The Brontës in Brussels by Helen MacEwan

Author:Helen MacEwan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2025-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The boulevards were another of the city’s charms. In letters home Charlotte describes ‘tramping’ about Brussels for hours, particularly when depressed, and specifically mentions tramping along the boulevards. This was before the time of those built in the later nineteenth century by Leopold II – Boulevard Anspach, for example, created on top of the Senne when the river was covered over. Charlotte was referring to the pleasant tree-lined roads encircling the city that had been constructed under the period of Napoleonic rule in the early years of the century on the site of the fourteenth-century city walls when these were demolished.

In her time the boulevards were still dotted with toll gates manned by guards, for the unpopular toll levied on many goods entering the city was not abolished until 1860. Lucy Snowe, who has set out from La Terrasse for a night out with her friends the Brettons, describes entering Brussels by carriage in the days of the toll gates:

The Porte de Louvain by Paul Lauters. The Brontës would have walked through this city gate on their way to the Protestant cemetery to visit the grave of Martha Taylor.

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