A Girl Walks Into a Book by Miranda K. Pennington

Author:Miranda K. Pennington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2017-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

Once the shock and excitement had calmed, Smith took the Misses Brontë to the opera, introducing them to as few people as possible as “the Misses Brown,” to services at St. Stephens, to dinners that both impressed and exhausted the “quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking.” They returned home with friends for life. Shortly after, Charlotte received what surely was one of the last letters before she became so famous it would be absurd for someone to get her name wrong; Smith inadvertently addressed a bank letter to her as “Caroline.” After she revealed her true identity, Charlotte’s exchanges with Smith grew ever friendlier, though she is consistently overly self-deprecating—she insists he shouldn’t trouble himself with the likes of her, he must have better things to do, she wouldn’t want to intrude, etc. She and Williams corresponded like father and daughter, but George and Charlotte were, in an understated, heavy on the literary criticism sense, totally flirting.

In one of her letters, following a brief lapse in communication after another visit in London, Charlotte said, “Of course I was not at all pleased when the small problem was solved by the letter being brought—I never care for hearing from you the least in the world.”7 That sort of teasing banter doesn’t occur in her correspondence with anyone else! “My dear sir I return the ‘Times’ and the ‘Literary Gazette’ with—Oh no! I forgot—not with thanks.”8 That “not with thanks” implies he told her to knock it off with the groveling.

The two of them went to a phrenologist together in London, under the names Mr. And Miss Fraser. According to Smith, Dr. Browne, the phrenologist, was so struck by the “imaginative power” of a lady he’d examined that he was talking about her days later to anyone who would listen. Since we don’t have any of Smith’s letters to Charlotte, we can’t close-read them to assuage our curiosity about his feelings. We can tell, though, that Charlotte occasionally doubted her highhanded manner with him, but consistently received reassurance: “Mr Fraser kindly understood me—for which I beg to tell him—I am grateful—it is pleasant to be understood.”9 And this bit of sweetness: “Forgive all the nonsense of this letter—there is such a pleasure and relief either in writing or talking a little nonsense sometimes to anybody who is sensible enough to understand—and good natured enough to pardon it.”10 That’s what I’d always liked about Eric—I didn’t want to be dominated or overruled, but I did want to be met halfway. To be challenged. To have my volley returned. To have a little nonsense now and then.

I don’t think George Smith was Constantin Heger 2.0; Charlotte didn’t look up to him as a teacher-god. They were intellectual equals, even if their age and social standing was uneven. Charlotte might write relationships that reflected traditional gender roles, even as she queered them with tomboys and Captain Shirley Keeldar, but in real life she was attracted to men she could hold her own with. As

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