“Different to what it is now; but I can tell of it clean different again, when there was neither mill, nor cot, nor hall, except Fieldhead, within two miles of it. I can tell, one summer evening, fifty years syne, my mother coming running in just at the edge of dark, almost fleyed out of her wits, saying she had seen a fairish [fairy] in Fieldhead Hollow; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on this countryside (though they’ve been heard within these forty years). A lonesome spot it was, and a bonny spot, full of oak trees and nut trees. It is altered now.”
The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity to offer directions. I only say, God speed him in the quest!
The End
About the Author
Born in 1816, Charlotte was the eldest of the famous trio of Bronte sisters, and the longest surviving in a family haunted by death. After their mother died in 1821, Charlotte acted as a maternal figure to her siblings (Emily, Anne, and their brother, Branwell,) and led them in their literary pursuits, which they started at a young age. As a young woman Charlotte worked as a governess and spent time teaching English in Brussels. In 1846, along with her sisters, she published a book of poems under the name Currer Bell, a pseudonym she would use for later publications, including her greatest work, Jane Eyre , which was published in 1847 to great success. Having survived all her siblings, who all died between 1848 and 1849, Charlotte would write two other novels, Shirley in 1849, and Villette in 1853, before dying at the age of thirty-eight while pregnant with her first child.
Примечания
1
Find me an English word as good, reader, and I will gladly dispense with the French word. “Reflections” won’t do.