CHARLOTTE BRONTËAT THE SOANE

Introductory Note

While working on a BBC Radio 4 drama series about Charlotte Brontë’s five trips to London as a published author - during which she fell for her handsome young publisher, George Smith, head of the firm Smith Elder - I naturally wondered if she had visited the Soane’s Museum? The series was commissioned to mark the Bicentenary of Charlotte Bronte’s birth on April 21st 1816. Prompted by the discovery that Charlotte’s own guide-book to London, in the possession of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, fea-tures the Soane, I begged the Soane’s archivist to let me look at the enor-mous leatherbound visitors’ books for the dates of her visits. A job made easier because I knew exactly which dates to search. A job made more difficult because the authoress would not necessarily have signed in herself when she visited. It could be that she was a ‘plus one’ if she came perhaps with George. Or with a friend of the Scottish Smith family with whom she was staying. She visited the Great Exhibition, for instance, with Sir David Brewster, a pre-eminent scientist and fellow Scot. She and George visited a phrenologist in the Strand and, for some reason, used the name ‘Fraser’.

With mounting excitement I combed the columns of signatures in those great visitor books, turning the pages for the dates of her visits, knowing that maybe maybe on the next page I might possibly find her signature. Or that of Currer Bell (her pseudonym that she went on using playfully on occasion even after everyone knew the identity of the author of Jane Eyre). I looked for someone she knew who might possibly have brought her. These lists of signatures are mesmerizing. Once years ago when I wanted to design some scarves for the Museum’s shop based on these visitors’ books, I had discovered Henry James father and son, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, William Morris, Richard Doyle and even, amusingly, a ‘Miss Cory’. Now I hoped – prayed – hoped to find a Ms Brontë!

wishful thinking

Alas, it was not to be. I found Smiths aplenty but they were the wrong Smiths. I cannot describe the disappointment with which I finally closed the tantalizing tomes and admitted defeat. I had not found her. She had not come – or if she did, there was no record.

I left the museum that day a trifle despondent. The loss felt the greater because, alone among the many places in London that Charlotte Brontë DID visit - and which feature in her guide book - the Soane Museum has not changed. It is exactly as it was when Sir John died in 1837. That nothing would ever be altered was one of the conditions on which he left his magnificent abode and Museum to the nation. This means that when you walk through the front door you could just as well be Charlotte Brontë arriving on the arm of George Smith in 1850. I could picture them wander-ing around together and almost overhear their conversation. She, eager and interested in all she saw, her visual senses delighted, her interest in art well satisfied by the picture gallery, for instance. The gothic caverns recalling the gothic Thornfield Hall. He, happily humouring his most successful novelist. Hoping to encourage her to write another bestseller, possibly even featuring an encounter at the Museum such as Henry James would do (in A London Life) a few decades later. He meandered about in her wake, slightly mystified by her interest but flattering her and cheerfully oblivious to the emotions he was awakening. George Smith, eight years Miss Brontë’s junior, appears to have been a natural flirt. It probably did not occur to him the effect he was having on this lonely writer, starved of company at home in Yorkshire with all her siblings dead and her Papa, the Reverend Patrick Brontë increasingly blind, dyspeptic and eccentric. Sadly, Charlotte took George Smith’s attentions seriously. But there was a point in their relationship – that occurs in the penultimate visit, 1851 the summer of the Great Exhibition – when he seems to have reciprocated her feelings

to some extent – certainly enough to have roused his doting mother to intervene and put an end to the ‘friendship’. When decades later, George Smith was asked if there had ever been anything between himself and Charlotte Brontë he had said not but that his mother had at one point been concerned.It was as I rounded the corner out of Lincoln’s Inn Fields that my heart leapt. It looks as if Charlotte Brontë did not visit the Soane but: why not bring her here for her Bicentenary? She did not come but she should have done. She would have found much to interest her. Her visits to London – or New Babylon as she liked to call the city - meant so much to her but were ultimately rather disillusioning. She struggled socially. The reception of the two novels she wrote after Jane Eyre was not very encouraging.She had yearned to meet people like Thackeray but she did not have the social skills to cope. So why not bring her to London again and give her another chance to enjoy the best of what the city has to offer. What better 200th birthday present for a writer who has stood the test of time than a visit at long last to this timeless place?

Jane Eyre is full of detailed descriptions of interiors. One can just imagine Charlotte Brontë standing in Sir John’s library and dining room carefully scrutinizing the furniture, the mirrors, the rugs, the paintwork. Here, for instance, is a description of one of the wicked Aunt Reed’s rooms at Gateshead Hall, from the early chapters of Jane Eyre:‘…the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour, with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany’That Charlotte Brontë had a keen eye for interiors is obvious from the many detailed accounts of rooms in her writing. It is also known that she spent money she made from her books sprucing up the dreary Brontë Parsonage. She designed wallpapers. And was very particular about her curtains and carpets. She would probably have looked round the Sir John Soane’s Museum as eager for ideas and inspiration as many interior designers visiting the place today.

Charlotte Cory, 2016

CHARLOTTE BRONTË’S FivE TRipSTO LONdON AS A puBLiSHEd AuTHORWhat she did and where she went and when she might have visited the Soane

7th – 11th July, 1848

This was the famous POP VISIT Jane Eyre by Currer Bell had been published the previous autumn to astonishing public and critical acclaim but following some mischievous publicity claiming that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the work of Currer Bell, the author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte received a letter from her publishers Smith Elder & Co accusing her of deceit. They naturally assumed that Currer Bell had sold the book to the publisher of The Tenant for a high sum, despite being contracted to them for another two novels. They wrote demanding an explanation. Charlotte Bronte was mortified to be thought so duplicitous and realized that the sisters’ use of pseudonyms was wrecking her meteoric literary career. She tried to persuade her sisters to accompany her to sort out the misunderstanding and reveal their real identities. Emily refused to go so on Friday 7th July, Charlotte and Anne (whose second novel was causing the bother) dashed down to Keighley, took a train to Leeds and then travelled to London on the overnight train to prove, at least, that there were more than one writer at work in the “Bell” family.

They arrived at Euston Square Station (D2) at 8 o’clock in the morning and went to the Chapter Coffee House in Paternoster Row (G3) (where Charlotte had stayed before with Emily and her father on the way to Brussels) near St. Paul’s Cathedral (G3) and then headed straight to the offices of Smith Elder & Co at 65 Cornhill (H3). George Smith was astonished by the appearance of these strangely clothed shortsighted ladies when all London was convinced that the Bell authors were gentlemen. He introduced them to the Reader of the firm William Smith Williams, the man who had sat up all night the previous year reading Jane Eyre and had then persuaded the young Head of the firm to publish the book. The two men then commenced to entertain their extraordinary visitors. George Smith took the sisters to the Italian Opera House (E3) to see Rossini’s Barber of Seville.

Next morning, a Sunday, Williams took the sisters to St Stephen’s, Walbrook (G3) to hear the celebrated preacher, Dr George Croly – a poet and novelist also published by Smith Elder’s - preach. He was not there. The Bronte’s then dined at the Smiths’ house at 4 Westbourne Place, Bishop’s Road, Paddington (A3) – apparently without George Smith’s mother and sisters knowing the identity of their guests. On Monday July 10th, Mrs Smith accompanied the pair to the Royal Academy, then the building to the right of the National Gallery (E4). They lunched again with the Smiths and then spent the evening with the Williams family. On Tuesday morning they returned home. At some point in this trip they called on Emily and Anne’s publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby at 72 Mortimer Street (D3). Charlotte promised a correspondent an account of this meeting but if she ever wrote this it is lost. It is likely that an encounter did take place because only a few weeks later a new edition of The Tenant was published, with corrections and a considered preface by Anne (Acton Bell). Within a couple of months of the sisters returning home, their brother Branwell died of alcohol and drug related illness, by Christmas Emily had died and Anne died the following May.

Thursday 29th November – Saturday 15th December 1849

THE SECOND VISIT was essentially a triumphal visit in the wake of the publication of Shirley in October. The book was selling well despite some awful reviews because people wanted to read the next book by the author of Jane Eyre. Charlotte described her first four or five days in the Big Babylon as “a sort of whirl”Charlotte Bronte made the acquaintance of Harriet Martineau who was staying near the Smiths with her cousins in closeby Westbourne Street (A3). On Tuesday December 4th, she visited the Wheelwright family (acquaintances from her Brussels days) at their home in 29 Lower Phillimore Place, Kensington. During the visit William Smith-Williams too her to see the new Houses of Parliament (E5). She saw Charles Macready acting in Macbeth and Othello. She made the acquaintance of William Makepeace Thackeray when he came to dinner with the Smiths.

29th May – June 25th 1850

THE THIRD VISIT had no particular rationale. Charlotte Bronte accepted an invitation from the Smiths purely because she fancied coming to London. By now they had moved to a new smart house at 76 (now 112) Gloucester Terrace (A3). Paid for, partly of course, by the success of Jane Eyre! She had her portrait done by George Richmond, the society artist who knew how to flatter his subjects. A task which curiously for such a light chalk sketch took three sittings. These took place at his studios in York Street (C2), close to Regents Park. She went to the Exhibition at the Royal Academy again and saw Landseer’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington on the field of

Waterloo and a painting by one of her favourite artists, his “Last Man”. She went to the Zoological Gardens (C1) to see a recently arrived hippo. Smith took her to the Houses of Parliament (E5) again where she sat in the Ladies Gallery and was aware what a stir the handsome young Mr Smith glancing up at the Gallery - to see if she was ready to leave - caused amongst the other female occupants. Smith also took her to the Chapel Royal, St James’s (D4) so that she could see the Duke of Wellington in person and then humoured her by chasing him round the park so that she could see him again on his way home to Apsley House (C3).She also attended a dinner party on June 12th given by Thackeray at his home at 13 Young Street, Kensington (A5), a small street of private houses leading into Kensington Square. With his wife incurably insane and living in Camberwell, he lived here with his two young daughters, Annie and Minnie, then aged 13 and 10. At the dinner party Charlotte discovered to her horror that she was guest of honour and expected to deliver scintillating conversation. The simple dress she wore is in the exhibition, by kind permission of the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth. Among those present were the Carlyles, the poetess Adelaide Proctor and the painter John Everett Millais who wanted to paint Charlotte’s portrait. At the end of her visit, and to her delight and astonishment, George Smith suggested that she accompany him and his sister, Eliza, to Scotland where he was going to fetch his younger brother Alick back from school. At first she declined the invitation and agreed with his mother that it would not do, but in the end she went back to Yorkshire and joined the Smiths in Edin-burgh, going on a trip to Melrose and then Abbotsford to see the home of Sir Walter Scott.

28th May – 27th June 1851

During THE FOURTH VISIT a year later in the summer of 1851, Charlotte Bronte got caught up in Great Exhibition (B4) mania. Having decided to eschew the pleasures of the Works of Industry of All Nations, she found herself going to the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park at least five times, at

least several of them in the company of Dr David Brewster, a pre-eminent scientist, inventor of a kaleidoscope and stereoscope for viewing 3D photography. He was a friend of the Smith family and a fellow Scot. Charlotte had come a day earlier than arranged in order to attend one of Thackeray’s lectures on ‘English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century’ at the Willis’s Rooms, King Street, St James (D4). Unfortunately he committed his usual insensitive blunder of referring to her as Jane Eyre so that she received a great deal of unwelcome attention from the packed audience. Charlotte was also offended by the flippant way Thackeray treated the vices of his subject of the evening, Henry Fielding. Having had a highly talented brother who had gone astray under the influence of drugs and alcohol she took a dim view of the lightness with which Thackeray dealt with the subject. He in his turn found her too po-faced and moralistic. She went to the Somerset House (F3) Exhibition (May 29th) and attended performances by the disturbingly sensual and celebrated actress Rachel of Adrienne Lecouvreur (June 7th) and again Corneille’s tragedy Les Trois Horaces (June 22nd). She would immortalize these performances in her descriptions of ‘Vashti’ in Villette .She attended a confirmation service at the Spanish Ambassador’s Chapel (C3) and went to hear the French

Protestant preacher D’Aubigné preach on her first Sunday (June 1st) in town. She also asked Smith to take her to yet another form of worship at the Friends Meeting House in Leicester Square (E3) where, somewhat to his embarrassment, she was amused rather than moved. On June 25th there was a trip to Richmond about which we know nothing. Her friendship/flirtation with the young George Smith reached its peak during this trip. He had invited her earlier in the year to take an excursion with him down the Rhine. He maintained that his sole intention in courting her thus was to encourage her to write another book. He took her to a phrenologist, Dr. J. P. Browne at 367 The Strand (E4) to have their heads examined. They gave their names as Fraser and the remarkably accurate accounts of Mr and Miss Fraser’s characters still exist. Couples often consulted phrenologists to discover if they were suitable so even this strange outing must have compounded Charlotte’s hopes that perhaps George might propose. Two days before her departure, Smith took a day off from his duties at Cornhill to escort his family and Charlotte Bronte on an outing to Richmond. What happened there we do not know since she only referred once and but briefly to the outing. In the course of this month long visit she began to perceive that she was being humoured as a guest for business reasons and that the very charming but overbearing Mrs Smith was deliberately steering George away from her.

5th - January – 2nd February 1853

Eighteen months then elapsed before the FIFTH AND FINAL VISIT in January 1853 during which Charlotte Bronte had been writing Villette, the novel in which she mischievously and accurately depicted George Smith and his doting Mamma as Dr John Graham and Mrs Bretton. The former friendli-ness and familiarity from George Smith and family is now clearly a stiff, po-

litely formal business arrangement with considerable embarrassment all round. This does not stop Charlotte enjoying her outings but, because her friend Mrs Gaskell was publishing a novel of gritty social realism at the same time – Ruth – and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was on everyone’s lips, Charlotte declared that she too wanted to

see reality. She was obviously acutely aware that Villette touched on no matter of public interest. To her hosts’ alarm and amazement, she insisted on visiting Penton-ville, a modern prison and New-gate (G3), an old one. Here she got into trouble with the warders for

talking to a girl who had killed her illegitimate child. She visited the Bank of England (G3), a Soane building and the Exchange (H3), the General Post Office and the offices of The Times newspaper, the Foundling Hospital

(E2) for orphans and Bethlehem Hospital (E5), or Bedlam, the Institution for the Insane.

The publication of the novel was delayed until 28th January 1853. A few days later Charlotte returned home before the reviews started to appear. A review from Miss Martineau (in the Daily News) – a woman she had thought was her friend - particularly stung her, taxing her as it did with only being interested in love. She used her private knowledge of Charlotte’s life to critique the book: ‘There are substantial, heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and under ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love.’ Char-lotte Bronte broke off the friendship. Though she had begged her friend to tell her the truth about her work, she had not been able to stomach it when this was done so publicly.You can imagine with what relief the Smiths put her on the train back North at the end of this visit that had lasted nearly a month. Charlotte and George would never see each other again. Within the year George Smith would meet and marry the beautiful daughter of a wealthy wine merchant and when he wrote to Charlotte Bronte in Haworth telling her his news, she replied by return saying that she too was engaged to be married to her father’s curate, the Revd Arthur Bell Nicholls. The wedding took place in June 1854. There was a very happy honeymoon at his family home in the middle of Ireland during which she discovered that Nicholls had hidden his true social status as a gentleman and also how much she loved this man who had waited for her so long. She died in the early stages of pregnancy the following March, aged 38. George Smith went on the make his fortune many times over. Smith Elders became one of the biggest publishing houses, with Mrs Gaskell and William Makepeace Thackeray as authors (directly thanks to Charlotte) and publishing Queen Victoria’s Journals. Smith made a fortune out of importing and cleverly marketing Apollinaris Mineral Water and another fortune out of the Dictionary of National Biography, the Wikipedia of its day.

THE QuESTiON iSon which of the five visits was Charlotte Brontë most likely to have visited the Soane Museum?

Certainly not the first (1848) as there was little time and the trip was too ad hoc for Charlotte and Anne to do more than accept invitations. Charlotte Brontë described the happy occurrences on her second, third and fourth trips so fully but – because of the somewhat embarrassing circumstances - she is much more reticent about the fifth (Jan/Feb 1853). She also went out and about a bit more by herself. I picture her going to the Soane on this fifth trip and wandering about slowly on her own, peering at items, thinking how changed relations were between herself and George Smith. Perhaps even thinking about the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls back home in Haworth, remembering his declaration of love and the many little unacknowledged kindnesses he had bestowed. He had buried her brother and sister Emily when their father understandably could not bear to take the funerals. He had quietly watched over her for years and shortly before she came away from home, had declared himself. Perhaps as she wandered among the Soane statues and the shadows, she came to a decision to seize happiness where it waited for her. She would go back home to Haworth and brave Papa Brontë’s wrath. For that is what she did.As she walked round the Soane, she will have seen the portrait of Emma Hart, The Snake in the Grass by Joshua Reynolds, the woman who would later become Admiral Lord Nelson’s mistress. Did she pause and reflect that if it hadn’t been for Nelson’s coming the Duke of Brontë, and her father chang-ing his name from Patrick Brunty to Patrick Brontë when he came over from Ireland, he herself would have been Charlotte Brunty. Her father’s objection to his Irish curate rendered ridiculous because socially they were no better than he. Charlotte will also have liked the portraits of Fanny, Mrs Soane’s Manchester terrier and been intrigued by Fanny’s tomb-stone in the yard. No doubt Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress and An Election will have appealed to her strong sense of moral values, and her dislike of the sort of excesses that did for her poor brother Branwell. At the bottom of the stes into the vaults she will have noticed the bust of Blücher and reflected how the Prussian General came to the aid of her beloved Wellington at Waterloo and ensured victory for her hero...

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THE SMITHS’ SECOND HOUSE

76 Gloucester Terrace (now No. 112)

In 1851, Charlotte Bronte visited the Great Exhibition five times in the company ofDr David Brewster, a pre-eminent physicist, inventor of a kaleidoscope and stereoscope for viewing 3D photography. He was a friend of the Smith family and a fellow Scot. Miss Brontë was a little bored by the science! This was

the summer of her romance with George Smith and perhaps Brewster stepped

in as an escort at the request of the wary Mrs Smith!

The place where all Charlotte Brontë’s adventures in London began and ended. With what trepidation she and her sister Anne arrived that morning in July in 1848, after a long night on the train, determined to visit her publisher in Cornhill and prove that there were more than one writer in the family (and inevitably reveal that they were women). Then later when she came alone - the excitement of arriving, uncertain what lay ahead. And finally departing for the quiet of Haworth.

Charlotte Brontë visited the zoo the happy summer of 1850 when the weather was ‘splendid' and hippo mania at its height. A new baby hippo had recently arrived from Egypt and London was agog with excitement. ‘Obaysch’ was the first hippo to be seen in Europe since Roman times and queues to get into the gardens were long but the secretary had sent Currer Bell a free ticket so presumably she and the Smiths did not have to wait in line. Charlotte wrote a long letter home to her father about all the animals she saw.

On the day that Currer and Acton Bell showed up in his o�ce unexpectedly, the young George Smith invited Charlotte and Anne to the opera. They were not certain if the invitation was definite and were slightly astonished when he arrived at their hotel with his sisters in full evening dress to escort them to the opera. They attended a production of Rossini’s Il Barbière with the celebrated Madame Persiani in the lead rôle. Charlotte commented afterwards that there were other things she might have preferred. And she was right - Chopin himself was giving a concert in London that same evening.

In the summer of 1850, Smith took Charlotte Brontë to the Chapel Royal to do a little bit of Wellington spotting. She was so excited to see the Duke in person that Smith humoured

her by chasing after the Duke so that they could

see him several times on his way back to Apsley House.

The chalk sketch took three visits/sittings. Smith chose this artist because he could be relied upon to flatter and indeed he paid very careful attention to what was generally regarded as Charlotte Brontë’s only attractive physical feature: her eyes. When she saw the finished picture she burst into tears and explained that it reminded her of her dead sister, Emily one account recalled, Anne another. But perhaps she was overjoyed to see herself immortalised so prettily.

On Sunday morning, July 9th 1848, William Smith Williams (the Reader at Smith Elders who had discovered Jane Eyre) escorted Anne and Charlotte to St Stephen’s to hear the celebrated author and clericDr George Croly preach. They were disappointed as he took that Sunday o� but able to appreciate this very beautiful Wren church where you can still see memorials to Dr Croly.

During Charlotte’s 5th and final visit to London as a published author, in Jan 1853, when she came to correct the proofs of Villette she decided to eschew the normal ‘decorative’ sightseeing that had delighted her on previous occasions in favour of ‘real’ London. This is largely due to the novel byMrs Gaskell that was published the same month - Ruth - coincidentally a novel that dealt with the plight of fallen women and illegitimate children. What Charlotte Bronte made of the Foundling Hospital is sadly nowhere recorded - but it was a natural place for this writer who so identified with orphans to visit.

Charlotte Brontë visited the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street on her final trip to London when she made a point of visiting the ‘real’. She was shortly to take her

savings back from George Smith whom she had asked to invest them for her - so perhaps she was looking for financial tips. If she never made it to the Sir John Soane’s Museum, it is good to think that she saw one of his masterpieces. As her guidebook states: 'The arrangements are most perfect; and nothing can surpass the order and regularity of this colossal establishment’.

6 5 C o r n h i l l was the address of Charlotte Bronte’s publishers, Smith Elder & Co. It was here that the famous encounter took place on Saturday morning July 8th 1848, when Currer and Acton Bell walked in and asked to speak to George Smith. The young publisher was astonished to be confronted with the two small (and in Charlotte’s case, at least) bespectacled women. He introduced her to the reader of the firm, William Smith Williams, a man in his 50s who had sat up all night reading Jane Eyre the year before and recognised it as a work of genius and persuaded Mr Smith to publish it at once.

In 1853, Charlotte went with the distinguished physician Dr John Forbes to visit the hospital for the insane in St George’s Fields, Lambeth. Forbes who would be knighted that year was a friend of the Smith family and an expert on the treatment of tuberculosis. Charlotte had consulted him on treatment for Anne and he seems to have been a constant friend to her, exchanging books and their meetings were often commented on with pleasure. Did he take her there because of her interest in the ‘mad' first wife of Mr Rochester? We will never know as she never recorded anything about her visit.

This was a new building on the corner of Cornhill and Threadneedle Street that had been opened by Queen Victoria in 1844. Outside stood Chantrey’s equestrian statue of Wellington that Charlotte - who was very keen on the Duke of Wellington - will have noticed. It was commissioned by the City of London to mark the help Wellington had given in securing the rebuilding of London Bridge - the bridge that was sold to the Americans in 1967, when they thought they were acquiring the iconic Tower Bridge! Granite from the original bridge is used as the plinth. Bronze for the statue came from melted down enemy canons, captured at Waterloo.

George Smith later recalled that at Newgate Charlotte Brontë rapidly fixed her attention on an individual prisoner. A poor girl with an interesting face and an expression of deepest misery. She had apparently killed her illegitimate child. Miss Brontë walked up to her and took her hand and began talking to her - and was told o� by the warders. “Visitors are not allowed to speak to the prisoners.” They were admitted solely, apparently, to look at them.

From the entry in Charlotte Brontë’s guidebook:'No 13, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. One of the most unique and interesting collections in London, bequeathed by Sir John Soane in 1833, an Act of Parliament having been obtained to sanction its disposal in its present form. The Museum occupies a suite of twenty-four rooms, enriched with a choice collection of Grecian and Roman specimens of architecture, Etruscan vases, and Egyptian antiquities; among the latter, being the

gem of the collection, is the celebrated alabaster sarcophagus, brought by Belzoni from the ruins of Thebes…’ Charlotte Brontë’s friends often referred to her propensity to visit museums and galleries and it is hard to believe that she was not enticed to visit the Soane by her guidebook’s enthusiastic write-up!.

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T h e S o a n e M u s e u m Z o o l o g i c a l G a r d e n s E u s t o n S q u a r e S t a t i o n

George Richmond’sStudio

T h e G r e a t E x h i b i t i o n T h e R o y a l E x c h a n g e The Italian Opera House Bethlehem HOSPITAL - or BedlamC h a p e lR o y a l

The BANK OF ENGLAND

Newgate PRISON

St Stephen's, Walbrook

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To Haworth To PENTONVILLE PRISONTo Haworth

To RICHMONDTo RICHMOND

To PENTONVILLE PRISON

CHARLOTTE BRONTË IN LONDON

Published by©CharlotteCory,London 2016Published by©CharlotteCory,London 2016

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76 Gloucester Terrace (now No. 112)

In 1851, Charlotte Bronte visited the Great Exhibition five times in the company ofDr David Brewster, a pre-eminent physicist, inventor of a kaleidoscope and stereoscope for viewing 3D photography. He was a friend of the Smith family and a fellow Scot. Miss Brontë was a little bored by the science! This was

the summer of her romance with George Smith and perhaps Brewster stepped

in as an escort at the request of the wary Mrs Smith!

The place where all Charlotte Brontë’s adventures in London began and ended. With what trepidation she and her sister Anne arrived that morning in July in 1848, after a long night on the train, determined to visit her publisher in Cornhill and prove that there were more than one writer in the family (and inevitably reveal that they were women). Then later when she came alone - the excitement of arriving, uncertain what lay ahead. And finally departing for the quiet of Haworth.

Charlotte Brontë visited the zoo the happy summer of 1850 when the weather was ‘splendid' and hippo mania at its height. A new baby hippo had recently arrived from Egypt and London was agog with excitement. ‘Obaysch’ was the first hippo to be seen in Europe since Roman times and queues to get into the gardens were long but the secretary had sent Currer Bell a free ticket so presumably she and the Smiths did not have to wait in line. Charlotte wrote a long letter home to her father about all the animals she saw.

On the day that Currer and Acton Bell showed up in his o�ce unexpectedly, the young George Smith invited Charlotte and Anne to the opera. They were not certain if the invitation was definite and were slightly astonished when he arrived at their hotel with his sisters in full evening dress to escort them to the opera. They attended a production of Rossini’s Il Barbière with the celebrated Madame Persiani in the lead rôle. Charlotte commented afterwards that there were other things she might have preferred. And she was right - Chopin himself was giving a concert in London that same evening.

In the summer of 1850, Smith took Charlotte Brontë to the Chapel Royal to do a little bit of Wellington spotting. She was so excited to see the Duke in person that Smith humoured

her by chasing after the Duke so that they could

see him several times on his way back to Apsley House.

The chalk sketch took three visits/sittings. Smith chose this artist because he could be relied upon to flatter and indeed he paid very careful attention to what was generally regarded as Charlotte Brontë’s only attractive physical feature: her eyes. When she saw the finished picture she burst into tears and explained that it reminded her of her dead sister, Emily one account recalled, Anne another. But perhaps she was overjoyed to see herself immortalised so prettily.

On Sunday morning, July 9th 1848, William Smith Williams (the Reader at Smith Elders who had discovered Jane Eyre) escorted Anne and Charlotte to St Stephen’s to hear the celebrated author and clericDr George Croly preach. They were disappointed as he took that Sunday o� but able to appreciate this very beautiful Wren church where you can still see memorials to Dr Croly.

During Charlotte’s 5th and final visit to London as a published author, in Jan 1853, when she came to correct the proofs of Villette she decided to eschew the normal ‘decorative’ sightseeing that had delighted her on previous occasions in favour of ‘real’ London. This is largely due to the novel byMrs Gaskell that was published the same month - Ruth - coincidentally a novel that dealt with the plight of fallen women and illegitimate children. What Charlotte Bronte made of the Foundling Hospital is sadly nowhere recorded - but it was a natural place for this writer who so identified with orphans to visit.

Charlotte Brontë visited the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street on her final trip to London when she made a point of visiting the ‘real’. She was shortly to take her

savings back from George Smith whom she had asked to invest them for her - so perhaps she was looking for financial tips. If she never made it to the Sir John Soane’s Museum, it is good to think that she saw one of his masterpieces. As her guidebook states: 'The arrangements are most perfect; and nothing can surpass the order and regularity of this colossal establishment’.

6 5 C o r n h i l l was the address of Charlotte Bronte’s publishers, Smith Elder & Co. It was here that the famous encounter took place on Saturday morning July 8th 1848, when Currer and Acton Bell walked in and asked to speak to George Smith. The young publisher was astonished to be confronted with the two small (and in Charlotte’s case, at least) bespectacled women. He introduced her to the reader of the firm, William Smith Williams, a man in his 50s who had sat up all night reading Jane Eyre the year before and recognised it as a work of genius and persuaded Mr Smith to publish it at once.

In 1853, Charlotte went with the distinguished physician Dr John Forbes to visit the hospital for the insane in St George’s Fields, Lambeth. Forbes who would be knighted that year was a friend of the Smith family and an expert on the treatment of tuberculosis. Charlotte had consulted him on treatment for Anne and he seems to have been a constant friend to her, exchanging books and their meetings were often commented on with pleasure. Did he take her there because of her interest in the ‘mad' first wife of Mr Rochester? We will never know as she never recorded anything about her visit.

This was a new building on the corner of Cornhill and Threadneedle Street that had been opened by Queen Victoria in 1844. Outside stood Chantrey’s equestrian statue of Wellington that Charlotte - who was very keen on the Duke of Wellington - will have noticed. It was commissioned by the City of London to mark the help Wellington had given in securing the rebuilding of London Bridge - the bridge that was sold to the Americans in 1967, when they thought they were acquiring the iconic Tower Bridge! Granite from the original bridge is used as the plinth. Bronze for the statue came from melted down enemy canons, captured at Waterloo.

George Smith later recalled that at Newgate Charlotte Brontë rapidly fixed her attention on an individual prisoner. A poor girl with an interesting face and an expression of deepest misery. She had apparently killed her illegitimate child. Miss Brontë walked up to her and took her hand and began talking to her - and was told o� by the warders. “Visitors are not allowed to speak to the prisoners.” They were admitted solely, apparently, to look at them.

From the entry in Charlotte Brontë’s guidebook:'No 13, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. One of the most unique and interesting collections in London, bequeathed by Sir John Soane in 1833, an Act of Parliament having been obtained to sanction its disposal in its present form. The Museum occupies a suite of twenty-four rooms, enriched with a choice collection of Grecian and Roman specimens of architecture, Etruscan vases, and Egyptian antiquities; among the latter, being the

gem of the collection, is the celebrated alabaster sarcophagus, brought by Belzoni from the ruins of Thebes…’ Charlotte Brontë’s friends often referred to her propensity to visit museums and galleries and it is hard to believe that she was not enticed to visit the Soane by her guidebook’s enthusiastic write-up!.

T h e F o u n d l i n gH o s p i t a l

T h e S o a n e M u s e u m Z o o l o g i c a l G a r d e n s E u s t o n S q u a r e S t a t i o n

George Richmond’sStudio

T h e G r e a t E x h i b i t i o n T h e R o y a l E x c h a n g e The Italian Opera House Bethlehem HOSPITAL - or BedlamC h a p e lR o y a l

The BANK OF ENGLAND

Newgate PRISON

St Stephen's, Walbrook

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To Haworth To PENTONVILLE PRISONTo Haworth

To RICHMONDTo RICHMOND

To PENTONVILLE PRISON

CHARLOTTE BRONTË IN LONDON

Published by©CharlotteCory,London 2016Published by©CharlotteCory,London 2016

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CHARLOTTE BRONTË AT THE SOANEThe Exhibits Described

1. Charlotte Brontë’s Account book – this is the little notebook in which CB recorded her expens-es during that first trip to Lon-don with Anne, July 1848, when they came to prove their identi-ty. Anne’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had just been pub-lished and her publisher, Thom-as Cautley Newby of 72 Mortimer Street was claiming that this was the work of the uber-successful Currer Bell, author of Jane Eyre. Earlier he had tried to sell Anne’s

first novel, Agnes Grey and Emily’s Wuthering Heights by Acton and Ellis Bell, advertising that they were related to Currer Bell, but now he was going a step further. This prompted Charlotte’s publisher, George Smith of Smith Elder & Co to write requesting an explanation. Clearly he suspected some sort of double dealing (for Currer Bell was contracted to him for another two novels). The letter arrived on Friday July 8th. Within hours, Charlotte and Anne had rushed down the hill to Keighley in a thunderstorm, taken the train to Leeds and caught the overnight train to London, travelling this stretch of the journey (as this account book proves) First Class. They walked into 65 Cornhill first thing in the morning – to George Smith’s great surprise. No one had known who the Bells were, whether they were men or women, or even whether there was more than one of them. They begged him to keep their secret and he was happy to oblige since the mystery sur-rounding the identities of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell had become a big selling point. By the time the rest of the world knew the iden-tities of the authors, Emily and Anne had both died. Other pages in the account book contain the Smith family’s address and other notes. Kindly loaned especially for the Bicentenary by the Brontë Parsonage Museum,

2. Charlotte Brontë’s dress This is the actual dress that Charlotte Brontë wore to Thackeray’s inner party, June 12th1850, during the same visit that her picture was executed by George Richmond. Thacker-ay’s daughter would remember the dress as moss green barège whereas it is in fact blue delaine! Kindly loaned especially for the Bicentenary by the Brontë Parsonage Museum

3. Fashionplates – for 1850 to show what the other more fashionable ladies who packed Thackeray’s dinner party were probably wearing.

3.

4. A recently discovered daguerreotype of Thackeray and his two daughters, Annie and Minny, taken at around the time that they met Charlotte Brontë. You can compare his face with that of the two carte-de-visites that are defi-nitely known to be the author of Vanity Fair. In 1847, this great novel was half way through its serialization when Jane Eyre appeared on the literary scene and diverted attention. Charlotte effusively dedicated the 2nd Edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray causing him to wonder who his secret admirer might be and setting London alive with gossip. Many thought “Currer Bell” must have been the governess to his children. Property of Charlotte Cory

5. La Fontaine’s Fables, Illustrat-ed with Grandville’s anthropomor-phic illustrations (so beloved of Balzac) Part II. Apparently a gift from Thackeray. This handsome volume has been in the Brontë Parsonage Museum for years with Arthur Bell Nicholls’s signature on the inside page. Thackeray was fond of teasing his fellow author, calling her Jane Eyre in public and the gift was an-other barbed reference to her book. When the governess first meets Adele, Mr Rochester’s ward, the little girl strikes an affected pose and recites La Fontaine’s La Ligue des Rats – a fable that just happens to be in Part II. Thackeray famously told Mr Smith that he thought that for all her genius, Charlotte Brontë craved nothing so much as a Mr Tomkins to love her and to love. Little did he know that she al-ready had a Tomkins waiting for her in Haworth – her father’s stodgy Irish curate, the Revd Arthur Bell Nicholls. It is good to think that this Tomkins got Thackeray’s plush volume. As well as Miss Bronte whom he eventually married. She died nine months later in the early stages of pregnancy but those nine months had been blissfully happy.

6. An empty bottle of Sancerre wine from Thackeray’s dinner party – ap-parently taken home as a souvenir by one of the many guests, handed down through the generations as a memento of The night Grandmamma dined with Jane Eyre and on loan here from the In-stitute of Advanced Visitorian Studies.

7. Her specs – in memory of the very probable truth of that famous-ly awkward dinner party. Poor Charlotte could not see. Without her

spectacles the notoriously shortsighted authoress will not have known who was ad-dressing her or even what she was eating. Hence her famous-ly monosyllabic conversation and her glowering sternly at Thackeray’s daughters.

8. That same visit, the third Charlotte made to London, she visited the zoo. In the back of a zoological book in the pos-session of the Brontës, The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society there are little pencil doodles. Of three sisters. Autographed by Anne Bronte. Loaned by the Brontë Parson-age Museum with another copy on dis-play to show various different pages

9. The same year that she visited the zoo and met the baby hippo that had just arrived from Egypt with his young keeper, London was awash

with hippo mania and here is the music composed at the time. A beautifully anthropomorphic hippo. Not the work of Grandville (see no 5 above) nor Charlotte Cory, but some anonymous artist of the time. Long queues famously formed to visit the hippo, stretch-ing all round Regent’s Park and as far, apparently as Buckingham Palace. But Currer Bell was sent a ticket by the Secretary of the Zoological Gardens so she (and the Smith family) very likely did not have to queue.

10. The night of the Thackeray dinner party (see 7, above) the young John Everett Millais apparently asked permission to paint Charlotte’s portrait. She turned him down because she was already engaged to attend George Richmond’s studio the following day for the first of her three sittings for the chalk sketch that is now in the Na-tional Portrait Gallery. This sketch was held to be very flattering by her friends and acquaintances. Here is a) an anthropomorphic inter-pretation of the Richmond sketch, b) a reworked version to square up the face and emphasize her large nose and c) also a version of how Millais might have painted Ms Brontë if he had had the chance. He could have had this exhibited in 1851 at the Royal Academy entitled “Woman of Genius, Tired with her own Brains” for that is how – in his disappointment at not getting the commission - he described her.

11. “The Missing Charlotte?” – an oil portrait. The National Por-trait Gallery owns a portrait of the Brontë sisters by their brother Branwell and a fragment from an-other group portrait that is thought to be of Emily. Where is the rest of that fragment? This portrait (with the same stylized hands, rose-bud lips, strange off-the-shoulder dress and neat eyebrows) might just be the missing Charlotte.

10c 10b10a

12. Charlotte Brontë’s own guidebook to London, for 1851, London, What to see and How to see it showing the Soane and many of the places Charlotte (an in-veterate sightseer) visited. The map has been roughly torn from the book – and probably went round with Charlotte in her pocket. Loaned by the Brontë Par-sonage Museum (with another copy on display to show various different pages)

13. A Brewsterscope. In 1851 Charlotte Brontë visited the Great Exhibi-tion in Hyde Park (just down the road from where she was staying with the Smith family in Gloucester Terrace) five times. In the company of Dr David Brewster, a distinguished physicist, inventor of a kaleido-scope and a Brewsterscope for 3D stereoscopic photography. He was friendly with many of the photographers who exhibited at the Great Exhibition – like Claudet, who had a whole table on show there, inlaid with daguerreotypes. These men were all friends of Prince Albert who was passionate about early developments in photography and who was, of course, responsible for the Exhibition itself. He actually personally funded a Committee to promote experimentation to prevent photographs

from fading, the charming-ly dubbed “Royal Fading Committee”. The emphasis on the new art of photogra-phy at the Great Exhibi-tion, and the fact that she visited so often in the com-pany of Dr Brewster, makes it all the more puzzling that Charlotte Brontë was never

photographed herself – presumably she made a definite decision not to have a carte-de-visite or a daguerreotype made of herself. And this is why the Richmond sketch is so important. Even if it is ridiculously flattering.

14. The Telescopic Book of the Great Exhibi-tion – showing Char-lotte Brontë wandering through the glass halls

15. The Visitors’ Book – the wrong George Smith. On display is one of the Sir John Soane’s magnificent visitors books, open at one of the days when Charlotte Bronte could have visited. The first name on the list is another George Smith (wrong address!). But suppos-ing supposing this had been the right George Smith. Here is a rep-resentation of what the Visitors Book might have looked like This reminds one also of the other people who would have been in

the museum at the same time. Did any-one notice the strange-ly intense little woman walking round looking at everything carefully through a pair of spec-tacles (7 above).

16. During the happy vis-it to London in 1851, George Smith and Charlotte Bronte visited a phrenologist in The Strand. They gave their names as Fraser and he wrote very accurate descriptions of them. As it was well-known for cou-ples to consult a phrenologist before getting married to see if

they were suited, it is quite likely that this visit compounded Char-lotte’s hopes that the young George Smith might ask her to marry him. Here we have a contemporary phrenological manual and a pair of calipers that were used to measure the various parts of the head.

17. This young giraffe stood in the Bronte Parsonage in the autumn of 2013, signifying the young George Smith who stuck his neck out and pub-lished a novel by an unknown writer that took the literary world by storm in 1847. Dur-ing his flirtation with Charlotte Bronte he had promised to visit her in Haworth and so it is fit-ting that he finally did so, all these years on. When Char-lotte visited the zoo in 1850 and saw the young hippo that had just arrived from Egypt (see 9 above) she mentions the “cameleopards” that she also saw in her letter home to her fa-ther. This was an oldfashioned word for giraffe even then, but per-haps she knew of them through the constellation of stars of that name.

18. The giraffe watches over the curate’s desk, otherwise known as the desk of the missing stuff. The Bronte Parsonage is full of items col-lected with the Brontes that have gradually returned to the building over the years. The most important items of memorabilia were taken by Charlotte’s husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls back to Ire-land with him when he left Haworth after her father’s death in 1861. He could rea-sonably have expected to be given the curacy in his stead but he had proved unpopular with locals for not allowing them to spread out their washing on the gravestones. If every artifact that people claim once belonged to the Brontes was in fact returned to the Museum you would not be able to get through the front door. But what of all the genuine items out there that have lost their provenance. Supposing supposing this box of quills, that wax seel, this necklace

once belonged to one of the Brontes but now, nobody knows. This desk commemorates all the disregarded stuff that has gone missing that will never now take its rightful place among the treas-ured Bronte relics.

19. Harriet Martineau’s Letter – note the astonishing number of excla-mation marks. Charlotte Bronte was delighted when she heard that her friend Harriet Marti-neau was going to review Villette for the Daily News. This letter shows how Miss Martineau sent the volume cheerily round her neighbours up in Ambleside – the Barkworths and the Arnolds living close by. When the review appeared however, accusing the writer of making out that the one preoccupation for women was finding love and giving love, Charlotte was outraged and broke off the friendship. The Esmond referred to was the latest novel by W M Thac-keray, a novel he did not enjoy writing and which did not prove a success.

20. The chairs feature a Visitorian Mrs Gaskell (as the sharp beaked bi-ographer) and Charlotte Bronte having a gossip - and thank good-ness. Mrs Gaskell visited Haworth and sat long evenings chatting to Charlotte and these conversations sufficiently whetted that other novel-

ist’s interest in the Bron-te story story so that the moment Charlotte died in 1855, Mrs Gaskell commenced work on the controversial Life of Charlotte Brontë, thus ensuring that interest in the Brontës of Haworth would be perpetuated.

21. The year Charlotte Bronte was born, silver coins were issued with George III depicted as a “bull’s head”. These 1816 bull’s head coins were still in circula-tion decades later and perhaps Charlotte even used one amongst the money she spent, totted up in the account book (no 1)

22. Finally A Season in Harrogate by Mrs Hofland. The links between Charlotte Brontë and the Soane Museum are more profound than might at first appear. After Sir John’s wife’s death (in November 1815), he went and stayed in Harrogate with the Yorkshire writer Mrs (Barbara) Ho-fland and her landscape painter husband. Sir John had employed Mrs Hofland to write a guide to his museum. She had recently published this work on Harrogate that was then a bestseller. A work the Brontës will have known about in their quest to become Yorkshire writers. Her novels about orphans, schools and the West Indies are often cited as among the very few models Charlotte Brontë could have drawn on in writing Jane Eyre. The relationship between Sir John and Mrs Hofland is interesting and rarely explored. Likewise Mrs Hofland and Charlotte

Brontë. Sir John’s fa-mous visit to Harro-gate took place in the summer of 1816 –just after Charlotte Brontë was born. Nearby. Her father, the Rev-erend Patrick Brontë often sent poor ail-ing parishioners from Haworth to Harrogate to sample the waters.

23. And thinking about Harrogate Spa water, it is interesting to note that Charlotte Bronte’s publisher, George Smith, (eight years her junior who denied that there had been anything of romance between them but admitted that his mother had at one stage been concerned) would in later life make another fortune out of Apollinaris Mineral Waters. His skills at promotion came to the fore. He made yet another fortune out of the Dictionary of National Biography that was edited by Leslie Ste-phen, Virginia Woolf’s father. Thackeray’s daughter Minny (see above) had been Leslie Stephen’s first wife, the mother of Virginia Woolf’s half siblings. Some Apollinaris souvenirs are therefore on display.

YOuR OwN viSiTORiAN COLOuRiNg pAgE

Vera

Hubert

Lucy

Written byCharlotte Corywww.charlottecory.comDesign byDirk Murlebachwww.campanero.co.uk

SOuvENiRS

No exhibition is complete without some original souvenirs, a mug, a keyring, a cushion and perhaps a silk scarf. All these (apart from the keyring) you will find in the Sir John Soane’s Museum shop.

ACkNOwLEdgEmENTSCharlotte Cory would like to thank everyone at the Sir John Soane’s Museum for their enthusiastic help with this very exciting project, especially (although it is invidious to mention anyone in particular) Xanthe Arvanitakis and Maxwell Blowfield.

Very many thanks for the generous support of Joseph Mellot, who make wonder-ful wine in Sancerre that Thackeray might have en-joyed at his club: “The wed-ding is to take place quietly,

in the church down below yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun: to French vineyards…” Jane Eyre, Chapter XXIV.

And to the inimitable Colonel Fox’s London Dry Gin: “She kept a private bottle of gin by her, and now and then took a drop over much. It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it…” Jane Eyre, Chapter XXXVI.

And to The Woolff Gallery, in Charlotte Street, London W1: “I halted there a minute; I looked at some pictures on the walls…” Jane Eyre, Chapter XI.