Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

the accession of the 18-year-old princess was noted in Emily and Anne’s 1837 diary paper. Her childhood, surrounded by “wicked” uncles and an ambitious and sexually unwise mother, must surely have fascinated all the young Brontës, echoing their own fevered royal chronicles. The christening of a goose after her is a more ambiguous, but probably loving, tribute. When Charlotte, alone in Brussels, wrote to Emily an account of the Queen’s state visit to Belgium she knew she had a receptive audience. She depicts a plump, plain, but (in modern newspaper parlance) fun-loving figure: “The Belgians . . . said she enlivened the sombre court” (1 Oct 1843). When she described Thackeray’s deferment to his “Duchesses and Marchionesses” who wanted to go to the races because the Queen would be there, or to a royal “Fancy Ball” (to PB, 7 & 14 June 1851) the tone is more ambiguous: she clearly despised his toadyism. The Queen repaid her interest, finding Jane Eyre “intensely interesting” but “melancholy” when she read it with Albert in 1858. She reread it after his death in 1880. ... log in or subscribe to read full text