Brontës (139 page)

In view of her extensive preparations, it was therefore in an ironic mood that she told George Smith, ‘Of course I am not in the least looking forwards to going to London – nor reckoning on it – nor allowing the matter to take any particular place in my thoughts: no: I am very sedulously cool and nonchalant.'
⁶⁰
Even though the visit was again to be ‘quiet and obscure as usual (any other style of procedure disagreeing with me mentally and corporeally)', Charlotte was suffering from extremities of nerves which manifested themselves in headaches and occasional sickness.
⁶¹

Charlotte's visit to London was fixed for Thursday, 29 May – just nine days after James Taylor's departure for India. He had written requesting a last interview in London, but Charlotte had refused, saying that her visit was already fixed for June ‘and therefore in all human probability we shall see each other no more'.
⁶²
Nevertheless, rumours were rife that Charlotte was going to London to get engaged or even married – rumours to which even Patrick, Martha and Tabby subscribed, much to her irritation.

In the event, Charlotte travelled to London on Wednesday, the day before she had originally planned, arriving at ten p.m. at Euston station where George Smith and his mother were waiting for her. The alteration in the plans had been made so that the next day she could attend one of Thackeray's lectures on ‘The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century'.
⁶³

The lecture proved to be one of the high points of Charlotte's visit. She wrote enthusiastically to both her father and Ellen, describing the experience in unusual detail. The very saloon in which the lecture was held was splendid: ‘the walls were all painted and gilded the benches were sofas stuffed and cushioned and covered with blue damask, the audience was composed of the very élite of London Society – Duchesses were there by the score –'. ‘I did not at all expect that the great Lecturer would know me or notice me under these circumstances – with admiring Duchesses and Countesses seated in rows before him – but he met me as I entered – shook hands – took me to his Mother whom I had not before seen and introduced me.'
⁶⁴
What Charlotte did not tell her father or Ellen was that the introduction had caused her immense embarrassment and anger. With his usual high spirits and thoughtlessness, Thackeray had said in a loud voice ‘audible over half the room', ‘Mother, you must allow me to introduce you to Jane Eyre.' Naturally, heads had turned in every row and everyone stared at the ‘disconcerted little lady' who grew confused and angry when she realized every eye was upon her. During the lecture itself Charlotte was too absorbed to notice the attention she herself was receiving; amidst all his grand surroundings, Thackeray ‘just got up and spoke with as much simplicity and ease as if he had been speaking to a few friends by his own fireside'. The lecture was ‘truly good', painstakingly compiled, finished without being studied and enlivened with quiet humour and graphic force.
⁶⁵

At its close, Charlotte's ordeal began. Someone came up behind her, leaned over and said, ‘Will you permit me, as a Yorkshireman to introduce myself to you?' After a moment's hesitation Charlotte recognized the Earl of Carlisle, who had the courtesy to enquire after her father, recalling the time they had shared an election platform at Haworth back in 1834, and begging to be remembered to him. Moments later, Richard Monckton Milnes, a writer, friend of Mrs Gaskell and Yorkshire Member of Parliament, introduced himself on the same grounds. He was followed by Dr Forbes, the London doctor whom Charlotte had consulted about Anne's symptoms and who had sent her copies of his books: this was their first meeting, but, given their previous contacts, Charlotte could truthfully say he was someone ‘whom I was sincerely glad to see'. Thackeray himself accosted Charlotte again, demanding to know her opinion of the lecture, a request which left her tongue-tied with embarrassment. Mrs Smith, who had accompanied Charlotte to the lecture, was making her customary surveillance on her guest's behalf and was aware that while they talked the
audience were gradually forming into two lines on each side of the aisle to the door. Realizing that the longer they delayed the worse the ordeal would become, Mrs Smith put her arm through Charlotte's to steady her nerves and swept her, trembling, from the room.
⁶⁶

The next day Thackeray paid an afternoon call at 76, Gloucester Terrace. ‘I had a long talk with \him/ and I think he knows me now a little better than he did', Charlotte airily told Ellen. George Smith's description of the visit was somewhat different. He had arrived home from work shortly after Thackeray was announced and entered the drawing room to discover a scene in full progress.

Thackeray was standing on the hearthrug, looking anything but happy. Charlotte Brontë stood close to him, with head thrown back and face white with anger. The first words I heard were, ‘No, Sir! If you had come to our part of the country in Yorkshire, what would you have thought of me if I had introduced you to my father, before a mixed company of strangers, as “Mr Warrington”?' Thackeray replied, ‘No, you mean “Arthur Pendennis.”' ‘No, I don't mean Arthur Pendennis!' retorted Miss Brontë; ‘I mean Mr Warrington, and Mr Warrington would not have behaved as you behaved to me yesterday.' The spectacle of this little woman, hardly reaching to Thackeray's elbow, but, somehow, looking stronger and fiercer than himself, and casting her incisive words at his head, resembled the dropping of shells into a fortress.

George Smith eventually recovered his presence of mind and interposed; Thackeray made the necessary, ‘half-humorous' apologies and the parting was a friendly one. As Smith commented, Thackeray had roused the hidden fire in Charlotte's soul and was badly scorched himself as a result.
⁶⁷

The same day, Charlotte paid her first visit to the Crystal Palace, Sir Joseph Paxton's enormous glass edifice in Hyde Park, housing the first international ‘Great Exhibition' which had been opened to the public by Queen Victoria on 1 May. Writing to her father, Charlotte described it as ‘a mighty Vanity Fair … It was very fine – gorgeous – animated – bewildering – but I liked Thackeray's lecture better'. On Saturday, Charlotte went to see the exhibition at Somerset House, which proved something of a disappointment: ‘about half a dozen of the pictures are good and interesting – the rest of little worth'. The following day, Sunday, she went to hear an afternoon sermon by the great Swiss Protestant preacher, Jean Henri Merle d'Aubigne: ‘it was pleasant – half sweet – half sad – and strangely suggestive to hear the
French language once more.'
⁶⁸
This flurry of activity during the first few days of Charlotte's trip to London was hardly the ‘quiet and obscure' visit she had described to Mrs Gaskell. Nevertheless, it set the pattern for what was to become the busiest and most public of all Charlotte's visits.

There were four further visits to the Great Exhibition. The second, a week after the first, impressed Charlotte more profoundly. ‘Its grandeur does not consist in
one
thing', she told her father, ‘but in the unique assemblage of
all
things – Whatever human industry has created – you find there'. The display of manufactured goods was so vast and so varied that it recalled the
Arabian Nights
or even her own Angrian creations to mind.

It may be called a Bazaar or a Fair – but it is such a Bazaar or Fair as eastern Genii might \have/ created. It seems as if magic only could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the Earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it thus – with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect.

Thirty thousand people visited the exhibition that day and Charlotte herself spent three hours there, returning to Gloucester Terrace ‘very sufficiently bleached and broken in bits' by the experience.
⁶⁹

Another visit was remarkable only for the fact that Charlotte saw the ex-royal family of France there, and another for the kind attentions of her escort, Sir David Brewster, the Scottish physicist who had invented the kaleidoscope and was one of the foremost scientists of the day. Though Charlotte had rather dreaded his scientific explanations, he spent two hours pointing out the most remarkable curiosities on display and giving information kindly and simply without being asked.
⁷⁰
Charlotte was privileged to be able to visit the Great Exhibition so many times and in such company but in retrospect she decided it was not much to her taste. ‘I never was able to get up any raptures on the subject', she later told Miss Wooler, adding, ‘It is an excessively bustling place – and after all its wonders appeal too exclusively to the eye and rarely touch the heart or head.'
⁷¹

Appealing more to Charlotte's heart, and therefore being more to her taste, were two visits to the theatre. Previously she had seen only opera, which left her cold, and the mannered acting of Macready, which she despised. This time, however, she went to the French Theatre to hear and see ‘Rachel', the thirty-one-year-old actress, Elisa Felix, who was the most famous French actress of the day. On the first occasion, Rachel was taking
the title role in
Adrienne Lecouvreur
by Gabriel Legouvé and Augustin Scribe. ‘I have seen Rachel', Charlotte wrote in awed tones to Amelia Taylor, ‘ – her acting was something apart from any other acting it has come in my way to witness – her soul was in it – and a strange soul she has – I shall not discuss it.' Two weeks later, Charlotte saw Rachel again, this time in one of her most famous roles, as the tragic heroine Camilla in Corneille's classic play,
Horace:
‘a wonderful sight –', she told Ellen,

terrible as if the earth had cracked deep at your feet and revealed a glimpse of hell[”] – I shall never forget it – she made me shudder to the

marrow of my bones: in her some fiend has certainly taken up an incarnate home. She is not a woman – she is a snake – she is the—.
⁷²

In that character, Charlotte declared, ‘I shall
never
forget her – she will come to me in sleepless nights again and yet again.' She would also provide rich material for
Villette
where Charlotte would portray her as the actress Vashti, ‘Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate'. ‘She and Thackeray are the two living things that have a spell for me in this great London', Charlotte told Amelia Taylor, ‘– and one of these is sold to the Great Ladies – and the other – I fear – to Beelzebub.'
⁷³

Charlotte's irritation with Thackeray grew more marked over the period of her stay. She was particularly put out when he deferred his next lecture because ‘the Duchesses and Marchionesses have petitioned him to put it off on account of Ascot Races – wearisome selfish seraphim that they are'. It was anathema to her that she should be deprived of the treat of hearing him lecture again simply on the whim of the women of fashion. Likewise, she was not impressed when he was invited to dine at the Smiths' and left early because the Duchess of Norfolk, the Marchioness of Londonderry, Lady Chesterfield and Lady Clanricarde were going to the Queen's fancy dress ball and wanted ‘their pet and darling' to see them in their costumes. Nevertheless, Charlotte still prolonged her visit to the last possible minute in order to hear one more lecture from Thackeray: ‘Nor was I disappointed; on the theme of Fielding – he put forth his great strength – and though I could not
agree
, I was forced to
admire
.'
⁷⁴

On 16 June, Charlotte went to hear another lecture which also fulfilled her expectations: Cardinal Wiseman addressing the Roman Catholic Society of St Vincent de Paul. All her prejudices came to the fore as she gleefully described the cardinal to her father.

He is a big portly man something of the shape of Mr Morgan; he has not merely a double but a treble and quadruple chin; he has a very large mouth with oily lips, and looks as if he would relish a good dinner with a bottle of wine after it. He came swimming into the room smiling, simpering, and bowing like a fat old lady, and sat down very demure in his chair and looked the picture of a sleek hypocrite … The Cardinal spoke in a smooth whining manner, just like a canting Methodist preacher. The audience seemed to look up to him as to a god.

Even the ‘bevy of inferior priests' surrounding him were ‘very dark-looking and sinister men' and the speeches, naturally, all turned on the necessity of straining every nerve to make converts to Popery.
⁷⁵
Given her reaction to this meeting, it was perhaps surprising that Charlotte later attended the Spanish Ambassador's Chapel to observe Cardinal Wiseman holding a confirmation. Having gone to be disgusted and outraged she was not disappointed: ‘The whole scene was impiously theatrical', she wrote with scorn.'
⁷⁶

The strain of all the excitement and activity began to tell. After two weeks in London, Charlotte began to suffer a series of debilitating nervous headaches. Writing to Ellen one morning in ‘an inexpressibly flat state' she complained of two days of continuous headache ‘which grew at last rampant and violent – ended with excessive sickness – and this morning I am better but quite weak and washy. I hoped to leave my headaches behind me at Haworth – but it seems I brought them carefully packed in my trunk and very much have they been in my way since I came.'

I cannot boast that London has agreed with me well this time – the oppression of frequent headache – sickness and a low tone of spirits has poisoned many moments which might otherwise have been pleasant – Sometimes I have felt this hard and been tempted to murmur at Fate which condemns me to comparative silence and solitude for eleven months in the year – and in the twelveth while offering social enjoyment takes away the vigour and cheerfulness which should turn it to account.
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