Note on ‘Bonnet’

Brontëё biographers and scholars have long speculated on what the true nature of the relationship between Charlotte Brontëёand her young publisher, George Smith, might have been. We know that Smith was handsome, charming, and clever and that he became Charlotte’s good friend, frequent correspondent and attentive host when she visited London; her letters suggest that she may well also have been in love with him and that he knew it. Against the background of Charlotte’s tragic family history, her desperate loneliness and sense of personal inadequacy, it is one of the most poignant stories of unrequited love I’ve ever come across. In my imagination, the encounter depicted in ‘Bonnet’ takes place towards the end of 1853, when—and these are the facts—Charlotte is 37 and Smith is 29 and has recently become engaged to Elizabeth Blakeway, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy London wine merchant, but no one, including Smith himself, has told Charlotte yet. The historical truth is that Smith seems to have felt unable to break the news to Charlotte, prevaricating and writing to tell her, eventually, only after she has found it out from his mother. When she does, at last, receive his letter, Charlotte writes back what must be, as Brontë scholar Juliet Barker says, ‘the most extraordinary letter of congratulation ever written’*:

My dear Sir

In great happiness, as in great grief—words of sympathy should be few. Accept my meed of congratulation—and believe me

Sincerely yours

C. Brontëё

Charlotte married the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, curate at Haworth, in June 1854. She died in March 1855 at the age of 38, probably of tuberculosis aggravated by acute morning sickness.

*The Brontës : A Life in Letters