William Smith
Williams, who, in her later years, was Charlotte Bronte's most intimate
correspondent. The letters to Mr. Williams are far and away the best
that Charlotte wrote, at least of those which have been preserved. They
are full of literary enthusiasm and of intellectual interest. They show
Charlotte Bronte's sound judgment and good heart more effectually than
any other material which has been placed at the disposal of biographers.
They are an honour both to writer and receiver, and, in fact, reflect the
mind of the one as much as the mind of the other. Charlotte has
emphasised the fact that she adapted herself to her correspondents, and
in her letters to Mr. Williams we have her at her very best. Mr.
Williams occupied for many years the post of 'reader' in the firm of
Smith & Elder. That is a position scarcely less honourable and important
than authorship itself. In our own days Mr. George Meredith and Mr. John
Morley have been 'readers,' and Mr. James Payn has held the same post in
the firm which published the Bronte novels.
Mr. Williams, who was born in 1800, and died in 1875, had an interesting
career even before he became associated with Smith & Elder. In his
younger days he was apprenticed to Taylor & Hessey of Fleet Street; and
he used to relate how his boyish ideals of Coleridge were shattered on
beholding, for the first time, the bulky and ponderous figure of the
great talker.
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