Path to the Silent Country by Lynne Reid Banks was first published in 1977 and it’s the sequel to the author’s Dark Quartet.
This book begins with Charlotte paying a visit to her friend of many years Ellen. Charlotte had thrown herself into work in an attempt to fill the void that had appeared with the death of Emily, Anne and Branwell in quick succession. Even the well-loved curate Willie Weightman had died unexpectedly.
Ellen’s neighbourhood is agog, there’s a rumour that Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre. She didn’t bother to disguise the many characters that she had taken from real life, and readers had recognised them, alarmingly sometimes they had recognised themselves, and Charlotte would be thrown into the company of some of those people at Ellen’s.
She’s very glad to get away from Haworth though and her increasingly tyrranical and selfish father. He’s terrified that she’ll leave him, a few men have been showing an interest in her, but Charlotte isn’t really interested, apart from anything else, she finds one of them repulsive, he has red hair and freckles!! (so have I) I wonder if he really existed as it is a typical way of a writer making a character instantly unlikeable.
She has been taken up by some celebrities of the day, particularly Thackeray and Mrs Gaskell of course and she finds a sort of happiness, but can’t stay away from Haworth for too long, her father is furious about being left with just the servants to look after him. But he’s even more angry when he realises that his curate is interested in Charlotte. Of course Patrick believes that Charlotte’s constitution isn’t strong enough for marriage and its inevitable consequences. Sadly he was correct. This was an enjoyable read
The author had access to lots of letters written by Charlotte to her friends so I’m not sure how much of her imagination she had to use. We have Charlotte’s husband Arthur to thank for the personal belongings and letters that he conserved on her death, realising they would be important to people in years to come, you can even see her spectacles and wee bits of jewellery displayed in the Haworth Parsonage, along with pens, a writing slope and clothing.
However the idea of the Brontes remaining anonymous writers for long was shot down by one of the Haworth guides when we visited. The post office is still where it was when the Brontes were sending off their many manuscripts to lots of different publishers, it’s a stone’s throw from the parsonage, and they were being returned to the parsonage under the surname Bell. There are no secrets in such a small community and you can be sure that the post-master/mistress and anyone else in the queue at the post office will have noticed all those parcels being sent off by the sisters, possibly Branwell was the only one who didn’t know what was going on!