Charlotte Brontë's London, And Why She Wasn't A Fan.

 Euston Arch in 1896, image via Wikimedia Commons.

Charlotte Brontë's first visit to London was in July 1848. Along with her sister Anne, Charlotte came down to meet her publisher George Smith of Smith Elder & Co, to disprove rumours that the Bell authors (the pseudonym the sisters were using) were in fact one person. They travelled by overnight train, arriving at Euston station early in the morning.

Euston would have been Charlotte's gateway to London; she passed through the Victorian railway hub each time she arrived in the capital, and each time she escaped back to the quiet of Haworth.
It's nice to note that the first WH Smith bookstall at a train station opened in the same year — November 1848 — perhaps Charlotte would have perused the books on offer when she visited.
Read more and see more beautiful photographs on  londonist/charlotte-brontes-london and  kateshrewsday

London in the time of the Brontes

Yesterday during looking to the Tour de France in Yorkshire, I saw all those beautiful pictures from the modern London.

It brought me to the question:

What did Charlotte Bronte see of  London?

Which buildings and streets (and so on) did exists in the time of Charlotte Bronte?

 

The Victorian city of London was a city of startling contrasts. New building and affluent development went hand in hand with horribly overcrowded slums where people lived in the worst conditions imaginable.

 

 

  benjaminluanson

 

The population surged during the 19th century, from about 1 million in 1800 to over 6 million a century later. A combination of coal-fired stoves and poor sanitation made the air heavy and foul-smelling. Immense amounts of raw sewage was dumped straight into the Thames River.

 

 

 In 1829 Sir Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police to handle law and order in areas outside the City proper. These police became known as "Bobbies" after their founder. uk-england-In Pictures: Police reform from watchmen to bobbies

Just behind Buckingham Palace the Grosvenor family developed the aristocratic Belgrave Square. In 1830 land just east of the palace was cleared of the royal stables to create Trafalgar Square, and the new National Gallery sprang up there just two years later.

When was the Square built?
Between 1825 and 1847. It was transformed from a large undeveloped area sometimes described as a swamp, a waste or a cess pit into one of the most fashionable districts of London. The marshy ground was partly filled with rubble from excavations in Dockland but the whole area is still not far above the level of the Thames.

What was here before it was built?
It was part of an uncultivated and marshy area between London and Knightsbridge, called the Five Fields which was thought to be very dangerous because of highwaymen.
 

 

 

The early part of the 19th century was the golden age of steam. The first railway in London was built from London Bridge to Greenwich in 1836, and a great railway boom followed. Major stations were built at Euston (1837), Paddington (1838), Fenchurch Street (1841), Waterloo (1848), and King's Cross (1850).

In 1834 the Houses of Parliament at Westminster Palace burned down. They were gradually replaced by the triumphant mock-Gothic Houses of Parliament designed by Charles Barry and A.W. Pugin.

literature11

For all the economic expansion of the Industrial Revolution, living conditions among London's poor were appalling. Children as young as 5 were often set to work begging or sweeping chimneys. Campaigners like Charles Dickens did much to make the plight of the poor in London known to the literate classes with his novels, notably Oliver Twist.

 

London-underground-photos

Upon this scene entered an unlikely hero, an engineer named Joseph Bazalgette. Bazalgette was responsible for the building of over 2100 km of tunnels and pipes to divert sewage outside the city. This made a drastic impact on the death rate, and outbreaks of cholera dropped dramatically after Bazlgette's work was finished. For an encore, Bazalgette also was responsible for the design of the Embankment, and the Battersea, Hammersmith, and Albert Bridges.

 

Regent Street rond 1850

 

 

victorianlondon/piccadilly

 

 

wiki/Carlton_House_Terrace

Before the engineering triumphs of Bazalgette came the architectural triumphs of George IV's

favorite designer, John Nash. Nash designed the broad avenues of Regent Street&lt, Piccadilly Circus, Carlton House Terrace, and Oxford Circus, as well as the ongoing creation of Buckingham transformation of Buckingham House into a palace worthy of a monarch. victorian-london

Dickenss-London-in-pictures

londongardenstrust

london/Dickens

old-pictures-of-london-in-victorian-era

"Where did you get this?" said he.

On this day in 1848 Charlotte and Anne Bronte visited London to meet their publisher and revealed their true identity. The Bronte sisters had been using the pseudonyms Acton Currer and Bell.

Read what happened on this day kleurrijkbrontesisters/-charlotte-and-anne
kleurrijkbrontesisters/blog-post

In George’s account of the meeting he said:

“That Saturday morning I was at work in my room, when a clerk reported that two ladies wished to see me. I was very busy and sent out to ask their names. The clerk returned to say that the ladies declined to give their names, but wished to see me on a private matter… Two rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking… one of them came forward and presented me with a letter addressed in my own handwriting to ‘Currer Bell, Esq.’ I noticed that the letter had been opened, and said, with some sharpness, ‘Where did you get this?’

‘From the post-office,’ was the reply; ‘it was addressed to me. We have both come that you might have ocular proof that there are at least two of us. This then was `Currer Bell' in person. I need hardly say that I was at once keenly interested, not to say excited. Mr. Williams was called down and introduced, and I began to plan all sorts of attentions to our visitors. I tried to persuade them to come and stay at our house.
ourcivilisation/anecdtes/bronte

paperspast

A door in Cornhill

An ancient thoroughfare with a mythic past, Cornhill takes its name from one of the three former hills of the City of London – an incline barely perceptible today after centuries of human activity upon this site, building and razing, rearranging the land. This is a place does not declare its multilayered history. Yet a pair of carved mahogany doors, designed by the sculptor Walter Gilbert in 1939 at 32 Cornhill – opposite the old pump – bring episodes from this rich past alive in eight graceful tableaux.
Walter Gilbert (1871-1946) was a designer and craftsman who developed his visual style in the Arts & Crafts movement at the end of the nineteenth century and then applied it to a wide range of architectural commissions in the twentieth century, including the gates of Buckingham Palace, sculpture for the facade of Selfridges and some distinctive war memorials. 

Gilbert’s elegant reliefs appeal to me for the laconic humour that observes the cool autocracy of King Lucius and the sullen obedience of his architects, and for the sense of human detail that emphasises W. M. Thackeray’s curls at his collar in the meeting with Anne and Charlotte Bronte at the offices of their publisher Smith, Elder & Co.

Look for more beautiful photographs on spitalfieldslife/a-door-in-cornhill/

I was thin when I went, but I was meagre indeed when I returned

On 10-07-1848 Charlotte and Anne visited the Royal Academy exhibition in the National Gallery. They dined again  at the Smiths' but spent the evening with Mr. Williams and his family.

On Tuesday morning 11-07-1848 we left London, laden with books Mr. Smith had given us, and got safely home. A more jaded wretch than I looked, it would be difficult to conceive. I was thin when I went, but I was meagre indeed when I returned, my face looking grey and very old, with strange deep lines ploughed in it—my eyes staring unnaturally. I was weak and yet restless. 

Charlotte Bronte 

Their wish had been to hear Dr. Croly on the Sunday morning 09-07-1848, and Mr. Williams escorted them to St. Stephen's, Walbrook;

Jost Amon/north-london

 But they were disappointed, as Dr. Croly did not preach. Mr. Williams also took them (as Miss Bronte has mentioned) to drink tea at his house. 

kensingtonmansion.org/restoration/1890s.

On the way thither, they had to pass through Kensington Gardens, and Miss Bronte was much struck with the beauty of the scene, the fresh verdure of the turf, and the soft rich masses of foliage." From remarks on the different character of the landscape in the South to what it was in the North, she was led to speak of the softness and varied intonation of the voices of those with whom she conversed in London, which seem to have made a strong impression on both sisters. All this time those who came in contact with the "Miss Browns" (another pseudonym, also beginning with B), seem only to have regarded them as shy and reserved little country-women, with not much to say. Mr. Williams tells me that on the night when he accompanied the party to the Opera, as Charlotte ascended the flight of stairs leading from the grand entrance up to the lobby of the first tier of boxes, she was so much struck with the architectural effect of the splendid decorations of that vestibule and saloon, that involuntarily she slightly pressed his arm, and whispered, "You know I am not accustomed to this sort of thing." Indeed, it must have formed a vivid contrast to what they were doing and seeing an hour or two earlier the night before, when they were trudging along, with beating hearts and high-strung courage, on the road between Haworth and Keighley, hardly thinking of the thunder-storm that beat about their heads, for the thoughts which filled them of how they would go straight away to London, and prove that they were really two people, and not one imposter. It was no wonder that they returned to Haworth utterly fagged and worn out, after the fatigue and excitement of this visit..

gaskell/elizabeth/bronte

On this day in 1848 Charlotte and Anne Bronte visited London to meet their publisher and revealed their true identity. The Bronte sisters had been using the pseudonyms Acton Currer and Bell.

With rapid decision, they resolved that Charlotte and Anne should start, for London, that very day, in order to prove their separate identity to Messrs. Smith and Elder, and demand from the credulous publisher his reasons for a "belief" so directly at variance with an assurance which had several times been given to him. Having arrived at this determination, they made their preparations. with resolute promptness. 
There were many household duties to be performed that day; but they were all got through. The two sisters each packed up a change of dress in a small box, which they sent down to Keighley by an opportune cart; and after early tea they set off to walk thither--no doubt in some excitement; for, independently of the cause of their going to London, it was Anne's first visit there. 

A great thunderstorm overtook them on their way that summer evening to the station; but they had notime to seek shelter. They only just caught the train at Keighley, arrived at Leeds, and were whirled up by the night train to London. About eight o'clock on the Saturday morning, they arrived at the Chapter Coffee-house, Paternoster Row--a strange place, but they did not well know where else to go. They refreshed themselves by washing, and had some breakfast. Then they sat still for a few minutes, to consider what next should be done.

When they had been discussing their project in the quiet of Haworth Parsonage the day before, and planning the mode of setting about the business on which they were going to London, they had resolved to take a cab, if they should find it desirable, from their inn to Cornhill; but that, amidst the bustle and "queer state of inward excitement" in which they found themselves, as they sat and considered their position on the Saturday morning, they quite forgot even the possibility of hiring a conveyance; and when they set forth, they became so dismayed by the crowded streets, and the impeded crossings, that they stood still repeatedly, in complete despair of making progress, and were nearly an hour in walking the half-mile they had to go. Neither Mr. Smith nor Mr. Williams knew that they were coming; they were entirely unknown to the publishers of "Jane Eyre", who were not, in fact, aware whether the "Bells" were men or women, but had always written to them as to men.

On reaching Mr. Smith's, Charlotte put his own letter into his hands; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. "Where did you get this?" said he,--as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell, for whom curiosity had been hunting so
eagerly in vain. An explanation ensued, and Mr. Smith at once began to form plans for their amusement and pleasure during their stay in London. He urged them to meet a few literary friends at his house; and this was a strong temptation to Charlotte, as amongst them were one or two of the writers whom she particularly wished to see; but her resolution to remain unknown induced her firmly to put it aside.

The sisters were equally persevering in declining Mr. Smith's invitations to stay at his house. They refused to leave their quarters, saying they were not prepared for a long stay.  When they returned back to their inn, poor Charlotte paid for the excitement of the interview, which had wound up the agitation and hurry of the last twenty-four hours, by a racking headache and harassing sickness. Towards evening, as she rather expected some of the ladies of Mr. Smith's family to call, she prepared herself for the chance, by taking a strong dose of sal-volatile, which roused her a little, but still, as she says, she was "in grievous bodily case," when their visitors were announced, in full evening costume.

The sisters had not understood that it had been settled that they were to go to the Opera, and therefore were not ready. Moreover, they had no fine elegant dresses either with them, or in the world. But Miss Bronte resolved to raise no objections in the acceptance of kindness. So, in spite of headache andweariness, they made haste to dress themselves in their plain high-made country garments.

The-Life-of-Charlotte-Bronte-Volume-2

Bronte sisters/chapter-coffee-house

Bronte sisters/ Smith, Elder & Co. -

The character Vashti in Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette

The character Vashti in Charlotte Brontë's novel Villette was based on Rachel, whom Brontë had seen perform in London.

French classical actress, the daughter of Alsatian-Jewish traveling peddlers. Her talent was discovered when she was singing in the streets as a young girl, and nurtured in drama school in Paris.  Her fame spread throughout Europe following a sensational success in London in 1841, and became particularly associated with the works of Racine, Voltaire, and Corneille, touring in Brussels, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. When Rachel first stepped on the stage of Comedie Francaise, French classical tragedy was not dying but dead. Regardless, Rachel would remain true to her classical roots. She aroused audiences with an undeniable craving for the tragic style of great writers like Corneille, Racine and Molière. She evoked a high demand for classical tragedy to remain on the stage. She created the title role in Eugène Scribe's Adrienne Lecouvreur. Her acting style was characterized by clear diction and economy of gesture, and represented a major change from the exaggerated style of those days. Out the doors of Rachel’s theatre was a battle of artistic desires. Society was beginning to demand the highly emotional, realistic, instinctual acting styles of the Romantics. Rachel completely turned her back on the Romantic Drama movement happening in nineteenth century France. She was best known for her portrayal of the title rôle in Phèdre. Eliza Rachel, as the actress was also known, was reportedly a great tragédienne.
wiki/Rachel_(actress)

Rachel’s private life was scandalous, and was chronicled with lip-licking relish by the European press: the Leeds Intelligencer, for example, noting her withdrawal from the role of Cleopatra, said her “success was becoming more questionable every day,” as if an immaculate private life was essential for success in that role ( Leeds Intelligencer , 8 Jan 1848). Her health was as fragile as her morals, and she died of consumption. Blackwell Reference  Rachel_(actress) Rachel
--------------------

During the summer of 1851, Charlotte Brontë visited London and saw Rachel Felix, the famous French actress, perform in several plays. "Thackeray's lectures and Rachel's acting," she wrote to Elizabeth Gaskell, "are the two things in this great Babylon which have stirred and interested me most -- simply because in them I found most of what was genuine whether for good or evil...." Brontë's adjective, "genuine," affiliates her assessment of Rachel with a mid-century theatrical discourse that increasingly represented the stage and the most favored acting styles as "natural." Although it turns up in many texts and contexts, George Henry Lewes, in his role as drama critic, articulated principles of "natural acting" that influentially framed the discourse for both its onstage and offstage versions. When he too saw Rachel on stage in 1851, Lewes, echoing Brontë, accordingly pronounced the actress "exquisitely natural" and set her up as a positive exemplar for what he perceived to be a theater in decline.
 

Brontë's and Lewes's assessments register a paradoxical cultural impulse that led them both to specify a controversial actress as the embodiment of naturalness. Recent studies of theatricality have underscored its potential to upset traditional gender categories; in particular, such studies have recognized women's capacities to elude naturalized sexual and gender roles in the theatre and to construct their own identities on stage. While these studies have influenced my arguments, I also suggest that the structure of mid-Victorian theatricality accommodated an essentialist version of gendered identity. In the context of the 1850s, moreover, a careful assessment of some such conceptions of identity must modify what we usually see as the restrictive tendencies of essentialism. Jonathan Dollimore has recently argued for the transgressive potential of certain appropriations of dominant ideologies, even essentialist ones, at specific historical moments. My readings of Lewes and Brontë support Dollimore's point: while they both viewed Rachel as essentially "natural," they surveyed her from markedly different gendered positions within Victorian culture. Their affiliated constructions of theatricality thus instantiate nature in the service of divergent cultural goals.

The discourse of natural acting exhibits the prominent features of a high culture conception of Victorian theatricality. This conception distinguished "genuine" or "natural" essence from a material and artificial medium of performance, a distinction that speaks to our current theoretical debates about identity. In postmodern critiques of the coherent humanist subject, theatricality often functions to disrupt conceptions of an originary self and essential identity that ostensibly exist apart from the discourses and practices of specific cultures. Delineating this disruptive theatricality is a project integral to many feminist dismantlings of monolithic, ahistorical conceptions of "the Feminine." These welcome efforts at cultural concreteness, however, cannot fully explain the Victorians' yoking of theatricality and gender, for their theatricality prefigured but was not a prototype of the postmodern version. Unlike postmodernists, many Victorians believed in a theatricality that sometimes revealed and sometimes obscured a timeless, innate self; in this view, an authentic core identity is separated from an external, performing, artificial self. If the portents of postmodern disintegration lurk in the fissures of this divided self, the binary construction nonetheless permitted the Victorians to privilege the "authentic core" in an effort to maintain what they saw as the integrity of a coherent identity. muse.jhu.edu/journals
These_are_not_a_whit_like_nature_Lucy_Snowes_Art_Criticism_in_Villette._

“Being allowed to have my own choice of sights this time—I selected the real rather than the decorative side of Life—I have been over two prisons ancient & modern—Newgate and Pentonville—also the Bank, the Exchange ‘the Foundling Hospital,’—and to-day if all be well, I go with Dr. Forbes to see Bethlehem Hospital.”

Bedlam in 1828

Did Charlotte Brontë actually go to Bethlem? 

There is no further reference to Bethlem in any known Brontë letter, and the many biographers whose books I consulted wrote that the visit had come off without saying how they had confirmed this. In a footnote, Margaret Smith writes that on January 28, Brontë presented a copy of her new novel, Villette, to Dr. John Forbes, the physician who was supposed to take her to the hospital, inscribing it personally “in acknowledgment of kindness.”² This could be taken as confirming the visit, but I wondered if it was enough.

Forbes was a distinguished lung specialist, a friend of Brontë’s publisher George Smith and a former schoolmate of Smith’s father in Scotland. In 1849, at Smith’s suggestion, Brontë had consulted Forbes about the care of her sister, Anne Brontë, who was dying of tuberculosis. It seemed possible that the visit to Bethlem had not come off, but that Brontë wished to thank Forbes for agreeing to take her, and for his help with Anne. After all, she signed books on January 28 for several friends and acquaintances.

Read more: bethlemheritage/just-visiting-charlotte-bronte

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Forbes, Dr John (1787–1861):

expert on consumptive diseases who was consulted by post on Anne’s consumption in 1849 and backed the advice of Dr Teale. He was a friend of George Smith’s, and extremely distinguished and in advance of his time. He made Charlotte’s acquaintance after one of Thackeray’s lectures on the English humorists, and on one of her later visits to London (Jan 1853) took her round the Bethlehem Hospital. No doubt it was on this occasion that he told Charlotte of the successful use of chloroform in operations, a remark that Patrick noted in his copy of Graham’s Modern Domestic Medicine . He was also a pioneer in the use of the stethoscope.  blackwellreference

Old pictures from London

Old pictures from London

images/victorian+london

flickr/victorian+london

London

London, St Paul's Cathedral, West Front in the 1890' soldukphotoslondon

Again

 I am searching

 for weblogs

 with information 

about the Brontes.

From the Sleepless reader: 

I think I mentioned before that I’m a member of the Brussels Brontë Group. (Brussels bronte) Charlotte and Emily lived here for a while and their experiences inspired Charlotte to write The Professor and Villette. The Group has about 50 members of 20 nationalities. We organize talks, Brontë city walks, visits to museums and last weekend 25 of us went on a Literary Weekend to London.

We lunched at the Stand Hotel with the London Brontë Society. According to them the Hotel is exactly on the spot where Charlotte and her editor George Smith came to visit aphrenologist. The “report” is still available at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

The group next to St. Paul’s cathedral. Charlotte visited it during a trip to London in 1842: 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-fetted wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who had never truly lived, were at last about to taste life. (Villete) 

The group admiring the wooden door of 32 Cornhill. The bottom right-hand panel was carved to commemorate the first visit of Charlotte and Anne to their publisher in 1848 

the Sleepless reader/the-Brussels-Bronte-group-literary-weekend-in-london/, 

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Phrenology was popular in the 1800s and the early 1900s. Phrenologists claimed that by feeling the lumps and bumps of the skull (and thus the underlying brain) they could determine someone’s character and personality. Although phrenology became popular with large numbers of people in the 1800s, it soon became controversial within medical circles, and was eventually dismissed by the medical profession as quackery. The subject was always controversial in medical circles.sciencemuseum

Second visit Charlotte Bronte to London, june 1850

Do you like London, Miss Bronte', she said; another silence, a pause, then Miss Bronte answers, `Yes and No'.

George Smith persuaded his morher to invite Charlotte to stay with them in their new home at Gloucester Terrace in Paddington, Hyde Park Gardens.

Read more: Victorian London.- Directories - Dickens's Dictionary of London, by Charles Dickens, Jr., 1879 - "Paddington"
Paddington, a large district with no specially distinctive title, lies to the north of Tyburnia proper, and affords a large choice of comfortably-built houses at a comparatively moderate rental. Soil, London clay. It occupies a large triangle, of which the two longer sides are Edgware-road from Maida-hill to Kilburn, and the Grand Junction Canal to Kensal Green. NEAREST Railway Station, Praed-st, Bishops-road, and Royal Oak. Omnibus Routes, Harrow-road, Bishop’s. road, and Edgware-road.

 

 

  

On sunday, 09 june, George Smith took her tot the Chapel Royal, where he could be very sure that she would catch side of her hero, the Duke of Wellington.

Charlotte had a big admiration of Wellington. Her fictional characters Charles and Arthur Wellesley feature prominently in her early Angrian writings. In Brussels she wrote an essay on ‘The Death of Napoleon’, in which she praises Wellington, making his genius superior to Napoleon’s. Throughout her life she would follow her hero's progress, finally seeing him in the flesh when she visited London in 1850.

"Of course I cannot give you in a letter a regular chronicle of how my time has been spent. I can only - just notify. what I deem three of its chief incidents: a sight of the Duke of Wellington at the Chapel Royal (he is a real grand old man), a visit to the House of Commons (which I hope to describe to you some day when I see you), and last, not least, an interview with Mr. Thackeray. He made a morning call, and sat above two hours. Mr. Smith only was in the room the whole time. He described it afterwards as a 'queer scene,' and - I suppose it was. The giant sat before me; I was moved to speak to him of some of his short-comings (literary of course); one by one the faults came into my head, and one by one I brought them out, and sought some explanation or defence. He did defend himself, like a great Turk and heathen; that is to say, the excuses were often worse than the crime itself. The matter ended in decent amity; if all be well, I am to dine at his house this evening.

She was reintroduced to literary society.

 G.H. Lewes

'A little, plain, provincial, sickly-looking old maid', is how George Lewes described Charlotte Brontë to George Eliot.

Charlotte Bronte:
"I have seen Lewes too. . . . I could not feel otherwise to him than half-sadly, half-tenderly, - a queer word that last, but I use it because the aspect of Lewes's face almost moves me to tears; it is so wonderfully like Emily, her eyes, her features, the very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, the forehead, even, at moments, the expression: whatever Lewes says, I believe I cannot hate him. Another likeness I have seen, too, that touched me sorrowfully. You remember my speaking of a Miss K., a young authoress, who supported her mother by writing? Hearing that she had a longing to see me, I called on her yesterday. . . . She met me half-frankly, half-tremblingly; we sat down together, and when I had talked with her five minutes, her face was no longer strange, but mournfully familiar; - it was Martha in every lineament. I shall try to find a moment to see her again. . . . I do not intend to stay here, at the furthest, more than a week longer; but at the end of that time I cannot go home, for the house at Haworth is just now unroofed; repairs were become necessary."  
 

Julia Kavanagh

 

Julia Kavanagh was a woman who lived a hard but successful life as a writer: crippled when young (spinal curvature), she was Irish Catholic and her parent separated sometime after the three moved to London (there were no other children). Her father was useless as a partner or companion for life: he never made a living, was continually involving himself with other women, a promiscuous ne’er-do-well philanderer. She and her mother made their way through their connections and her genius into the writing world and she published novels, books about women of letters, travel writing. They lived in London, eventually made their home-refuge, France, and travelled in Italy. Kavanagh became fluent in both Italian and English. She died relatively young.

Once again Thackeray

 

Thackeray's daughter, the writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie recalled a visit to her father by Charlotte Brontë:

Two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, with fair straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barège dress with a pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking, reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the books - the wonderful books. The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though she may be, Miss Brontë can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, specially to forward little girls who wish to chatter. Every one waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all. Miss Brontë retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the ladies sat round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all after Miss Brontë had left, I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him long afterwards Mrs. Procter asked me if I knew what had happened It was one of the dullest evenings [Mrs Procter] had ever spent in her life the ladies who had all come expecting so much delightful conversation, and the gloom and the constraint, and how finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to his club.
Lady Ritchie/ Anne Thackeray

The painter Richmond

 

victorian london.

Charlotte Bronte in London

She set about marshalling a small trousseau for the visit. November 1849 Charlotte sent out for London, armed with her new wardrobe, including the sable boa and cuffs that she had commissioned Ellen to buy for her that summer with money from Jane Eyre, along with a squirrel tipped for every day.

She went straight to the Smiths' house in Westbourne Place.

George Smith had assembled an illustrious party of guests.

I bought this book.

One of the pictures gives an idea about this kind of social event.

Elizabeth Gaskell   ""The Life of Charlotte Brontë"":

At 7 o'clock Tackeray was announced.

"As to being happy, I am under scenes and circumstances of excitement; but I suffer acute pain sometimes, - mental pain, I mean. At the moment Mr. Thackeray presented himself, I was thoroughly faint from inanition, having eaten nothing since a very slight breakfast, and it was then seven o'clock in the evening. Excitement and exhaustion made savage work of me that evening. What he thought of me I cannot tell."

She told me how difficult she found it, this first time of meeting Mr. Thackeray, to decide whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest, and that she had (she believed) completely misunderstood an inquiry of his, made on the gentlemen's coming into the drawing-room. He asked her "if she had perceived the secret of their cigars;" to which she replied literally, discovering in a minute afterwards, by the smile on several faces, that he was alluding to a passage in Jane Eyre. Her hosts took pleasure in showing her the sights of London. On one of the days which had been set apart for some of these pleasant excursions, a severe review of Shirley was published in the Times. She had heard that her book would be noticed by it, and guessed that there was some particular reason for the care with which her hosts mislaid it on that particular morning. She told them that she was aware why she might not see the paper. Mrs. Smith at once admitted that her conjecture was right, and said that they had wished her to go to the day's engagement before reading it. But she quietly persisted in her request to be allowed to have the paper. Mrs. Smith took her work, and tried not to observe the countenance, which the other tried to hide between the large sheets; but she could not help becoming aware of tears stealing down the face and dropping on the lap. The first remark Miss Brontë made was to express her fear lest so severe a notice should check the sale of the book, and injuriously affect her publishers. Wounded as she was, her first thought was for others. Later on (I think that very afternoon) Mr. Thackeray called; she suspected (she said) that he came to see how she bore the attack on Shirley; but she had recovered her composure, and conversed very quietly with him: he only learnt from the answer to his direct inquiry that she had read the Times' article.

William Makepeace Thackeray

George Smith and his mother took her to the Theatre, to the new Houses of Parliament, to the National Gallery, where Charlotte enjoyed the exhibition of Turner's paintings.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Turner

Charlotte sent a note to Harriet Martineau, she wants to visit here.

Harriet Martineau
 

By the end of her stay Charlotte was exhausted by the whirl of social life.
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Later she wrote to Ellen Nussey:

‘Haworth, December 19th, 1849.
‘Dear Ellen,—Here I am at Haworth once more. I feel as if I had come out of an exciting whirl. Not that the hurry or stimulus would have seemed much to one accustomed to society and change, but to me they were very marked. My strength and spirits too often proved quite insufficient for the demand on their exertions. I used to bear up as well and as long as I possibly could, for, whenever I flagged, I could see Mr. Smith became disturbed; he always thought that something had been said or done to annoy me, which never once happened, for I met with perfect good breeding even from antagonists—men who had done their best or worst to write me down. I explained to him, over and over again, that my occasional silence was only failure of the power to talk, never of the will, but still he always seemed to fear there was another cause underneath.
‘Mrs. Smith is rather stern, but she has sense and discrimination; she watched me very narrowly. When surrounded by gentlemen she never took her eye from me. I liked the surveillance, both when it kept guard over me amongst many, or only with her cherished one. She soon, I am convinced, saw in what light I received all, Thackeray included. Her “George” is a very fine specimen of a young English man of business; so I regard him, and I am proud to be one of his props.
‘Thackeray is a Titan of mind. His presence and powers impress me deeply in an intellectual sense; I do not see him or know him as a man. All the others are subordinate to these. I have esteem for some, and, I trust, courtesy for all. I do not, of course, know what they thought of me, but I believe most of them expected me to come out in a more marked eccentric, striking light. I believe they desired more to admire and more to blame. I felt sufficiently at my ease with all except Thackeray, and with him I was painfully stupid.

‘Now, dear Nell, when can you come to Haworth? Settle, and let me know as soon as you can. Give my best love to all.—Yours,

‘C. B.’
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More photo's of London at that time.