Romancing Miss Bronte (26 page)

“Yes, it was, thank you,” Charlotte nodded. “Much warmer than that to which I am accustomed.”

“Is it too warm, my dear?” she asked pleasantly. “Is it stuffy?”

“Not at all. I’m most comfortable, ma’am. Truly I am.”

“Very well, then,” she said and returned to her correspondence, sorting through papers and opening envelopes with a cheery briskness.

Charlotte glanced about the room for the newspapers, which were always laid out for her to read, but this morning the table was conspicuously bare.
Shirley
was to be reviewed that day in the
Edinburgh Review
, and Charlotte immediately suspected that they had hidden it. In that case, the review must have been bad.

“Forgive me for disturbing you, ma’am …”

Mrs. Smith met her gaze with a solemn, wide-eyed look. “Oh, my dear, you’re not disturbing me in the least. We know you prefer a quiet morning.”

“Has the paper arrived?”

“What paper is that, my dear?”

“The
Edinburgh Review
.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed innocently. “Oh, it’s not here?”

“I believe Mr. Lewes’s review of
Shirley
was to appear today, was it not?”

“Perhaps it’s been mislaid,” she replied, then quickly went back to her paperwork, avoiding Charlotte’s prying gaze.

“I would very much like to read it,” Charlotte said after a long hesitation.

Mrs. Smith sat back with a sigh. “Miss Brontë, I confess that George asked me to keep it from you. He was afraid it would upset you, and he didn’t want your day marred by unpleasantness. Perhaps you might like to read it this evening, after George returns.”

There it was, Charlotte thought. Another poor review. She struggled
to put on a brave face. “It is most kind of you, but I would prefer to read it now.”

Mrs. Smith rang for the parlor maid, who then returned, slightly out of breath, with the paper on a silver tray.

George Henry Lewes had been one of those critics whose wild enthusiasm for
Jane Eyre
had prompted him to initiate correspondence with Currer Bell through her publishers, but his zeal often took the form of bombastic lectures on her failures. He had urged her to cultivate the mild-mannered, highly polished style of Jane Austen to counteract her tendency to melodrama and her overcolored imagination. Charlotte felt it was very much like urging a fish to fly, and in her replies she passionately defended the Romantic ideals to which she and Emily had clung, and her conviction that clarity and common sense did not always yield the heart’s truth.

But what had given her most cause for concern was his claim to have solved the mystery of her identity, and his careless refusal—despite her pleas—to judge her strictly as an author, not as a woman.

Now, as she adjusted her spectacles and unfolded the large tabloid sheets with tremulous hands, she thought he must have been brutal indeed to write something that her publisher deemed should be hidden from her.

“We take Currer Bell to be one of the most remarkable of female writers—that she is a woman, we never had a moment’s doubt,” he wrote.

For a long while Charlotte struggled to remain hidden, screened behind the broadsheets. She was helpless to check the tears that flushed down her face, gathering in her mouth, at her chin, dripping silently onto her black silk gown. There was something absurdly ironic about the moment, the force of her feelings, the loneliness and lovelessness bursting forth at a time and place when they must at all cost be suppressed. She could not put down the paper. Mrs. Smith would look up. And then she would be exposed—vulnerable, sensitive, so pathetically womanish.

She thought,
If I just sit here long enough and allow all this to pass, and my tears to dry …

There was the sound of rustling skirts and the tread of steps on the carpet.

“Miss Brontë?”

Mrs. Smith moved aside a cushion and settled her broad self noisily onto the sofa. “Now, now,” she said matter-of-factly, “you must not allow them to excite you so.”

Charlotte lowered the paper and quickly folded it away.

“I do apologize. I’ve been quite rude, haven’t I?” Charlotte mumbled as she fished a handkerchief from her sleeve.

“Nonsense.”

“This is precisely what you were trying to spare me.” She dabbed at her eyes and cast a look up at Mrs. Smith that was so appealing, so wanting of affection, that it was impossible to remain unmoved.

“My dear, it is Mr. Lewes who owes you an apology. It was most thoughtless of him to write some of those things, although I do believe he does not intend it so—George tells me he is a great admirer of yours. But he is a rather pedantic young man, quite full of himself like all these brilliant literary men, and I fear he would be stunned to think he has wounded you so.”

A deep shudder shook Charlotte’s tiny frame. “When my sisters were alive, we would laugh over this kind of thing.”

At the mention of her sisters, Mrs. Smith understood that the tears were about much more than a review of her book.

George’s mother was not the caressing kind, and when she reached to pat Charlotte’s knee it was roughly, rather like whacking a cushion, but the intentions were heartfelt.

“Now, now, dry those tears and let’s have an end to all this.”

But the emotions had taken their toll, and Charlotte’s head was pounding. She raised a hand to her temple; her face had drained of all color.

“I’m afraid I’m not feeling well,” she whispered. “I think I should like to retire to my room.”

“By all means. Indeed, you do look weary, Miss Brontë.” Mrs. Smith rose as Charlotte slid from the sofa and headed for the stairs. “I’ll send the maid up to draw your curtains.”

Mrs. Smith had to ring twice for the maid before the girl arrived, wide-eyed and out of breath.

“It’s Miss Brontë,” the maid apologized. “I found her in the upstairs hall, wandering around in a terrible state. She said she was confused by all the doors and couldn’t find her room. I showed her to her room, ma’am, but she looked frightfully pale, like she might faint.”

Mrs. Smith hurried upstairs and stood listening for a moment at the door. When she heard the unmistakable sound of retching, she knocked lightly and entered. Charlotte was bent over the washstand, heaving violently with each convulsion. Mrs. Smith closed the door and strode across the room, slipping an arm around Charlotte and untangling the strands of dark hair that had fallen into her face.

“Here, here, let me help you,” she commanded gruffly. “I’ve nursed four children through worse than this, and a dying husband.”

She snatched a towel from the rack beside the washstand, dampened it with water from the pitcher, and pressed it to Charlotte’s head.

“Take a deep breath, my dear. There. There. That’s better.”

When the nausea was calmed, she ordered Charlotte out of her dress and into bed. Once the curtains were drawn and the maid had gone, Charlotte opened her eyes to see Mrs. Smith approaching with a basin of water. She pulled up a chair beside the bed.

“I beg you not to tell Mr. Smith about this,” Charlotte murmured. “I should not like to upset him.”

“I shall tell him only that you were overtired and needed to rest.” She wrung out a cloth and laid it over Charlotte’s forehead. “Now lie still and try to sleep.”

“My dress …” Charlotte murmured.

“I’ve sent it down to have it sponged clean.”

“You are very kind.”

“My compliments to your dressmaker.”

Charlotte’s eyes fluttered open. “Do you approve?”

“It’s very becoming … done up very nicely,” she replied. “Simple and elegant.”

“You must not bother yourself with me,” Charlotte said. “I’m quite accustomed to being alone.”

“Indeed, my dear, too accustomed. You should be alone as little as possible.”

Charlotte fell still, and after a moment she felt the clasp of cool, damp skin as Mrs. Smith placed a hand in hers, and gave it a brisk, reassuring squeeze.

George Smith blew into the entry hall on a gust of wintry wind, shaking the damp drizzle off his hat before he passed it to the manservant.

“Where are they?” he asked as he shed his heavy coat and untwined the wool scarf from his neck.

“Upstairs in the drawing room, sir.”

“Did my flowers come?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

George knew the effect the Lewes review would have on Charlotte, with the heartless references to her spinsterhood and lack of maternal instinct, and the merciless harping on the lack of delicacy in her writing; he anticipated a rough evening ahead. But as he climbed the stairs, he could hear the soft murmur of easy conversation and laughter coming from the drawing room. To his surprise, when he opened the door he found his mother and Charlotte sitting beside the fire, happily chatting away in the manner of old friends.

“There he is!” his mother exclaimed, laying down her needlepoint as he strode across the room. “And he’s in time for supper!” She arched her neck and presented her cheek in feigned coolness. “We had hoped to see you at tea.”

Charlotte rose to stand beside the fire, her warm brown eyes brimming with an easy gaiety that took George by surprise.

“Listen to her,” George said as he leaned down to plant a kiss on his mother’s cheek. “I can never please her.”

“You are my witness, Miss Brontë. You know he’s never on time for breakfast, nor for any meal for that matter.”

He had not missed Charlotte’s bright gaze all this time, shining up at him with the warmth of gratitude.

“Thank you for the yellow roses, sir,” she said. “It was much too kind. And I fear they were had under false pretenses. As you can see, I am in exceedingly fine spirits.”

“What have you done to her, Mother? I think I’ve never seen Currer Bell so relaxed.”

“I’ve done as you ordered. Let her rest,” his mother replied as she gathered up her thread and tucked it into her basket. “We canceled all our excursions for the day. It is so wretchedly cold, and truthfully, we’ve spent a very pleasant and quiet afternoon.”

“I hope she didn’t tire you out with her old-lady gossip,” George said to Charlotte.

“On the contrary, your mother’s gossip is very enlightening.”

“Oh? How so?”

“I told her all about the scandal around Mr. Lewes and his wife.”

George turned an alarmed look on his mother. All of London society knew that Lewes’s wife had been living openly with Leigh Hunt, Lewes’s close friend and editorial partner; she had even borne Hunt’s children. But such scandal was only whispered between intimate friends, never mentioned in polite company.

“No need to look so shocked, my dear boy. She has every right to know. Particularly since Mr. Lewes is so quick to judge Miss Brontë’s novels, and then lives so scandalously. And his own novels were such abject failures. Really, they were quite awful.”

George turned to Charlotte. “So you read Mr. Lewes’s review.”

“Yes, and I’m quite recovered now.”

“Good,” he smiled.

“And Mr. Thackeray called,” Charlotte continued. “He saw the review and came by to cheer me. It was ever so kind of him.”

“We’ll have no more talk of reviews this evening, George,” his mother ruled, casting a stern warning glance over the rims of her spectacles. “We will converse only on cheerful topics.”

George Smith found his author intriguing to watch that evening, the waiflike creature in the black of deep mourning, her fairylike hands folded at her waist. There was an exquisite sensitivity at work in those intelligent eyes. Even when she was silent, those eyes were never passive; they watched carefully, noticing everything. She seemed to be reading your feelings and attitudes, at times even your soul.

Over dinner, the conversation flowed freely with the claret and port, from soup to roast saddle of mutton and cheese. George would glance at her, and he would wonder at his extraordinary fortune; here at his table sat London’s most sought-after literary phenomenon. She was his. This tiny lady—the great Jane Eyre.

Returning to her room that evening, Charlotte sat up writing letters to Ellen and her father. Shrewdly, she held up different masks to each of them. To her father she was the connoisseur of art; she wrote of the
paintings at the National Gallery, of seeing the great actor Macready perform
Macbeth
. Rarely, if at all, did she mention George Smith. “I get on quietly,” she wrote. “Most people know me, I think, but they are far too well-bred to show that they know me, so that there is none of that bustle or that sense of publicity I dislike.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “I met Thackeray.”

To sociable Ellen she spoke of London society and the people she had met, painting herself as the epitome of a country clergyman’s daughter, as if she feared losing her austere little soul if she were to enjoy herself too much. “Mrs. Smith watched me narrowly—when I was surrounded by gentlemen—she never took her eye from me—I liked the surveillance—both when it kept guard over me among many or only with her cherished and valued son—she soon, I am convinced, saw in what light I viewed both her George and all the rest.” She added poignantly, “She treats me as if she likes me. As for the others, I do not know what they thought of me, but I believe most desired more to admire and more to blame.”