The two women come in the door and stand timidly, side by side, not venturing into the room. Neither of them is young or pretty, and certainly their clothes are out of date. He is about to tell them he is a very busy man when one of them approaches and hands him a letter, which he can see is in his own hand. He looks at it and realizes it is one he has written to his best-selling author Currer Bell, who has all of London buzzing with discussions on whether the author is a man or a woman and whether the three books that came out under the name Bell were written by one or several men, or perhaps even by a woman.
He looks at the diminutive woman and asks rather sharply how she came by the letter and why she now returns it. Has she stolen it, or merely found it in the gutter? What does she hope to gain by bringing it to him? Is this some sort of blackmail? He looks at her in the clear morning light of his sunny office and sees something like a grin on her face, a flash of amusement in what he now realizes behind the glasses are large, intelligent eyes.
“You sent it to me—,” she says with a little laugh, putting her hand to her breast for emphasis.
Can this be, is it possible that this little woman is the author of Jane Eyre? The woman motions to her sister and adds, “We are three sisters, you see.” George Smith stares at her, taking in the tiny hands, which she waves delicately in the air, the glow of the hair and skin.
“You are the author of Jane Eyre?” he gasps. “You?” He stares at her, taking her in for himself and also, he is aware, for posterity. He is already writing his memoirs, an account of this meeting, noticing the head that seems too big for the little body, the uneven teeth. He wants to know all about her figure, her dress, her tiny, narrow shoes. He wants to touch her, feel if she is real. This small, frail person, hardly five feet tall, with these dainty hands and feet, has written a large, strong book that has already made him a great deal of money.
“Yes,” she says in a voice that is bell-like, like the name she has assumed. “Yes, I am.”
“Goodness! Great goodness!” he says. He claps his hands, announcing, “We will have to have a dinner party! We will have to introduce you to all of London! My mother and sisters will be delighted. Wait until they see you! Wait until Mr. Thackeray hears about this!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Opera
Charlotte declines this invitation to be shown off to the famous literati of London but accepts one to go to the opera that night, under yet another pseudonym. She and Anne will be the Misses Brown. Despite a headache and in her plain, high-collared country attire, she goes up the crimson, carpeted steps, up and up, at the Royal Opera House, surrounded by a throng of chattering, laughing, elegantly dressed people. Like the ladies and gentlemen in her own and her brother’s stories from long ago or someone in a fairy tale, she goes through the throng on the arm of her youthful and fine-faced publisher. Despite her unease she glances up shyly at his creamy complexion, his dark, close-trimmed side whiskers, and—what pleases her most—his cleft chin.
Her first impression of him was not particularly f avorable. He had looked her up and down so carefully, staring at her under the bright light of the skylight in his office, rather like a fishwife eyeing a fish to determine its freshness. Now, his large, dark eyes glance at her face quickly and then scan the crowd. With buoyant step he walks beside her, in his full evening dress. He talks fast in his mellow voice, makes little jokes, waves his white-gloved hands in the air, rather like a magician who has conjured this all up just for her, her personal Prospero. He is attempting good-naturedly to put her at ease. Beside him trip his two tall sisters in their low-cut taffetas and ribands, and cruising ahead, rather like a stately ship, his serene and portly mother goes on with ponderous step.
Though Charlotte is aware of the supercilious stares and the puzzlement and disconcertedness of his mother and sisters, she is amused by the contrast between her modest appearance and George Smith’s studied polite-ness. She has made him a lot of money, and he cannot wait, she suspects, to tell the world the secret, that he has on his arm the author of the celebrated Jane Eyre, that this little plain woman at his side has written the big book they are all talking about.
They enter a box near the stage where they have excellent seats. Despite her protests, Mr. Smith insists that she and her sister sit in the front row.
“I want you to be able to see it all: both the stage and the audience,” he whispers in her ear. So they sit bolt upright on either side of his formidable mother in her mauve dress, her tortoiseshell spectacles tucked into a fold at her considerable bosom. Mr. Smith, flanked by his tall sisters, sits in the row behind like a pale flower.
His mother turns to the older sister, the one who wears spectacles, and peers at the playbill shortsightedly. She says, “We are so glad you could both come with us this evening, my dear,” but she wonders why on earth her son has asked these two plain country creatures to accompany them to the opera. She calculates how much the excellent seats in the box he has taken for all of them must have cost. What extravagance! Surely the firm, though it is going from strength to strength under her son’s expert guidance, is not doing so well as to afford this? Why has he gone to such trouble and expense?
Indeed, she would not have come out this evening at all had her son not insisted. He had rushed home late, looking flustered, excited, his cheeks uncustomarily flushed. He refused to eat any dinner, not even the tempting thick mutton chop she had had the servants prepare for him. “You should eat, George, otherwise you might faint,” she said.
Instead, he had said breathlessly, “There is someone I very much want you to meet, Mama.” When she had pleaded fatigue, he added, “It is very important to me—well, to all of us—you will see,” with a little mysterious smile. He had ordered the carriage, told them to dress for the opera, and set off with them to collect the mysterious guests.
He hinted at some secret he had promised to keep, which led her to expect something else entirely: a great beauty, perhaps, or a great fortune, or a celebrated writer he was about to publish, someone brilliant and amusing, perhaps even the great Thackeray himself. Instead, there are these two subdued and plain creatures, who are acting now rather like two children at a birthday party.
She smiles at the younger one, who is the prettier of the two, with her fair hair and blue eyes. She has something vulnerable and appealing about her, but surely her son is not interested in either of these women romantically? They must be in their early thirties. Obviously two impecunious women, in their ill-fitting dresses, considerably older than her son, with a certain distinction of manner and a shyness bordering on haughtiness—she will give them that, but of the faded variety. They look like proud governesses, the sort of put-upon ones of whom lively children would take advantage.
“You must excuse us, for we are not used to such pleasures in our hill-village home,” one of the Misses Brown—if that is really her name—says and smiles at her. Mrs. Smith notices the fine eyes behind the spectacles, with their odd, slightly superior, amused gaze. What is it that amuses her so? And what is her source of superiority?
“Is it your first visit to London, my dear?” she asks. She doesn’t remember where George said the women come from, some small, bleak place in the North.
“No, no. We have been here before.”
“And when were you last here, may I ask, Miss Brown?’
“Actually, six years ago, en route to Brussels, where we—I went to school.”
“You did? You must speak very good French, then.”
“Quite,” the woman says without false modesty, smoothing the folds of her dress. Mrs. Smith notices the small hands, the neat, well-polished nails. There is a pregnant silence. Something about this woman, a certain reticence, intrigues Mrs. Smith. She has the impression she could tell her something interesting if she wanted to. Does she have some secret accomplishment? Is she even wellborn? The voice is sweet, but is there some lingering trace of Irish or Scottish accent?
“And you stayed at the same p
lace in London?” Mrs. Smith asks, as they have picked the two women up on Paternoster Row at the Chapter Coffee House, such an odd place, surely, with its low ceilings and dingy rooms, for two gentlewomen to reside.
“Yes, that is where my father stayed when he first came to London,” she says, and looks back with her unflinching gaze.
“I have never been in that part of London before, I must confess,” Mrs. Smith cannot help but say with a little smile.
The woman looks her in the eye and says, “No, I suppose you wouldn’t have.”
She would like to question the women further, but now the orchestra is playing the overture, the curtain is rising on the first act, and she can only watch the two of them with their rapt expressions. She notices, too, how her son passes the elder one his opera glasses assiduously, so that she can see every detail.
Mrs. Smith watches the two sisters rather more closely than she does the Rossini. She wonders if they have ever been to an opera before. They seem totally absorbed. George has said they will be introduced as country cousins, but obviously they must be otherwise. The family has no cousins up North. The headache, mentioned earlier, seems forgotten.
Mrs. Smith finds the Rossini performance an ordinary one. The Barber of Seville was never one of her favorites. She prefers Verdi, and her stays are uncomfortable. She battles with her embonpoint but cannot resist sweet things. She would have preferred to remain home this evening, without her corset, in her comfortable peignoir, nibbling on a few petits fours or a box of chocolates, but she has always found it hard to resist her handsome, clever son, who has been such a help to her. Why has he insisted on her presence this evening? What does he wish her to do for these women?
Surely this must be a business arrangement. In matters of business, Mrs. Smith has entire confidence in her enterprising son, young as he is. He has always been her favorite, she thinks, turning back to smile at him in the shadows behind her and to squeeze his hand and raise her eyebrows with a glance of complicity. You see how good I’m being, making polite conversation with these two poor women, all for you, my dear.
It seems such a short while since he was a boy. In the shadows of the box and with a Rossini aria in the air and these two strangers at her side, she sees him again in the short gray pants of his school uniform. How she worried about him, such a thin boy, and delicate—she was always concerned about his health and his heart. She couldn’t bear to think of how he was teased by his classmates, and he fainted at the slightest pretext. Yet he has always had a strong will, a stout heart, and such determination. He has done as he pleased, even getting himself expelled from school at fourteen and insisting on joining the firm. He preferred working with his father, and they had given in to his wishes. Yet he has always responded to her when she has called upon him. Her dear girls seem faded and pale beside him now, even in their bright best dresses and posies.
Since her beloved husband’s illness and death four years ago, she has had to rely increasingly on him. He has proven to be such a zealous, hard worker with an excellent business sense, which his father, unfortunately, good man that he was, did not possess. What would she and the rest of her children have done without her enterprising son?
It is he who has sorted out that dreadful imbroglio with the unscrupulous partner she had warned her husband about, but he was too good-natured to understand. Her son, though he seems so innocent, has his practical and prudent side. But she finds him this evening to be behaving in a most peculiar manner.
During the interval he jumps up and offers to go and look for refreshments, should anyone so desire, though the women demur. They are not women used to being waited upon, she deduces, more and more puzzled.
She turns from them to her son, but for once he does not seem to hear what she is saying. He turns the conversation onto general topics, the delights of London, the museums they will surely enjoy, the parks, even the zoo, obviously trying to amuse these women, to detain them in London, or at least to draw them into a dialogue. They seem almost struck dumb and look rather pale and piqued. She wonders how healthy they are. She hopes that this performance will not be repeated, but is very much afraid she may have to entertain them the next day for Sunday lunch, which will be quite an ordeal. She wonders what her beloved boy has in mind. Business is all, she fervently hopes.
Sitting in the box with Anne next to this handsome, middle-aged mother in her mauve dress, Charlotte is reminded of how she and Emily first met Madame H. on the rue d’Isabelle. She remembers their arrival and warm welcome, the elegant room, all the bric-a-brac on the mantelpiece, Madame Parent and her exciting tales of the French Revolution, and how they sat side by side on the white sofa and shook Monsieur H.’s hand. How she still longs for her Master! And how she had disliked him at first sight! Her black beetle. How wrong she was, too, in her first estimation of his wife.
Her first impressions are not to be relied upon. Still, she cannot help feeling drawn to this woman who sits so solidly at her side in the shadows of the box. She prefers her to the prudent, half-Scottish son, who seems rather calculating. She likes the mother’s lively brown eyes, her clear cheek, the way she offered her warm hand so promptly on greeting her. She likes her decided bearing, her strong profile seen in the half light of the opera box. A handsome woman and certainly, this evening, all amiability, all graciousness. She likes the way she scolds her son jokingly, takes him to task as though he were still a boy, the way he calls her “Old Lady.” There is obviously a close bond of affection and trust between this mother and the young, promising son that moves Charlotte. She prefers him as a son and brother.
She wonders what her own life would have been if her mother had not died when she was so young, if she had had the support and unconditional love of an intelligent woman, someone who could have guided her through the complexities of life, who would have tempered her father’s self-absorption, controlled his explosions of wrath. She thinks of her mother’s letters, which her father has recently allowed her to read, letters of such tenderness, frankness, and humor, they moved her to tears. How different her life would have been with someone of that kind at her side to encourage and exhort.
She takes in all the gestures, the complicit glances between this mother and son with a little stab of sadness. Never will a woman, even her good friends from school, her dearest sisters, treat her thus. She wonders what role, if any, this woman will play in her life.
Before the Smiths leave them at the Chapter Coffee House, they insist that they come the next day for lunch at their home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Fame
George Smith writes her many lively letters, on Charlotte’s return to Haworth. These sustain her in the writing of Shirley, her next book, where she tries to bring her beloved sister, Emily, back to life. These letters and her visits to London enable her to continue with her work, despite the family tragedies that now occur one after the other, like the beads in a dark necklace of woe: first Branwell, then very quickly Emily, as though she could not live without him, and then dearest, dearest Anne. Charlotte is left alone with her father.
Now she longs to escape the parsonage, the cold and empty rooms, despite the bright new curtains and carpets she has been able to provide. In her grief and solitude, with only her poor lonely father, she wishes to get away, to abandon the old man who clings to her.
Above all she would like to share what she has written with her dead sisters, as they had so often done, night after night, walking together around the dining room table arm in arm, the three of them telling stories, encouraging, criticizing, laughing in the freedom of the dark, their long intimacy, their father’s absence. How she misses them! Above all she misses the laughter, the shared language of childhood, the little private jokes. She is seized with a great lassitude. She wants to laugh at herself and at others.
When she allows herself to escape her duty as a daughter, her father’s presence, she travels to London, trips that have to be made alone and with only her self-absorbe
d father to recount her adventures to on her return. When she comes home there is no one to listen attentively and with such lively interest, living these visits vicariously as Emily once did, though she would never come with her. Now Charlotte moves through her life of fame alone, only her ailing father—his ailments seem to occur when she is about to leave—and her dear friend from school, Ellen N., for love and support.
Still, she forces herself to continue with the business of everyday life, even finding a new dressmaker, thanks to her friend, buying a bonnet with a pink lining. Like her Jane before her abortive wedding, Charlotte buys a flurry of new clothes, which are trimmed with fur for special occasions. In a desperate attempt, she augments her thin hair with a false plait around the crown.
There are dinners at the Smiths’ house, visits to galleries, lectures, the Crystal Palace, the theater, and even the zoo. She receives a complimentary ticket from the secretary of the Zoological Society and writes to her father about the amazing animals there. She has seen some frogs that are almost as big as Flossy.
There are meetings with important people, with the aristocracy, with the Scottish essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle. There is even a meeting with the great Thackeray, who disappoints and provokes her ire by introducing her to his mother as “Jane Eyre.” How dare he! Does he not understand the difference between imagination and reality?
Invited to stay in the Smiths’ fine home, she is given the best guest bedroom. When she enters the large, calm room she feels she has dived down into some precious chamber in the sea, as she used to imagine when making up stories with her brother. With its pale green walls and counterpane, the lined cream curtains rising and falling in the air, the dressing table with the triple mirror and its frilled organdy skirt, the big bowl of cut flowers, the wax candles on the mantelpiece, the fire kept burning day and night, she feels herself to be in a haven of peace and voluptuousness. The wide four-poster bed with its diaphanous hangings looks like a ship about to sail. She throws herself across the bed and stretches out luxuriously.
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