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Notes
I am grateful for help given by both Juliet R. V. Barker, Curator and Librarian at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Library, Haworth, and Herbert Cahoon, Curator of Autograph MSS at the Pierpont Morgan Library. David Jackson McWilliams, Director of the Casa del Libro museum in San Juan, was kind enough to obtain photocopies of the manuscript for me while he was in New York.
This manuscript fits well the description which Mrs. Gaskell made of Charlotte's writing habits. "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" (Gaskell, 307; in all editions, vol. 2, ch. 1). The "piece of board . . . such as is used in binding books" was undoubtedly the cover of an octavo, only slightly larger than the folded-over paper on which Charlotte did her writing of first drafts.
On 14 October 1846 she would write to her friend, Ellen Nussey, "I returned to Brussels [29 January 1843] after Aunt's death against my conscience—prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse—I was punished for my selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of mind . . . (SHB 2: 115).
As Herbert Wroot pointed out half a century ago (Wroot, 196), when the autograph manuscript of The Professor is held to the light, one can see that the present title has been pasted over the original one, The Master.
The manuscript has been reprinted as Appendix D of the 1979 Clarendon edition of Shirley, ed. Herbert Rosengarten and Margaret Smith.
Though it was already heading towards archaism, Charlotte had used the adjective "posed" before (The Professor, first paragraph of ch. 3). "Lipped," on the other hand, is quite fresh; the OED records no use earlier than 1826 for the sense in which Charlotte uses it here.
In 1960, M. M. Brammer made a careful study of the autograph manuscript of The Professor. However, she makes no reference at all to Charlotte's pencilled draft of the "Preface"; it seems likely that she never saw it, for in a footnote she remarks of The Professor that she had consulted "a microfilm copy" (158).
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