great change for a lady considerably past forty to come and take up her abode in a place where neither flowers nor vegetables would flourish, and where a tree of even moderate dimensions might be hunted for far and wide; where the snow lay long and late on the moors, stretching bleakly and barely far up from the dwelling which was henceforward to be her home; and where often, on autumnal or winter nights, the four winds of heaven seemed to meet and rage together, tearing round the house as if they were wild beasts striving to find an entrance.  She missed the small round of cheerful, social visiting perpetually going on in a country town; she missed the friends she had known from her childhood, some of whom had been her parents’ friends before they were hers; she disliked many of the customs of the place, and particularly dreaded the cold damp arising from the flag floors in the passages and parlours of Haworth Parsonage.  The stairs, too, I believe, are made of stone; and no wonder, when stone quarries are near, and trees are far to seek.  I have heard that Miss Branwell always went about the house in pattens, clicking up and down the stairs, from her dread of catching cold.  For the same reason, in the latter years of her life, she passed nearly all her time, and took most of her meals, in her bedroom.  The children respected her, and had that sort of affection for her which is generated by esteem; but I do not think they ever freely loved her.  It was a severe trial for any one at her time of life to change neighbourhood and habitation so entirely as she did; and the greater her merit.