Charlotte
In 1854, Charlotte Brontë, honeymooning in Ireland with Arthur Bell Nicholls, reported to her former teacher Margaret Wooler that she had met her new husband’s Irish relatives, including his cousin Mary Anna Bell, “a pretty lady-like girl with gentle English manners.” The marriage would be cut short by Charlotte’s tragic death, probably through complications of pregnancy, leading the bereaved Arthur to take Mary as his second wife—and, eventually, leaving the widowed Mary in possession of valuable Brontë memorabilia.
Through Mary’s first-person narrative, interspersed with transcripts of interviews with the elderly Mary, author Martina Devlin tells the story of this Irish honeymoon and its aftermath, including Mary’s painful position of being married to a man passionately devoted to the memory of her predecessor. Mary proves herself worthy of her position as narrator: she’s a sharp-eyed and often sharp-tongued observer. As is much in vogue, the narrative moves back and forth in time; fortunately, Devlin handles it deftly. The Irish setting is vividly evoked (as are the lingering effects of the Great Famine).
I did find one subplot, involving Mary’s lecherous (and purely fictitious) brother, to be somewhat gratuitous, as if the author felt that some gothic goings-on were necessary to liven up the plot, when it seemed to me that the real-life characters were quite interesting enough without his help. That’s only a minor quibble, however, with a well-researched novel that provides a welcome look at one of the lesser-known figures in the Brontë circle.
