Since our trip, I’ve visited the manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum downtown, a fitting palatial home for such treasures. One afternoon I went to Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library to see a box of Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s effects—she was a Brontë Society president who wrote introductions for new editions of all the Brontë novels in 1905. A few weeks later at the Strand I found those editions of Shirley and Villette—it felt like I was enmeshed in a Brontë constellation, as if I had found my place in their orbit.
Sometimes it feels like my whole life has been coherently pointing in this direction. Just as liking led to love and reading one book led to another, being a huge dork led to a life wrapped in literature, art, history, languages. And, finally, to Haworth itself, where I wipe away tears with the back of my hand because this, this is as close as I can get. I know how Charlotte Brontë sounded on paper as a child, as a young girl, as a woman. I know who her hero was and where he is buried. I know what she might have seen when she woke up in London on a morning in March. I know which imaginary places Anne felt were important enough to record in her geography book. I know what her neat, tidy stitches looked like. I’ve seen the kitchen where Emily studied German and the front door she rarely felt like going through. I’ve seen the pub where Branwell drank and bragged and drank some more; the corner where he met his friend John to sneak a final dram of gin. I could still go to Brussels, I suppose, and see where the pensionnat used to be, or return to Yorkshire to visit the houses of their friends. But I don’t know that it’s necessary. I know where Charlotte wandered, I know where she married, I know where she died. Perhaps that is enough to tell me what I need to know.
DURING my time at the Parsonage, I only asked to see one letter—from Charlotte’s time in Brussels. Charlotte concluded a letter to Ellen with “Good-bye to you dear Nell when I say so—it seems to me that you will hardly hear me—all the waves of the Channel, heaving and roaring between must deaden the sound.”11 On the back, she sketched a cartoon of the two of them. Charlotte is a disproportionate, gnome-like figure, waving under a speech balloon that says “G o o d b y e,” and looking across the sea to Ellen, who is graceful in an elegant dress, with a male companion in a top hat (labeled “The Chosen”). A steamship is puffing by in the background. I held onto the letter until my very last moment in the library, imagining Charlotte was waving goodbye to me, too, as I prepared to make my way home with my chosen, not just across the whole Atlantic Ocean, but all the intervening years too.
Before I left, I took one last tour of the museum. And this time, what had been impossible to access on my first harried walk-through sank into me like waves. It wasn’t a museum anymore; it was a home. I’d sat in Reverend Wade’s former dining room and breathed the house’s air, heard its creaks, crossed its kitchen flagstones every morning and afternoon. As I read, Charlotte was writing in the dining room, Patrick was smoking in his study, Emily was reading to Aunt Branwell, Anne was sewing, Branwell was painting upstairs, and Tabby was making tea. All of this was happening without regard to the passage of time, while I paged through tiny manuscripts and deciphered magnified pencil-marks. The chimes I heard from the clock on the stairs were the same tones the Brontës heard every hour—one morning the clock ran down, and the research librarian had to go get Patrick’s keys and wind it. They were still Patrick’s keys! School groups and clusters of visitors from all over the world had gathered on the other side of the kitchen wall behind me, and I heard them even through the closed door—they’d asked questions about a cooking implement or how the place was heated, what the Brontës ate or how long they’d lived. Another scholar or two shared the big table in the research library with me from time to time, checking postal records or examining illustrations up close. One thing I’ll say for the Parsonage—it is small and solitary, but it is full of life.
Figure 14.2: Cartoon of Charlotte waving. Letter to Ellen Nussey, March 6, 1843.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM.
And I can take comfort in this: however she may have signed all those hurried letters after her marriage, Charlotte belongs to the readers who love her most. She will forever be Charlotte Brontë. It was not Mrs. Nicholls who insisted “I’m just going to write because I cannot help it,” or boldly traveled to Brussels, or wrote Jane Eyre.
When we left Haworth, I cried. Our cab to the train station eased to the bottom of the hill, turning onto the main road and steering us back to the present. As it did, a rainbow stretched in front of us, each end buried behind a rise of the moors. We drove toward it all the way to Keighley and never reached it. We never even came close.
Acknowledgments
First, my very heartfelt gratitude to the Research Librarians of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Ann Dinsdale and Sarah Laycock, who gave my pilgrimage the infusion of resources and knowledge it needed. A particular thank you to Christine Nelson for her time and generosity (and for leaving me speechless with Mary Taylor’s copy of Jane Eyre), as well as the other estimable librarians of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Thanks also to the staff and stacks of Columbia University’s Rare Manuscript and Butler Libraries.
Many thanks to my exuberant agent, Julia Lord; my editor, Stephanie Knapp; and to Julia Campbell, Katherine Streckfus, Susie Pitzen, Trish Wilkinson, Faceout Studio, and the hard-working teams at Seal, Da Capo, and Hachette. This book became real because of your support, your enthusiasm, and your diligence.
Enthusiastic thank yous are owed to the teachers and mentors who nudged me to take myself and my Brontë affinity seriously—Richard Locke, Lis Harris, Rebecca Godfrey (the champion of the anti-heroine), and the warm and wonderful Margo Jefferson. Barbara Adams, you are invaluable as a mentor and a friend. Patricia O’Toole, I can safely say I stuck to it, and it was because of your help. Thank you to Sue Mendelsohn, Jason Ueda, and the rest of the Columbia University Writing Center denizens for their warmth and Jedi insights. A special thank you to Michelle Orange for being the first person to plow all the way through a complete draft, despite our differing opinions on Cathy Earnshaw.
Thank you to Meg, Becca, and Jaime G., who read drafts of this book from its birth as a fourteen-page research essay to its unwieldy newborn-giraffe adolescence. Your eyes, ears, and red pencils were always appreciated, and I miss you. Love to Kate, sharer of apartments and provider of actual home-cooked food; to Sheryl, empathetic listener and relationship role model; and especially to Sally, perpetual cheerleader and all-around best gal. To Leslie, Jaime H., Adrienne, and Betsy, testaments to the power of reconnection. To Molly J., who is a beam of light.
Thank you to my family—my parents, Mark and Lynda, my brother Thomas. Without them, I would not have known where to start, I would not be myself, and I would not have been nearly so well entertained along the way. To my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, I love you and I miss you and I hope there’s nothing too embarrassing in here.
For Eric: “There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him.… It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.”
And good heavens—there’s no way I could finish a book about this family without sending out all my love and appreciation to the Brontës themselves. Thank you Patrick, Maria, Aunt Elizabeth, Emily, Anne, and even Branwell. And, of course, endless gratitude to the singular Charlotte Brontë, for teaching me what I needed to know.
Miranda K. Pennington is a lifelong Brontë enthusiast. She has been a writing consultant and university writing instructor at Columbia University, where she also received her MFA in creative nonfiction. She has spent time working in test prep publishing, working in arts education nonprofits, and teaching academic and creative writing. Her work has appeared on Electric Literature, The Toast, The American Scholar online, The Ploughshares Blog, and The Catapult podcast. A proud member of the Cherokee Nation, she was born in Tuls
a, Oklahoma and grew up in northern Virginia. This is her first book.
PRAISE FOR A Girl Walks into a Book
“I’ve been watching Miranda Pennington happen for some time. Her first book is all I could hope for, as a fan and a fellow Brontë girl: As doggedly funny and practical as its heroines, perpetually surprising, and containing perhaps the world’s first impassioned defense of Anne. (Wait. Were we supposed to care about Anne?) Read it on its own, and take it as a guide on your next tour through the eternally useful Brontë works.”
—Sady Doyle, author of Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear… and Why
“In Miranda Pennington’s telling, her relationship with the Brontës and their work is an epic love story, as real, reciprocal, and life-altering as they come. Warm, smart, and very funny, A Girl Walks into a Book offers a version of the experience it describes: entry into a singular world and a lasting friendship.”
—Michelle Orange, author of This Is Running for Your Life
“Miranda Pennington’s literary memoir is a necessary book. While there have been many books about the Brontë sisters, Pennington’s is the first to define their influence on a new generation of young women. Whether writing about Charlotte Gainsbourg, romantic confusion, or visits to the moors, Pennington is a witty, charming, candid observer of female rebellion, past and present. A Girl Walks into a Book champions the strange, beautiful magic of the Brontës, while establishing Pennington herself as a daring, unforgettable heroine.”
—Rebecca Godfrey, author of The Torn Skirt and Under the Bridge
Bibliography
All of the Brontë sisters’ novels and surviving letters, and many of the contemporary reviews, are in the public domain and accessible through Project Gutenberg, the British Library, The Brontë Parsonage Museum, and other public sites of record.
Allott, Miriam Farris. The Brontës: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994.
———. The Brontës: A Life in Letters. New York: Overlook Press, 1998.
———. The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors. The Story of a Literary Family. New York: Pegasus Books, 2012.
Brontë, Charlotte. The Belgian Essays. Edited by Sue Lonoff. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
———. Juvenilia, 1829–1835. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
———. The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends. Vol. 1, 1829–1847. Edited by Margaret Smith. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.
———. The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends. Vol. 2, 1848–1851. Edited by Margaret Smith. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000.
———. The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends. Vol. 3, 1852–1855. Edited by Margaret Smith. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004.
———. Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë. Edited by Margaret Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Brontë Society. Brontë Society Transactions (1893–2001).
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Brontë: Author of Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, &c, 2nd ed. London: Smith, Elder, 1857. Project Gutenberg.
Lemon, Charles. Early Visitors to Haworth: From Ellen Nussey to Virginia Woolf. Haworth, UK: Brontë Society, 1996.
Miller, Lucasta. The Brontë Myth. London: Jonathan Cape, 2001.
Shorter, Clement King. Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1896. Project Gutenberg, Kindle ed.
Stoneman, Patsy. Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848–1898: An Illustrated Edition of Eight Plays with Contextual Notes. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2007.
Taylor, Mary. The First Duty of Women. London: Emily Faithful, 1870. Nineteenth Century Collections Online.
Thormählen, Marianne. The Brontës and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Woolf, Virginia. The Common Reader: First Series. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
Notes
WALKING INTO THE BRONTËS
1. Miriam Farris Allott, The Brontës: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 108.
THE FAMILY
1. Allott, The Brontës, 254.
2. Juliet Barker, The Brontës (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), revised and updated as The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors. The Story of a Literary Family (New York: Pegasus Books, 2012).
3. Clement King Shorter, Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1896 [Project Gutenberg]), Kindle ed., loc. 706.
4. Barker, The Brontës (2012), 110.
5. Charlotte Brontë, Juvenilia, 1829–1835 (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 3.
6. Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, Vol. 1, 1829–1847, edited by Margaret Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 153.
JANE
1. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XII.
2. Allott, The Brontës, 98.
3. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XXIII.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
A WISH FOR WINGS
1. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:266.
2. Ibid., 1:268.
3. Ibid., 1:284.
4. Ibid., 1:285.
5. Charlotte Brontë, The Belgian Essays, edited by Sue Lonoff (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 140.
6. Ibid., 362.
7. Ibid., 363–364.
8. Ibid., 360.
9. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:300.
10. Ibid., 1:317.
11. Ibid., 1:334.
12. Ibid., 1:340.
13. Ibid., 1:109.
14. Ibid., 1:379.
15. Barker, The Brontës (1994), 441.
16. Shorter, Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, loc. 735–736.
17. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:435.
18. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë: Author of Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, &c., 2nd ed. (London : Smith, Elder, 1857 [Project Gutenberg]), 194.
19. Ibid., 210.
MAKING THE ROUNDS
1. Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends, Vol. 2, 1848–1851, edited by Margaret Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 744.
2. Barker, The Brontës (1994), 117.
3. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:168.
4. Ibid., 1:169.
5. Ibid., 1:239.
6. Allott, The Brontës, 62.
7. Ibid., 65.
8. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:537.
9. Ibid., 1:539.
10. Allott, The Brontës, 67.
11. Ibid., 70.
12. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:49.
WEARYING HEIGHTS
1. Allott, The Brontës, 229.
CATHY EARNSHAW: ANTI-HEROINE
1. Allott, The Brontës, 227.
2. Ibid., 220.
3. Charles Lemon, Early Visitors to Haworth: From Ellen Nussey to Virginia Woolf (Haworth, UK: Brontë Society, 1996), 242–243.
4. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter XV.
5. Ibid.
6. Slings and Arrows, Season 2, episode 1, directed by Peter Wellington, 2003.
7. Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader: First Series (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 159.
AGNES GREY
1. Allott, The Brontës, 252.
2. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:742.
3. Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey, Chapter XIV.
4. Charlotte Brontë, Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë, edited by Margaret Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 31.
5. Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey, Chapter VII.
6. Ibid., Chapter XII.
7. Ibid., Chapter XXI.
SHIRL
EY AND CAROLINE
1. Lemon, Early Visitors to Haworth, 119.
2. Ibid., 117.
3. Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, Chapter VII.
4. Ibid.
5. Barker, The Brontës (1994), 612.
6. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 1:135.
7. Ibid., 2:81.
8. Ibid., 2:88.
9. Ibid., 2:107.
10. Ibid., 2:439.
11. Ibid., 2:136.
12. Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, Chapter XXIII.
13. Brontë, Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Smith, 2:195.
14. Ibid., 2:222.
15. Ibid., 2:224.
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