The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (30 page)

The outing proved to be an exciting adventure. It was Anne’s first visit to London (she had never left Yorkshire in her life), and only my second. I had spent three thrilling days touring London’s most famous sights with papa and Emily en route to Belgium six years earlier, but I had taken no time to stop there before my last voyage.

Anne and I immediately packed a small trunk, sent it to Keighley, apprised papa of our plans, and boldly set out that very afternoon after tea. It was the 7th of July. We walked to the train station through a thunderstorm; we got to Leeds, and were whirled up by the night train to London. We arrived—after a sleepless night—at eight o’clock in the morning at the Chapter Coffee-House in Paternoster Row, where I had stayed before. We washed ourselves, ate some breakfast, and set off in queer inward excitement to find 65 Cornhill.

For Anne, who had been in delicate health all year, the long journey and the walk through town proved both exciting and taxing. I thought she looked very pale when we arrived, although she insisted she was fine. Smith & Elder, it turned out, was housed in a large bookseller’s shop, in a street almost as bustling as the Strand. We went in and walked up to the counter. It was a Saturday—a full working-day—and there were a great many young men and lads here and there in the small room. I said to the first I could accost: “May I see Mr. Smith?”

He hesitated, looked a little surprised, and asked for our names. I declined to give them, explaining that we had come to see the publisher on a private matter. He bade us to sit down and wait. As we waited, my apprehension grew; what would Mr. George Smith think of us? He had no idea we were coming; he had believed, for the past eleven months of our association, that Currer Bell was a man; and my sister and I did not, I knew, make a very impressive picture, both being so small of stature,
and attired as we were in our homemade, provincial dresses and bonnets.

At length a tall, handsome, gentlemanly young man came up to us. “Did you wish to see me, ma’am?” said he dubiously.

Anne and I stood. “Is it Mr. Smith?” I said in surprise, looking up through my spectacles at a dark-eyed, dark-haired youth of twenty-four, with a pale complexion and a trim, athletic figure, who appeared far too young and far too good-looking to be the head of a publishing house.

“It is.”

I put his own letter into his hand, directed to Currer Bell. Mr. Smith looked at it, and then at me again. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

I laughed at his perplexity; after a moment, as a silent, astonished recognition crossed his countenance, I said, “I am Miss Brontë. I am also Currer Bell, the author of
Jane Eyre.
This is my sister, Miss Anne Brontë—otherwise known as Acton Bell. We have come from Yorkshire to put to rest any doubts you may have about our identities, and our authorship.”

Y
ou are the Bells?” exclaimed Mr. Smith, absolutely stunned. “But I thought—I assumed you were three brothers!”

“We are three sisters!” I replied—instantly regretting the avowal, for in those four hastily spoken words, I had inadvertently broken my promise to Emily. “I am pleased that you thought as you did, sir,” I went on quickly, “for that is indeed the impression we wished to impart.”

Mr. Smith let out a great laugh, a mixture of surprise and apparent delight. “And what of Ellis Bell?”

“
He
could not come with us.” I rapidly launched into a brief explanation of the situation with Mr. Newby, anathematising Newby with undue vehemence.

“Your charges are all well-founded,” said Mr. Smith. “We call Newby’s establishment the ‘Nubian Desert.’ Manuscripts and correspondence can languish there for an eternity. Will you be so good as to wait a moment? There is some one to whom I must introduce you.” He hurried out and promptly returned with a pale, mild, stooping gentleman of fifty: Mr. William Smith Williams. It was a great pleasure finally to meet the other man with
whom I had been corresponding with such intimate regularity for nearly a year.

There followed a great shaking of hands, and an hour or more of talk as we sat in Mr. Smith’s bright little office (only large enough to hold three chairs and a desk, but ceiled with a great skylight.) The young Mr. Smith was the most loquacious, while Mr. Williams and Anne said almost nothing at all. Mr. Williams had a nervous hesitation in speech, and seemed to have a difficulty in finding appropriate language in which to express himself, which threw him into the background in conversation; but I knew with what intelligence he could write, so I could not undervalue him.

I also liked Mr. Smith immediately. I saw that he was a pleasant, practical, intelligent, and shrewd man of business; and he was gracious and generous as well. Once he recovered from his initial shock at learning the true identities of Currer and Acton Bell, he responded gallantly, by inviting us to stay at his house—an invitation I declined.

“We only intend to stay in town for the night, Mr. Smith. We will return home to-morrow.”

“Oh, no; that is impossible, Miss Brontë,” rejoined Mr. Smith, from his seat behind his desk. “You have come all this way, you must stay a few days at least. Is this your first time in London? Have you seen its sights?”

“I have been here once before, and saw a great deal. My sister has not.”

“You must allow me to show you around. You must make the most of your time! I will take you to-night to the Italian opera; you must see the Exhibition; Mr. Thackeray would, I know, be very pleased to meet 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, and you will meet them.”

I said firmly, “Mr. Smith, with all these invitations, you make my head spin; but I am afraid I must say no to all of them. My sister and I have come here to-day with one idea only: to introduce ourselves quietly to you, and to pay our ‘respects’ to
Mr. Newby. We have no desire to meet any one else. In fact,” I added gravely, “we must insist, sir, that you tell no one else we are here, and let not a single other soul into the secret of our identities. To the rest of the world, we wish to remain as gentlemen—the same, elusive Bell brothers.”

Mr. Smith’s face fell. “But surely not—that is to say—you will be missing out on such an opportunity! Do you realise what a sensation you will cause, Miss Brontë, if you allow me to introduce you to London society? People will simply fall over themselves to meet the author of
Jane Eyre
!”

“That is precisely the sort of spectacle, sir, that I wish to avoid.”

“I understand you completely, Miss Brontë,” interjected Mr. Williams, with a kind and sympathetic look.

“Thank you, Mr. Williams.”

“You cannot wish to leave so quietly as this,” insisted Mr. Smith unhappily. “Surely you can attend one dinner party. I will introduce you as my ‘cousins from the country.’ I will invite Mr. Thackeray and Harriet Martineau and Charles Dickens. You wish to meet them, do you not?”

At the mention of these names—all heroes of mine—I was infused by a sudden thrill; the desire to see them kindled in me very strongly. “It is a tempting offer. But—could we truly remain incognito?”

“I will do my best—although I admit, I cannot ask men like Thackeray without a
hint
as to whom they are to meet.”

I glanced at Anne; she shook her head silently. I knew she was right. Such an evening, I realised, would only make a show of us, to no good effect. “I am sorry, Mr. Smith. I should very much like to meet these literary giants; but it is far better that the world should think of us as the ‘coarse Bell Brothers,’ than as two tiny, shy, country women from Yorkshire, cowering in a corner, too nervous to say a word—for I assure you, that is what would occur.” I rose. “Now we really must go; I fear we have taken up too much of your time.”

“Miss Brontë,” said Mr. Smith, as he hastened around his
desk to our side, “if you insist on declining all my other offers, at the very least, you must allow me to introduce you to my sisters. I promise they will not reveal your identity to any one. Tell me: where are you staying?”

I did not have the heart to refuse again, and gave him the information he desired. To our astonishment, when Mr. Smith called on us that evening at our inn, he was attired in evening costume, accompanied by two elegant young ladies in full dress, prepared for the opera. Anne and I were not expecting to go out; we had no fine, elegant dresses with us, or in the world; but we quickly attired ourselves in the best of what we possessed, and went with them. I was struck more by the architectural brilliance of the Opera House itself and the brilliant throng there assembled (I had only witnessed such splendour and spectacle once in my life, in Brussels), than by the performance of Rossini’s
Barber of Seville
(I have seen stories, since, that I like better); but the entire evening was a genuine thrill, which my sister and I would never forget.

On Tuesday morning, before leaving town—having made our way around the art galleries by day, and taken meals with Mr. Smith and the Smith Williamses in the evening—we went to see Mr. Thomas Newby. That interview began with the same reception of shocked disbelief that we had received at Smith & Elder, but there the similarity ended. Mr. Newby’s establishment at 72 Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square was as gloomy and cluttered as Mr. Smith’s had been light and neat, and the man himself matched his surroundings: small, dark, aloof, shuffling, and vaguely unkempt as to his person. Moreover, the discovery that his client Acton Bell was a woman, induced in him a clear and new-found attitude of condescension and contempt.

“I do beg your pardon,” said Mr. Newby haughtily from behind the dusty counter (he did not invite us into his back office, for which I was unspeakably grateful), “if I have misinterpreted the situation, but I was operating on intelligence as to the identity of this Mr. Bell, which I believed to be valid. I shall withdraw my offer to Harper’s, of course, and let us hope for the
best with your current book,
Miss Anne.
” The shifty gleam in his beady eyes and the condescending, deceitful cast to his voice verified every concern I had ever held as to his character.

“I have done with Newby,” resolved Anne later that morning, as we dropped into our seats on the train bound for home, laden with books which Mr. Smith had given us. “I will never more have him for a publisher.”

“Let us hope that he at least keeps his end of the bargain,” said I.

Newby did, in fact, emit a full disclosure to Harper’s; but it was not long before he began leaking the secret of our true names and gender; and it was years before he paid even a small part of the money owed to my sisters.

As Anne and I sat on the train, we re-read the first notices for
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,
which had come out on the very day we had arrived in London. The reviews were mixed, praising the writing but complaining about the novel’s graphic depiction of human vices, and the writer’s “morbid love for the coarse, not to say the brutal.”

I felt badly for Anne. Although she did not say much, being of such a naturally taciturn, still, and reserved nature, I could see that she felt the effects of the unfavourable notices most keenly. However, despite (or perhaps because of) the reviews, Anne’s novel sold very well, and Newby published a second edition just six weeks after the first.

We were no sooner in the door of the parsonage than Emily made us sit down by the fire in the study and give her and papa a precisely detailed description of everything we had seen and done over the past five days. Although Emily had professed no interest in going to London, the gleam in her eyes as I gaily told our story (with Anne interjecting a thought here and there), revealed the enjoyment she derived from living the experience vicariously. I told her all, refraining only from mentioning that I had inadvertently betrayed the truth of her identity to Mr. Smith and Mr. Williams. The facts came out two weeks later, however,
when Emily read a letter to me from Mr. Williams, in which he alluded to my “sisters” in the plural.

“How could you?” exploded Emily, waving the letter in front of my face with the same wrath she had brought down upon my head when I first discovered her poems. “I was explicit about my feelings on this issue!”

“I am very sorry,” I replied, shame-faced. “The words ‘we are three sisters’ escaped me before I was aware. I regretted the admission the moment I made it.”

“You shall write back to Mr. Williams immediately, and inform him that henceforth,
Mr. Ellis Bell
shall not endure to be alluded to under any other appellation than his nom de plume.”

I did as Emily ordered. I am not certain if she ever forgave me.

Six weeks after my return from London, an incident occurred which dramatically altered my relationship with Mr. Nicholls. It began when Martha told me the sad news that the Ainley family, after being beset by illness all summer, had just lost their newest infant. It had been a blistering, brutal month, with my father sick in bed all the past week with a severe case of bronchitis; Mr. Nicholls had been handling all of papa’s duties in his stead. I wanted to pay my respects to the Ainleys. As Emily never made such calls, and Anne was busy with other things, I decided to go on my own.

It was a hot morning in late August. Children of all ages were milling aimlessly outside the Ainleys’ cottage as I approached; only the youngest ones were playing, but not with their typical muster, nor did they gather around me as I walked up to the front door. From within the house I could hear the murmur of conversation, and the sound of people crying. With a heavy heart, I knocked. The door was opened by Mr. Ainley, a tall, hardy-looking man with thinning, sandy hair and a prematurely lined face.

“Miss Brontë,” said he with a nod, as he wiped his red and brimming eyes on his sleeve, and gestured for me to enter.

Inside the small, dark room, a sparse crowd of sad-faced people were gathered, all dressed in black or whatever dark-coloured clothing they possessed; many of the women were sobbing. Mrs. Ainley sat in her rocking chair, weeping softly. Their eldest son John, wearing the very shirt that Anne and I had sewn for him the year before, stood over the tiny coffin which rested beside the hearth.

“I am so sorry for your loss, Mr. Ainley,” said I, after which I made my way to Mrs. Ainley’s side. A chair was produced for me; I sat and took Mrs. Ainley’s hand. “My heart goes out to you, ma’am. I can only imagine how difficult it must be, to lose a child so young.”

“Our Albert wor sich a good little bairn,” said Mrs. Ainley brokenly. “He ne’er gave us a single care. Then two nights past he took wi’ a fever, an’ before I knew it, he wor gone.” She burst into fresh tears.

“His loss hit us ever so hard,” said Mr. Ainley, “but we must accept it, for ’twas clearly th’ Lord’s will. We be sorely grieved, howsoever, by what has happened sin’, for Mr. Nicholls has refused t’ bury him.”

“Refused to bury him?” I repeated, stunned. “How can that be?”

“Mr. Nicholls said ’at, seeing how th’ baby was unbaptised, ’twould go against God an’ be against all his principles t’ bury him,” said Mr. Ainley.

“Against his principles?” I cried. “To bury an infant?”

“We surely meant t’ have th’ baby baptised!” said Mrs. Ainley. “But I wor poorly for th’ first two months after his birth, an’ then Mr. Ainley an’ all th’ other childer got sick, an’ then ’twas too late. We asked him if th’ parson could perform th’ service, but Mr. Nicholls said he wor confined t’ bed—an’ that Mr. Brontë would be of no different mind, in ony case.”

This much was true, I thought, fuming inwardly. I had argued with papa many times over this same, infuriating clerical obstinacy; it was one of the few, rigid teachings of Puseyism to which papa stubbornly adhered.

“Mr. Nicholls says th’ bairn cannot be buried i’ th’ churchyard,” Mrs. Ainley went on. “So now our poor Albert be condemned t’ an eternal life o’ damnation, ’cause we’ll have t’ bury him ourselves, without th’ blessing o’ a man o’ God!”

I could hardly contain my anger and dismay at this news. I bade the Ainleys good-bye, conveying my deepest sympathies, and promised to make some inquiries, to see if I could do something on their behalf. I then made immediately for home, intending to unleash my fury on papa. However, as I turned into Church Lane, I saw Mr. Nicholls exiting the schoolhouse. I strode directly up to him, my heart pounding.

“Sir! I have just been to see the Ainleys. They told me of your unconscionable behaviour—that you have refused to bury their child! How can you call yourself a Christian, sir, and treat them so cruelly?”

“Miss Brontë,” responded Mr. Nicholls, clearly taken aback. “I am grieved if I have given you offence in this matter, but I was only doing my duty.”

“Your duty? How can it be your duty to ignore the needs of a poor, innocent child? It is sad enough that he met such an untimely end—but to be banished from the churchyard? Now his parents think he will suffer eternal damnation!”