A Girl Walks Into a Book

by Miranda K. Pennington

  ONE of Charlotte’s final relationship lessons for me is a pragmatic one: when she arrived home after their honeymoon, she wrote to Ellen, “It is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife,” and signed it “Yours faithfully C Bron Nicholls.”14 I love that. It’s like Charlotte’s pen didn’t want her to forget who she was.

  I am about to run out of road, so to speak, on the Brontë life map. It does feel perilous, losing this line along which I’ve paced my steps so far. It also offers a great many possibilities. If I start a new job, if I relocate for my career, if I have kids, I’ll be telling stories Charlotte never got to tell.

  Though she will never write another book, and found leading a classroom to be an ordeal rather than a vocation, Charlotte is still a born teacher. After I finished Charlotte’s letters, I began to notice her influence in my life in subtle ways. I use lessons I’ve learned reading and writing about the Brontës in the hope of inspiring my students the way the Brontës inspire me. I have started to appreciate my imperfect friendships differently; I write to my friends more often—a quick check-in message, a “saw this and thought of you” email. I even pick up the phone occasionally to leave Sally long, rambling voicemails. I spearheaded a writing retreat for my grad-school friends, and we have plans to make it a semiannual event. I make an effort to return holiday cards and inquire after family members. I call my parents regularly and try to be as nice to my brother as he is to me. I may not have a large group of people in my constellation, but the ones I do have are loyal, kind, and funny, and I value them immensely.

  I finished the last of Charlotte’s letters thinking, this is it. This is all there is.

  But there was still one place left.

  Haworth

  Our excitement as we neared Haworth had in it an element of suspense that was really painful, as though we were to meet some long-separated friend, who might have changed in the interval—so clear an image of Haworth had we from print and picture.1

  —Virginia Woolf, 1904

  When I first discussed the possibility of a trip to Haworth with Eric, he was eager to come along. As the trip got closer, he was less sure—he was afraid he’d be in my way, that he’d distract from my experience, that because he didn’t love the Brontës as I love the Brontës, I would be less able to immerse myself in Haworth and its history. Possibly he was worried I’d run mad on the moors and leave him stranded without the cultural familiarity to navigate home. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re half the point of going,” I told him, before making him watch the five-hour BBC Jane Eyre. He had the good sense to pretend he liked it very much, whether he did or not.

  Thanks to the Brontës, I had begun to learn how to share my life (and what’s more, my actual life, not merely an elaborate performance of a well-behaved one). He had to be there. My mission was as simple as it had always been—to get as close to Charlotte Brontë and her family as possible, to see what could only be seen from standing where they stood. We began our trip in London, where we would spend three days before going on to Yorkshire. Fortunately for us, on their first trips to London, Charlotte and Anne were as much tourists as anyone else, flocking to landmarks like St. Paul’s and Winchester Cathedral; we got the best of old and new London as we followed their footsteps. As Charlotte later wrote in Villette,

  Elation and pleasure were in my heart: to walk alone in London seemed of itself an adventure.…

  … I went wandering whither chance might lead, in a still ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment; and I got—I know not how—I got into the heart of city life. I saw and felt London at last: I got into the Strand; I went up Cornhill; I mixed with the life passing along; I dared the perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone, gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure. Since those days, I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the city far better. The city seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, and sounds. The city is getting its living—the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At the West End you may be amused, but in the city you are deeply excited.2

  We saw where Charlotte and Anne would have stayed in Paternoster Square, where they first met George Smith on Waterloo Place, and we heard the bells she would have heard when we woke up on our first morning there—they drew us straight to St. Paul’s Cathedral, just like they did for Lucy Snowe:

  When I awoke, rose, and opened my curtain, I saw the risen sun struggling through fog. Above my head, above the house-tops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a solemn, orbed mass, dark blue and dim—THE DOME. While I looked, my inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life.…

  Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning. Finding myself before St. Paul’s, I went in; I mounted to the dome.3

  The front steps of St. Paul’s are bustling, the steps crowded with tourists and the streets with buses and taxis. Though the dome is an impressive sight from all over London, right at the cathedral’s base it becomes hardly noticeable. Once inside, in awe of the cathedral’s size and spectacle, the ornate marble and bronze decorations, I stopped by a particularly impressive monument in the nave featuring a man on a horse surrounded by ornamentation and pomp. “I wonder how I’d have to live my life to get this kind of memorial,” I said irreverently, before walking around to the side with the subject’s name etched into it. It was Lord Wellington. Charlotte’s personal hero and secular patron saint.

  And then, on the left side of the nave as I approached the altar, there were plaques commemorating World War I veterans. On one of them, I saw my last name, “Pennington,” etched in neat capitals. Then I gasped. Four rows above it was “Eyre.”

  We decided to climb all the way to the topmost gallery of the dome. It was a scary, anxious undertaking, walking up marble steps, then stone steps, and finally ascending narrow spiral iron staircases, teetering between the inner dome and the outer one. I kept repeating, “If Charlotte could do this, with no arch support and no immune system, so can I.” I could imagine the headlines the following day—Brontë Enthusiast Plunges to Death, Punctures Hole in Ceiling of Cathedral That Survived the Blitz.

  The climb was worth it. The views from each of the overlooks are breathtaking. As Charlotte (who was notoriously nearsighted) put it in Villette,

  I saw thence London, with its river, and its bridges, and its churches; I saw antique Westminster, and the green Temple Gardens, with sun upon them, and a glad, blue sky, of early spring above; and between them and it, not too dense, a cloud of haze.4

  We made our way back down and ventured out into the city. I fell in love with London immediately—the Thames, the cabs, the bridges, the innumerable “on this spot stood something designed by Christopher Wren that was destroyed in the great fire” signs and the quirky alleys everywhere. A great many fish and chips were consumed, along with large quantities of fizzy lemonade and tea. After two days of acclimation (and the progression of my terrible fake accent through every act of My Fair Lady) we were ready to follow Charlotte back to the Parsonage.

  We arrived in Haworth, that “lonely, quiet spot, buried away from the world,” the way Charlotte Brontë might have returned to it—a train ride from London to Leeds, then a shorter train ride to Keighley (pronounced, I now know, with a sort of ich-laut, tapping the tongue on the roof of the mouth as you pass over the gh). We watched the sun get lower over the beautiful countryside from the train windows, nudging each other to point out church spires and anything that looked like a castle. By the time we alighted at Keighley, it was dark and we could only see the gray stone buildings where they were lit by street lamps, following the narrow road up out of the Worth Valley and into the village of Haworth. We took a cab; the Brontës would have taken a one-horse trap cart, or, horrors, walked the remaining four miles. Our cabbie asked if we’d been there before, and when I said no, he asked “Hom
e to see the sisters?” and I said yes. Home to see the sisters. If I stopped to mention every time I cried on this trip, it would double the length of the chapter, so just assume I perpetually had the vapors.

  We passed by some of the fearful tourist Brontë-exploitation I’d been afraid of: a Brontë laundromat, an apartment building called “Thornfield,” a coffee shop called “Villette,” a store called “Eyres and Graces.” I thought, “I am coming here to Haworth on my knees—there is no need to sell the Brontës to me,” accompanied by a flash of irritation that anybody needs to have the Brontës sold to them. We passed a railway station, then what looked like an old factory with a “cars for hire” sign on it, and at last turned onto a bumpy, narrow cobblestone road, so steep we were pressed back into our seats. I was surprised the little cab’s engine was able to move us upward, the grade was so extreme. “This is Main Street,” the cabbie announced, and we peered out our respective windows at the small shops and pubs that lined it.

  He pulled over in front of our lodgings, the Apothecary Guest. Next door, Rose and Co., which had been a real apothecary back in the Brontës’ day (that sold Branwell real opium), now sold kitschy soaps and candy. We rang the bell, fearful suddenly that we were about to find ourselves in a Poe novel, but Nic, the smiling proprietor, opened the door, took my suitcase, and led us up some narrow stairs. Our room had a copy of Branwell’s famous portrait of his sisters on the wall, with Branwell misguidedly painted back in. After a moment of delighting over the old-fashioned lock and key, we ventured back out onto the dark, misty streets of Haworth, heart of Shirley Country and nexus of the Brontë universe. I would have knelt to kiss the cobblestones, but it occurred to me that for all it was two hundred years later, public hygiene probably wasn’t quite improved enough for that.

  In 2012, Daphne Merkin wrote for the New York Times Magazine that “there is always the hope that whatever led the Brontës to pull great books out of themselves might work again if one only entrusted oneself to the same brooding surroundings.”5 Even the most pragmatic of earlier visitors, who commented rather harshly on the manners of their tour guides, were unable to resist mentally reviving the sisters. We just can’t help ourselves. In 1861, American Charles Hale visited during the renovation of the Parsonage, following the departure of Arthur Bell Nicholls. He pilfered Patrick Brontë’s bellpull, and purchased a window sash from Charlotte’s bedroom and purloined some of the panes. He wanted pieces of the Parsonage to frame other pieces of the Parsonage. But this is grisly souvenir-seeking; this is not the act of a man on pilgrimage.6

  Many have written about what readers and writers seek when they visit the homes of their heroines and heroes. Virginia Woolf’s first piece of published writing was a recollection of a visit to Haworth in 1904, in which she remarked it was better to stay home and read the books themselves than to undertake sentimental journeys to famous doorsteps.7 I both understand and object to her argument. Of course we get a jolt of contact when we read the Brontës’ work, no matter where we are, and certainly, we are deluded about the power of place. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to it. We want to feel close to them. To imagine they feel close to us. To sense their presence. We think we’ll know them better, we’ll see the work more clearly, we’ll become touched by greatness ourselves. Perhaps we just want to say, “Thank you, thank you for what you did and I’m sorry about the consumption and so, so grateful for your life and your work.” And what’s wrong with the sentimental journey anyway—not just for the Brontë-seekers, but for devotees of any author who has touched readers deeply?

  We passed the Black Bull on our left, where Branwell used to regale his fans and neighbors with drunken exploits, glanced down to the White Lion on our right, then turned left at the Kings Arms and realized we were facing the side of the Haworth church. A few steps farther and we were standing alongside the graveyard, which meant the illuminated building up ahead could only be the Parsonage. That Parsonage. My eyes filled with urgent tears and then I sobbed. Three days of imagining “Charlotte Brontë visited near here and would have seen this, not precisely these buildings, but definitely something similar to this” in London gave way to a true and absolute certainty that “she was here, she walked here, she saw this. This is all real. This is where she is.”

  The Parsonage faces the church, with the graveyard spread in between and crawling around to the left. A stone wall runs the length of the graveyard and encloses a small front lawn; an iron gate admits visitors, and over it hangs an ironwork sign of a woman at a desk, writing. Behind the Parsonage is the ticket office and the inevitable gift shop, and beyond are the moors, invisible in the darkness. We stood quietly for a few more minutes. The house seemed smaller than I had imagined, though it was at least as big as my childhood home, which only ever had to contain two children. I imagined teleporting through the walls, and being alone with the Brontë relics I knew were there.

  We walked back down the darkened lane. My eyes were still streaming. It felt exactly right. Gloomy and still and so beautiful. I could see why Elizabeth Gaskell had given into the impulse of mythmaking. The damp grass and dead leaves of the graveyard made a more picturesque backdrop for the Brontës’ Gothic tales than the daffodils impudently nodding in barrels below the church windows. Much of Haworth shuts down on weeknights, since the tourist traffic is less active in the off-season, so we felt lucky to find a restaurant that was still open for a late dinner. Afterward, back in our bedroom, as I was imagining how it would be to knock on the Parsonage door and take Charlotte Brontë’s tiny hand into my own, the adrenaline wore off and I fell asleep.

  WHEN we woke up the next morning, Eric was decidedly unwell. He’d complained of a sore throat in London but we had both chalked it up to plane germs and London fog. My vision of the morning’s events (a triumphant return to the Parsonage, where the ghosts of the Brontë sisters would offer me tea in the dining room and keep me company while I researched, answering all my questions with wit and good humor) had to be set aside. I set off in pursuit of over-the-counter remedies, and when the Rose & Co. apothecary was no help (damn you kitschy soaps!), I hiked all the way down the impossibly steep hill in a misting rain to the nearest grocery.

  I tried to balance concern for Eric’s health with frustration over the way this once-in-a-lifetime trip was being disrupted and the physical discomfort of seriously, the steepest hill ever. Suddenly I felt calm descend. What could bring me closer to the Brontës of Haworth than having my creative fulfillment compromised by the illness of a loved one? Now I, too, would experience the straight-up inconvenience of Yorkshire-induced ailments. I might even have the opportunity to triumph over adversity before, regretfully, succumbing to the sore throat and body aches my beloved was currently enduring. Would they bury me in Haworth!? Would I win some sort of most dedicated tourist award? Could this even make me an honorary sister? Things were looking up.

  At last, the hill conquered (it was a million times worse to ascend, by the way), and Eric dosed with ibuprofen and breakfast, he felt well enough to come with me to the Parsonage. A breathless, jumpy feeling overtook me as we got our tickets and walked to the front of the building. Running narration dogged my every step. I am in Charlotte Brontë’s yard. I am on her steps. That is her door. She heard those hinges squeak. This was her foyer. This is it, this is her floor. This wall I am not supposed to be touching was her wall. Her skirt brushed this doorway. I gazed into the Brontës’ dining room, decorated as it would have been in the 1850s, after Charlotte put red curtains over the windows and hung portraits of Thackeray and Wellington on the walls. I ran my eyes over the blur of Patrick’s study, the kitchen, Arthur Nicholls’ study. Then up the stairs (she stepped on this step and held the bannister maybe here or maybe here), passing the grandfather clock on the landing. I glanced into the servants’ bedroom, then Patrick’s bedroom, outfitted to match a sketch Branwell had done in which Death loomed over him in bed;* then the nursery, which had been made smaller when Charlotte expanded the mas
ter bedroom next door. There are pencil sketches and doodles on the wall that may have been done by the Brontë children. Branwell’s studio was renovated by the curate who came after the Brontës, and now contains an exhibition of Brontëana.

  Finally I stepped into the room that Patrick and Maria had shared, where Charlotte and Arthur had slept after their marriage, and where Charlotte had finally died. It wasn’t furnished like a bedroom; instead, it held display cases of trinkets and treasures, personal items that had touched Charlotte’s hands. The ceiling was low and the wooden floor creaked as I stepped gingerly around the room. The central case held a silk dress on a mannequin, so if you glanced out of the corner of your eye it looked like one of the sisters was standing there, headless. Charlotte’s wedding bonnet sat beside it, doing nothing to dispel the illusion. Her botanical pictures lined the walls. Pamphlets from the Great Exhibition, which she’d visited several times, and Aunt Elizabeth Branwell’s glasses, and pairs of impossibly tiny lace gloves were dimly illuminated under glass. And I felt nothing.

  For the first time since setting foot in Haworth I didn’t have an emotional reaction. Maybe I’d done too much research—I recognized nearly everything from pictures I’d seen. For a while that headless silk dress had been my cell phone’s wallpaper. Or maybe the exhibits made the bedroom feel too far removed from its previous life. Other people, the Reverend Wade and his family and subsequent caretakers, slept and woke and lived in it after Charlotte did, and now it felt the most like a museum of any room in the house. The dining room, I fancied, held more of Charlotte’s creative energy, or the kitchen that, though renovated, still looked as though the Brontës might have just stepped out of it.