Thackeray called one Saturday morning and stayed for two hours, and she went to his home to dine the following evening. That dinner was the only failed moment of her visit. She arrived in her chaste high-collared dress to find a room full of sophisticated society ladies, many in low-cut gowns with softly cleaved bosoms, and she was soon wishing she were at the Zoological Gardens among the lions and leopards. One particularly striking young beauty diverted George’s gaze throughout the evening, and Charlotte—who was painfully observant of these things—found herself sinking into a chilly silence, quite incapable of making conversation except with the quiet governess who was supervising Thackeray’s young daughters. The evening was a disaster—the room dim and smoky from the oil lamps, Charlotte constrained and unbrilliant, the others breathlessly expectant. As soon as Charlotte left, Thackeray took up his hat and sneaked out to his club, abandoning his disappointed guests to gossip about how poor Charlotte’s braided hairpiece was so obviously false. Years later, some would recall it as the dullest evening of their life.
She and George argued over only one thing: her portrait. He proposed the idea one evening after the opera. Neither of them were inclined to sleep, and his mother—who had slept through most of the performance—now sat snoring in her armchair, with her chin resting comfortably on her chest.
George sat with his legs stretched out, necktie dangling from one hand and a glass of brandy in the other.
“Richmond is the artist who did Harriet Martineau’s portrait. The one you admired at her home. And I will bear the expense myself.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I see no need to have my portrait made. Who would want such a thing in their home?”
He belted out such a laugh that it startled his mother from her sleep. She muttered something nonsensical and immediately dozed off again.
“See,” Charlotte said, with her taut little smile that both scolded and sparred. “She agrees with me.”
“Mother doesn’t have a vote in this one,” he replied, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “I won’t let you squirm your way out.”
“Truthfully, my dear father would be the only person who would derive any pleasure from such a portrait, and after he’s gone, what would I possibly do with it?”
George slung his necktie onto the table, then sat up and crossed his legs. There was a thoughtful pause before he spoke. “And if I told you I wanted it for myself? That I wanted a portrait of my famous authoress, whose genius rescued my business when I feared it might fail and whose courage has been an inspiration to me personally. What would you say to that?”
Charlotte braved the intensity of his blue eyes, holding that sweet moment as long as possible. “Would it really displease you so if I were to refuse?” she asked softly.
“It would.”
“All right then.”
An impassive butler greeted them at the door, led them up a narrow staircase, and deposited them in a small alcove, where they waited while Richmond finished another sitting. During those few moments, Charlotte’s courage nearly failed her. Watching her, George could see the struggle being waged behind those intense hazel-brown eyes. She withdrew her gloves and fidgeted with them in her lap, glancing anxiously toward the wide double doors. She looked as if she might bolt at any second, and George reached for her hand to calm her. She started, as if jolted by an electric shock. Her palms were hot and moist.
“He’ll be out in a minute,” George said soothingly, trying to think of something that might distract her.
But at that moment the door flew open and Richmond stood there. He was a good-looking man of middle age, slender, with fine-boned, aristocratic features.
“Ah!” he said as Charlotte rose to greet him. “Miss Brontë! This is indeed an honor! A very great honor!”
He led them into his studio, and as she slipped her spectacles into her pocket and untied her bonnet, she gave herself a stern little lecture and vowed not to let her nerves get the better of her.
She turned to find Richmond scrutinizing her with that intense objectifying look she had seen in the eyes of artists. She managed a smile and then removed her bonnet.
“What is that thing?” Richmond asked, striding toward her with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his smock.
“What?” Charlotte asked nervously.
“On your head,” he replied, his eyes boring down on her with a perplexed frown.
Her hand shot to the braided crown of hair.
“Your fur hat. Could you remove it?” he asked.
She turned a mortified look on George and immediately broke into tears.
“It’s a hairpiece,” George whispered to him. “Rather difficult to remove, I should think.”
“Ah!” Richmond said. “I see.” He cleared his throat. “Well, not to worry, Miss Brontë, we can work around it.”
But he could see the nervous state she was in, and he summoned the maid, who took Charlotte away.
“I say, she’s a sensitive little thing, isn’t she?” Richmond said.
“Very. Particularly about her appearance.”
“Ah, well, in that case, I think it best that she not see the work in progress. She can view it when it’s finished.”
“I am in perfect agreement, sir.”
Charlotte returned a short while later, the hairpiece gone, looking pale and exhausted. She managed a brave, timid smile and offered a heartfelt apology.
She returned the following day for a final sitting. When he had finished, Richmond beckoned her to come forward and see the work. Subtle shading had improved the square jaw and broad nose and softened the irregular mouth, but the focus was on her intensely expressive eyes. In those dark pools he had captured her sweetness and melancholy, and hinted at the well of anxiety beneath the gentle façade. It was Charlotte, and yet not like her at all. Little did he know that, with his talent for quiet flattery, he had evoked a whisper of her sister Anne, who had always been the prettiest of the three.
George had a unique effect on Charlotte. With his boyish exuberance and charm, he was able to draw smiles and wit from her like a magnet, and somewhere along the continuum of her visit she laid down her defenses. Strolling down the street side by side with her hand wound through his arm, she would press her shoulder against him. Facing each other in the carriage, she would lean forward, place her hands on his knees, look up into his eyes, and talk away with sparkling frankness. They never lacked for words, and their silences were full of unspoken complicity. She fell in love with him not only for himself, but for how he made her feel when she was with him. She was loose and alive inside. If he had been so inclined, she would have allowed him to kiss her.
They returned one afternoon from an excursion and found George’s mother and his youngest sister in the drawing room, Mrs. Smith busy with her embroidery and Isabella sprawled on her stomach before the window, copying illustrations of horses into her sketch pad.
“George, come and see what I’ve drawn,” Isabella said brightly as she sat back on her heels.
But George was murmuring in a low voice to Charlotte, who broke away from him with a scolding glance and crossed the room toward the little girl. “What have you drawn, Bella? May I see?”
“Mother,” George announced, “I’ve asked Charlotte to come up to Scotland with me next month when I go to fetch Alick home from school.”
Charlotte twirled around in midstride and said lightly, “He’s only joking.”
“I daresay he is,” Mrs. Smith chimed in.
“I am certainly not joking.”
When his mother heard that tone of voice, her head shot up.
“Bella, dearest, take your sketch pad up to the nursery,” she said as she swiftly put away her needlework.
“But Mama …” Bella whined.
“Bella?” she said sternly. The girl gathered up her pencils and chalks and sulked out.
George, busy checking his watch against the clock
on the mantel, ignored the brewing tempest at his back. When he had pocketed the watch, he said, “I thought we’d take a little side trip up to the Highlands. Charlotte, you could meet us in Glasgow in two weeks’ time, and from there …” He went on, planning the itinerary, dropping the names of Scottish watering places Charlotte had visited only in her dreams.
Charlotte had taken refuge in the chair opposite his mother. When George finished, she turned a raised eyebrow to his mother and said, “I do think your son is serious.”
“Of course I am,” he enthused. “Tarbet is on Loch Lomond—there’s a perfectly decent inn there—and Oban is a lovely resort town. We’d be traveling through some of Scotland’s most beautiful regions—”
Charlotte raised both hands in protest. “George, do stop. It’s out of the question. I hardly think it’s advisable for us to go gallivanting around the country together. That would certainly set tongues wagging.”
“George, don’t tempt her,” his mother said sternly. “Her instincts are impeccable. You can imagine the gossip that would set off.”
“There’s nothing improper about it. Eliza’s coming along—”
His mother interrupted. “Eliza is only two years older than you.”
“—and Alick would be with us on the way back.” George wagged a playful finger at Charlotte. “Mark my words, you’ll not find a better chaperone in all of London than my seventeen-year-old brother. He’s like a leech.”
“George,” his mother said sternly, “have you lost your senses?”
Hearing the rising alarm in her voice, George chose not to pursue the argument, although both women could see they had upset him by siding against him. After dinner, Charlotte put on her spectacles and tried to mollify him by reading a few poems in French by Lamartine. But he remained sullen, slumped in his armchair with his legs stretched out before him, one boot toe tapping away to the rhythm of invisible thoughts.
His mother knew him well enough to expect him in her bedroom that evening, and she sat dozing with a book on her stomach, waiting for the sound of his knock on her door.
“I’ll have my way on this one, Mother, so don’t oppose me,” he stated calmly as he picked up a chair and plunked it down next to her bed. “I can’t imagine a place more to her liking than Scotland would be.”
His mother removed her reading glasses and turned a worried frown on him.
“Be frank with me, George. What are your intentions with regards to Miss Brontë?”
“My intentions?”
“You’re not entertaining the idea of pursuing this woman, are you?”
“No.”
“You hesitated just then.”
He paused and lowered his voice soothingly. “Mother, dear, you know my weakness for pretty faces.”
“I also know your weakness for clever people.”
“I find her fascinating, but not in that way.”
“But she might misread your attentions. You certainly don’t treat her like a sister.”
“I don’t think of her as a sister. She’s my author, and she’s an extraordinary woman. Her mind, her personality—all of it intrigues me. But she has absolutely no physical charms. There’s nothing in that regard to tempt me in the slightest.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. But I do worry about how she might misconstrue all these wild plans of yours. She’s such a sensitive creature.”
“Yes, but she’s also far too wise to think I could ever be in love with her.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands folded, a thoughtful look on his face. “I see it this way. It’s a gift I want to give her. The gift of my company on a simple excursion that would bring her an immense amount of pleasure. She needs to live, Mother. She has such a love of life, and she’s had so little opportunity to experience it.” He paused and added, “I think it might help bring out her next novel. She’s struggling to find a story, and I’d like to see her return to that romantic vein again. Scotland might be just the inspiration.”
“It’s very kind and generous of you, my dear boy, but that’s not the way the gossipmongers will see it.”
“I see it as good business, Mother. To keep my author happy.”
She hesitated. “Well, then, if it would please you.”
“Then I’d like you to do something for me. Tomorrow, after I’ve gone to the office, I want you to use your influence to persuade her. Without your approval she won’t agree, and that would greatly disappoint me.”
Chapter Twenty
Ellen’s home in Birstall served as a halfway house for Charlotte, a way of easing herself out of the whirl of London before descending into the tomblike silence of Haworth. In the past, when there had been so many Nusseys tumbling over one another, Brookroyd House had been a little overwhelming. The cramped Georgian stone house was filled with a staggering jumble of heirlooms and small treasures, patterned quilts, chintzes, and needlepoint. It was difficult to find a place to sit that wasn’t cluttered with another body, a cat, or a sewing basket. The more fortunate ones had grown up and moved away, and Brookroyd had become a house of unmarried women and a wayside for the more troublesome brothers, who came around from time to time to stir things up. The drama felt warmly familiar, reminding Charlotte of the domestic upheavals, great and small, that had once occupied her own days.
Come warm weather, they escaped to the garden. In the mornings, while Ellen trimmed back the sprawling hollyhocks and weeded the potager, Charlotte would tag along, chattering away freely, her breathlessly long sentences dotted with expressions of deep affection like “my darling Nell” and “my dear, dear Nell.” In the afternoons they sat in the leafy shade of an old beech tree and pitted cherries, and later, in the pitch black of a moonless night, they would stroll the gravel walks arm in arm, dissecting human nature and their own hearts.
Charlotte arrived at Brookroyd late and exhausted, and she didn’t tell Ellen about her planned excursion to Scotland until the next morning. She knew she could count on Ellen for sound maidenly advice. Ellen’s judgment hinged on the strictures of morality. Even romance must abide by the rules.
“You mean to say he sent his mother to argue his case?” Ellen said in wide-eyed wonder. “And she did his bidding?”
“Oh, the mother may be master of the house, but the son is clearly master of his mother,” Charlotte said benignly, looking up from her embroidery hoop. “She quite pleaded with me. She said George would be very upset if I didn’t go. George’s father was a Scotsman, you know. He’s quite proud of his native land.”
Charlotte did not tell her dear friend how little persuasion it had taken, how she had lain awake all night, burning with resentment at having to deny herself the sweet opportunity laid at her feet. Because it was the right, the moral thing to do. Then she had gone down the next morning to discover that George had crushed his mother’s objections and rescued her dreams.
“You mustn’t go.” Ominously, Ellen’s voice dipped to the low register. “It’s highly improper.”
“It might be, if things were other than they are.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I’m quite protected from him on two fronts: my age and my looks.”
“Oh, Charlotte, you’re fooling yourself. I’ve read his letters. I think he’s captivated by you, my dear, and should you find yourself alone with him out in some wild mountainous region with no one to protect you …” Ellen was getting a little carried away, and Charlotte was tempted to smile.
“George and I understand each other perfectly. And we respect each other sincerely. We really do suit, in all ways except those that would excite romance. I don’t fear his attentions in the least. I would go anywhere in the world with him.” She added, a shade defiantly, “Even to China, if it would make him happy.”
“What does your father say?”
Charlotte grew suddenly quiet, dropping her nose back into her needlework.
“Have you told him?”
“You know he is best kept in the
dark about things that might upset him.”
“You mean you intend to hide it from him?”
“Of course not. But I intend to present him with the situation at the right moment and in a certain light, to be sure to gain his approval.”
Charlotte reached into her work basket and retrieved a small skein of gold thread. “Oh, Ellen, I am so weary of being sensible and ladylike.”
“Charlotte!”
“And I am so longing to go.”
Charlotte began carefully unwinding the skein, drawing out the fine gold thread.
“I think you feel more for him than you say you do, and I’m afraid he might take advantage of your tender feelings.”
“Come now,” Charlotte scowled as she held the needle to the light. “George is not a rake.”
“No, but he’s very worldly, and I think your judgment may be a little clouded.”
Charlotte fell into a long, reflective silence while she threaded the needle.
“What are you working on?” Ellen asked, her attention drawn to the folds of heavy white silk in Charlotte’s lap.
“It’s an altar hanging.” There was a shade of dejection in her voice. “I was growing tired of hearing Mr. Nicholls complain about our worn and faded altar hangings.” She lowered the embroidery hoop to show Ellen. “It’s my own design. A burning bush, in silver and gold thread against the white.”
“It’s lovely.”
Charlotte straightened her spectacles and raised the hoop to her eyes. With her nose nearly touching the silk, she began whipping tiny, perfectly even stitches. “I think he’ll be pleased,” she said, but it was evident that her thoughts were not remotely inclined toward Arthur Bell Nicholls.
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