Romancing Miss Bronte (27 page)

When she had sealed the letters and undressed, she crawled into the deep bed, which had been carefully turned down by the maid. Before she blew out her candle, she glanced around the pretty green room with the chintz curtains, momentarily fancying herself in a family such as this.

Her heart wanted desperately to cling to George Smith, but she could not paint herself into the portrait, could not imagine her queer little body linked to his athletic six-foot frame. He was eight years younger than she, bright-spirited and sweet-tempered. He would have a pretty wife with a fortune and social graces, certainly not a stunted clergyman’s daughter, regardless of how great her fame.

T
hey waited until the end of her visit to introduce her to the London literary critics. Charlotte knew how much it meant to her publisher, and she would not have disappointed him for the world, regardless of how much she dreaded the confrontation. The opinions of these men carried enormous weight, and it was a necessary trial she would have to endure to disprove the rumors that Currer Bell was godless and immoral.

She sat in George’s office in bonnet and gloves, perched stiffly on a chair with her teacup and saucer in her lap, watching George and Mr. Williams as they paced the small space, excitedly discussing plans for the dinner party at the end of the week.

“They’re all coming,” George said proudly. “Quite speedy replies. Mr. Chorley of the
Athenaeum
replied within the hour.”

“And the
Examiner
?” Mr. Williams asked.

“Confirmed.”

“And the gentleman from the
Times
?” Charlotte asked.

George fixed her with a meaningful glance. “I haven’t sent out his invitation. I wished to consult you first.”

Just that week the
Times
had published an excessively sarcastic notice of
Shirley
that had shaken Charlotte even more than Lewes’s remarks.

“He must be invited,” Charlotte said brightly. “It would be impolite to exclude him. Besides, I should be disappointed only to meet my friends. I should like to meet my foes as well. I should like to see what manner of creatures they are.”

“And Mr. Lewes?”

She paused to take a sip of her tea, which had gone cold. Her hand trembled, and the cup rattled on the saucer as she lowered it to her lap.

“I should very much like to meet him as well.”

George knew how the harsh judgment of some of these men had wounded her and her sisters, and he was amazed at her toughness of mind.

“You need not look so surprised,” Charlotte said, meeting their looks with steady eyes. “I am ready for the challenge.”

“Do you realize how unusual it is to get these men to agree to sit in the same room together?” Williams asked. “Chorley and Lewes can’t tolerate each other. And Forster’s feuding with all of them. But not one of them would turn down an invitation to meet you, even if it meant sitting down with the devil himself.”

Charlotte took another sip of her cold tea and replied with a twist of humor, “Very aptly said, Mr. Williams, since there are some of them who do indeed take me to be the devil.”

After she had gone, George sank into a chair and propped his feet up on a pile of manuscripts. “I admire her ever so much, Williams. She suffers terribly before these dinner parties, you know. Frightful headaches and nervous spells. But she has the heart of a lion.”

On her last night in town, London’s most eminent critics rolled up one by one in front of George Smith’s home, bringing to an end the feverish excitement that had reigned that day in the editorial offices of the city’s great newspapers. Despite the gossip, some of them were still not convinced of her sex. They didn’t know what to expect, if they would enter the drawing room to find a dazzling and witty beauty or an unmannered Yorkshire weaver. Some of them still clung to the suspicion that Currer Bell had written
Wuthering Heights
.

In order to steel her nerves, Mrs. Smith had forced a copious tea on Charlotte, and Charlotte had waited out the afternoon with quiet resignation, installed on the sofa near the crackling wood fire, knitting infant’s boots for Mrs. Smith’s charity basket.

That evening as the drawing room door was thrown open and the great and powerful were announced, George remained firmly at her side; his mother stood at a distance, keeping to her role of watchful chaperone. One by one Charlotte braved the onslaught, all the while praying that her nerves would not fail her and she would not speak stupidly. John Forster of the
Examiner
bounded into the room, peered down at her from beneath his bushy black brows, and began pumping her hand with a fresh overeagerness that took her by surprise. Lewes surprised her even more. There was a vivacity in the man and an irrepressible sense of fun that permeated all his conversation. He bore a haunting resemblance to Emily—the wistful pale eyes, the full mouth—and she thought she could not hate him, whatever he might say or do. Only Chorley shocked her. More than six feet tall, he strutted in with his patent boots, his enormous velvet lapels, his satin scarf puffed out like the crop of a pigeon, and extended his gloved fingers with the statement “Henry Fothergill Chorley, madam. Art and music critic and editor for the
Athenaeum
since 1830.” He then struck an affected pose with his hand inside his waistcoat, looking down his short, turned-up nose at her with an expression of undeniable self-satisfaction. Charlotte was stupefied, having never met an authentic dandy, believing Queen Victoria had snuffed them out in the previous decade.

Nevertheless, this group accounted for the most prolific geniuses of the day, having between them published enough literary essays, novels, plays, and biographies to paper every inch of George’s grand Bayswater residence. The conversation was nothing if not brilliant, and they were all, even swaggering Chorley, squeakily civil to her. She was a literary sensation, and they would all go away that evening wearing Charlotte Brontë in their cap as they wore Browning, Dickens, Tennyson, Carlyle, and every other poet or artist worth celebrating.

On the way down to the dining room, with Charlotte on his arm, George leaned over to whisper reassuringly in her ear, “You seem quite composed this evening.”

She gave his arm a slight squeeze and drew herself up on her tiptoes
to whisper in his ear, “I’m determined to enjoy myself. After all, it is my last night.”

He covered her hand with his own, pressing it warmly. “You will be back here often, I insist upon it. My home is always open to you.”

But as George escorted her to her chair near the head of the table, when she realized that she would be surrounded by strangers, she was seized by panic. Without warning, she gathered up her skirts and turned away.

“Charlotte?” he whispered to her, catching her elbow. “Where are you going?”

Ignoring his baffled look, she slipped out of his grasp and quickly marched to the other end of the table, to where his mother sat. The servant stepped up and drew out the chair next to Mrs. Smith. Charlotte sat down, flushing brightly as she arranged her skirts.

Mrs. Smith whispered to her, “But, my dear, you are the guest of honor. Your place is beside George.”

Charlotte was mortified by her own timidity. She only shook her head and kept her eyes averted.

“It’s quite all right, my dear.” Mrs. Smith found Charlotte’s knee and gave it a pat. “If you feel more comfortable beside me …”

The dinner was a two-hour procession of dishes accompanied by countless bottles of champagne and claret. Mr. Sutherland from the
Times
, a raspy-voiced man with a pocked face, took up the topic of Dickens’s
Martin Chuzzlewit
with the roast goose and didn’t drop him until they had been served the plovers’ eggs in aspic jelly.

Gradually, thanks to the wine and the reassuring presence of Mrs. Smith, Charlotte’s self-consciousness began to vanish and they began to draw her out with their questions. Pausing first to compose her thoughts, she answered simply but always clearly and without a trace of self-doubt. These men, so accustomed to London’s fashion of intellectual affectation, its verbal banter and wit, found themselves disarmed by her earnestness.

By the time they had finished the
macédoine de fruits
and started on the cherry ice, they had all drunk a good deal. There had been a little
sniping between Forster and Lewes, and they had all fairly well drowned Thackeray in abuse.

“You are a great admirer of Mr. Thackeray’s, if I recall, Miss Brontë,” Mr. Forster said.

“Indeed, I am. He honors the Truth.” She paused. “In all but his portrayal of women. Only there do I fault him.”

“But his women are perfect models of modesty, Miss Brontë,” Forster declared.

“Indeed. Therein lies his error.”

“Now, having met you, knowing you to be a faultlessly well-bred lady,” Chorley simpered, a little too unctuously, “I cannot imagine that you would have all our women behave like Jane Eyre.”

“Because she speaks frankly of her feelings?”

Forster replied, “The sentiment she expresses is not one we would wish our women to emulate in literature.”

“Would you condemn the expression of these sentiments in real life?”

“Between a well-bred man and woman, most certainly!” Chorley cried.

“Hypocrite,” Lewes muttered, emptying his glass.

Chorley ignored this and ranted on: “It is the purpose of our literature to purify human passions and teach the importance of virtue. We cannot allow our literature to trample on our conventions.”

Sutherland, who had been falling asleep, roused himself to speak. “Indeed, I found there to be a coarse frankness of dialogue between the man and the woman.”

Charlotte gazed around the table at them, her eyes blazing. “Perhaps you confuse virtue and convention, gentlemen. Conventionality is not morality, and self-righteousness is not religion.”

Lewes, who had become a little tipsy, was clearly in Charlotte’s camp. He leaned forward and glared down the table at the others, raised his brandy snifter, and cried, “Well said, Currer Bell! Well said!”

“Oh, but I assure you, if I said all that I think on the matter of women and how we are seen through this warped glass—by even the cleverest and most intelligent men, like yourselves—I’m quite sure I’d be stoned.”

“Come, come now, Miss Brontë, I cannot believe that you would have our literature strewn with vulgar and coarse heroines!”

“But there is my point, sir—that you confuse coarseness with honesty. Why, I have never—even from childhood—believed your heroines to be natural or true. Your good woman is a queer cross between a painted doll and an angel, and your bad woman is always a temptress. If I should be obliged to copy these characters, I would simply not write at all.”

She shrugged, then calmly added, “I paint women as I see them, and they are honest and real. If the public refuses to acknowledge this reality, I can quietly put down my pen and trouble them no more. From obscurity I came; to obscurity I can return.”

There was a deep, stunned silence. None of the men dared to meet her gaze.

Breaking the chill, Forster leaned across the table and pleaded, “Miss Brontë, we beseech you to do no such thing. For poor George’s sake.”

There was relieved laughter, and the conversation droned away through coffee and the end of dinner.

Lewes was the last to depart. As he stood in the hall putting on his coat, he tottered forward and said, “You and I should be friends, Miss Brontë. We have much in common. We’ve both written naughty books.”

George had never witnessed his author’s wrath until that moment, and it was a glorious thing to behold. She stared up at the pale little Lewes, her eyes fired and her voice trembling with rage. “Mr. Lewes, I have not read your novels, but I would imagine that there is as great a difference between your work and mine as there is between your personal conduct and mine. And I can assure you, I am quite as well informed on your personal life as you are on mine. Although I would not commit the grave and thoughtless indiscretion of making allusion to it in the press.”

He seemed at once chastised, and he furrowed his brow and said gently, “But we are friends, are we not?”

“We were once,” she replied sternly.

“Are we not now?” he pleaded.

A moment of rigid silence passed; then, softening, she extended her hand to shake. “I’m sure we shall be friends again one day.”

“I’m not quite sure what they made of me,” Charlotte said when she and George were alone. She was visibly exhausted. A strand of hair had fallen loose, and with her head down she absentmindedly fished for a comb; it was an unguarded gesture, revealing a softness and vulnerability George had not seen before.

“I think a few of them might be afraid of you,” George smiled.

“Afraid of me?”

“Because you’ve shown yourself to be independent of their judgment. They’ll respect you for it, albeit a little grudgingly.”

“That’s just as well,” she replied. “I think I shall be less afraid of their condemnation in the future. It’s a liberating feeling.”

“And perhaps in the future you’ll be less afraid to sit at my side.”

She dropped her eyes. “I do so regret having disappointed you. I was only concerned about appearances.”

“No one is going to find it improper for a poor publisher to lean upon the prop of his famous author.”

Her eyes flashed a smile. “I would be proud to consider myself your prop.”

“Charlotte, I want you to know that I’m not blind to how difficult this is for you. I only hope that these two weeks of activity have brought you a little distraction from your grief.”

He had called her by her Christian name. It sounded so very natural, not at all forced or improper. “Oh, they have,” she replied earnestly. “And I am ever so grateful.”

As she started up the stairs, he teased, “Don’t wait too long to return. You’ll forget your way around the house and get lost again.”

She gave him a tired smile. “Good night, George.”

“Good night, Charlotte.”

He watched her, thinking she looked smaller than ever as she disappeared quietly and noiselessly up the stairs. Just like a bird, as Rochester
had called her. He thought of her returning to her empty parsonage in bleak and snowbound Yorkshire. There was something heart-wrenching in the idea that this little creature would be entombed in such a place, moving about it like a spirit herself. Especially when he thought how that slight, still frame concealed such a strong, fiery force, which neither tragedy nor harsh condemnation had been able to extinguish or freeze.