Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

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B EFORE I LEFT MY BED IN THE MORNING, LITTLE ADELE CAME running to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away.

Reader, that sentence is from a novel I wrote. It ends the scene in which Mr. Rochester proposes marriage to Jane Eyre, she accepts, and a fierce storm rages over Thornfield Manor. The lightning symbolized the earth-shattering event in Jane’s life; the split chestnut tree, the lovers soon to be torn asunder. When I wrote the sentence, little did I suspect that I had prophesized my own future.

In the summer of 1848, lightning struck me when I was plunged into an adventure the like of which I had never believed possible. I journeyed far beyond my wildest imaginings; I experienced momentous events now cloaked in secrecy. If I now say that my actions influenced the fate of nations, please forgive me the appearance of immodesty: I only speak the truth.

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