Society in fundraising drive to 
secure Charlotte Brontë essay

The society learned in December that a previously unknown autograph manuscript by Charlotte had been discovered inside the pages of a book.

Experts confirmed the handwriting was Charlotte’s and the owners decided to put the work called L’Amour Filial 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The single-page document, written on both sides, is a previously unpublished homework essay in French – known as a devoir.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 is currently fundraising in an attempt to buy the devoir for the nation.

It will be a new jewel in the crown of its collection of Brontë manuscripts and artefacts at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, West Yorkshire.

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 school’s directrice.

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.

Brontë Society Chairman Sally McDonald said: “The fact that this work is unpublished adds enormously to its significance.”