Romancing Miss Bronte (12 page)

“Something we might be interested in?”

“Not so much the book itself—it’s a rather slight novel—would make up only a single volume, I’d say—and I’m afraid the story lacks appeal. However”—Williams paused and gripped the back of a chair with both hands—“there is great literary power on the page.”

George leaned back against his desk and folded his arms. Whenever Williams spoke up, George listened carefully. Williams had been writing theater reviews for the
Critic
before George had snatched him up to work for Smith, Elder; the man had extraordinary insight and an eye for talent.

“Yes, go on.”

“I think perhaps with a different subject … if the author might be persuaded to make another attempt …”

“And you’re just the man to do that, Williams.”

“Should you like me to write to him?”

“Yes, do. And leave me the book. I’ll take a look at it this evening. What’s the title?”

“
The Professor
. Written by a Mr. Currer Bell. Appears to be a northerner, sir. From Yorkshire.”

The letter Charlotte received from Mr. William Smith Williams, literary assistant to George Smith of Smith, Elder & Co., was two pages long. She knew when she broke open the seal that it was no mere rejection, and she hurried up to her room, closed the door, and read it with trembling hands. They had declined to publish
The Professor
, but the book had caught their attention. Mr. Williams had been able to look past the story’s shortcomings and was able to discuss at length its merits and qualities, and believed he had discovered a writer of promise.

Charlotte sat down to write a reply that very day, explaining that she had nearly completed a longer work that might interest him. Three weeks later, she walked four miles to Keighley to the train station, where she posted the fair copy of the completed manuscript of
Jane Eyre
.

Sunday was George Smith’s only day of rest, and his mother, who worried that he worked excessively long hours, jealously guarded what little time he spent at home. She was understandably upset when—at eight in the morning, while they were still having breakfast—the doorbell rang.

“It’s Mr. Williams, sir,” the servant announced. “The gentleman would like a word with you.”

“Oh dear, George, not on a Sunday,” Mrs. Smith exclaimed. “And before you’ve finished breakfast.”

George swallowed a mouthful of sausage, dabbed his mouth with a napkin, and nodded to the servant.

“Show him in.”

Mr. Williams entered hesitantly, clutching his hat and a parcel wrapped in brown paper under his arm. He nodded to Mrs. Smith, who was busy tucking a graying strand of hair into her white morning cap.

“Good morning, madam,” he said. “I do apologize for the inconvenience.”

“I suppose it must be important if you’ve come all the way to Bayswater on a Sunday morning,” George said.

“Actually, sir, I spent the night at the office. Finishing this.” He stepped forward with the bundle. “I urge you to read it at your earliest possible convenience.”

George put down his napkin and reached for the parcel.

“Is this our new literary sensation?”

“It may well be, sir. Do you remember the name Currer Bell?”

“Was that
The Professor
?”

“Yes. That’s the one. This is his new work. Quite a different story altogether. Title is
Jane Eyre
.”

George took it into his study after breakfast, thinking to read the first few chapters, perhaps skim through a few more. He settled down in his reading chair and picked up the manuscript. Before long, the servant knocked and entered.

“It’s your groom, sir. He’s brought your horse.”

“Brought my horse?”

“Yes, sir. You were to ride today. You were to meet Mr. Sturbridge in the country.”

“Not until noon.”

“It is noon, sir.”

“It can’t be.”

“I’m afraid it is, sir.”

George took out his watch.

“By Jove, it is.” He set aside the manuscript, went to his desk, and jotted off a quick note of apology to his friend, excusing himself due to urgent business. He gave it to the servant to deliver to the groom, then settled back down in his chair.

The rest of his day was given up in much the same manner. When the servant came to announce lunch, George asked for a sandwich and a glass
of claret, and he read on until evening. He dined quickly and returned to his study. Sometime after eleven his mother slipped in and quietly went about replacing the candles; the ones on the mantel had gone out and George hadn’t even noticed.

It was after one when he finished the book. On the way to bed, he noticed the light beneath his mother’s door. He found her sitting up in bed, reading. She put down her book and turned to him with the brightly serene smile that had always been there to encourage him, even in their darkest hours.

“So, you’ve finished it?”

“Yes.”

“My dear boy, I do hope it was worth it—you sacrificed your entire day.”

“It was worth every minute.”

“Are you going to publish it?”

“Most definitely. I intend to write Mr. Bell tomorrow and make him an offer.”

He came across the room and leaned down to kiss her soft cheek, which smelled of lavender water.

“Good night, Mother.”

“Good night, George.”

At the door he hesitated and said over his shoulder, “It was a most extraordinary book. I think I’ve never read anything quite like it.”

That week, Ellen Nussey came for a long-overdue and much-anticipated visit.

She was to arrive by the afternoon train, and Charlotte, dressed in light gingham and a straw bonnet newly trimmed in blue ribbon, set off to walk the four miles to the Keighley station. She had barely passed the last straggling cottages and struck off across a field when she heard her name called. She turned to see Emily running up the lane, skirts hiked up around her ankles; Emily squeezed through a stile in the drystone wall and tore across the field toward her.

Charlotte was alarmed, immediately thinking of her father or some episode with Branwell, and she turned back on the path.

Emily came flying up, completely out of breath, and drew a letter from her pocket.

“This came,” she said, a hand on her heaving chest. “From Smith, Elder.”

Charlotte took it from her and opened it. Emily watched her expression for signs of disappointment or elation, but she could detect neither.

“So? What did they say?”

Charlotte covered her mouth with her hand, then just as quickly drew it away and said in a faint voice, “They’ve offered me a hundred pounds for
Jane Eyre
and first refusal rights on my next two books.” She looked up and glanced around the field. The cows had stopped grazing and were watching them with huge liquid eyes. “I think I should sit down now.”

Charlotte sat on the moss-covered low stone wall while Emily read the letter. Her face had stretched itself into a ridiculously wide smile that she was quite helpless to control. Meanwhile, she was having wild visions of herself running at the cows and scattering them with shrieks of joy. Emily finished the letter and, in a rare display of affection, hooked her arm around her sister’s neck and kissed her roughly on the cheek. Then she began offering advice about the terms, wondering if they might negotiate more than a hundred pounds. Eventually, Charlotte’s brain—confused by an overabundance of happiness—resolved its befuddled state the only way it knew how: she burst into tears.

It took a while for Charlotte to regain her composure, and then she worried that she would be late arriving in Keighley. She entrusted the letter to Emily, who—before letting Charlotte out of her sight—reminded her that she could not so much as hint about their publishing to Ellen.

Ellen had arrived on the four o’clock train and was waiting patiently on a bench in the shade of the station, her blond curls a little damp around the edge of her pretty bonnet, her blue eyes betraying just a shade of disappointment. She carried a new parasol the shade of pale
mint, although she knew the wind might well ravage it on the walk back to Haworth.

When they had first met at Roe Head, Charlotte had not cared much for her. Ellen was conformist to the core and slavishly mindful of the opinions of anyone with money or social influence. But she was also kindhearted and affectionate, and Charlotte craved affection. Ellen had arrived at school just days after Charlotte, and she had found fourteen-year-old Charlotte in the empty classroom, huddled behind the long drapes of the bay window sobbing her heart out while the other girls played outdoors. Ellen had gently coaxed her out of hiding, and together the two homesick girls had sat on the window seat and spilled their hearts to each other.

There was something disarmingly reassuring about Ellen, a genuine kindness that invited trust, but Charlotte had never known intimacy outside the intense bonds of her own uniquely gifted family. As children they had felt themselves branded by their poverty, and as a result, the feminine rituals of social calling had become a painful experience not to be endured. On the few occasions when their aunt had herded them to social tea drinkings in the finer homes on the outskirts of the village, the girls had suffered acutely from condescending glances and cutting remarks. Their best dresses were often hand-me-downs passed on to them by the very families in whose parlors they would be obliged to sit for a stifling hour or two, staring across the tea table at mothers and daughters who would recognize Anne’s dress or Emily’s bonnet, something discarded, too old-fashioned to be worn by anyone but the parson’s charity children.

And so they grew up, socially defective, isolated, but with a firm belief in their worth as individuals. Intellectually gifted, they withdrew into their own tight world, where all that mattered were books, paintings, and music. Every human unkindness preyed on their minds, but alone, within their mental world and the comfort of their family, they were giants, titans, genii.

Much to Charlotte’s surprise, over the long summer break following her first year at Roe Head, Ellen had kept up a faithful correspondence.

The next summer, Charlotte was invited for two weeks at Rydings, the Nusseys’ grand old battlemented house with its rookery and fruit trees. It would be another year before Charlotte had the courage to reciprocate the offer.

“She sounds boring and snobbish,” Emily had said. Emily didn’t like having to entertain visitors.

“She can be snobbish, but honestly, Em, I find it refreshing sometimes, just to gossip about frivolous things.”

Emily gave one of her contemptuous little grunts.

“Besides, Ellen likes me. And whenever someone likes me, I can’t help but like them in return.”

“I can’t see why. You have Branwell and me and Anne. Why should you need anyone else?”

“Because I do.”

“She won’t like us. No one does. We’re poor and we’re all odd. Except Aunt, but no one pays any attention to her. You just wait. Papa will launch into one of his horrifying tales after dinner and scare the wits out of her. She’ll never come back again.”

But she did. Over the course of the years, they became comfortable with each other’s qualities and faults; they were contrasts but they suited each other, and affection grew into love. Charlotte was capable of infinite love.

Ellen had already sent her luggage on with a carrier, and so they went directly to the Devonshire Arms for tea. Charlotte’s spirits were high, and Ellen thought she had not seen her friend so cheerful in years.

“So, your dear brother Henry is engaged to be married,” Charlotte said gaily.

“Are you not just a tiny bit jealous, Charlotte?”

“Jealous! Why, not a whit!”

“You could have been his bride, you know.”

“Yes, and ten to one I shall never have the chance again.” She waved her gloved hand in a carefree gesture. “But
n’importe
.”

“He was truly very fond of you.”

“Oh, Nell, Henry thinks he knows me, but he doesn’t. I’d shock him—he’d think me too wildly romantic for his taste and he’d be constantly censuring me, and there you have it. That’s not the kind of husband I need.” She would not remind Nell of how irritable she could become when dissatisfaction set in, how insipid conversation with mediocre young men turned loose the ogre in her. And the idea of marrying one—like dear Henry … well, you might as well lock her up in the attic and throw away the key.

Ellen sipped her tea and with a wounded voice said, “He is a grave and quiet young man, but then clergymen often are.”

Charlotte reached across the table and touched her arm. “Dearest Nell, Henry will make a wonderful husband, but I know I could never have for him that intense feeling that would make me willing to die for him.”

“Do you still think you can find that kind of love?”

“I doubt it, but I can’t marry without it.” Charlotte added, “I only regret that you and I will not be sisters-in-law.”

This seemed to be what Ellen had wanted to hear. She smiled. “But we are sisters in spirit.”

“Yes. And that is more meaningful than any binding laws.”

She peered at Charlotte, whose eyes seemed unusually brilliant. There was something very beguiling about her today, a spritelike air and effervescence. “My dear, you must have some news to tell me.”

“News?” Charlotte started as she set down her cup.

“Are you hiding something from me?”

“What would I be hiding?”

“Have you had attentions shown to you from a certain quarter?”

“You mean romantic news.”

“Precisely.”

“Where would I find romance in Haworth?”

“Your father’s curate?”

Charlotte burst out in laughter. “You see romance in the strangest places, Ellen dear.”

“What else would make you so lighthearted and cheerful?”

“A visit from you and a bright sunny day,” she beamed.

They walked back to Haworth in the cool of the evening, both of them refreshed and relaxed. They fell into easy chatter about the many dramas in their families. Ellen’s oldest brothers moved in aristocratic circles in London and were always good for a little court gossip, but the younger brothers seemed to be plagued with constant misfortune or poor health, one of them mentally ill, another an alcoholic. Ellen confided all these heartaches to Charlotte, and in return Charlotte openly confided Branwell’s adultery and addictions. In the privacy of letters and on visits like this, the most humiliating and distressing incidents were aired, wept over, prayed for; anger was purged and hope renewed. The only topic they never discussed was Charlotte’s writing, and so Charlotte kept her secret, and Ellen continued to search for romance in the air.