Brontës (115 page)

was that on the very day I received Smith & Elder's letter – Anne and I packed up a small box, sent it down to Keighley – set out ourselves after tea – walked through a thunderstorm to the station, got to Leeds and whirled up by the Night train to London – with the view of proving our separate identity to Smith & Elder and confronting Newby with his lie –
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Though they had travelled by second-class ticket from Keighley to Leeds, they changed to a first-class carriage for the night train to London, arriving about eight o'clock the next morning at the Chapter Coffee House in Paternoster Row – ‘our old place Polly', Charlotte told Mary, ‘we did not well know where else to go'. They washed themselves, had some breakfast, sat for a few minutes and then set off to 65, Cornhill ‘in queer, inward excitement'.

We found 65 – to be a large bookseller's shop in a street almost as bustling as the Strand – we went in – walked up to the counter – there were a great many young men and lads here and there – I said to the first I could accost – ‘May I see Mr Smith –?' – he hesitated, looking a little surprised – but went to fetch him – We sat down and waited awhile – looking a[t] some books on the counter – publications of theirs well known to us – of many of which they had sent us copies as presents.
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Saturday being a full working day, George Smith was already in his office but he was busy and anxious not to be disturbed. When the clerk came with the message that two ladies wished to see him, Smith sent out to ask for their names which the Brontës declined to give, saying they had come on a private matter. Ever courteous, Smith concealed his impatience and went out to meet the two ‘rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking', who were waiting for him.
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An amused Charlotte later reported their first meeting.

somebody came up and said dubiously

‘Did you wish to see me, Ma'am?'

‘Is it Mr Smith?' \I said/ looking up through my spectacles at a young, tall, gentlemanly man.

‘It is.'

I then put his own letter into his hand directed to ‘Currer Bell.' He looked at it – then at me – again – yet again – I laughed at his queer perplexity – A recognition took place – I gave my real name – ‘Miss Brontë' – We were both hurried from the shop into a little back room – ceiled with a great skylight and only large enough to hold 3 chairs and a desk – and there explanations were rapidly gone into – Mr Newby being anathematized, I fear with undue vehemence. Smith hurried out and returned quickly with one whom he introduced as Mr Williams – a pale, mild, stooping man of fifty – very much like a faded Tom Dixon – Another recognition – a long, nervous shaking of hands – Then followed talk – talk – talk – Mr Williams being silent – Mr Smith loquacious –

‘Allow me to introduce you to my mother & sisters – How long do you stay in Town? You must make the most of the time – to-night you must go to the Italian opera – you must see the Exhibition – Mr Thackeray would be pleased to see you – If Mr Lewes knew “Currer Bell” was in town – he would have to be shut up – I will ask them both to dinner at my house &c.'
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At this point Charlotte was obliged to stop the flow with ‘a grave explanation'. Their publishers alone were to be admitted to the secret of their identity; to the rest of the world they must remain ‘gentlemen'. With that intuition which made him such a sympathetic correspondent, Williams ‘understood me directly'. George Smith, who relished the prospect of the sensation that the two tiny provincial ladies would make in a London which characterized them as the ‘coarse Bell brothers', ‘comprehended by slower degrees – he did not like the quiet plan – he would have liked some
excitement, eclat &c.' He tried another tack, urging them to attend a literary party incognito as his ‘Country Cousins', but Charlotte was obliged to veto this plan too when she learnt that men like Thackeray could not be invited without a hint as to whom they would meet, even though the desire to see some of the people Smith mentioned ‘kindled in me very strongly'. ‘I declined even this – I felt it would have ended in our being made a show of– a thing I have ever resolved to avoid.' Smith made a last-ditch attempt to persuade the sisters to stay at his house, but this too they declined. As they parted, Smith told them that he would bring his own sisters to meet them that evening, a courtesy Charlotte had not the heart to refuse again. Having dropped their bombshell, Charlotte and Anne retired to the quiet obscurity of the Chapter Coffee House, where Charlotte ‘paid for the excitement of the interview by a thundering headache & harrassing sickness'.
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It is difficult to believe that, prior to this interview, neither George Smith nor William Smith Williams had guessed that ‘Currer Bell' was one and the same as the ‘Miss Brontë' to whom they had addressed ‘his' correspondence. Smith later claimed that, for his own part, he had never had much doubt on the subject of the writer's sex – ‘but then I had the advantage over the general public of having the handwriting of the author before me. There were qualities of style, too, and turns of expression, which satisfied me that “Currer Bell” was a woman, an opinion in which Mr Williams concurred.' George Smith's observation of Charlotte's appearance and character, informed by later and better acquaintance, was equally perceptive:

I must confess that my first impression of Charlotte Brontë's personal appearance was that it was interesting rather than attractive. She was very small, and had a quaint old-fashioned look. Her head seemed too large for her body. She had fine eyes, but her face was marred by the shape of the mouth and by the complexion. There was but little feminine charm about her; and of this fact she herself was uneasily and perpetually conscious. It may seem strange that the possession of genius did not lift her above the weakness of an excessive anxiety about her personal appearance. But I believe that she would have given all her genius and her fame to have been beautiful. Perhaps few women ever existed more anxious to be pretty than she, or more angrily conscious of the circumstance that she was
not
pretty.
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George Smith was equally sensitive in his assessment of Anne Brontë,
though this was the only occasion on which he ever saw her. ‘She was a gentle, quiet, rather subdued person, by no means pretty, yet of a pleasing appearance. Her manner was curiously expressive of a wish for protection and encouragement, a kind of constant appeal which invited sympathy.'
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Charlotte's first impressions of George Smith were more favourable.

Mr Smith made himself very pleasant, – he is a firm, intelligent man of business though so young – bent on getting on – and I think desirous to make his way by fair, honourable means – he is enterprising – but likewise cool & cautious. Mr Smith is a
practical
man –
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He was also, she might have added, extremely good-looking: twenty-five years old, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with a clear pale face and an athletic figure kept in trim by his daily habit of riding. By contrast, William Smith Williams – the ‘pale, mild, stooping man of fifty' – was more of a kindred spirit to Charlotte and Anne, a man who was ‘altogether of the contemplative, theorizing order … [who] lives too much in abstractions':

he was so quiet but so sincere in his attentions – one could not but have a most friendly leaning towards him – he has a nervous hesitation in speech and a difficulty in finding appropriate language in which to express himself – which throws him into the background in conversation – but I had been his correspondent – and therefore knew with what intelligence he could write – so that I was not in danger of underrating him.
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On the Saturday evening, 8 July, after their eventful first meeting in the morning, Charlotte was unable to throw off her headache and nausea, despite a strong dose of sal volatile. She was, therefore, still in ‘grievous bodily case' when the Smiths were announced and found the sisters clinging together on the most remote window-seat of the long, low dingy room where the elderly waiter, touched by their plight, had given them refuge.

They came in two elegant, young ladies in full dress – prepared for the Opera – Smith himself in evening costume – white gloves, &c a distinguished, handsome fellow enough – We had by no means understood that it was settled that we were to go to the Opera – and were not ready – Moreover we had no fine, elegant dresses either with us or in the world – However on brief rumination, I though [t] it would be wise to make no objections – I put my headache in my
pocket – we attired ourselves in the plain – high-made, country garments we possessed – and went with them to their carriage – where we found Williams likewise in full dress. They must have thought us queer, quizzical-looking beings – especially me with my spectacles – I smiled inwardly at the contrast which must have been apparent between me and Mr Smith as I walked with him up the crimson carpeted staircase of the Opera House and stood amongst a brilliant throng at the box-door – which was not yet open. Fine ladies & gentlemen glanced at us with a slight, graceful superciliousness quite warranted by the circumstances – Still I felt pleasurably excited – in spite of headache and sickness & conscious clownishness; and I saw Anne was calm and gentle – which she always is –

The performance was Rosini's opera of the ‘Barber of Seville' – very brilliant though I fancy there are things I should like better – We got home after one o'clock – we had never been in bed the night before – had been in constant excitement for 24 hours – you may imagine we were tired.
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Smith later told Mrs Gaskell about a touching incident at the opera. As they had climbed the grand staircase, Charlotte, overcome by the splendour of her surroundings, had involuntarily pressed his arm and confided in a whisper, ‘You know I am not accustomed to this sort of thing.'
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Charlotte may have nipped in the bud George Smith's plans to show her off as his trophy author but she could not prevent him devising schemes for her entertainment. The day after they had attended the opera, the Brontë sisters were escorted to morning service at St Stephen's, Walbrook by Williams but, to their disappointment, Dr Croly, whom they had wished to hear, did not preach.
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In the afternoon George Smith arrived with his mother in their carriage to carry them off for dinner. Throughout the ordeal of the opera and the less public but equally trying dinner with the Smiths, who had not been told who their visitors really were, Charlotte was buoyed up by her sense of the ridiculous: nothing could be more incongruous than to see the ‘elegant, handsome' man about town, George Smith, ‘treating with scrupulous politeness these insignificant spinsters' – ‘a couple of odd-looking country-women'.
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She had, too, the secret satisfaction of knowing that all these fine ladies and gentlemen who had looked down so superciliously on herself and her sister would have fallen over themselves to meet the author of
Jane Eyre
.

At the Smiths' grand residence in Westbourne Place, Bishop's Road, Paddington, the Brontës were given a fine dinner ‘which neither Anne nor
I had appetite to eat – and were glad when it was over'. ‘I always feel under awkward constraint at table', Charlotte confided in Mary Taylor. ‘Dining-out would be a hideous bore to me.'
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The following day, Monday, Mrs Smith called on the sisters but, to their relief, left them to make their own way round the exhibitions at the Royal Academy and the National Gallery. They dined again at the Smiths' but spent the evening with Williams and his family in the more congenial surroundings of his ‘\comparatively/ humble but neat residence'. There, no doubt to the Brontës' gratification, they met a daughter of Leigh Hunt, who was Williams' friend: ‘she sang some little Italian airs which she had picked up amongst the peasantry in Tuscany, in a manner that charmed me – For herself she was a rattling good-natured personage enough –'.

On Tuesday Morning we left London – laden with books Mr Smith had given us – and got safely home. A more jaded wretch than I looked when I returned, it would be difficult to conceive – I was thin when I went but was meagre indeed when I returned, my face looked grey & very old – with strange, deep lines plough[ed] in it – my eyes stared unnaturally – I was weak and yet restless. In a while however these bad effects of excitement went off and I regained my normal condition –
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Having exhausted herself reliving the excitement of the whirlwind trip to London, Charlotte ended her long account to Mary Taylor with the news that she and Anne had also visited Newby. Frustratingly, she deferred the description of what must have been another momentous meeting to a later letter, which she seems never to have written.
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One small surviving record of the ‘pop visit', as Mary Taylor termed it, gives a touching insight into the Brontës' arrangements. In the tiny notebook in which she also jotted down George Smith's address and directions to his house, Charlotte noted the expenses of the journey and their stay. Their second-class tickets from Keighley to Leeds had cost five shillings and their first-class tickets on the train to London £4 9s.; on their return journey, they economized by travelling second class from Euston at a cost of only £3 4s. Their embarrassment at their inadequate country clothing is indicated by the purchase of new gloves and parasols (five shillings and sixteen shillings respectively) and they paid two shillings to get into the Academy exhibition. Three nights at the Chapter Coffee House cost them £2 5s., somewhat more than the inn at Leeds where they stayed overnight on their return for a mere nine shillings.
They came home bearing presents for their sister and the servants – a twelve-shilling copy of Tennyson's
Poems
for Emily and books for Martha Brown and Tabby Aykroyd – but, curiously, nothing for either Patrick or Branwell. The whole trip, including tips to porters and the cost of cabs in London, had cost Charlotte and Anne exactly fourteen pounds – nearly three-quarters of their annual salary as governesses.
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