In the summer of 1848 Charlotte Brontë and Anne Brontë made a fateful journey to London, determined to prove their innocence after a ruse by rogue publisher Thomas Cautley Newby led to Charlotte’s publisher George Smith being informed that Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell were all in fact the same person. It was a journey that led to the Brontë sisters finally revealing the true identities which had been hidden behind male pen names. It also led to enduring friendships between Charlotte Brontë, George Smith and his assistant W. S. Williams.
It also led to a series of books being sent from the publisher’s Cornhill headquarters to Haworth Parsonage, gifts that were much appreciated by the book loving sisters. On this day in 1848, in the month after her London journey, Charlotte wrote to Smith to thank him for his latest parcel:
The parcel from Bradbury & Evans forwarded by Smith was a copy of Vanity Fair sent by W. M. Thackeray to Charlotte. A remarkable tribute in itself, as at this point Thackeray had not met Charlotte and nor did he even know her true identity, he was simply a great fan of Jane Eyre by, as far as he was aware at this time, Currer Bell. The admiration was mutual; Charlotte Brontë was a great fan of Thackeray’s work, going so far as to dedicate the second edition of Jane Eyre to him. This was a move which provoked mirth and some questions within London literary circles as they knew, unlike Charlotte, that he had a wife who after a mental breakdown was incarcerated in a number of public and private asylums. That led to them wondering whether the author knew Thackeray, and whether Thackeray was the inspiration for Rochester.
The second book referred to by Charlotte also deals with a family who were stricken by mental illness in an incredibly tragic way. Charles Lamb is best known today for his collection of essays The Essays Of Elia and for his Tales From Shakespeare, co-written with his sister Mary Lamb. It’s clear that Charlotte loved the biography of Charles Lamb sent by her publisher, and it attracted critical praise too, with The Examiner saying: “A book more deeply interesting than this, more sad or strange and yet beautiful and exalting, has not been given to the world in our time.”
Why was the book sad and strange? The truth was that the bond between Charles and Mary Lamb was a unique one; in 1796 36 year old Mary suddenly picked up a knife and stabbed her mother to death. The court declared her a lunatic which meant that instead of being put on trial she was sent to an asylum, but her 21 year old brother Charles, 15 years Mary’s junior, had her released from custody and then spent the rest of his life caring for her. They were great sibling writers, like the Brontës, but their story was even darker, even sadder.
I hope you are enjoying these summer days while you can, and that you can join me next week for another new Brontë blog post.