by Nick Holland
If the aim of the critics was to prevent people purchasing this scandalous book by expressing a moral outrage, they were to be greatly disappointed. Word of this new novel from the Bell brothers was spread by whispers and winks. It was scandalous, it was dangerous, it was out of control; it was, in short, a must read.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall became the fastest selling Brontë novel of them all, a fact often forgotten today. Within six weeks it had sold every copy of its initial run of 2,000 and a second edition was being prepared. It was one of the most requested books in the all-important circulating libraries, and Acton Bell was the name on the lips of people in salons across the land. The critics had been scathing, and yet the public had silenced them, but there was one critic closer to home that could not be silenced.
Anne was distraught at the reviews the book had received, throwing newspapers aside after reading them, yet keeping her secret anger and heartbreak locked deep within as usual. She had written the book to teach people how to live better lives; it was at heart a deeply moral book, and yet she saw it denigrated as an immoral, and even irreligious, book. This was the worst possible form of criticism for Anne, and it cut her to the quick. If the critics had known that the author was a quiet, unworldly woman, they would have been even more outraged and even more vehement in their attacks, yet the most hurtful criticism of all would come from her sister Charlotte.
We get a glimpse of Charlotte’s distaste for the book not only from the fact that she suppressed its publication after Anne’s death, but also from Charlotte’s assessment of it in the biographical notice of Ellis and Acton Bell:
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Acton Bell, had likewise an unfavourable reception. At this I cannot wonder. The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer’s nature could be conceived. The motives which dictated this were pure, but, I think, slightly morbid.8
Whilst this was written a year after Anne’s death, there can be little doubt that Charlotte would have made Anne very aware of her views. Charlotte was a forthright and plain-speaking woman, even with those closest to her, and would not have been deterred from saying what she thought was right, but just why did she take such a disliking to her youngest sister’s work? There are three possible reasons, and the truth is likely to be a combination of all three.
It could be that Charlotte was jealous of Anne. This in no way denigrates the genius that Charlotte was, but simply shows that she was prey to the natural emotions and frailties that siblings across the world, and throughout the ages, have suffered from, even in an otherwise loving and respectful relationship. Whilst Charlotte held Emily in awe, she had long thought of Anne as the weakest, least significant member of the family, even though she had been disproving this ever since she had joined Charlotte at Roe Head School. We have seen how Charlotte reacted when William Weightman spurned her advances and instead preferred Anne. Charlotte had rightly taken pride in the spectacular success of Jane Eyre, and Currer Bell had been the talk of the town, but now she was finding herself usurped by the person she had rocked as a baby on her knee.
The second reason is that Charlotte and Anne had very different world views. Charlotte stuck to her high Tory principles, and whilst she also believed that women could be just as successful as men in literature and work, she still supported the strict delineations between what was acceptable for a man and what was acceptable for a woman. She found Anne’s story of a woman leaving her husband and making her own way in life truly shocking, an ‘entire mistake’ as she put it, and she was not shy of voicing this opinion. Literature could challenge conventions, as Jane Eyre itself had done, but it must never set itself up in opposition to them.
Finally, and perhaps most critically, Charlotte was mortified by the character of Arthur Huntingdon. She could not fail to read the tale of the hard drinking, gambling, cursing, boastful man who turns away from God and puts the fulfilment of his own desires above all else and see a reflection of Branwell. By this time Branwell’s behaviour was becoming increasingly violent and unpredictable, and yet instead of finding relief from these everyday horrors in a book, here was one that was reminding Charlotte of the awful reality within her own family.
Tensions between Anne and Charlotte were growing, but within weeks of the publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall an incident was to occur that would bring them together like never before. Thomas Newby was delighted with the early sales figures for Anne’s new novel, and with the controversy it had generated. He believed that there was no such thing as bad publicity, yet he soon discovered that it was easy to overstep the mark when dealing with the Bell brothers.
Newby had already sold rights to Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights in the United States, and encouraged by the excellent sales of Jane Eyre in that country, he was soon offering The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to American publishers. He had previously told a New York publisher that Wuthering Heights was the work of Acton Bell, and now he tried the same trick again. Newby declared that to the best of his knowledge The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the new work by the celebrated Currer Bell and that in fact all of the supposed brothers were actually one man, who for unknown reasons liked to publish under alternative names. He also contended that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the finest book that the mysterious Mr Bell had yet produced.
The American publisher was duly excited by this prospect, snapped up the rights and began to advertise their new purchase. This was where Thomas Newby’s deceit began to unravel. Charlotte’s publisher Smith, Elder & Co. already had a deal in place with Harper & Brothers of the United States under which they would be offered the first rights to any new work by Currer Bell. They were angry to have been deceived, as they thought, in this way and wrote to Smith, Elder & Co. in London to let them know of their anger.9
Smith, Elder & Co. were equally bemused. They thought they had a good relationship with their new author Currer Bell, but could he really have deceived them and played one publisher off against the other? The only way to solve this conundrum was to write to Currer Bell for an explanation, and this they duly did.10 Their letter arrived in Haworth on the morning of 7 July 1848. It was curt and to the point, unlike the long and friendly letters Charlotte had become accustomed to receiving from Cornhill. Whilst not directly accusing Currer of deception, they asked for permission to contradict Mr Newby’s statement, which they were quite sure was untrue.
Charlotte pushed the letter on to the table with a thud and slipped it across to Anne, too angry to trust herself to speak. She had told Anne not to trust that charlatan Newby and now look where it had landed them. It was easy to read between the lines, she was being accused of being a liar. Almost as bad, in Charlotte’s eyes, was that people now thought that she, or rather Currer, was responsible for a work that she found wholly distasteful and immoral. This could not be allowed to go unchallenged.
Whilst Charlotte sank silently into a chair, Anne paced the room, tears running from the eyes that often produced them in moments of joy, sadness or anxiety. The letter was next passed to Emily, who had sat impassively watching it all. Charlotte broke the spell. ‘Something has to be done,’ she opined, and in that moment the sisters were united once more by a common goal, to restore their good name.
Sitting around the table, a plan was quickly formed. There was only one way that they could prove the falsehood of Newby’s assertion, but at first it seemed almost too dreadful to contemplate. A letter would be no proof of any kind, the only possible option would be to present themselves in person and abandon their mask of anonymity. Anne, for whom nothing could be worse than the accusation of dishonesty, agreed with this plan, but could Emily be persuaded to agree to it? She could not put aside her anonymity, it would be the death of her to do this, but she would not object to Charlotte and Anne doing so. It was they, after all, who were concerned in this matter. A compromise reached, the sisters hugged each other and then entered their father’s study to explain the news to him.
It says much ab
out the indignation that Charlotte and Anne felt, as well as their naivety in worldly matters, that they could brook no delay in this venture. Their minds had been made up, a plan formulated and they must put it into action immediately. The letter had arrived at the parsonage after breakfast, and by evening Anne and her sister were on the train to London.
They had packed a trunk with some meagre belongings and a change of clothing and sent it on with a cart boy to the railway station at Keighley. After tea they set off together to walk the 4 miles to Keighley, but the black clouds were already gathering overhead. A storm broke with the typical ferocity of the Yorkshire moors, and by the time they reached the station they were tired, weary and thoroughly bedraggled. From there they took the train to Keighley, and while a porter was transferring their trunk on to the overnight express to London, Anne and Charlotte enjoyed a drink of tea, warming their hands on the sides of the china cups.
Charlotte had arranged for them to have first-class accommodation on the train, costing them £2 5s 6d each, which was by their standards a highly extravagant purchase. Nevertheless, it meant that they had a carriage to themselves and could finally change out of their sodden clothing. It was nearly 8 p.m. when the train pulled out of Leeds station; a new adventure was beginning.
Although Anne had travelled by train with Emily to and from York three years earlier, this was the first time she had journeyed anywhere with Charlotte since she had entered Roe Head School nearly thirteen years previously. Both sisters had changed since then, they had developed their own characters, one proud and fiery, one quiet yet strong. There had been misunderstandings, arguments and accusations, but at the heart of everything they still loved each other in a way that only sisters who were raised without a mother can.
The train passed through Sheffield and then rolled between the limestone crags of the Peak District. Charlotte pointed out the landscape she knew from visits to Ellen Nussey during her occasional sojourns with her brother at Hathersage. Anne instantly thought of the Robinson girls, who were still writing to her from Derbyshire, and their treacherous mother, who was now ensconced in the nearby Allestree Hall. They were in a new county and still heading southwards; it was the first time that Anne had ever left the confines of Yorkshire.
Anne still felt anger, rage even, at the way that her publisher had deceived them all, but as the miles wore steadily on a new feeling began to grow: excitement. It was an adventure such as she had never experienced before, she was about to see London itself, home to Queen Victoria and her young family, and St Paul’s Cathedral. She was travelling to the capital of the nineteenth-century world, and when she got there she would finally have to reveal herself to it.
The sisters were so excited that they found sleep impossible, even though their seating had been designed for this purpose. They passed time by talking about the sights of London and the authors and poets who lived there. The hours passed with relentless speed, and as the summer morning dawned, the train pulled into Euston station. At last Anne and Charlotte, exhausted by both the journey and the thought of what must be the ordeal to come, could enjoy a brief sleep, and they were allowed to stay on the train until 7.30 a.m. The hustle and bustle of Euston greeted them as they stepped out of their carriage, and for Anne it was like stepping into a new, chaotic world.
Plans had been formalised on the journey. They would see both publishers that day and then return to Haworth on the following morning, after the Sunday morning service. As they walked through the station, Charlotte striding along in front, Anne would have gazed about her at the iron girders and the throng of life. It was warmer than she had expected, there was no icy wind to cool the July mornings as she was used to in Haworth. A cab was hailed, but where would they go? Charlotte asked the driver to take them to the Chapter Coffee House on Paternoster Row. It was where she and Emily had stayed with their father en route to Brussels, and as she later admitted in a letter to Mary Taylor, she did not know anywhere else to go.
The Chapter Coffee House is no longer standing; the area now houses banking offices and upmarket eateries. It was already an old building by the time that Anne and Charlotte arrived there. The ceilings of the rooms were low, which was no impediment to the short Anne and her even more diminutive sister, and heavy oak beams ran across them. By chance, the sisters had found a perfect dwelling place. The area around Paternoster Row was full of stationers and bookshops. At the end of the eighteenth century, the coffee house itself was famous for being the meeting place of the most celebrated writers of the time, and the doomed young Chatterton writes of meeting Oliver Goldsmith there. Now, unknown to the establishment, it was playing host to two writers of even greater stature.
For Anne, the coffee house had an even stronger advantage, as it was in the shadow of Wren’s mighty St Paul’s Cathedral. As soon as the new guests were shown to their room, Anne threw the window open, breathed in the London air and gazed in awe at the cathedral before her. A porter, apparently charmed by the young provincial women, brought them breakfast, but they had no time to waste. They must call upon Smith, Elder & Co. immediately, every hour that passed without them doing so was another hour that their character was stained and besmirched.
After quickly refreshing their appearance, the determined sisters set out to walk to 65 Cornhill. It was a very easy walk of just over half a mile from the Chapter Coffee House to the headquarters of Smith, Elder & Co. Anne and Charlotte had simply to walk past St Pauls’ Cathedral and turn right on to Cheapside, which then quickly transforms into Cornhill. Unfortunately, there was no way the sisters could have known this, and they were too timid to ask for directions or hail a cab. The streets were becoming busier and noisier, and Anne and Charlotte simply pushed on against the crowd, hoping that they were going in the right direction. They weren’t, and a walk that should have taken ten minutes took them over an hour before, by chance, they found the building they were looking for.
The entrance to the address was a large bookshop, with the publishing office above it. They paused on the threshold, even now wondering if they had the courage to do what had to be done. Anne, who had been content to follow Charlotte’s prolonged meanderings, and who had gazed wide-eyed at the architectural delights that seemed to be on every corner, squeezed her sister’s hand in encouragement. They must be, like the character in Emily’s poem that they knew so well, no coward souls, no tremblers in the world’s storm-troubled sphere. A deep breath taken, they stepped into the premises.
It was early Saturday morning, and already the shop was busy with both customers and the young men and women who worked there. There was no going back now, and Charlotte approached the nearest member of staff and asked to be introduced to Mr Smith. The man paused, it was not a question he had ever heard a customer ask before, but Charlotte repeated it with more urgency, and the man departed.
While they waited for him to return, they took a book each from the counter and seated themselves in comfort. It had not occurred to the sisters that the publisher himself might not be in his office on a Saturday morning, but as luck would have it, on this occasion he was. He was also busy and did not particularly appreciate being disturbed at his work. George Smith had only recently taken over the business upon the death of his father. He was 26 years old, a handsome and well-connected man about town, hard working and fiercely ambitious for his publishing company. Smith asked the man to return and find the name of the person who was asking for him, and he was amazed when he returned to announce that it was two women who would not give their names but said they had come on important business and must be seen immediately.
He had important work to complete – it felt like he always had important work to complete – yet something about this story intrigued him. After making them wait a few minutes longer, he asked for them to be called up. Anne and Charlotte were admitted to his office, both stood nervously before him as he looked at them in silence, appraising their characters. This wasn’t what he had expected at all, two small women who were obvio
usly not from London by way of their dress and their timidity.
Smith asked them what business they had that could not wait and that had to disturb him from his work on a Saturday morning, and that’s when he got an even bigger shock. Charlotte produced the letter to Currer Bell she had received in Haworth a day earlier and placed it on his desk. ‘Where did you get this letter from?’, George Smith asked, still blinded to the truth. ‘From the post office. It’s addressed to me,’ said Charlotte, ‘I’m Currer Bell, and this is Acton Bell.’ Smith’s mouth fell open; for once he was lost for words as he surveyed the women who now met his gaze with a strange look of pride.11
He quickly ushered the sisters to sit down, and there followed another silence as he tried to understand what had been said. The Bell brothers weren’t one man, they weren’t men at all, so what then was the truth? More proof was needed. Smith made Charlotte sign a piece of paper as ‘Currer Bell’ and compared the signatures with correspondence he had. He questioned both women firmly yet politely, and he was astounded to hear how they were in fact sisters by the name of Brontë, who lived in a remote parsonage, and who had wished to keep their identities secret, and still wished to do so.
Papers were locked in a drawer; the business of the day could wait. Here sitting opposite him was the genius who had written Jane Eyre, in whom he had such high hopes for the future, and in company with the controversial author who had written the literary cause célèbre of that season. He looked again at the demure women in their unfashionable clothing: it was impossible for them to have been more different to how he had imagined.
It was a moment that George Smith would always remember, and he recalled the appearance of the sisters on that day: ‘I must confess that my first impression of Charlotte Brontë’s appearance was that it was interesting rather than attractive. There was but little feminine charm about her and of this fact she was herself unusually and perpetually conscious.’12