The Road to Villette

Rob McCrae from Leeds recounts his journey in the footsteps of Charlotte and Emily Brontë from Yorkshire to Brussels (aka Villette) -- starting at The North Midland Railway Station in Leeds and ending at the Cathedral of St. Gudule in the Belgian capital. 

Helen MacEwan writes: 

In October I had the pleasure of meeting Rob McCrae from Leeds, his daughter and son-in-law, who were visiting Brussels. It was no ordinary tourist trip! Over a coffee in Bozar on the site of the Pensionnat Heger, Rob told me about their carefully planned journey to Brussels by train and ferry following as closely as possible in the footsteps of Charlotte and Emily Brontë. 

 

There have been many changes since 1842 – Leeds’ main railway station is now on a different site, the Leeds-London train no longer involves a change at Derby, the Channel crossing no longer takes 14 hours! But thanks to Rob’s meticulous research, he and his companions were able to visit sites no longer on the route and gain an understanding of the Brontës’ experience. They also followed the Brontë trail in Villette. 

Rob has lived in Leeds all his life. He first visited the Brontë Parsonage on a school trip around 1970, but it was after a visit 20 years later that he was inspired to want to find out as much about the Brontës as possible, starting with biographical works and only later reading all their novels. Over the years, he’s also visited many of the places associated with them, to feel a connection with them and with the past. His Brussels adventure is the latest such endeavor. 

During our meeting we discussed the possibility of Rob writing a blog report on his journey. The result is his account below, which is fascinating in its details, for example of train travel in the 1840s. 

 

The Road to Villette 

It was whilst re-reading Villette in the spring of 2025 that I had a sudden desire to follow in the footsteps of Charlotte Brontë as she travelled from Haworth to Brussels with her sister Emily in 1842 on a mission to perfect their language skills at the Pensionnat Heger, an often underestimated venture that would not only inspire what is perhaps Charlotte Brontë’s greatest work, the story of Villette and its heroine Lucy Snowe, but would also potentially influence all the Brontë novels in some way or other. 

 

On Saturday the 4th of October 2025, following months of preparation, and perhaps a further two or three whole minutes persuading my equally Brontë-enthused daughter and son-in-law to accompany me, we were finally ready to set forth from our home in Yorkshire, bound for Brussels just as Charlotte and Emily had done 183 years ago. Our aim was to follow as closely as possible the same route and with the aid of old maps and illustrations of the time, to identify what remains today of the places they would have encountered along the way. 

Our first port of call would be The North Midland Railway Station at Hunslet Lane in Leeds where Charlotte and Emily boarded a train for London accompanied by Patrick, who naturally wanted to escort his daughters safely to Brussels along with school friend Mary Taylor, who was also studying near Brussels, and Mary’s brother Joe. The Hunslet Lane station closed just four years later and became a goods yard when The North Midland Railway moved operations to the larger Leeds Central Station and today the site is known as Crown Point Retail Park. 

The station building no longer exists; however, armed with a set of archive plans, much to the bemusement of the shoppers in Asda Living, we were able to locate the exact position where all of the main features had stood, such as the platforms, booking office and the ladies waiting room where almost certainly Charlotte, Emily and Mary would have sat whilst Patrick and Joe perhaps purchased tickets from the booking office. But it was along the south perimeter of the retail park that we found our first little gem. Here we found the railway cutting where trains would have entered and left the station, and although the tracks themselves are long gone the track bed and the original ornamented stone walling still exist, and no doubt Charlotte & Emily would have set eyes on this very stonework as they began their eleven-hour train journey to London. 

 

The railway cutting leaving Leeds Hunslet Lane Station southbound. 

Next, we headed for Derby where the North Midland service terminated, and the party took refreshments in the Midland Hotel whilst waiting for their connection with the London and Birmingham service that would then take them on to London. The Midland Hotel still exists but much to our disappointment was closed on the day we arrived and so we were unable to take refreshments there as the Brontës had done. Not to be deterred however, we found a nearby establishment where we consulted our copy of the 1842 edition of “The North Midland Railway Guide” over a pot of tea and a sandwich. Gazing through the window in the direction of the station, we were able to compare the view to that of a period illustration in our railway guide showing that very little has changed since 1842. The horse-drawn transport has been replaced by modern vehicles, and the station has sadly lost the elegance of a magnificent Victorian frontage, but otherwise the entire scene remains virtually the same to this day. 

Derby Station then and now with the Midland Hotel on the far right. 

After the remainder of the train journey which included a descent of the cable-worked Camden Bank* into Euston Station, the Brontës finally arrived in London and made their way to lodgings at The Chapter Coffee House on Paternoster Row, haunt of 18th & early 19th century Literati and once frequented by the likes of Samual Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith. The Chapter Coffee House, which stood in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral was destroyed during the blitz, but thanks to a sketch drawn by Patrick and the 1894 o/s map of London, we were able to locate its position at the back of a narrow gap called Paul’s Alley on the north side of the Cathedral. The Coffee House was situated on what is now a paved area known as Paternoster Square, but there is a modern café on the site where we were able to sit and appreciate just how exhausted the Brontës must have been by this stage of the journey, and we mused over whether they had sat in this very spot recuperating over coffee just as we were doing now. The Brontës spent three days in London, and we know they visited St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and the National Gallery, and of course duty bound to the authentic reproduction of the original journey, we felt no less than obliged to do precisely the same. 

Standing where the doorway to the Chapter Coffee House would have been. 

On a cold Saturday morning Charlotte, Emily and the rest of the party made their way to London Bridge Wharf for transfer to the twice weekly Ostend Packet, a paddle steamer, and the fourteen-hour sea voyage to the continent. From our 1894 o/s map, we could determine that London Bridge Wharf had been situated at the northeast side of London Bridge. The rather elegant bridge the Brontës would have known was removed in 1968 and shipped to Arizona, and the current bridge which opened in 1973 is wider and unfortunately encroached upon the wharf, which had already been redeveloped somewhat over the years. However, by means of an old photograph taken around 1870, we were able to identify our next little gem. One of the stone pillars that stood between the bridge and the wharf has survived and can still be seen, with its granite corbels and large cap stone, sandwiched between a modern mass of steel and concrete. We could even make out part of the original stone pier where Charlotte and Emily would have stood prior to boarding their boat. Sadly however, paddle steamers no longer operate from here to Ostend and so we had to make our way to Dover for the ferry to Dunkirk and then pick up the trail again on the continent. 

London Bridge Wharf with the pillar (centre left) and the same pillar today. 

Following a short stay in Ostend, it is believed the Brontës travelled on to Brussels most likely going through Ghent, and so Ghent became our next stop along the route. And here we were captivated by the atmosphere and splendour of the old town with its canals, its ancient church towers and historic architecture, which no doubt Charlotte and Emily would have gazed upon with great admiration just as we did, and for us Ghent became another of those little gems that seemed to keep lighting our way like a faithful trail of guiding beacons. 

Ghent

We were now nearing our goal, Brussels and the site of the Pensionnat Heger where Charlotte and Emily came to study. Within nine months Emily had returned home to the familiar rugged landscape of her beloved Yorkshire, but Charlotte remained for nearly two years in all, at first studying and later teaching, working closely with her mentor and professor of literature Constantin Heger with whom she would eventually develop an infatuation. 

We followed Rue Royale until we came to the statue of General Augustin Belliard, the same Belliard statue that stood here in 1842. The steps that descend behind the statue however are not the ones Charlotte and Emily would have known; the modern steps now split into two, whereas the original ones ran straight down the centre directly behind the statue and descended a further five or six feet at the bottom as the ground level has since been raised. And as we reached the bottom of the steps and crossed what would have been Rue d’Isabelle running from left to right in front of us, Charlotte and Emily would have stood just below our feet as they first caught sight of the pensionnat door in front of them. We stood in wonderment for a while on what is now Rue Baron Horta. 

If only the pensionnat had been preserved as a museum, we could have entered that very door and explored the classrooms and dormitories and no doubt found them exactly as described in Villette. We could have stepped out onto the courtyard and wandered into the garden with its grand berceau and alley of pear trees extending majestically beneath the Palais des Beaux Arts on our left, and there we could have perhaps sat a while, just as we sat now on the low wall at the bottom of the modern Belliard steps in this once calm, once quiet place, this very place where Charlotte Brontë found her genius and lost her heart.

 

“That old garden had its charms. On summer mornings I used to rise early to enjoy them alone; on summer evenings, to linger solitary, to keep tryste with the rising moon, or taste one kiss of the evening breeze, or fancy rather than feel the freshness of dew descending. The turf was verdant, the gravelled walks were white; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered beautiful about the roots of the doddered orchard giants. There was a large berceau, above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran all along a high and grey wall, and gathered their tendrils in a knot of beauty, and hung their clusters in loving profusion about the favoured spot where jasmine and ivy met and married them.”  

 Villette, Charlotte Bronte. 

Alas, neither the Pensionnat nor the garden have survived the destructive tides of progress, and the Isabelle quarter is now almost entirely redeveloped. However, not all is lost and if you know where to look there are still some of those little gems to be found. We proceeded to the end of Rue Baron Horta where there is a plaque in honour of the Brontës, and we turned left towards the fifteenth-century Hôtel Ravenstein. To the left of the hotel is a short section of cobbled street that has survived the redevelopment, slightly below the main street and with a second plaque in honour of the Brontës at one end. This is Rue Terarken, an ancient street that once met with Rue d’Isabelle and a street that Charlotte and Emily would have used on their way to the Protestant Chapel in the Place du Musée not far from here. 

The Chapel also still exists and if you time a visit to coincide with a service you may get a glimpse of the inside which remains largely unchanged since the Brontës worshipped here. Another little gem is Rue Villa Hermosa to the rear of Hôtel Ravenstein which, although partly cut off by modern redevelopment, still has a few of its original buildings which appear just as they would have done to Charlotte and Emily as they made their way around the Isabelle quarter. 

From Rue Villa Hermosa we went on to Place Royale and then into the park where we came across a beautiful old cast iron bandstand. This bandstand, although now repositioned within the park, is known to have been here in 1842 and it is highly likely that Charlotte and Emily would have come across it. It is also possible this very bandstand could have inspired one of the most memorable scenes in Villette where Lucy Snowe is drawn into the park late one night by the sound of revelling crowds and a band playing. 

The bandstand in the park. 

Heading out of the park we were now approaching our final port of call, but this would be no ordinary encounter, not merely another of our little gems; this was the jewel in the crown. We were now standing inside the magnificent Cathedral of St. Gudule with its high vaulted ceilings and impressive statue-clad pillars around which many treasures of wood and gilt appear in the dull light of the stained glass windows, and along the walls ornately carved wooden confessionals, one of which we know to have been used by Charlotte to famously confess we know not what. And nor do we need to know, for the mere fact that Charlotte felt the need to confess here in open betrayal of her own true faith is testament to the immense burden of depression and desperate loneliness we know she was suffering at that time. 

And for us, what made this place stand out from all the other places we had visited on our amazing journey, was that here, not only did we feel a sense of Charlotte’s presence, but a sense of her very spirit, a thought that seemed to hold us for a while. And on leaving this immense darkened Gothic space to emerge once more into the sharp light of day we sadly realised that our adventure had come to an end, but as we slowly made our way back through the narrow streets around St. Gudule, many of which seem to hold an enduring sense of ancient charm, I felt, just for the briefest of moments, that I might be in the streets of Villette, the very same thought that brought us here in the first place. 

 All of us at St. Gudule 

  Rob McRae

* Camden was originally the rail terminus for London because freight was transferred to the Regent’s Canal there, but it meant passengers had to travel the rest of the way by road. Camden Bank was an extension to the railway built in 1834 to take passengers all the way into Euston station, but the incline was too steep for the steam locomotives so they had to detach the carriages which would freewheel downhill with a Brakeman or “Bankrider” holding them back to a maximum of 10mph. On the return journey uphill out of London Euston, the carriages were attached to a cable driven by two stationary steam powered winding engines (hence the cable-worked Camden Bank) and hauled up the bank to be reconnected with the locomotive at the top.