Jolien Janzing, author of Charlotte Brontë's Secret Love, based on true events of a forgotten chapter in Charlotte Brontë's life and the secret love Charlotte harboured for the man who would inspire her to write The Professor, Villette and Jane Eyre.
Charlotte Bronte's Secret Love
1. I can't imagine a life without telling stories. And it's not something I began at a certain moment and so will be able to stop again one day. As a six-year-old I was allowed to use my mother's plastic typewriter and was finally able to type out the stories that I made up.2. As a young woman I went into journalism and for a while that kept me reasonably satisfied. I eschewed dry journalism and politics - I was too much of a romantic for that. I wrote about murderers, princesses, weirdos, poison in cosmetics and other fascinating things.
3. Since I've devoted myself to fiction, I spend a couple of hours a day in a kind of parallel universe. It's just that I know the magic formula and can always come back. In the morning, while the normal world is asleep, I return to my wonderland. My hands are on the keys and I am welcomed like an old friend. My characters are sitting at breakfast and I have my chair at the table.
4. I am an incurable Romantic. That's why I wanted to write down the love story of Charlotte and Monsieur Heger, her Belgian teacher.
As a Protestant country girl she found it difficult to adapt to the boarding school in Catholic Brussels.
5. I felt like I understood Charlotte: I'm Dutch, but I moved to Flanders when I was little. I was raised a Protestant and was confronted with Catholicism, so I understood the culture shock Charlotte must have felt when she came here.
6. For ten years I wrote travel reportages, which was marvellous. But one fine day - I was in a hotel in Las Vegas with flu, and was due to leave for China a week after getting home - travel stories suddenly lost their fascination. I stopped there and then.
7. At home I have a beautiful writing desk upstairs which looks out onto the fields, but I hardly ever sit there. I prefer to write on the sofa, with a blanket and my laptop. And tea, I really need a pot of tea. Very British!
8. I am married to the man of my dreams! Charlotte was unable to obtain her great love, because he already had a family. I can imagine that such sorrow may cast a shadow over your entire life.
9. I used to write in cafes. The more buzz, the better, as long as they left me in peace. Strange, isn't it? But apparently there are still writers who like to work in cafes.10. Charlotte was capable of great jealousy. That may not be such a nice character trait, but it is very human, isn't it? I'll tell you a secret: I can be a little jealous, too, sometimes.
Charlotte Brontë's Secret Love by Jolien Janzing is published by World Editions, paperback original £9.99 and ebook