The City doesn’t quite have the sheer volume of literary connections that – say – Westminster does, but what it lacks in volume it makes up for in charm and curious incident.
Take the legendarily disastrous meeting in 1849 between the Bronte Sisters Emily and Charlotte and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Famous for novels such as Vanity Fair, he was a literary god of the time. Charlotte wrote of him when dedicating her second edition of Jane Eyre:
“I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognized; His wit is bright, his humor attractive, but both bear the same relation, to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud, does to the electric death-spark his in its womb.”
Charlotte and Emily visited London in the utmost expectation of the lions of literature sharing wonderful ideas and flashing wit.
The meeting, at his publisher’s offices in Cornhill just across from the Royal Exchange in the City of London, was a damp squib.
Here is a contemporary retelling:
“At dinner. Miss Bronte was placed opposite him. ‘And,’ said Thackeray, ‘I had the miserable humiliation of seeing her ideal of me disappearing, as everything went into my mouth, and nothing came out of it, until, at last, as I took my fifth potato, she leaned across, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, and breathed imploringly, ‘Oh, Mr. Thackeray! Don’t!'”
One guest recalled it as “one of the dullest evenings she ever spent in her life”, and Thackeray’s daughter Anne remembered: “It was a gloomy and silent evening. Everyone waited for the brilliant conversation, which never began at all.”
One guest, desperate to break the silence, asked Brontë if she was enjoying London. After a long silence, she finally replied: “Yes; and no.”
The whole scene has been carved into the wooden doorway at the modern office in 32 Cornhill in 1939, and looking at the detail of Thackeray I can’t see any potatoes near him.
His expression is hard to make out behind the goggle like glasses he has been given either, he looks like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider about to jump on his chopper.
On the other side the Bronte sisters look quite stony faced, bored and annoyed.
This is only one of several carvings illustrating the history of the area,here is more detail about the other carvings on the door.
It’s well worth a detour if you are in the area.
https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/walter-gilbert-door-cornhill.htm
