Despite the Myths

 

There's no doubt that A- is Scarborough

where she died at the Grand Hotel,

but was the Weston named after

Agnes Grey's suitor? She loved the sea

as Emily did the moors, Charlotte the city,

yet unlike them she would never cross it,

though her other heroine does. 

Even Lucy Snowe never touches

Paris or Rome, or not as far as we know.

When we took my grandma to see her grave

she said, 'Well thank you Anne

for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.'

I still have the copy she bought me

for my fifteenth birthday

which I must have read four times,

maybe five, on the train to school,

at York station, before bed,

in Room 203 Lloyd Thomas Hall.

Sellotape so old it's no longer sticky

or clear covers its fraying spine, 

Winifred Gerin's notes at the back,

written the year I was born are falling out.

I open it now at random and discover

a forgotten detail. Helen visits London

which her creator has yet to see.