The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 2 — John Shaqi
The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 2Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
General
The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 2
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
Paternoster Row was for many years sacred to publishers. It is a narrow
flagged street, lying under the shadow of St. Paul's; at each end there
are posts placed, so as to prevent the passage of carriages, and thus
preserve a solemn silence for the deliberations of the "Fathers of the
Row." The dull warehouses on each side are mostly occupied at present
by wholesale stationers; if they be publishers' shops, they show no
attractive front to the dark and narrow street. Half-way up, on the
left-hand side, is the Chapter Coffee-house. I visited it last June.
It was then unoccupied. It had the appearance of a dwelling-house,
two hundred years old or so, such as one sometimes sees in ancient
country towns; the ceilings of the small rooms were low, and had heavy
beams running across them; the walls were wainscotted breast high; the
staircase was shallow, broad, and dark, taking up much space in the
centre of the house. This then was the Chapter Coffee-house, which, a
century ago, was the resort of all the booksellers and publishers; and
where the literary hacks, the critics, and even the wits, used to go in
search of ideas or employment. This was the place about which Chatterton
wrote, in those delusive letters he sent to his mother at Bristol,
while he was starving in London. "I am quite familiar at the Chapter
Coffee-house, and know all the geniuses there." Here he heard of chances
of employment; here his letters were to be left.
Years later, it became the tavern frequented by university men and
country clergymen, who were up in London for a few days, and, having
no private friends or access into society, were glad to learn what was
going on in the world of letters, from the conversation which they were
sure to hear in the Coffee-room. In Mr. Brontë's few and brief visits to
town, during his residence at Cambridge, and the period of his curacy in
Essex, he had stayed at this house; hither he had brought his daughters,
when he was convoying them to Brussels; and here they came now, from
very ignorance where else to go. It was a place solely frequented by
men; I believe there was but one female servant in the house. Few people
slept there; some of the stated meetings of the Trade were held in it,
as they had been for more than a century; and, occasionally country
booksellers, with now and then a clergyman, resorted to it; but it was
a strange desolate place for the Miss Brontës to have gone to, from its
purely business and masculine aspect. The old "grey-haired elderly man,"
who officiated as waiter seems to have been touched from the very first
with the quiet simplicity of the two ladies, and he tried to make them
feel comfortable and at home in the long, low, dingy room up-stairs,
where the meetings of the Trade were held. The high narrow windows
looked into the gloomy Row; the sisters, clinging together on the most
remote window-seat, (as Mr. Smith tells me he found them, when he came,
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