“Do you like the truth (between the Brontës and my family)?” asked Monica Kendall in her fascinating, interlinking presentation to the Brussels Brontë Group last Saturday, in which she discussed her journey to discover the connections between her great-great-grandparents Eliza and the Reverend Evan Jenkins, the British chaplain in Brussels from 1825 to 1849, and the Brontë sisters’ stint at the Pensionnat Heger in the Belgian capital.
“Yes” was the resounding answer, if the
animated question and answer session after the talk was anything to go by!
The Brussels Brontë Group on Saturday 30 April 2022 could finally get together in a real-life venue instead of on Zoom. What a relief to see each other again, talk to friends, have a coffee and a lovely piece of cake, finally some sort of normality is getting back into our lives.
On the programme we had two talks with a Brussels theme. Very appropriate indeed.
Monica Kendall, author of ‘Lies and the Brontës: The Quest for the Jenkins Family,’ was a welcome speaker today at the Brussels Brontë Group for two reasons: this was the first occasion for two years that members of the group was able to meet face to face; and Kendall was introducing us to an area of Brontë research which has been hardly touched.
She is one of an increasing number of researchers who have succeeded in finding original documents relating to the time Charlotte and Emily Brontë spent in Brussels.
