31 March 1855, Arthur Bell Nicholls writes to Ellen, ’Our dear Charlotte is no more – She died last night of Exhaustion … We intend to bury her on Wednesday morn[in]g’. Ellen later recollected her subsequent visit to Haworth in a letter to George Smith the following year. She reported:
’her death chamber is in vivid remembrance … Her maid Martha brought me a tray full of evergreens & such flowers as she could procure to place on the lifeless form … what made the [task] impossible at first was the rushing recollection of the flowers I spread in her honour at her wedding breakfast & how she admired the disposal of the gathering brought by Martha from the village gardens – ’
