"Gaskell, Elizabeth C - The Life Of Charlotte Bronte - vol 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

letters; any one who has enjoyed the rare privilege of listening
to her talk, must have noticed her singular felicity in the
choice of words. She herself, in writing her books, was
solicitous on this point. One set of words was the truthful
mirror of her thoughts; no others, however apparently identical
in meaning, would do. She had that strong practical regard for
the simple holy truth of expression, which Mr. Trench has
enforced, as a duty too often neglected. She would wait patiently
searching for the right term, until it presented itself to her.
It might be provincial, it might be derived from the Latin; so
that it accurately represented her idea, she did not mind whence
it came; but this care makes her style present the finish of a
piece of mosaic. Each component part, however small, has been
dropped into the right place. She never wrote down a sentence
until she clearly understood what she wanted to say, had
deliberately chosen the words, and arranged them in their right
order. Hence it comes that, in the scraps of paper covered with
her pencil writing which I have seen, there will occasionally be
a sentence scored out, but seldom, if ever, a word or an
expression. She wrote on these bits of paper in a minute hand,
holding each against a piece of board, such as is used in binding
books, for a desk. This plan was necessary for one so
short-sighted as she was; and, besides, it enabled her to use
pencil and paper, as she sat near the fire in the twilight hours,
or if (as was too often the case) she was wakeful for hours in
the night. Her finished manuscripts were copied from these pencil
scraps, in clear, legible, delicate traced writing, almost as
easy to read as print.

The sisters retained the old habit, which was begun in their
aunt's life-time, of putting away their work at nine o'clock, and
beginning their study, pacing up and down the sitting room. At
this time, they talked over the stories they were engaged upon,
and described their plots. Once or twice a week, each read to the
others what she had written, and heard what they had to say about
it. Charlotte told me, that the remarks made had seldom any
effect in inducing her to alter her work, so possessed was she
with the feeling that she had described reality; but the readings
were of great and stirring interest to all, taking them out of
the gnawing pressure of daily-recurring cares, and setting them
in a free place. It was on one of these occasions, that Charlotte
determined to make her heroine plain, small, and unattractive, in
defiance of the accepted canon.

The writer of the beautiful obituary article on "the death of
Currer Bell" most likely learnt from herself what is there
stated, and which I will take the liberty of quoting, about Jane
Eyre.

"She once told her sisters that they were wrong--even morally