This will never do, and will produce no
good. I tell you this that you may check false anticipations. You
cannot help me, and must not trouble yourself in any shape to
sympathise with me. It is my cup, and I must drink it as others do
theirs."
It would be difficult to create a picture of more poignant
suffering; yet she was at this time a famous writer. She had
published Jane Eyre and Shirley, and on her visits to London, to
her hospitable publisher, had found herself welcomed, honoured,
feted. The great lions of the literary world had flocked eagerly to
meet her. Even these simple festivities were accompanied by a
deadly sense of strain, anxiety, and exhaustion. Mrs. Gaskell
describes how a little later she met Charlotte Bronte at a quiet
country-house, and how Charlotte was reduced from tolerable health
to a bad nervous headache by the announcement that they were going
to drive over in the afternoon to have tea at a neighbour's house--
the prospect of meeting strangers was so alarming to her.
But in spite of this agonising susceptibility and vulnerability,
there is never the least touch either of sentimentality or self-
pity about Charlotte Bronte.
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