Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/106

---

such simple honesty and hearty courtesy as must have been more than needed to make the very dullest and most impervious of reverend or irreverend gentlemen continue to bear themselves with the frank civility of kindly custom towards the solitary and sorrowful woman whose scornful genius had done its worst on them—and that worst, even to a thick-headed and thick-skinned victim, how terrible!—must surely also have been more than sufficient to disprove the full justice of the caricature, and impeach the accuracy of whatever was most offensive in her design or injurious in her imputations. To the vivid yet temperate fidelity of the Yorke family group we have the witness of a member offered to the photographer of that singular and sharply outlined circle. In most