She was on her honeymoon, having married her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, an Irishman keen to introduce her to his family. The couple took the train into Westland Row station, and spent several days in Dublin, visiting Phoenix Park and Trinity College, where Nicholls had studied. Thereafter, they travelled to Banagher in what is now Co Offaly, to the area that Charlotte’s husband regarded as home and which forms much of the backdrop to Devlin’s intriguing and absorbing novel, .
But Devlin was interested in more than simply narrating the last part of Brontë’s eventful life — she was to die, along with the couple’s unborn child, only nine months after she had married, at the age of 38. She also wanted to explore the Brontë family’s ambivalent relationship to Ireland and what it reveals about their life, the work and wider attitudes towards the country. In the novel’s opening pages, Charlotte is approached by “a hollow-chested girl carrying a baby almost as large as herself”, beseeching her in Irish.
Arthur’s cousin Mary, a central character in the novel, translates: “She’s saying they’re hungry. They’re the only two left from a family of eight.” But while Charlotte finds the scene harrowing, Mary reflects that she must “guard against allowing my heart to harden”, given that destitution is everywhere.
“The people had become walking skeletons — those who’d survived. Between death and emigration, the country had emptied out.�.