Charlotte Brontë essay saved for nation

The Brontë Society clinched the £50,000 deal at a private sale to buy the manuscript, which was produced at a turbulent time in Charlotte’s life and deals with the subject of love for parents in dramatic style.

It claims that the child who treats a parent unlovingly is little more than a murderer in the eyes of God.

The Brontë Society’s executive director, Prof Ann Sumner, said: “We know Charlotte had a deep love and respect for her father, Patrick Brontë, but lost her mother at the age of just five, when she died from what is now believed to have been ovarian cancer.

“This new and exciting window on her love for her father, written at a time of great turmoil, is of incalculable value to our understanding of Charlotte’s interior life, and will form the focus of much new scholarship.”

A race against time to raise the money for the sale began when the society learned in December that a previously unknown autograph manuscript by Charlotte had been discovered inside 
the pages of a book in a private library.

Experts confirmed the handwriting was Charlotte’s and the owners decided to put the 
work called L’Amour Filial – the love of a child for parents – up for sale.

The single-page document, written on both sides, is a previously unpublished homework 
essay in French – known as a devoir.

The Brontë Society launched a fundraising effort last month in an attempt to buy the devoir for the nation.

It has gone on display as the latest addition to its collection of Brontë manuscripts and artefacts at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

It was originally assigned to Charlotte by her teacher, Monsieur Constantin Heger, as part of her French lessons at the Pensionnat Heger School he and his wife ran in Brussels.

Heger, who added his teacher’s corrections to Charlotte’s work, was married with children. But Charlotte was besotted with him, even though he never returned her affections.

Several letters she wrote to him – now held by the British Library – were discovered in his waste-paper bin torn to pieces by his wife Claire.

The letters were painstakingly stitched back together, possibly to preserve evidence of Charlotte’s indiscretion. Charlotte wrote of Claire: “I no longer trust her. She seems a rosy sugar-plum but I know her to be coloured chalk.”

Evidence of Charlotte’s doomed love affair was only made public when Heger’s son, Paul, donated her letters to the British Museum in 1913.

The homework essay offers a fascinating insight into Charlotte’s interior world.

Prof Sumner said: “This exciting discovery sheds light on a formative time in Charlotte’s life, and contributes substantially to our understanding of her character.

“We strongly believe it belongs here in Haworth at Charlotte’s home, part of our extensive Brontë collection, and a resource for scholars.”

Another of Charlotte’s French homework assignments – an essay entitled L’Ingratitude – was discovered in February last year by Brussels-based architect Brian Bracken at the Musée Royal de Mariemont in Morianwelz in Belgium.