Becoming Jane Eyre (21 page)

He is not as blind or as foolish as they might think, though he has said nothing about it, not wanting to embarrass his girls. He presumes that after many failures and heaven knows how many rejections, this one must have finally resorted to paying some dishonest publisher a small fortune to have her words appear in print. What vanity!

For who would want to read something by an obscure parson’s daughter, living in a remote region of Yorkshire? And what could she have written about? What can she possibly know, having lived so much of her life alone, sheltered, protected in his cramped parsonage, with nothing around her but barren moors, her spinster sisters, her spinster aunt, and an elderly, ignorant servant, a delinquent brother, a parson father—pray God she has not written about him! She has lived all her life either at home, at girls’ schools, or as a governess with small children, shut up in various nurseries like a nun. What does she know about the human heart, about love?

If he admits it, he has often found the prattle of his girls tiresome, even this sensible girl by his side who has looked after him so devotedly. Light verse, he can imagine her writing, as he has done himself, after all: for the edification of young people, for children. But this is apparently a book of some length. He squints with suspicion at the thing.

She lifts it higher, thrusts it at him. “Read it, Papa, please,” she says, and stares at him, her eyes, he is afraid, filling with tears. He is obliged to take the heavy thing into his hands. So many pages! He looks at the cover, the frontispiece, turns the page to the dedication. The girl has even dared to dedicate this book to the great Thackeray!

“The expense! But just think of the expense, my poor dear!” he says. Has she spent her aunt’s entire legacy? Borrowed from her sisters? What must this have cost? Twenty-five, perhaps even fifty pounds? When they are all struggling to survive! Money that should have been saved for her later years, when he will not be there to provide a roof over her head! What foolishness!

The girl protests, saying she must read him a few reviews so that he may realize how profitable this venture has been. She has not lost money, but rather gained some—indeed, much more than she has ever had, a sum she would never have dreamed of. She lowers her gaze and shyly mentions a sum that he cannot imagine receiving: five hundred pounds.

“Good heavens, what would you, as a woman, want with so much money?” he asks her. She is now in a position to offer him a few luxuries, to make his life easier, she says, carried away, no doubt. She is dreaming of carpets, curtains, perhaps even pictures, more shelves for their books, she says. She will be able to do what her heroine does in her book for her cousins, refurbish the parsonage. How strange that she has described something that will become true.

He sighs at what he imagines must be her confusion—she has never been practical or had much sense of practical things—and says, “Reviews?” for who on earth would have reviewed this girl’s book? Still, as she seems determined and has several in her hands that appear to be printed, he tells her to go ahead. She draws up a chair, sits down beside him, adjusts the lamp to shine on her pages, and commences to read in her clear voice.

She has decided to begin with one of the shorter ones, something that goes quickly to the point:

“Decidedly the best novel of the season: one, moreover, from the natural tone pervading the narrative, and the originality and freshness of its style, possessing the merit so rarely met with nowadays in works of this kind, of amply repaying a second perusal. Whoever may be the author, we hope to see more such books from his pen.” She stops there and looks up at her father, who is staring back at her. “Good heavens, child, what did you do for this gentleman to have him write something of the sort?” he asks.

She reads another as response, from
The Era
, “an extraordinary book. Although a work of fiction, it is no mere novel, for there is nothing but nature and truth about it. A unique story, for we have no high life glorified, caricatured or libeled; nor low life elevated to an enviable state of bliss. The tale is one of the heart, and the working out of a moral through the natural affections.”

She cannot resist reading him one more, which has pleased her particularly and which refers to the voice in the book: “It is soul speaking to soul; it is an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit:
suspiria de profundis!
”

Her father looks at her now, his mouth slightly open. He says, “Leave the book with me, child, and we’ll see what we will see.”

VOLUME THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A
nne packs a small box with a change of clothes for herself and Charlotte, which they send on ahead of them. Emily does not even say good-bye as they prepare to set out on foot for Keighley after tea. When deeply moved, she is often silent and remote. She practices loneliness like a sport. Standing in the hall, Anne watches her climb the stairs slowly, a hand to her side. She thinks of Byron’s lines: “From my youth / My spirit walked not with the souls of men / Nor look’d upon the earth with human eyes.” How can they leave her like this? Such somberness and restraint frighten Anne.

Emily stands for a moment on the stairs in her gray dress and half-turns toward her sisters in the hall, her face suddenly caught by the light from the window. A woman with hanging hair, a smile set on her lips, a smile of suffering. “Emily!” Anne calls, wishing she would at least say good-bye, wish them a good voyage, but she does not answer, just lifts her hand slightly toward her shoulder. She continues up the stairs, closes the door behind her, and goes into her small room alone, with the bunch of foxgloves Anne picked for her that morning in a glass by her bed, her notebook with her beautiful poems, her big dog. Anne would like to call her back, but how?

Charlotte says, “We must go, or we’ll miss our train,” and she is obliged to follow. Branwell is out somewhere, hunting down money, or at the Old Cock in Halifax, where he has run up a large bill.

They set out on foot to walk the four miles to Keighley. Charlotte strides ahead down the path and, almost running, Anne follows her in her printed cotton dress, her narrow shoes, her bonnet. A late-born lamb crosses her path as it runs bleating up the bank to join its mother.

Escaping the house, the trouble at home, bent on proving her own identity, she is suddenly filled with determination, despite the ominous clouds in the low sky. How low it hangs in these parts, a place of everlasting rain.

Despite a thunderstorm and heavy rain that soaks them both, their thin muslin dresses clinging to their skin, they keep going along the narrow path, leaning forward, heads lowered into the rain and wind, with a sense of purpose. She will tell the publishers who they are. She will set the record straight. She is not ashamed of anything she has written. On the contrary, she has done her best to describe the world as she has seen it. She has refused to compromise. Let the critics know she is a woman. Let them judge her accordingly. Why should a woman not be allowed to speak up?

They take the train and get to Leeds just in time to take the night train to London. They shiver in their damp clothes, but they are in first class for this venture, thanks to Charlotte’s newfound fortune.

They arrive in the early morning at Euston station and step out of the train onto the platform. The skies have cleared, the day is bright, the light harsh in their startled eyes. They go to the only place they know, the one where Charlotte stayed with Emily before going to Belgium, where their father had stayed before them, the Chapter Coffee House.

Charlotte steps out of the carriage into the street, with its noises and smells of early morning. Somehow, despite her fatigue and sensitivity to noise, all this bustle—the horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, the cries of vendors, someone shouting out something from a window—reassures her. The city with its business, its rush and roar, all the earnestness of people getting a living, excites her deeply. She is proud to be a part of it.

“Look,” she says to Anne as they are ushered into their low-ceilinged, dingy room, and Anne is hunting for something to give to the porter who has brought their bags, “St. Paul’s.” She points out the spire, which they can see from the small window. The hum of the bells in their colossal, dark-blue dome feels like a summons to freedom.

She remembers her first visit to this inn, with Emily, before her trip to Belgium. Little did she realize at the time that she was about to undergo what has perhaps been the definitive emotional experience of her life. Now she feels her spirit shake its half-fettered wings free.

At the familiar and reassuring sight, she suggests they eat something and rest a while before going to confront Mr. Smith. It does not occur to her that, this being a Saturday, he might not be at his place of work. Exhaustion and anxiety over their voyage have made her hungry. They tidy up and head into the restaurant, a long, low room upstairs. They sit opposite each other at a table by the window. There is the hum of conversation, the clatter of china and cutlery. A waitress drops a knife to the floor.

Recklessly, Charlotte orders without considering the price of the items. “I’m famished,” she says. Besides, for the first time in her life she has money she has earned by her own wits. What a thrill to think that she is not as dependent on her father as she was in the past. Here they are in London. She feels a lift in her spirits. She looks around the room and out the window at the buildings and the street below.
All of this is mine, mine, mine! Thanks be to God.
She lowers her head and mumbles a prayer.
For what we are about to receive may we be truly thankful.

They order eggs and haddock with buttered toast. They eat the large breakfast in the dim, paneled dining room almost in silence. Charlotte watches Anne eat with great pleasure. Her little sister seems to be enjoying their joint venture. How few voyages, how little pleasure she has had in her life! How hard they have worked! They smile at each other across the table, chewing, with sudden complicity. They have come this far together.

“I’m so glad you came with me,” Charlotte says, and watches Anne wipe the grease from her mouth with her napkin. She says, “Poor, dear Emily. I wish she had come with us.” Charlotte grasps Anne’s hand. She remembers the nurse with her large lamb bone and her bare feet, and smiles: Humber. Perhaps she is with her three little girls, whom she spoke of so fondly. Perhaps she has even read
Jane Eyre
.

When she has eaten, Charlotte says, “I must lie down for a moment,” overcome with exhaustion. They go to their small room, with its double bed. They remove their bonnets and shoes and close the shutters. She lies down by Anne’s side in the darkened room, as she once did beside her father in Manchester. She is almost asleep when Anne rouses her, touching her arm. “Ought we to go now?” she asks nervously. She rises and walks up and down the room.

“Yes, it’s time,” Charlotte replies. They do their best with their crumpled attire, wash their faces, tidy their hair, slap their cheeks to bring forth a little color, bite their lips, and put on clean gloves.

Charlotte stares at her face in the mirror. Will George Smith believe she is the author of the book that has set all of London talking? She can hardly believe herself that she has written this book, which has made Currer Bell famous. She believes almost that Currer Bell has nothing to do with Charlotte Brontë, that this book has come from some other, mysterious source. But she has George Smith’s letter and money as her proof, carefully folded in her reticule.

Do I dare go in and tell George Smith I am the one who has written this book?
How can she give up her anonymity, the androgynous name that has freed her to write this? Can she say, “Reader, my name is Charlotte Brontë and I am the author of
Jane Eyre
”? She remembers that moment in the dark room in Manchester catching a glimpse of a face in the mirror and wondering who it was.