Zoe Craig

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

Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond. Chalk, 1850. (c) National Portrait Gallery

Yorkshire-born author Charlotte Brontë has few connections to London.

Unlike Agatha Christie or Beatrix Potter, who we like to claim are kind-of Londoners, Charlotte and her sisters remain out of our grasp.

And yet the Brontës did visit London. Charlotte made five separate visits to the capital. It's safe to say she didn't share our love of the city, preferring the wild countryside of Yorkshire to the strictures of London society.

But Brontë fans can still consider some lasting London locations for a Brontë pilgrimage. And the city certainly left its mark on our heroine.

The Brontë Sisters, left to right: Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë. Branwell painted himself out of his portrait of his three sisters. 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.

Euston Arch in 1896, image via Wikimedia Commons.

The famous meeting of the two sisters and their publisher George Smith took place at 65 Cornhill, now a bank.

The young publisher was presumably astonished to see these two earnest little ladies in provincial dress; he had been under the impression that Jane Eyre was written by a man.

65 Cornhill, London in 2016. on 8 July 1848, the Bronte sisters surprised the publisher, George Smith, revealing themselves to be women. Image from Google Maps.

George describes the sisters as "two rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious looking."

Of Charlotte, George said,

It may seem strange that the possession of genius did not lift her above the weakness of an excessive anxiety about her personal appearance; but I believe that she would have given all her genius and her fame to have been beautiful.

George Smith (courtesy of Bronte Parsonage Museum)

That night, George took the sisters to see Rossini's Il Barbiere at the Royal Italian Opera House, what is now the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

The sisters must have looked out of place, wearing plain, high-necked day dresses while London society regulars at the opera swished around them in silks, jewels and taffeta.

The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in the late 1820s. From the Royal Opera House wikipedia page.

Records also show Charlotte and Anne visited St Stephen's Walbrook the next day, hoping to hear the famous author and cleric Dr George Croly preach.

St Stephen's Walbrook by John Mugford.

In fact, Croly was absent that Sunday. Memorials to the cleric remain in this beautiful Wren church today.