“The first time Charlotte Brontë saw the sea—she was about seventeen or eighteen, I think—she was utterly overcome. . . .” she told me. She didn’t seem to notice she’d slipped into a British accent, and I didn’t point it out to her, I just listened. “. . . After all those years on the moors. She’d imagined what the sea was like, over and over, of course—how could she not—but when she saw it, it was more than she’d imagined. Didn’t someone write that nothing’s greater than the imagination? I think that’s nonsense, don’t you?”
