Farewell to Angria.
When I was in college, I did a huge research paper on Charlotte Bronte. It was just another blip on the scholastic radar--six years later, I have absolutely no idea what it was about or what kind of grade it got.
What I do, know, though, is that while reading up on Charlotte, I discovered she started off as a fanfic writer. Not our kind of fanfic, certainly, but if she lived today I'm sure she would have spent her childhood writing great Harry Potter epics. (I think Anne Frank would have done the same, but that's another story.) Charlotte and her siblings dreamed up this world--Angria--all centered around toy soldiers belonging to her younger brother. It was full of the kind of royal intrigue and soap opera-style goodness that makes a girl want to be best friends with its creators.
As the Bronte kids grew up they kept Angria close, writing books and books worth of fiction centering around it. But, as is the way of such things, they eventually outgrew the game and went on to greater things. Which is when Charlotte wrote her Farewell to Angria, a piece I fell in immediate love with when I read it way back in the day. In the deep, dark depths of Hanson obsession, I could already see how my fanatic passion for the band would end--the exact same way Charlotte's preoccupation with Angria did.
I've been looking around for a copy of the Farewell for ages, combing the internet and even doing some research in the stacks of my local college library. I didn't find a thing, though, until this morning when I conducted a full-scale search of the attic in hopes of finding my ancient, battered copy of Deep Wizardry, by Diane Duane. In a box full of Existentialism from Camus to Satre, Beyond Good and Evil, and the Ryrie Study Bible, there was a folder of college papers. And in the middle of that folder, a copy of the Farewell that I had printed from the Internet on March 13, 1998.
Finally, I have it. And can share it. As was the case with most writing in the early nineteenth century, it's a little overwrought. But I would be surprised to hear that I'm the only person who sees herself in its every word.
Farewell to Angria, by Charlotte Bronte
I have now written a great many books and for a long time have dwelt on the same characters and scenes and subjects. I have shown my landscapes in every variety of shade and light which morning, noon, and evening--the rising, the meridian and the setting sun can bestow upon them. Sometimes I have filled the air with the whitened tempest of winter: snow has embossed the dark arms of the beech and oak and filled with drifts the parks of the lowlands or the mountain-pass of wilder districts. Again, the same mansion with its woods, the same moor with its glens, has been softly coloured with the tints of moonlight in summer, and in the warmest June night the trees have clustered their full-plumed heads over glades flushed with flowers. So it is with persons. My readers have been habituated to one set of features, which they have now seen in profile, now in full face, now in outline, and again in finished painting,--varied but by the thought or feeling of temper or age; lit with love, flushed with passion, shaded with grief, kindled with ecstasy; in meditation and mirth, in sorrow and scorn and rapture; with the round outline of childhood, the beauty and fullness of youth, the strength of manhood, and the furrows of thoughtful decline; but we must change, for the eye is tired of the picture so oft recurring and now so familiar.
Yet do not urge me too fast, reader; it is not easy to dismiss from my imagination the images which have filled it so long; they were my friends and my intimate acquaintances, and I could with little labour describe to you the faces, the voices, the actions, of those who peopled my thoughts by day, and not seldom stole strangely even into my dreams by night. When I depart from these I feel almost as if I stood on the threshold of a home and were bidding farewell to its inmates. When I try to conjure up new inmates I feel as if I had got into a distant country where every face was unknown and the character of all the population an enigma which it would take much study to comprehend and much talent to expound. Still, I long to quit for awhile that burning clime where we have sojourned too long--its skies flame--the glow of sunset is always upon it--the mind would cease from excitement and turn now to a cooler region where the dawn breaks grey and sober, and the coming day for a time at least is subdued by clouds.
What I do, know, though, is that while reading up on Charlotte, I discovered she started off as a fanfic writer. Not our kind of fanfic, certainly, but if she lived today I'm sure she would have spent her childhood writing great Harry Potter epics. (I think Anne Frank would have done the same, but that's another story.) Charlotte and her siblings dreamed up this world--Angria--all centered around toy soldiers belonging to her younger brother. It was full of the kind of royal intrigue and soap opera-style goodness that makes a girl want to be best friends with its creators.
As the Bronte kids grew up they kept Angria close, writing books and books worth of fiction centering around it. But, as is the way of such things, they eventually outgrew the game and went on to greater things. Which is when Charlotte wrote her Farewell to Angria, a piece I fell in immediate love with when I read it way back in the day. In the deep, dark depths of Hanson obsession, I could already see how my fanatic passion for the band would end--the exact same way Charlotte's preoccupation with Angria did.
I've been looking around for a copy of the Farewell for ages, combing the internet and even doing some research in the stacks of my local college library. I didn't find a thing, though, until this morning when I conducted a full-scale search of the attic in hopes of finding my ancient, battered copy of Deep Wizardry, by Diane Duane. In a box full of Existentialism from Camus to Satre, Beyond Good and Evil, and the Ryrie Study Bible, there was a folder of college papers. And in the middle of that folder, a copy of the Farewell that I had printed from the Internet on March 13, 1998.
Finally, I have it. And can share it. As was the case with most writing in the early nineteenth century, it's a little overwrought. But I would be surprised to hear that I'm the only person who sees herself in its every word.
Farewell to Angria, by Charlotte Bronte
I have now written a great many books and for a long time have dwelt on the same characters and scenes and subjects. I have shown my landscapes in every variety of shade and light which morning, noon, and evening--the rising, the meridian and the setting sun can bestow upon them. Sometimes I have filled the air with the whitened tempest of winter: snow has embossed the dark arms of the beech and oak and filled with drifts the parks of the lowlands or the mountain-pass of wilder districts. Again, the same mansion with its woods, the same moor with its glens, has been softly coloured with the tints of moonlight in summer, and in the warmest June night the trees have clustered their full-plumed heads over glades flushed with flowers. So it is with persons. My readers have been habituated to one set of features, which they have now seen in profile, now in full face, now in outline, and again in finished painting,--varied but by the thought or feeling of temper or age; lit with love, flushed with passion, shaded with grief, kindled with ecstasy; in meditation and mirth, in sorrow and scorn and rapture; with the round outline of childhood, the beauty and fullness of youth, the strength of manhood, and the furrows of thoughtful decline; but we must change, for the eye is tired of the picture so oft recurring and now so familiar.
Yet do not urge me too fast, reader; it is not easy to dismiss from my imagination the images which have filled it so long; they were my friends and my intimate acquaintances, and I could with little labour describe to you the faces, the voices, the actions, of those who peopled my thoughts by day, and not seldom stole strangely even into my dreams by night. When I depart from these I feel almost as if I stood on the threshold of a home and were bidding farewell to its inmates. When I try to conjure up new inmates I feel as if I had got into a distant country where every face was unknown and the character of all the population an enigma which it would take much study to comprehend and much talent to expound. Still, I long to quit for awhile that burning clime where we have sojourned too long--its skies flame--the glow of sunset is always upon it--the mind would cease from excitement and turn now to a cooler region where the dawn breaks grey and sober, and the coming day for a time at least is subdued by clouds.