Title: The Secret of Charlotte Brontë - Followed by Remiiscences of the real Monsieur and Madame Heger
Author: Macdonald, Frederika
Language: English
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(http://www.girlebooks.com) and Marc D'Hooghe
(http://www.freeliterature.org)



THE SECRET OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Followed by Some Reminiscences of the Real
Monsieur and Madame Heger

by

FREDERIKA MACDONALD, D.LITT.

Authoress of 'Xavier and I,' 'The Iliad of the East,'
'A New Criticism of J.-J. Rousseau,' 'The Flower
and The Spirit,' 'The Humane Philosophy
of Rousseau,' etc.



London: T.C. & E.C. Jack
67 Long Acre, W.C.
and Edinburgh
1914



[Illustration: Portrait by Richmond]


     'And now I will rehearse the tale of Love, which I heard
     from Diotima of Mantineia, a woman wise in this, and many
     other kinds of knowledge....

     '... "What then is Love," I asked: "Is he mortal?" "He is
     neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two,"
     she replied. "He is a great Spirit, and, like all spirits,
     an intermediate between the divine and the mortal." "And
     what," I said, "is his power?" "He interprets," she replied,
     "between gods and men; conveying to the gods the prayers and
     sacrifices of men; and to men the commands and replies of
     the gods." "And who," I said, "is his father? and who is his
     mother?" "His father," she replied, "was Plenty (Poros), and
     his mother Poverty (Penia), and as his parentage is, so are
     his fortunes. He is always poor, and has no shoes, nor a
     house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under
     the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses,
     taking his rest, and like his mother he is always in
     distress. Like his father, too, he is bold, enterprising,--a
     philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter,
     sorcerer, sophist. As he is neither mortal nor immortal, he
     is alive and flourishing one moment, and dead another
     moment; and again alive, by reason of his father's nature."'

     (_Symposium_. Plato's _Dialogues_. Translator, Jowett, vol.
     ii. pp. 54, 55.)

[Illustration: THE FRONT OF THE SCHOOL (RUE D'ISABELLE),
WHICH REMAINED UNALTERED UNTIL 1909]



CONTENTS

PART I

CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S LETTERS TO M. HEGER
_(These Letters supply the Key to the Secret of Charlotte Brontë)_

CHAPTER I
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF CHARLOTTE
BRONTË, CREATED BY A FALSE CRITICAL
METHOD

CHAPTER II
THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM

CHAPTER III
CHARLOTTE'S LAST YEAR AT BRUXELLES, 1842-43

CHAPTER IV
THE CONFESSION AT STE. GUDULE

CHAPTER V
THE LEAVE-TAKING--THE SCENE IN THE CLASS-ROOM
--'MY HEART WILL BREAK'

CHAPTER VI
THE LOVE-LETTERS OF A ROMANTIC

PART II

SOME REMINISCENCES OF THE REAL
MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER

CHAPTER I
THE HISTORICAL DIFFICULTY: TO DISENTANGLE
FACT FROM FICTION

CHAPTER II
MY FIRST INTRODUCTION TO CHARLOTTE
BRONTË'S PROFESSOR

CHAPTER III
MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER AS I SAW THEM:
AND BELGIAN SCHOOLGIRLS AS I KNEW
THEM

CHAPTER IV
MY SECOND INTERVIEW WITH M. HEGER. THE
WASHING OF 'PEPPER.' THE LESSON IN
ARITHMETIC

CHAPTER V
THE STORY OF A CHAPEAU D'UNIFORME

CHAPTER VI
MADAME HEGER'S SENTIMENT OF THE JUSTICE
OF RESIGNATION TO INJUSTICE


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

     CHARLOTTE BRONTË .... _Frontispiece_
     THE FRONT OF THE SCHOOL IN THE RUE D'ISABELLE
     M. HEGER AT SIXTY
     DRAWING BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË OF ASHBURNHAM CHURCH
     (_Copyright of Author_)
     MADAME HEGER AT SIXTY
     (_Copyright of Author_)
     THE ALLÉE DÉFENDUE
     (_Copyright of Author_)
     THE GALERIE AND GARDEN IN WINTER
     (_Copyright of Author_)



THE SECRET OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE 'PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM' OF CHARLOTTE
BRONTË, CREATED BY A FALSE
CRITICAL METHOD


We live in an epoch when impressionist methods of criticism, admissible,
and often illuminative, in the domains of art and of imaginative
literature, have invaded the once jealously guarded paths of historical
criticism, to the detriment of correct standards of judgment. Leading
critics, whose literary accomplishments, powers of persuasive argument,
and unquestionable good faith, lend great influence to their decisions,
show no sort of hesitation in undertaking to interpret the characters
and careers of famous men and women, independently of any examination
of evidence, by purely psychological methods. I am not denying that, as
literary exercises, some of these impressionist portraits of men and
women of genius, seen through the temperament of writers who are,
_sometimes_, endowed with genius themselves, are very interesting. But
what has to be remembered (and what is constantly forgotten) is, that if
these psychological interpretations of people who once really existed
are to be accorded any authority as historical judgments, they must have
been preceded by an attentive enquiry, enabling the future interpreter,
before he begins to employ psychology, to feel perfectly certain that he
has clearly in view the particular Soul he is undertaking to penetrate,
with its own special qualities, and placed amongst, and acted upon by,
the real circumstances of its earthly career. Where the preliminary
precaution of this enquiry, into the true facts that have to be
penetrated, and explained, has been neglected, no psychological
subtlety, no pathological science, no sympathetic insight, can protect
the most accomplished literary impressionist from forming, and
fostering, false opinions about the historical personages he is judging
from a standpoint of assumptions that do not allow him to exercise the
true function of criticism, defined by Matthew Arnold as: 'an impartial
endeavour to see the thing as in itself it really is.'

In the case of Charlotte Brontë, her first, and, still, classical
biographer, Mrs. Gaskell, carried through, now fifty-seven years ago,
with great literary skill, and also with historical exactitude, the
study of her parentage and youth; of her experiences in England as a
governess; of her family trials and losses; of the sudden development of
her talent, or rather, of her genius as a writer, that, at one bound,
after the publication of her first novel, made her famous throughout
England; and soon famous throughout Europe: and that proved her (since
Charlotte has been 'dead'--as people use the phrase--more than half a
century, and since her books are still living spirits, we may be allowed
to affirm this) one of the immortals.

But now whilst all these epochs in Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte
Brontë_ were studied by exact historical methods, there was one epoch in
her heroine's career that this, elsewhere, conscientious biographer
neglected to study at all: in the sense, of subjecting facts and events
and personages, belonging to its history, to careful examination. Here,
on the contrary, we find that Mrs. Gaskell left exact methods of enquiry
behind her; and adopted arbitrary psychological methods, of arguments,
and assumptions, where, not only no effort was made to consult the
testimony of facts, but where this testimony was ignored, or
contradicted, when it stood in the way, of preconceived theories. And
this period, thus inadequately, or, rather, thus mischievously, dealt
with, happened to be precisely the one where the key must be found to
the right interpretations of Charlotte's personality; and of the
emotions and experiences she had undergone and that called her genius
forth to life: and stamped it with the seal and quality that made her,
amongst our great English Novelists, the only representative
prose-writer in our literature of the European literary movement that
French critics praise, and attack, under the name of _le Romantisme_.

The period in Charlotte's life that I am speaking of is, of course, the
interval of two years (from Feb. 1842 to Jan. 1844) that she spent at
Bruxelles, in the school in the Rue d'Isabelle, whose Director and
Directress, Monsieur and Madame Heger, are supposed to have been painted
in the characters of 'Paul Emanuel' and of 'Madame Beck,' in the famous
novel of _Villette_.

How far that supposition is justified, and to what extent _Villette_ is
an autobiographical reminiscence, thinly disguised as a novel, can be
now, but has never been up to this date, satisfactorily decided, by an
attentive historical enquiry. What is established securely to-day, and
cannot be removed from the foundation of documentary evidence that
serves as the basis upon which all future theories must rest, is, that
it is in this period that Charlotte Brontë--not as an enthusiastic and
half-formed school-girl, as some reckless modern impressionist critics,
careless of the evidence of facts, would have us believe, but as a
woman, profoundly sincere, impassioned, exalted, unstained, and
unstainable, who, between twenty-six and twenty-eight years of age, had
long left girlish extravagance behind her--underwent experiences and
emotions, that were not transient feelings, nor sensational excitements.
But they were transforming and formative spiritual influences--causing,
no doubt, bitter anguish, and intolerable regrets, that 'broke her
heart,' in the sense that they destroyed personal hope or belief in
happiness, and even the personal capacity for happiness: yet that from
this grave of buried hope, called her genius forth to life; and stamped
and sealed it, with its special quality and gift:--the gift that made
her a 'Romantic.' So that at this hour one has not to deplore any
longer, for Charlotte's sake, this tragical sentiment, of predestined,
hopeless, and unrequited love, that broke her heart, but that gave her
immortality. For, whilst the broken heart is healed now, or, at any
rate, has slept in peace for more than half a century, the genius, born
from its sorrow, is still a living spirit; and will probably continue
to live on, from age to age, whilst the English tongue endures.

At the present hour all this can be positively affirmed. But even before
the final settlement, for every critic who respects historical evidence,
of the now incontrovertible fact, Mrs. Gaskell's method of dealing with
this momentous period could not satisfy an attentive student who
compared her account with Charlotte's correspondence: and also with
eloquent impassioned passages in _Villette_ and the _Professor_, where
the authoress is plainly painting emotions and impressions she has
herself undergone. And the effect that was left upon thoughtful readers
of the _Life of Charlotte Brontë_' was that the biographer was, not
negligently, but _deliberately_, altering the true significance, by
underrating the importance, of Charlotte's experiences in Bruxelles, and
of her relationships with Monsieur and Madame Heger.

This biographer's theory was (and the doctrine has been vehemently
defended by a certain clique of devotees of Charlotte Brontë down to
the present day) that Charlotte obtained, certainly, great intellectual
stimulus, as well as literary culture, from the lessons of M. Heger, as
an accomplished Professor; but that, outside of these influences, her
relationships with M. Heger were of an entirely ordinary and tranquil
character, and that she carried back with her to Haworth, after her two
years' residence in Bruxelles, no other sentiments than those of the
grateful regard and esteem a good pupil necessarily retains for a
Professor whose lessons she has turned to excellent account.

How far Mrs. Gaskell did believe, or was able to make herself believe,
what she professed, it is difficult to determine now. My own opinion is
she did _not_ believe it; but that she esteemed it a duty to respect the
secret _that had not been confided to her_: and to pass by in silence,
and with averted eyes, the place where, forsaken by hope, Charlotte had
fought out bravely and all alone this battle, with a hopeless passion
(that, after all, when it comes across any woman's path, she _must_
fight out _alone_, because nowhere, outside of her own soul, is there
any help), and then, having won her battle, had gone on, leaving her
broken heart buried in that silent, secret place, to face her altered
destiny. And to write stories as a method of salvation from despair. But
to return, now and again, to visit that silent, secret grave: and to
gather the magical flowers that grew there, and breathe their bitter,
sweet perfume. And to take large handfuls of these flowers home with
her, and, in the air saturated with the bitter-sweet perfume of these
magical flowers, to write her stories. So that the stories themselves
come to us, not like other stories, but steeped in this strange perfume
thrilled through with the magical life belonging to flowers of
remembrance, gathered from the grave of a tragical romance. And this
explains why the stories are themselves romantic: and why, as Harriet
Martineau complained, _Villette_, especially, has this quality, which,
to the authoress of _Illustrations in Political Economy_, appeared a
defect, that '_all events and personages are regarded through the medium
of one passion only--the passion of unrequited love._'

To return to Mrs. Gaskell and her criticism of Charlotte Brontë. The
question of whether she, like Harriet Martineau, committed a critical
blunder, as a result of studying Charlotte's character and genius by
wrong methods, or whether out of loyalty she endeavoured to cover in her
friend's life the secret romance that Charlotte herself never revealed,
does not need to trouble us much, because the answer does not greatly
matter. However laudatory Mrs. Gaskell's motive may have been, the fact
remains, that, as a result of her endeavour rather to turn attention
away from, than to examine, the true circumstances of Charlotte's
relationships with Monsieur and Madame Heger, an inadequate, or else a
false, criticism was inaugurated by her influence of the most popular in
Europe of our distinguished women novelists, and who, outside of
England, is judged by right standards as a 'Romantic,' but who, in her
own country, has been criticised from 1857 down to 1913, in the light of
one of two contradictory impressions--both of which we now know were
historical mistakes.

The first of these impressions is that Charlotte Brontë has painted, not
only her own emotions, but her own actual experiences, in _Villette_;
and that Lucy Snowe, Paul Emanuel, and Madame Beck, are pseudonyms,
under which we ought to recognise Charlotte herself, and the Director
and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle.

The second, and almost equally mischievous impression is that no
romantic nor tragical sentiment whatever characterises the relationships
between Charlotte Brontë and her Bruxelles Professor in literature; and
that she derived her inspirations as a writer solely from the drab
dreariness and the desolation of disease and death, of her life in the
shadow of Haworth churchyard. It is impossible from the standpoint of
either of these impressions to form right opinions about Charlotte
Brontë, either as a distinguished personality, or as a writer of genius,
whose place in English literature is that amongst our prose writers she
is the representative 'Romantic' who counts with George Sand; but
differs from her, as an English and not a French exponent of the
sentiment of romantic love.

Judged both as a distinguished personality and as a writer of genius
from the standpoint of the impression that _Villette_ is an
autobiographical story, Charlotte Brontë suffers injustice, both as a
woman of fine character, and as an imaginative painter of emotions
rather than an observer of events, or a critic of manners. Accepted as a
realistic picture of her own adventures in Brussels, the book does not
testify to her accuracy or skill in portraiture, from the purely
literary point of view. And from the moral and personal standpoint, she
remains convicted (if she be held to be telling her own story) of the
baseness of a half-confession;--and _of a dishonourable and a
successful_, not a _romantic and tragical_, love for a married man. And
of the treacherous wrong done a sister-woman, who threw open her home to
her, when she was a friendless alien in a foreign city. And, if this
were so, this traitress would have further aggravated the dishonest
betrayal of her protectress, by holding up the woman she had wronged to
the world's detestation, either as the contemptible and scheming Mlle.
Zoraïde Reuter, of the _Professor_:--or the less contemptible but more
hateful Madame Beck, in _Villette_.

If, then, Charlotte did mean, or even suppose, that others could be
induced to believe that she meant, to paint her own relationships to
Monsieur and Madame Heger in the story, she would stand convicted, not
only as a woman of bad character, but as one who had a wicked and
vindictive heart.

Nor yet does the second impression, patronised by devotees of Charlotte
Brontë (who seem to imagine that the revelation of an entirely innocent
and indeed beautiful, though tragical, romantic attachment in the life
of this romantic writer, is the disclosure of a sin), help us to find
any solution of the 'problem' as psychological critics present it to us,
of the 'dissonance' between her personality and dull existence, and her
literary distinction, as our chief English Romantic, and the authoress
of those amazing masterpieces _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette._ What a
contrast, in effect, between the characteristics of these masterpieces
and the characteristics of her circumstances at Haworth and of the
circle of her familiar acquaintances! The characteristics of Charlotte's
books are--emotional force, the exaltation of passion over all the
commonplace proprieties, the low-toned feelings, the semi-educated
pedantries that are the characteristics of the people who surround
Charlotte; who are her correspondents and her friends; and whose
mediocrity weighs on the poor original woman's spirit (and even on her
literary style) like lead:--so that the letters she writes to them are,
really, nearly as dull as the letters they write to her; and one finds
it hard to believe that some of the letters, to Ellen Nussey, for
instance, come from the same pen that wrote _Villette_: or even that
wrote from Bruxelles some of her letters to Emily.

And again, if we leave out of account the tragical romantic sentiment
for M. Heger, how are we to solve the problem as these psychologists
present it to us, and that states itself in this conviction: that the
creator of 'Rochester' and 'Paul Emanuel' found her _own_ romance, only
at forty years of age, in her marriage with the Rev. A.B. Nicholls, an
event she announces thus:--'_I trust the demands of both feeling and
duty will be in some measure reconciled by the step in contemplation_';
adding on to this the following description of the future bridegroom:
'_Mr Nicholls is a kind, considerate fellow: with all his masculine
faults, he enters into my wishes about having the thing done quietly_'?

From the standpoint of the impression that the romance in Charlotte's
life, was the marriage she speaks of as '_the thing_,' that she wishes
'_may be done quietly_,'--and that the highest pitch of personal emotion
she attained to, is expressed by her in the temperate confidence that by
'the step in contemplation'--'_the demands of both feeling and duty may
in some measure be reconciled_,' (--only _in some measure_? Poor
Charlotte!--But she died within a year)--from this standpoint, I say,
one really cannot solve the problem of the 'dissonance' between
Charlotte's personality and her books.

But there is one conclusion we are bound to reach. The influences of
Haworth, no doubt--the drab dreariness of everything; and then the
desolation after Bramwell's death, and Emily's death, and Anne's
death--and the father threatened with blindness--and also the mediocrity
of all those dull, dull people, who represented her familiar friends and
correspondents, so satisfied with themselves, all of them; so
dissatisfied with life, and who saw it through the medium not of a
romantic tragical sentiment, not of one great passion, but through the
medium of small grievances of superior nursery governesses: the sort of
people who dislike children, and want overdriven mothers to be always
occupied with their governesses' sentiments, instead of with the baby
who is cutting its teeth. No doubt the influences of Haworth and of
Charlotte Brontë's 'Circle' there, before she became famous, _did_ help
to plant in her the immense depression and fatigue of a spirit that had
known the stress of great emotions, and _could bear no more_,--expressed
in the letter announcing her decision to marry one of the curates she
had laughed at in _Shirley_--who _with all his masculine faults_,' she
says, 'is a _kind, considerate fellow_,' who doesn't expect her to
pretend she thinks this marriage ('_the thing_')--a Festival. Well, but
the conclusion we must form is this, that if it be at Haworth, and after
1846, that we must find the causes of the depression that brought about
Charlotte's marriage with Mr. Nicholl, it is _not_ here that we must
seek the '_Secret of Charlotte Brontë_';--the romance that broke her
heart, true--but made her an immortal, whose claim to live for ever is
based upon no moderate well-balanced sentiment, where 'the demands of
both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled'--but upon
passionate emotions, compelling expression, and forming a new language
almost; as M. Jules Lemaître has said 'introducing new ways of feeling,
and as it were a new vibration into literature.'

And in the place where the romance in Charlotte's life is found must we
seek, also, the source of this power of emotion: creating powers of
expression to which much more accomplished literary artists than
Charlotte (Jane Austen and Mrs. Gaskell, for instance) never reached;
and to an intimate knowledge of moods and ecstasies and raptures, that
rule and torture and exalt human souls, that much more subtle and
scientific psychologists than herself (George Eliot, for instance, and
Mrs. Humphry Ward) never discovered.

The supreme gift of the authoress of _Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_, as a
painter of emotions, an interpreter of intimate moods, a witness in the
cause of ideal sentiments, an incessant rebel against vulgarity and
common worldliness, and the stupid tyranny of custom, an upholder of the
sovereignty of romance, cannot be weighed against, nor judged by, the
same standards as the accomplished literary gift of such finished
artists as the authors of _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Cranford_, such
subtle students of character as the authors of _Middlemarch_ and _Robert
Elsmere_, such vigorous fighters for intellectual and moral ends as are
represented by the author of the _Illustrations upon Political Economy_,
and the _Atkinson Letters_. And it is because, as a result of judging
her genius and her personality from the standpoint of false
impressions, Charlotte Brontë has not been recognised in England as a
painter of personal emotions, a Romantic in short, but has been judged
as the advocate of a general doctrine--(one very agreeable to the
convictions of the average man, but especially exasperating to the
aspirations and principles of the superior woman)--I mean, the doctrine
that _to obtain the love of a man whom she feels to be, and rejoices to
recognise as, her 'Master,'--is the supreme desire and dream of every
truly feminine heart_; it is because, I say, of this mistake, that
Charlotte has become the idol of a class of critics least qualified
perhaps to appreciate the merits of a romantic rebel against
conventional domesticity; whilst amongst more naturally sympathetic
judges, the peculiar perfume and power of these novels, steeped in and
saturated with the passionate essence of a personal romance, has not
been recognised either for what it really is,--the 'magic' of Charlotte
Brontë; the special quality in her work that gives it originality and
distinction; but this very quality--'the personal note' that makes her
our only English Romantic Novelist, has been signalised by many sincere
admirers of her books as a defect!

I have already mentioned the judgment passed upon _Villette_ by an
admirable woman of letters, Charlotte Brontë's personal friend, and a
critic whose good faith, and honest desire to serve the interests of
this sister-authoress with whom she found fault it is quite impossible
to doubt.

When _Villette_ appeared, Charlotte Brontë had been for some little time
on very friendly terms with Harriet Martineau: and she did not fear to
incur the risk--always a perilous one to friendship--of asking Harriet
to tell her, quite frankly, what she thought of her book. Harriet
responded with perfect frankness to the invitation; and the almost
inevitable result followed. The event wrecked their friendship. And no
one was to blame: Harriet Martineau, without disguise, but without
malice, said what she thought was true. But neither was Charlotte in the
wrong, for she felt herself unjustly judged; and her feeling was right,
because Harriet used false standards.

'As for the matter which you so desire to know,' wrote the frank
Harriet; 'I have but one thing to say: but it is not a small one. I do
not like the love--either the kind or the degree of it--and its
prevalence in the book, and effect on the action of it, help to explain
the passages in the reviews which you consulted me about, and seem to
afford some foundation for the criticism they afford.'

Charlotte was deeply offended: 'I protest against this passage,' she
wrote; 'I know what _love_ is as I understand it, and if man or woman
should be ashamed of feeling such love, then there is nothing right,
noble, faithful, truthful, unselfish in this earth, as I comprehend
rectitude, nobleness, fidelity, truth and disinterestedness.'

Here spoke the Romantic. But Harriet Martineau was _not_ a Romantic but
an Intellectual, and she judged Charlotte's books and her genius through
her own temperament, and by intellectual standards. She followed up the
private rebuke to her friend for making too much of love, in a review of
_Villette_, contributed to the _Daily News._

'All the female characters,' she wrote, 'in all their thoughts and
lives, are full of one thing, or are regarded in the light of that one
thought, love! It begins with the child of six years old, of the opening
(a charming picture), and closes with it at the last page. And so
dominant is this idea, so incessant is the writer's tendency to describe
_the need of being loved_, that the heroine, who tells her own story,
leaves the reader at last under the uncomfortable impression of her
having either entertained a double love, or allowed one to supersede
another, without notification of the transition. It is not thus in real
life. There are substantial, heartfelt interests for women of all ages,
and, under ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love; there is an
absence of introspection, an unconsciousness, a repose, in women's
lives, unless under peculiarly unfortunate circumstances, of which we
find no admission in this book; and to the absence of it may be
attributed some of the criticism which the book will meet with from
readers who are no prudes, but whose reason and taste will regret the
assumption that events and characters are to be regarded through the
medium of one passion only.'

The critical blunder in this judgment is that here the authoress of the
_Illustrations in Political Economy_ and of the _Atkinson Letters_ sees
the authoress of _Villette_ through her own temperament, as an
intellectual like herself:--a humane sociologist, and a philosophical
freethinker, _whose literary purpose is to use her talent as a writer in
the service of her ideas and principles_. Judging _Villette_ and its
authoress from this point of view and by these standards, Harriet
Martineau decides that _because_ 'all events and characters in _Villette
are_ regarded through the medium of one passion, love,' _therefore_ the
literary motive and purpose of the authoress must have been to deny--or
at any rate to ignore--that '_there are substantial heartfelt interests
for women of all ages, and in ordinary circumstances, quite apart from
love._'

The mistake lay in assuming that Charlotte Brontë was an intellectual,
instead of an imaginative genius; and that her literary purpose was to
affirm, or deny, or ignore deliberately, any principle; or in any way
to make her genius the servant of her intellect; whereas her
intelligence was so coloured by her imagination, so subservient to her
genius, that if one were to measure her by intellectual standards--with
Harriet Martineau, for instance--she would remain as vastly Harriet's
inferior in enthusiasm of humanity, in practical benevolence and warm
interest in social reform, and in emancipations from prejudice and
insularity and bigotry, as she was Harriet's superior in power of
passionate feeling, in wealth of imagination, and in superb gift of
expression. But any such comparison would be out of place. Let us admit
that Charlotte's thoughts and aspirations, as we find them scattered
through her writings, express the ordinary vigorous prejudices of an
English gentlewoman of her period, brought up under the influences of a
father who was a good sort of Tory clergyman; that her attitude of
condescension toward, rather than of sympathy with, the 'common people,'
regarded as the 'lower orders,' who should be kindly treated of course,
but kept in their place, and taught to 'order themselves lowly and
reverently to their betters,' indicates a defective humanitarianism;
that her almost rabid patriotism--her conviction that not to be English
is a misfortune, and a stamp of inferiority that weighs heavily as an
impediment to nobility and virtue, upon every member of every other
foreign race, is distinctly narrow; and that her staunch and straitened
protestantism, leaves her as far away as the 'idolatrous priests' she
denounced, from any claim to enlightened tolerance.

Yet this lack of any particular height or breadth or distinction in
Charlotte Brontë's social, political, critical, or even religious views,
does not in any way detract from the height, depth and distinction of
her powers of noble emotion and splendid expression; nor from the rare
gift of translating words into feelings that quicken her readers'
sensibility to a finer perception of the ideal beauty that lies at the
heart of common things.

Here is the gift by which we have to judge, or, to speak more
becomingly, for which we have to praise and thank, our only English
'Romantic' novelist, who stands in rank with George Sand, and who has
been studied in comparison with her by Swinburne. And we have to praise,
and thank our Charlotte all the more, because she has a national as well
as a personal note: and brings to this European literary movement the
characteristic qualities of imagination and sentiment that belong to our
English literary temperament, and that do us honour, as a romantic
people who are romantic in our own, and nobody else's way.

But now if we want to appreciate the 'magic' of Charlotte Brontë as a
Romantic we must not look for the sources of her inspiration at Haworth;
nor in the circle of dull people, to whom she wrote, brilliant writer as
she was, dull letters, because their mediocrity weighed upon her spirit
like lead.

Twenty years ago, now, I attempted (but was not especially successful in
the task) to establish upon the personal knowledge that my own residence
as a pupil in the historical Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle, at
Bruxelles gave me of the facts of Charlotte Brontë's relationships to
Monsieur and Madame Heger, right impressions about the experiences and
emotions she underwent between 1842 and 1846, and that supply the key
and clue to the right interpretation of her genius. Every opinion I then
ventured to state, not upon the authority of any special power of
divination or of psychological insight of my own, but solely upon the
authority of this personal knowledge of Monsieur and Madame Heger in my
early girlhood, and also of the information I owed to the friendship and
kind assistance given me, in my endeavour to rectify false judgments, by
the Heger family, has quite recently, not only been confirmed, but
established upon entirely incontrovertible evidence, by the generous
gift made to English readers throughout the world of the key needed to
unlock once and for ever the tragical but romantic 'Secret' of Charlotte
Brontë.



CHAPTER II

THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM


The common saying, that 'people must be just before they are generous,'
becomes at once less common and more correct when it is formulated
differently. '_One needs to be very generous before one can be really
just_' is Jean-Jacques Rousseau's way of stating the proposition. And
one calls this sentence to remembrance when recognising how much
generosity is revealed in the act of justice recently performed by Dr.
Paul Heger in his gift to the British Museum (that is to say to English
readers throughout the world) of the four tragical, but incomparably
beautiful, Letters written by Charlotte Brontë to his father, the late
Professor Constantin Heger, within two years of her return to England.

No doubt this gift _was_ an act of justice. Without the conclusive
evidence these Letters afford, there would have been no means of
rectifying the arbitrary, false, and inadequate criticism of the
personality, and thus, indirectly, of the writings, of a great novelist
misjudged especially in her own country.

But whilst, for these reasons, the publication of these Letters was a
duty to English literature, the son of the late Director and Directress
of the Bruxelles Pensionnat--unwarrantably supposed to have their
literal counterparts in the interesting Professor Paul Emanuel, and in
the abominable Madame Beck--might well, in view of the unintelligent and
ungenerous criticism of his parents by English readers, have refused to
recognise any obligation on his side to concern himself with the
rectification of the dull laudatory, or the malicious condemnatory,
judgments passed, from a false standpoint, on the authoress of
_Villette._

We find Dr. Paul Heger able to rise entirely above all personal rancour,
and to recognise that Charlotte Brontë herself is not to be made
responsible because a good many of her critics have blundered. Indeed,
the conduct of the whole Heger family since the publication of
_Villette_, and the death of Charlotte Brontë, has been distinguished by
this fine spirit of disinterestedness; and by a dignified indifference
to undeserved reproaches. The answer to all charges, of unkindness to
Charlotte on Madame Heger's part, or of injudicious kindness first,
followed by heartless indifference, on M. Heger's side, was in their
hands; and they had only to publish the present Letters to establish the
facts as they really were. But this could not have been done in the time
when _Villette_ appeared, nor even immediately after Charlotte's death,
without wounding others. _Villette_ appeared in 1853. In 1854 Charlotte,
then in her fortieth year, married the Rev. A.B. Nicholls; and she died
less than a year after this marriage. Mr. Nicholls survived her more
than forty years. No doubt he would have been wounded in his
sensibilities by the disclosure of his late wife's entirely honourable,
but very romantic and passionate earlier attachment to somebody else.
Intimate personal friends of Charlotte, also, would have been afflicted,
not by her revelations, but by the commentaries upon them that a
certain type of critic would have infallibly indulged in. Whilst these
conditions lasted, the Heger family scrupulously refrained from
publishing these documents. Twenty years ago, when I was collecting the
materials for my article published in the _Woman at Home_, and when, in
the light of my own recollection of M. and Madame Heger, as their former
pupil, I endeavoured to rectify, what _I knew to be_, false impressions
about their relationships with Charlotte Brontë, I was told by my
honoured and dearly loved friend, Mademoiselle Louise Heger, about the
existence of these Letters; _but they were not shown me._ And I was
further assured that, whilst they would be carefully preserved, they
would not be published, until every one had disappeared who could in any
way be offended by their disclosure. After the lapse of more than half a
century since Charlotte's death, these conditions have now been reached.
And in his admirable Letter to the Principal Librarian of the British
Museum, Dr. Paul Heger explains his reasons for making this present to
the English people of documents entirely honourable to the character of
one of our great writers, and that explain the emotions and experiences
that formed her genius:

'Sir,--In the name of my sisters and myself' (thus runs the opening
sentence of the Letter reprinted in the _Times_), 'as the
representatives of the late M. Constantin Heger, I beg leave to offer to
the British Museum, as the official custodian on behalf of the British
People, the Letters of Charlotte Brontë, which the great Novelist
addressed to our Father. These four important Letters, which have been
religiously preserved, may be accepted as revealing the soul of the
gifted author whose genius is the pride of England. We have hesitated
long as to whether these documents, so private, so intimate, should be
scanned by the public eye. We have been deterred from offering them
sooner, by the thought that, perhaps, the publicity involved in the gift
might be considered incompatible with the sensitive nature of the artist
herself. But we offer them the more readily, as they lay open the true
significance of what has hitherto been spoken of as the "Secret of
Charlotte Brontë," and show how groundless is the suspicion which has
resulted from the natural speculations of critics and biographers; to
the disadvantage of both parties to the one-sided correspondence. We
then, admirers of her genius and personality, venture to propose that we
may have the honour of placing these Letters in your hands; making only
the condition that they may be preserved for the use of the nation.'

'Doubtless,' continues Dr. Paul Heger, when dealing with the actual
relations between Charlotte and the Director and Directress of the
school in the Rue d'Isabelle, 'Doubtless, my parents played an important
part in the life of Charlotte Brontë: but she did not enter into their
lives as one would imagine from what passes current to-day. That is
evident enough from the very circumstances of life, so different for
her, and for them. There is nothing in these Letters that is not
entirely honourable to their author, as to him to whom they are
addressed. It is better to lay bare the very innocent mystery, than to
let it be supposed that there is anything to hide. I hope that the
publication of these Letters will bring to an end a legend which has
never had any real existence in fact. I hope so: _but legends are more
tenacious of life than sober reality_.'

The last observation shows that Dr. Paul Heger, an experienced
_littérateur_, foresaw what has actually happened, and that the
defenders of the two 'legends' of Charlotte Brontë, patronised by
writers who derive the authority for their opinions about her, not from
the study of the facts of her life and character, but from their own
impressions and convictions, are not going to admit that the legends are
overthrown, simply because it has been proved that they are founded upon
mistakes. At the same time, no statement can be more true than that
'facts are stubborn things,' and that, when these 'stubborn things' are
found arrayed in stern and uncompromising opposition to the impressions
and convictions of the most accomplished psychological theorists--well,
it is the psychological theorists who must give way.

And this is the situation that has to be faced to-day by critics of
Charlotte Brontë, who have either formed their opinions about her in the
light of their impression that _Villette_ represents an autobiographical
study, or else who have founded their judgments of her personality and
genius as a writer upon their conviction that it is a '_silly and
offensive imputation_' to suppose that her sentiment for M. Heger was a
warmer feeling than the esteem and gratitude a clever pupil owes an
accomplished professor.

In connection with the tenacity of life of this last theory (after the
publication of the evidence which proves it is a mistake), we have to
consider with serious attention the account rendered in the _Times_ of
the 30th July 1913, of an interview with Mr. Clement Shorter, known to
be the most distinguished supporter, in the past, of the doctrine that
Charlotte's sentiment for Professor Heger was 'literary enthusiasm,' and
nothing more. And this serious attention is needed, because, in Mr.
Clement Shorter's case, it is not allowable to dismiss lightly the
judgment of a critic who (after Mrs. Gaskell) has done more than
any one else to throw light upon the family history of the Brontës,
and also upon and around those three interesting and touching
personalities--Emily, Anne, and, the greatest of them all, Charlotte,
amongst the familiar scenes and personages of their environment at
Haworth, both before and after they had conquered their unique place in
English literature. One cannot for a moment suppose that Mr. Clement
Shorter wilfully refuses to see things as they really are, simply
because it pleases him to see them differently? No! One realises
perfectly that, as with Mrs. Gaskell fifty-seven years ago, _so_ with
this modern conscientious and generous critic to-day there exists an
entirely noble, and, _from a given point of view_, justifiable reason,
for refusing to handle or examine a matter with which (so it is alleged)
historical and literary criticism has no concern--a purely personal, and
intimate secret sorrow, in the life of an admirable woman of genius; the
sanctuary of whose inner feelings it is by no means necessary to
explore: and still less necessary to throw open to the vulgar curiosity
and malevolent insinuations of a generation of critics, infected with
hero-phobia, and the unwholesome delight of discovering '_a good deal to
reprobate and even more to laugh at_,' in the sensibility of men and
women of genius, who have honoured the human race, and enriched the
world, _because_ they have possessed through power of feeling, power
also of doing fine work, that the critics who find much in them 'to
reprobate and more to laugh at' have not the power even to appreciate.
Now, _if_ the point of view of Mrs. Gaskell and Mr. Clement Shorter were
a correct one, with all my heart and soul I, for my part, should approve
of their action in slamming the door in the face of invading facts that
threatened to leave the way open for scandal-hunters and hero-phobists
to enter with them, and to deal with the honoured reputation of
Charlotte Brontë in the same way that--more to the discredit of English
letters than to that of two French writers of genius--recent critics
have dealt with the love-letters of Madame de Staël and George Sand.

This point of view, however, is a mistaken one in the present case,
because, to commence with, Charlotte Brontë's romantic love for M. Heger
affords no game to the scandal-hunter; but, on the contrary, it is
serviceable to the just appreciation of her character, as well as of her
genius, that her true sentiment for her Professor--_that explains her
attitude of mind when writing 'Villette'_--should be rightly understood.
Then also, whilst Madame de Staël's infatuation for Benjamin Constant
neither adds to nor diminishes her claims, as the authoress of _Corinne_
and _de l'Allemagne_, to the rank of a fine writer and a great critic,
and while George Sand's tormenting and tormented love for the ill-fated,
irresistible, unstable 'child of his century,' de Musset, is a poignant
revelation of the passing weakness (through immense tenderness) of a
splendidly strong and independent spirit, that one is almost ashamed to
be made the spectator of, Charlotte Brontë's valorous martyrdom,
undergone secretly and silently, and 'rewarded openly,' fills one with
an extraordinary sentiment of respect for her: and justifies Mr. Clement
Shorter's own fine and generous utterances upon the impression that the
Letters that betray the anguish she endured, and overcame, alone,
produces upon him.

'_Charlotte Brontë_,' said Mr. Clement Shorter, by the report of an
interviewer who recorded his opinions in the _Times_, 30th July,
immediately after the publication of these Letters, '_is one of the
noblest figures in life as well as in literature; and these Letters
place her on a higher pedestal than ever_.'

Let me quote from the same report in the _Times_ the further statement
of his opinions given by this well-known critic, as to the sentiments
revealed in these Letters:

     'Mr. Shorter,' affirmed the interviewer, 'welcomed the
     publication of the letters in the _Times_ "as giving the
     last and final word on an old and needless controversy."
     "Personally," he said, "I have always held the view that
     those letters were actuated only by the immense enthusiasm
     of a woman desiring comradeship and sympathy with a man of
     the character of Professor Heger. There was no sort of
     great sorrow on her part because Professor Heger was a
     married man, and it is plain in her letters that she merely
     desired comradeship with a great man. When Charlotte Brontë
     made her name famous with her best-known novel, she
     experienced much the same adulation from admirers of both
     sexes as she had already poured upon her teacher. She found
     that literary comradeship she desired in half a dozen male
     correspondents to whom she addressed letters in every way as
     interesting as those written by her to Professor Heger.
     There is nothing in those letters of hers, published now for
     the first time, that any enthusiastic woman might not write
     to a man double her age, who was a married man with a
     family, and who had been her teacher. When one considers
     that half a dozen writers have, in the past, declared that
     Charlotte Brontë was in love with Professor Heger, it is a
     surprising thing that Dr. Heger did not years ago publish
     the letters. They are a complete vindication both of her and
     of his father, and, as such, I welcome them, as I am sure
     must all lovers of the Brontës."'

In his first contention Mr. Clement Shorter is undeniably right: it _is_
quite true that '_the publication of these Letters places Charlotte
Brontë on a higher pedestal than ever_.' But why is this true? _Because
these are love-letters of a very rare and wonderful character_; because
the passionate tragical emotion that throbs through them is a love that,
recognised as hopeless, as unrequited, makes only one claim; that,
_precisely because it makes no other_, it has a right to be accepted and
to live. Now this sort of love is a _very rare and wonderful emotion,
that only a noble being can feel; and that although it is hopeless,
tragical, is nevertheless a splendid fact, that renders it absurd to
deny that sublime unselfishness is a capacity of human nature_. And,
again, these letters place Charlotte Brontë 'on a higher pedestal than
ever,' because in them her vocation and gift of expressing her own
emotions in a way that makes them 'vibrate' in us like living feelings
is here carried to its height. So that these personal letters, more even
than the pictured emotions of Lucy Snowe, stand out as a record of
romantic love that (in so far as I know) has never before been rivalled.
It is true we have the romantic love-letters of Abelard and Héloïse, and
the letters in the _New Héloïse_ of Saint-Preux to Julie, and of Julie
to Saint-Preux, after their separation, as beautiful examples of love
surviving hope of happiness; and Sainte-Beuve has quoted, as examples of
the tragical disinterested passion of a love that claims no return, but
only the right to exist, the letters of some eighteenth-century women:
Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, Madame de la Popelinière, and Mademoiselle
d'Aissé. But in none of these historic love-letters (so, at least, it
seems to me) does one feel, with the same truth and strength as in these
recently published letters of Charlotte Brontë to M. Heger, the
'vibration' of this tragical, hopeless, romantic love, that asks for
nothing but acceptance, that does not 'seek its own'--the love that only
asks to give, compared with which all other sorts of love, that _do_
seek their own and claim return, are as sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal.

But now, if we were to accept the view of these letters, that they do
not express love at all, but merely the writer's '_desire of comradeship
with a great man_': and that '_after she had become famous "she found
that literary comradeship she desired, in half a dozen male
correspondents, to whom she addressed letters in every way as
interesting as those written by her to M. Heger_"'; and that '_there is
nothing in these letters that any enthusiastic woman might not write to
a man double her age, who was a married man with a family, and who had
been her teacher_'--if we could accept all these views, could we _then_
hold the opinion that 'the publication of these letters places Charlotte
on a higher pedestal than ever'?

It seems to me, on the contrary, that _then_ we should find ourselves
compelled to admit that Charlotte Brontë had fallen very much in our
esteem as a result of the publication of these Letters. For whilst
romantic love is a noble sentiment that does honour to the heart that
feels it, an '_immense enthusiasm for literary comradeship with great
men_' is not _necessarily_, nor generally even, a commendable sentiment.
It is very often merely a rather vulgar and selfish persistency in
claiming the time and attention of busy people who don't want the
comradeship; and I suppose there are very few people in the least degree
famous who have not been rightly harassed by the 'enthusiasm' of
professing admirers who have nothing to do themselves, and who want
busy men or women of letters to correspond with them. And if a desire of
comradeship with M. Heger had really been the sentiment and motive of
Charlotte's letters to him, after she left Bruxelles, then the fact that
she continued to write to him although he did not answer her letters
would prove that she was insisting upon being the 'comrade' of some one
who did not want her. Again, if the tone and terms of these Letters to
M. Heger in 1845 were the same that she employed with '_half a dozen
other male correspondents_,' after she became a famous writer, well
Charlotte _would_ fall in our estimation, both as a writer, who ought to
know how to avoid extravagant language, and as a self-respecting woman
who should not have allowed her enthusiasm for literary comradeship to
induce her to repeat experiences that, without loss of dignity, one
cannot pass through more than once in a lifetime.

Happily, however, attention to facts proves that none of the conditions
that, if they had existed, would have rendered the writing of these
Letters discreditable to Charlotte's reputation, can be accepted as in
the least credible. It is not credible that her sentiment for M. Heger
was that of intellectual enthusiasm for a great man double her age;
because, to begin with, M, Heger was _not_ double Charlotte Brontë's
age, but only seven years her senior. About this question there can be
no dispute. M. Heger was born in 1809; and Charlotte Brontë in 1816. In
1844 Charlotte then was twenty-eight, and M. Heger thirty-five years of
age, and given the fact that women lose their youth first, M. Heger had
precisely the age that would render him most sympathetic to a woman who
was still young but who had left girlhood behind her. Again, M. Heger
was not a '_Great Man_,' in the sense of being either a celebrity, or an
original genius with gifts or qualities of an order calculated to kindle
intellectual hero-worship; and he was further a dictatorial and
ingrained Professor, the very last person on earth to offer literary
comradeship to a former pupil. The Director of the Pensionnat in the Rue
d'Isabelle, and the former _Préfet des Études_ at the Brussels
_Athénée_ (who had resigned this post when religious instruction, made a
free subject, was excluded, as a compulsory Catholic training from the
college curriculum) was a man of talent, who had weight in Catholic
circles, and was recognised in his character of a Professor as one with
an admirable gift for teaching, even by the enemies of his religious
convictions; but he was not in any way, save as a teacher, a
distinguished or famous personage; and in all probability if this
English writer of genius had not immortalised him in the character of
'Paul Emanuel,' M. Heger would not have outlived the affectionate and
respectful remembrance of his family and personal friends.

The method of testing the question of whether intellectual enthusiasm,
or tragical romantic love is the sentiment revealed in these Letters is
_to read the Letters themselves--in the light of a true impression of
the real relationships (when they were written) between Charlotte Brontë
and M. Heger_, that is to say in the first twelve months that followed
Charlotte's farewell to the Director and the Directress of the
Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle, in January 1844. And to obtain this
right impression, we have to see what had taken place, to alter the
original entirely friendly terms between Madame Heger and the English
under-mistress, who during the first year of her stay in Brussels had
been a parlour-boarder:--for the story told in _Villette_ of Lucy
Snowe's arrival at the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle late at night,
and with no place of shelter, having lost her box and been robbed of her
purse on the voyage, is, to start with, an incident that has no place in
the true history.



CHAPTER III

CHARLOTTE'S LAST YEAR AT BRUSSELS

1842-43


What were Charlotte Brontë's real relationships with Monsieur and Madame
Heger when, in January 1844, she bade them, what was to prove, a final
farewell? This is what has to be understood before we can read with a
full sense of their true meaning the tragical impassioned Letters to M.
Heger, written within the first two years of Charlotte's return to
England, Letters that not only place the authoress of _Jane Eyre_ and
_Villette_ (as a devotee, and an exponent of Romantic love) on a 'higher
pedestal than ever,' but that, also, explain at what cost of personal
anguish she attained as a writer her extraordinary power of translating
emotions into words, that, by the impression they produce retranslate
themselves to her readers' imagination and sensibilities as feelings.

We have always to remember that the relationships between Charlotte and
her former Professor were not those that existed between Lucy Snowe and
her 'Master.' Paul Emanuel was unmarried, and in love with Lucy,
although Madame Beck and the Jesuit, Père Silas,--and in the end
Destiny--prevented the love-story from reaching a happy ending.

Nor were these relationships, as the facts of the case reveal them,
those imagined by Mr. Clement Shorter; where '_it was no cause of grief
to Charlotte that M. Heger was married_,' because her enthusiasm for him
was that of simple hero-worship for a great man. Nor yet were these
relationships, when she left Bruxelles in 1844 (nor had they been for
some ten months before that date), the same relationships (of trustful
friendship on the one hand and sympathetic interest on the other) that
had existed between Charlotte and the Director and Directress of the
Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle when, a year earlier (in January 1843),
Charlotte had returned to Bruxelles alone, _in response to Madame's as
well as Monsieur's invitation_, to perfect her own French, and to
receive a small salary as English Mistress. These first relationships
had continued untroubled for the first few months after Charlotte's
return. Thus, in March 1843, writing to her friend Ellen Nussey, she
qualifies her complaints of loneliness in the Pensionnat (without the
companionship she had enjoyed the previous year of her dearly loved
sister Emily) by reference to the kindness of Madame, as well as of
Monsieur Heger.

'As I told you before,' she writes, 'M. and Madame Heger are the only
two persons in the house for whom I really experience regard and esteem;
and of course I cannot be always with them, nor even very often. They
told me, when I first returned, that I was to consider their
sitting-room my sitting-room, and to go there whenever I was not engaged
in the schoolroom. This, however, I cannot do. In the daytime it is a
public room, where music-masters and mistresses are constantly passing
in and out; and in the evening I will not, and ought not, to intrude on
M. and Madame Heger and their children. Thus I am a good deal by
myself; but that does not signify. I now regularly give English lessons
to M. Heger and his brother-in-law. They get on with wonderful rapidity,
especially the first.[1]

So that, up to this date, no cloud is visible. But by May 29 there is a
cloud above the horizon. It is no bigger than 'a man's hand' as yet: but
it is charged with electricity, and one knows the storm is gathering.
This time Charlotte is writing to Emily, _who never liked M. Heger for
her part_. 'Things wag on much as usual here, only Mlle. Blanche and
Mlle. Haussé are at present on a system of war without quarter. They
hate each other like two cats. Mlle. Blanche frightens Mlle. Haussé by
her white passions, for they quarrel venomously; Mlle. Haussé complains
that when Mlle. Blanche is in a fury "_elle n'a pas de lèvres_." I find
also that Mlle. Sophie dislikes Mlle. Blanche extremely. She says she is
heartless, insincere and vindictive, which epithets, I assure you, are
richly deserved. _Also I find she is the regular spy of Madame Heger,
to whom she reports everything. Also she invents, which I should not
have thought_. I am [not] richly off for companionship in these parts.
_Of late days, M. and Madame Heger rarely speak to me; and I really
don't pretend to care a fig for anybody else in the establishment_. You
are not to suppose by that expression that I am under the influence of
_warm_ affection for Madame Heger. _I am convinced she does not like me:
why, I can't tell_. (O Charlotte!) _Nor do I think she herself has any
definite reason for this aversion_.(!) But for one thing, she cannot
understand why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche,
Sophie and Haussé. M. Heger is wondrously influenced by Madame: and I
should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of
sociability. He has already given me a brief lecture on universal
_bienveillance_; and perceiving that I don't improve in consequence, I
fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone, left
to the error of her ways, and consequently he has, in a great measure,
withdrawn the light of his countenance; and I get on from day to day,
in a Robinson Crusoe like condition, very lonely. That does not signify;
in other respects I have nothing substantial to complain of, nor is even
this a cause of complaint. _Except for the loss of M. Heger's goodwill
(if I have lost it,) I care for none of 'em_.'[2]

Let us see what this letter, written eight months before Charlotte left
Bruxelles, tells us about the altered facts of the relationships between
herself and the Directress and Director of the School. First, it is no
longer Monsieur and Madame Heger who are the only people Charlotte cares
about in the establishment, _but it is only the goodwill of M. Heger
that she would grieve to lose_. And Madame Heger, who so kindly invited
her to consider the family sitting-room hers, now takes no notice of
her, and, Charlotte knows it, has taken an aversion to her. And when M.
Heger says, 'Don't you think, "Mees Charlotte," who is lonely without
her sister Emily, should be taken more notice of?' Madame Heger replies
coldly: '_If "Mees" is lonely, it is her own fault. Why does she not
make friends with her compeers, Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Sophie and
Haussé?_ They are of her rank; they follow the same profession; no, this
young Englishwoman is full of the pride and narrowness of her race! She
is without _bienveillance_: she esteems herself better than others, she
makes her own unhappiness; _and it is not for her good to single her out
amongst the other excellent under-mistresses as we have done_. Let her
make herself friends amongst them: _let her learn to be amiable_.' And
M. Heger, who thinks there is something true in this, because his
unalterable opinion is that it belongs to the English character, and to
the Protestant creed, to be proud, narrow, unamiable and without
benevolence, lectures Charlotte in this sense. Here are the facts of the
situation in May 1843.

Now what has happened in these few months to so change the relationships
between Charlotte and Madame Heger, and to render Monsieur Heger--_under
Madame's influence_--less friendly and helpful than he had formerly
been, in his efforts to encourage the studies, and brighten by gifts of
books, and talks about them, the solitude of the English teacher? It is
not very difficult to discover the cause of the change, if only critics
with psychological insight would employ this quality, not to fabricate
problems out of false impressions, but to penetrate the true
significance of the evidence that lies open to one, of the actual
circumstances and facts.

The circumstance that explains the fact of Madame Heger's altered
conduct and feeling towards the English under-mistress whom only a few
months earlier she had invited to use her own sitting-room, and to
regard herself as a member of the family, and whom _now_ she scarcely
speaks to, and thinks should find companions with the other
under-mistresses, is a discovery that Madame probably made, before even
Charlotte herself had fully recognised what had happened. This discovery
is that a change has taken place in Charlotte's sentiment towards her
'Master in literature'; a sentiment that at first had not transgressed
the limits of a cordial and affectionate appreciation of his kindness
and of his talent and charm and power as a teacher--approved of by
Madame Heger as a becoming sentiment in this young person, convenient,
'convenable.' But as Charlotte's exclusive pleasure in M. Heger's
society and conversation increases, with her distaste for the society
and conversation of every one else with whom she is now in daily
contact, and as the charm of his original personality grows, with her
sense of the natural disparity between herself and the self-controlled
Directress, whose rule of life is respect for what is _convenient,_ in
the French sense of _la convenance_ (_i.e._ what is _becoming_) and of
revolt against the vulgarity and profligacy she finds as the
distinguishing characteristics of her fellow-governesses, this sentiment
becomes transformed (insensibly and fatally, without her knowledge or
will) into a passionate personal devotion--in other words, into a
sentiment that does transgress very seriously indeed the limits of the
sort of feeling that Madame Heger, in her double character of directress
of a highly esteemed Pensionnat de Demoiselles, and of the wife of
Monsieur Heger--esteems 'convenient,' in the case of an under-mistress
in her establishment. It was not a question of ordinary jealousy at all.
Madame Heger, a much more attractive woman than Charlotte Brontë in so
far as her personal appearance was concerned, was absolutely convinced
of the affection and fidelity of her husband, and of the entirely and
exclusively professorial interest he took in assisting this clever and
zealous and meritorious daughter of an evangelical Pastor, to qualify
herself for a schoolmistress in her own country. It was entirely a
question of the '_inconvenience_'--the unbecoming character of this
unfortunate infatuation, that renders it entirely intolerable; something
that must be got rid of at once; but as quietly as possible, without
exciting remark, and with as much consideration for this imprudent,
unhappy 'Mees Charlotte' as possible. The whole affair is a misfortune,
of course, 'un malheur': but what one has to do, now it _has_ arrived,
is to guard against even greater 'malheurs' for everybody concerned. For
'Mees Charlotte' herself, first of all--what a 'malheur' should this
'infatuation,' involuntary and blameless in intention, no doubt, but so
utterly inconvenient, betray itself in some regrettable exhibition of
feeling, most humiliating to herself, and most distressing to her only
parent, the respectable widowed evangelical Pastor in Yorkshire! And
then for the Pensionnat, what a 'malheur' should any gossip arise: and
what sort of an effect would it produce upon the mind of parents of
pupils, who most naturally would object to the knowledge of the
existence even of a sentiment so inconvenient as this being brought to
the knowledge of their young daughters? And confronted with these
perils, Madame Heger's conclusion upon the only way of avoiding them, is
really not a very unreasonable nor unkind one. It is that the sooner
'Mees Brontë' returns to her home in Yorkshire, the better for herself,
and for the interests and the tranquillity of the Director and the
Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle: who wish to sever
their relationships with her on friendly terms; who, in the future,
when she has cured herself of this unhappy extravagance (as no doubt her
good sense and excellent upbringing will assist her to do) hope to renew
their intercourse with her; but who, in the circumstances that have
arisen, think it better all intimacy should be suspended.

Nor, having formed this conclusion, was Madame Heger's method of
endeavouring to force Charlotte to adopt it also, either wilfully unkind
or inconsiderate. Her method was to convey forcibly to Charlotte's
knowledge _without any needless humiliating explanations_, that she, the
Directress of the Pensionnat where Charlotte was under-mistress, has
penetrated the secret of her feelings towards M. Heger, and consequently
that the old terms between herself and Charlotte have become impossible,
and that the necessity has arisen to assert her claims and to establish
the rules that must be observed in the ordering of the Pensionnat and of
the staff of teachers for which she is responsible. Without discussions
or recriminations in connection with the reasons for this decision,
these mere reasons, well known to Miss Brontë herself, convince her
that it is not convenient 'Mees' should continue a teacher, or even an
inmate, in her school any more; and surely this circumstance alone
should point out to 'Mees' herself, what she ought to do? Let her do
this, let her take the opportunity offered her of relieving Madame Heger
of the painful necessity of touching upon distressing subjects, and the
secret they share shall never be made known to any one, _not even to M.
Heger himself_, who is entirely unconscious of it. An explanation could
easily be found by 'Mees' for the necessity of her return to
England:--her aged father's infirmities, the establishment of the school
that she is now qualified to manage, etc.--and all this matter will
arrange itself quietly. _To bring Charlotte to dismiss herself_ was
Madame Heger's purpose: but in view of the slowness and reluctance of
this obstinate Englishwoman to recognise what was 'becoming,' and
expected from her, the immediate object became to guard against any
self-betrayal by Charlotte of her state of feeling to other members of
the establishment, _and especially to M. Heger,_ whom Madame knew to be
entirely innocent of any warm feeling resembling romantic sentiment for
the homely but intelligent and zealous Englishwoman, whose progress
under his instruction and capacity for appreciating good literature made
her interesting to him as a pupil, whilst her meritorious courage in
working to qualify herself to earn her own bread as an instructress
herself claimed his approval--but whom he had not as yet suspected of a
tragical passion for him. _And Madame Heger esteemed it most undesirable
he should ever make the discovery._ And _therefore_ her immediate care
was to guard against the occasion of such a revelation being given: and
_therefore_ she endeavours to stop private lessons given by M. Heger to
Charlotte, or English lessons given by her in return; _therefore_ too,
she works to prevent any intercourse or meetings between the Professor
and this particular pupil, outside of the presence of spectators and
listeners, whose unsympathetic but attentive eyes and ears will impose
restraint upon this extravagant Charlotte; so little under the control
of good sense and respect for what is becoming.

But now these tactics followed by Madame Heger, although from her own
point of view they were as considerate and judicious as the interests of
Charlotte, the Pensionnat, and 'convenience' permitted, and although no
personal jealousy, vindictiveness nor malice entered into them,
nevertheless _from Charlotte's point of view_ were intolerable and
cruel; and the torments they inflicted upon her during the long seven
months she lived through this incessant conflict with Madame Heger,
under cover of an outer show of politeness on both sides, were precisely
the same torments of cheated expectancy, suspense, thwarted hope,
disappointments, that she has painted in _Villette_, and the
_Professor_, as inflicted upon the hapless governesses Lucy Snowe and
Frances Henri, by those two cruel, pitiless head-mistresses Madame Beck
and Mlle. Zoraïde Reuter. Yes:--but there was all the difference in the
world between the circumstances arranged by the authoress in her two
novels, and the circumstances as a mischievous destiny had entangled
them in the true history.

In the stories made to please her fancy by Charlotte, we have in
_Villette_ Paul Emanuel unmarried--and in love with Lucy Snowe; but by
the base contrivances of Madame Beck, a Jesuit priest, Père Silas, has
been called in, to stir up superstitious dread of allying himself with a
heretic in the mind of the good Catholic that Paul was, and so prevent
him from carrying through certain tentative indications of the state of
his affections that have awakened and justified the passionate but timid
and self-despising Lucy Snowe. Nothing then can be more plain than the
position here--Paul Emanuel and Lucy Snowe are being divided, and
trouble is being created, by a horrid, jealous, mischievous Madame Beck,
who wants Paul Emanuel to marry her, although she knows he loves Lucy,
and that Lucy is in love with him, but too little self-confident, too
feeble, in her dependent position, to assert her claims. In the
_Professor_ it is much the same case, only Mlle. Zoraïde Reuter is more
of a cat than Madame Beck, and less an evil genius, who demands
admiration for her cleverness whilst Mlle. Zoraïde, who makes coarse
love to the Professor, provokes contempt.

Well but now here is the real case. Madame Heger knows that here is the
English daughter of an Evangelical Pastor, who (although she is old
enough to look after herself), is nevertheless under her (Madame's)
protection, and behold this young woman has taken it into her head to
conceive a most inconvenient infatuation for her husband, M. Heger! Now
how is one to meet this situation in the best way for everybody? Happily
the secret lies between herself and Mees Charlotte: it rests with Mees
to take herself out of harm's way: and all is safe. But that is what she
will not do. So here you have the position: this grown-up, obstinate
Englishwoman, with her 'inconvenient' passion, always on the verge of
exhibiting her sentiments in a way that may inform M. Heger--who is the
best of men; most honourable, but still a man--who may or may not see
how serious this is: who may tell one, 'Let _me_ talk reason to her,'
which is the last course to take! It is true, Madame will have said to
herself, 'I might take matters into my hands; and since she has no sense
of 'convenience' herself, I might say: 'Mees, I exact this of you:
_immediately_ you make up your trunks, and return to Yorkshire; you
start to-morrow.' Yes, but what happens then? There are
observations,--indignation is excited. M. Heger will say to me, 'What
now is this sudden attitude you take up towards Mees? it is not just.'
And if I explain, he may say: 'You imagine things; you women are not
good to each other.' Or he may say: 'Let _me talk to Mees Charlotte_,'
and then there will be _attaques de nerfs_--who can say? No, there is
only one thing to do: as this Englishwoman has not herself any sense of
'convenience.' We must be patient until the end of the year, when her
term is finished. _Then she goes_, arrive what may. And, meanwhile, one
must support it; only she must not meet M. Heger alone: and one must
constantly take precautions, in this sense, against scenes.'

Well, was there anything very cruel, or hard-hearted, or vindictive, in
Madame Heger's conduct? If you are a psychologist, put yourself in her
place. What could she have done with this entanglement of circumstances,
all menacing what she most valued, a watchful preservation of
'convenience,' most necessary in a Pensionnat de _Jeunes Filles_ of high
repute? If any one will suggest a plan that would have been more
considerate to Charlotte than the one she took, I should very much like
to hear what plan? Even then, in the light of what I know of Madame
Heger's incapability of a deliberate desire to torture, or inflict
severe punishment on any pupil, or teacher, or living thing, I should
still protest confidently that in all she did--that sweet and kind old
schoolmistress of mine--in the days when she was twenty years younger
than when I knew her--she _meant_ to be considerate and kind.

Without attempting to decide who, between Charlotte and Madame Heger,
was to blame, or whether either of them were to blame, here, at any
rate, we have the conditions of feeling between these two women: each
exasperated against the other, under the strain of a forced politeness,
during the last seven months of Charlotte's residence in Bruxelles. No
doubt, for both of them the strain was great. All this time (without
saying it out aloud) Madame Heger was forcing upon Charlotte's
attention, the '_inconvenience_' of her presence in the Pensionnat; the
necessity for her return to England. All this time Charlotte--outwardly
compliant with all the demands made upon her, that keep her writing
letters at Madame's dictation (_in the hours when Monsieur is giving his
lessons in class_), that send her upon messages to the other end of
Bruxelles (_upon holidays when Monsieur's habit is to trim the vine
above the Berceau in the garden_)--all this time, Charlotte's bitter
protest spoke out in the gaze she fastened on the Directress: 'Merciless
woman that you are! _you_ who have everything; who are his wife, the
mother of his children, whom he loves; who will enjoy his conversation
and his society, and the pleasant home you share with him, all your
life; and who grudge me--I, who have nothing of all this, but who love
him more--I, who in a few months must go out into the dark world,
without the light his presence is to me; without the music his voice
makes for me; without the delight his conversation is to my mind, and
the complete satisfaction his society brings to my whole nature--and you
grudge me these few months of happiness? Rich and cruel woman, who, in
your selfish life possess all this, you are more cruel than Dives was to
Lazarus; you grudge me even the crumbs that fall from your table.'


[1] _Life of C.B._, p. 254.

[2] _Life_, p. 258.



CHAPTER IV

THE CONFESSIONS AT ST. GUDULE


We are now in a position to realise the emotions and experiences that
lasted up to the eve of Charlotte's return to England. But there are two
events that vary the incessant conflict with Madame Heger; and that help
to form the basis of real experiences, expressed in the portraits (that
are not historical pictures) of Zoraïde Reuter and of Madame Beck. These
two events also re-appear, as scenes in _Villette, that did not take
place in the way the authoress relates_ them; but that put us in
possession of the parallel facts in Charlotte's true career: where she
felt the very same emotions she describes in the novel. The first event
gives us the actual, the original history, of what in _Villette_
reappears in the imaginary account of Lucy Snowe's Confession: and
serves there to introduce us to the Jesuit who is half a spy and half a
saint--Père Silas. In Charlotte's life the event, as it is related by
her in a letter to Emily, took place during that long and solitary
vacation in the empty Pensionnat, where, from August to October 1843,
Charlotte was left to face the position now made for her by Madame
Heger's discovery of the Secret that, possessed by her enemy, could not
remain hidden from Charlotte herself.

Charlotte's letter to Emily begins by describing the desolation of this
large house, with its deserted class-rooms, and silent garden, and
galérie, and for her solitary companion only the repulsive-minded and
malicious Mademoiselle Blanche, whom she has described in an earlier
letter as a spy of Madame Heger's.

'I should inevitably,' she writes, 'fall into the gulf of low spirits if
I stayed always by myself.... Yesterday I went on a pilgrimage to the
cemetery, and far beyond it, on to a hill where there was nothing but
fields as far as the horizon. When I came back it was evening, but I had
such a repugnance to return to the house which contained nothing that I
cared for, that I kept treading the narrow streets in the neighbourhood
of the Rue d'Isabelle, and avoiding it. I found myself opposite to _Ste.
Gudule_; and the bell, whose voice you know, began to toll for evening
_salût_. I went in quite alone (which procedure you will say is not much
like me), wandered about the aisles (where a few old women were saying
their prayers), till vespers. I stayed till they were over. Still I
could not leave the church nor force myself to go home--to school, I
mean. _An odd whim_ came into my head. In a solitary part of the
cathedral six or seven people still remained, kneeling by the
Confessionals. In two Confessionals I saw a Priest. I felt as if I did
not care what I did, provided it was not absolutely wrong, and that it
served to vary my life and yield a moment's interest. I took a fancy to
change myself into a Catholic, and go and make _a real Confession_ to
see what it was like. Knowing me as you do, you will think this odd,
_but when people are by themselves they have singular fancies_. A
penitent was occupied in confessing. They do not go into the sort of pew
or cloister the priest occupies, but kneel down on the steps and
confess through a grating. Both the confessor and the penitent whisper
very low: you can hardly hear their voices. After I had watched two or
three penitents go, and return, I approached at last, and knelt down in
a niche which was just vacated. I had to kneel there ten minutes
waiting, for on the other side was another penitent, invisible to me. At
last that one went away, and a little wooden door inside the grating
opened and I saw the Priest leaning his ear toward me. I was obliged to
begin, and yet I did not know a word of the formula with which they
always commence their confessions!... I began by saying I was a
foreigner and had been brought up as a Protestant. The Priest asked if I
was a Protestant then. I somehow could not tell a lie, and said yes. He
replied that in that case I could not "_jouir du bonheur de la
confesse_," but _I was determined to confess_, and at last he said he
would allow me, because it might be the first step towards returning
towards the true Church. _I actually did confess--a real Confession_.
When I had done he told me his address, and said that every morning I
was to go to the Rue du Parc to his house, and he would reason with me
and try to convince me of the error and enormity of being a Protestant.
I promised faithfully. Of course, however, the adventure stops here: and
_I hope I shall never see the Priest again_. I think you had better not
tell Papa this. He will not understand that it was _only a freak_, and
will perhaps think I am going to turn Catholic.'

Only 'a freak'?--an 'odd whim'? Even without the knowledge of the
special facts we now possess, could any serious student of Charlotte
Brontë believe it? Given what we know of her seriousness, of her
religious temper, that cannot take spiritual things lightly, of her
rational Protestant piety, of her antipathy to Catholic formulas--given
all this as characteristic of her aspirations,--and as characteristics
of her personality, shyness, and reserve carried almost to
morbidness--can any one believe that mere _ennui_, a craving for
variety, excitement, flung this normally shamefaced, timid Englishwoman
down on her knees, on the stone steps of the Sainte Gudule
Confessional; inspired her with the determination needed to withstand
the Priest's objections to allow her, as a Protestant, _de jouir du
bonheur de la confesse_; compelled her to insist upon her claim, by
virtue of her dire need of this '_happiness_' (or at any rate of this
_relief_) of unburthening her soul by a 'real Confession'? A _real_
Confession--of _what_? What crime has this poor innocent Charlotte on
her conscience that stands in such need of confession? No crime, we may
be sure. Only the weight, the misery of this tragic 'Secret'; too
intimate, too sacred to be confided even to those nearest to her,--even
to Emily. But now that her 'enemy' holds it, too grievous a secret to
remain unshared with Some One, who is not an enemy, nor yet a friend--a
stranger, who will not blush nor tremble for her, will not see her
whilst she whispers through the grating: whom she will not see, or meet
again;--Some One, who by profession, is God's Delegate of Mercy to
deliver the unwilling offender, who repents him of his secret sins,
Some One who is pledged, when he has given pardon and consolation,
_never to betray what he has heard--to forget it even_. Some One who,
experienced in offering counsel and consolation, may (who can say?)
offer some comfort or advice, assisting her to extricate herself from
the snare into which she has fallen, and to recover safety.

Does one not know what the 'Confession,' whispered through the grating,
really was? Or can one doubt what the Priest's advice was? Was it not
necessarily the same advice so urgently forced upon her by Madame Heger?
She must escape from the peril of temptation: she must not show this
tragic passion any mercy: she must break this spell: she must go back to
England. She felt she could not do this thing of herself without 'God's
special grace preventing her'? Therefore she must diligently seek to
obtain this grace _by the aid of the Holy Catholic Church_--and she must
call in the Rue du Parc--next morning. In so far as the last
recommendation went, we know Charlotte did not follow it. _The
adventure_--as she says herself, _stopped there_. Nor is there anything
in her own story to indicate the existence of any real Jesuit, taking
the place of the mischief-making Saint, Père Silas, familiar to readers
of _Villette_. The Priest of Ste. Gudule comes to us as a more
impressive personage just because Charlotte _never met him again._

But his advice remained vividly present to her recollection we may feel
sure. On the 23rd October, about a month after this event, she writes
once more to Ellen Nussey:--

'It is a curious position to be so utterly solitary in the midst of
numbers. One day lately I felt as if I could bear it no longer _and I
went to Madame Heger and gave her notice. If it had depended upon her I
should certainly have soon been at liberty. But M. Heger having heard of
what was in agitation, sent for me the day after and pronounced with
vehemence his decision that I could not leave. I could not at that time
have persevered in my intentions without exciting him to anger; and
promised to stay a little while longer._'

And so what had to be done in the end was postponed: and the old hidden
enmity between Charlotte and Madame Heger went on for another three
months.



CHAPTER V

THE LEAVE-TAKING--THE SCENE IN THE
CLASS-ROOM--CHARLOTTE LEAVES BRUSSELS


Two other events that we know must have happened within a few days of
Charlotte's departure from Brussels, 2nd January 1844, are lit up by the
emotions painted in _Villette._ We cannot doubt that these emotions were
suffered by the woman of genius who describes them, because it is, not
imagination, but remembrance, that has given these pages the magical
touch of life, the 'vibration' that translates words 'into feelings,' so
that we are not readers, but witnesses, of what this tormented heart
endures.

Anguish of suspense; heart-sickness of hope deferred; despair, following
on repeated disappointment; rage and indignation at the cruelty and
injustice of this outrage done to a Love, that has wronged no one,
robbed no one, that has no desire to inflict injury on others; yet that
is refused the right that even the condemned criminal is _not_
refused,--to bid farewell to what he holds most dear on earth before he
goes forth to execution--all these feelings are painted in the wonderful
pages, where the circumstances of the story nevertheless are legendary,
and belong to the parable of Lucy Snowe: but where the sufferings Lucy
endures on the eve of her separation from Paul Emanuel were facts stored
up in the experiences of Charlotte Brontë.

Like the incident of Lucy Snowe's 'Confession,' the passages that in
_Villette_ describe the efforts made by Madame Beck and the Jesuit, Père
Silas, to prevent Paul Emanuel from bidding Lucy farewell, before he
starts for his voyage to Basseterres in Guadeloupe, are pages from the
spiritual life of Charlotte Brontë--taken out of their proper frame of
circumstances, and altered in some important details. But outside of
these alterations, one recognises their truthfulness, in the vivid light
they throw upon the facts told us in Charlotte's correspondence.

In the novel, Paul Emanuel is expected to visit the class-room at a
certain hour and to take farewell of his pupils. In connection with the
real events, it has to be remembered that Charlotte left Bruxelles on
the 2nd January, that is to say, in a period when, from Christmas day to
perhaps the 7th January, there would be holidays, and the Bruxelles
pupils would have gone to their homes. It is probable then that the
English teacher, before the breaking-up, would have taken her farewell
of her pupils in the class-rooms--this was the usual practice when a
teacher was leaving for good--and that M. Heger, whom she hoped to have
seen upon this occasion, would have been absent.

There would have been also a last lesson in class given by M. Heger
before the breaking-up for these short Christmas holidays--the last
lesson of his, that Charlotte, before she quitted the Pensionnat for
ever, would have had the chance of attending. But, _like Madame Beck_,
Madame Heger would have kept her English teacher employed in writing
letters at her dictation, in her private sitting-room, whilst this
class was going on. Like Lucy, Charlotte would have broken away at the
end, when she heard the sound of moving forms, and shutting desks,
proving the lesson ended. But here also Madame Heger would have followed
her (even as Madame Beck followed Lucy Snowe)--have kept the
under-mistress in the background, and then have taken possession of M.
Heger, on the plea of some business matter demanding his attention.

Certainly also (it seems to me) we may believe in the incident of the
scrap of paper, handed by one of the smallest girls in the school, to
Charlotte, after these two exploits of Madame Heger's diplomacy,
intended to avoid the danger--_and was not the danger real?_--of an
emotional scene of leave-taking, that might thwart her endeavour to get
Charlotte safely out of the house, without any 'inconvenient'
revelations. M. Heger may, or may not, have been as ignorant of all that
was going on between his wife and 'Mees Charlotte' as Madame Heger
desired him to be. But it would have been entirely like him, whether he
knew what was happening or not, to wish for an emotional leave-taking
with his English pupil. M. Heger liked to foster a certain amount of
sensibility in his relationships with his pupils--it did not amount to
more than a taste for dramatic situations where he had an interesting
part to play that gave his histrionic talents a good field of exercise.
But the message warning Charlotte '_that he must see her at leisure,
before she left, and talk with her at length_,' appears to me just the
sort of message M. Heger would have sent. And more especially he would
have acted thus if _in reality he had forgotten all about Charlotte's
near time of departure_ and then had suddenly remembered it, and that
'Mees' would feel hurt, and think he had behaved coldly to her. In this
case he would have tried to put himself right and to persuade her that
he had not forgotten at all, but had arranged a special opportunity for
a long talk, etc. And Charlotte believing it all, upon the strength of
this note, would have lingered on in his class-room, expecting M.
Heger,--who never appeared.


[Illustration: M. HEGER AT SIXTY (He was born in 1809: hence
thirty-four, in 1843, when Charlotte bade him farewell)]


It seems to me that, whilst it is _possible_ that Madame Heger _may_
have prevented her husband from keeping the appointment, it is also
quite _possible_ that M. Heger may have again forgotten all about it?
That would have been like him too,--as I shall show by and by.

But what I believe to have _certainly happened is that the scene between
Madame Heger and Charlotte took place just as the authoress of
'Villette' described_. That interview wears, to my mind, the stamp of
truth.

     The last day broke. Now would he visit us. Now would he come
     and speak his farewell, or he would vanish mute, and be seen
     by us nevermore.

     This alternative seemed to be present in the mind of not a
     living creature in that school. All rose at the usual hour;
     all breakfasted as usual; all, without reference to, or
     apparent thought of, their late professor, betook themselves
     with wonted phlegm to their ordinary duties.

     So oblivious was the house, so tame, so trained its
     proceedings, so inexpectant its aspect, I scarce knew how to
     breathe in an atmosphere thus stagnant, thus smothering.
     Would no one lend me a voice? Had no one a wish, no one a
     word, no one a prayer to which I could say Amen?

     I had seen them unanimous in demand for the merest trifle--a
     treat, a holiday, a lesson's remission; they could not, they
     _would_ not now band to besiege Madame Beck, and insist on a
     last interview with a master who had certainly been loved,
     at least by some--loved as _they_ could love; but, oh! what
     _is_ the love of the multitude?

     I knew where he lived; I knew where he was to be heard of or
     communicated with. The distance was scarce a stone's-throw.
     Had it been in the next room, unsummoned I could make no use
     of my knowledge. To follow, to seek out, to remind, to
     recall--for these things I had no faculty.

     M. Emanuel might have passed within reach of my arm. Had he
     passed silent and unnoticing, silent and stirless should I
     have suffered him to go by.

     Morning wasted. Afternoon came, and I thought all was over.
     My heart trembled in its place. My blood was troubled in its
     current. I was quite sick, and hardly knew how to keep at my
     post or do my work. Yet the little world round me plodded on
     indifferent; all seemed jocund, free of care, or fear, or
     thought. The very pupils who, seven days since, had wept
     hysterically at a startling piece of news, appeared quite to
     have forgotten the news, its import, and their emotion.

     A little before five o'clock, the hour of dismissal, Madame
     Beck sent for me to her chamber, to read over and translate
     some English letter she had received, and to write for her
     the answer. Before settling to this work, I observed that
     she softly closed the two doors of her chamber; she even
     shut and fastened the casement, though it was a hot day, and
     free circulation of air was usually regarded by her as
     indispensable. Why this precaution? A keen suspicion, an
     almost fierce distrust, suggested such question. Did she
     want to exclude sound? What sound?

     I listened as I had never listened before; I listened like
     the evening and winter wolf, snuffing the snow, scenting
     prey, and hearing far off the traveller's tramp. Yet I could
     both listen and write. About the middle of the letter I
     heard what checked my pen--a tread in the vestibule. No
     door-bell had rung; Rosine--acting doubtless by orders--had
     anticipated such reveille. Madame saw me halt. She coughed,
     made a bustle, spoke louder. The tread had passed on to the
     _classes_.

     'Proceed,' said Madame; but my hand was fettered, my ear
     enchained, my thoughts were carried off captive.

     The _classes_ formed another building; the hall parted them
     from the dwelling-house. Despite distance and partition, I
     heard the sudden stir of numbers, a whole division rising at
     once.

     'They are putting away work,' said madame.

     It was indeed the hour to put away work, but why that sudden
     hush, that instant quell of the tumult?

     'Wait, madam; I will see what it is.'

     And I put down my pen and left her. Left her? No. She would
     not be left. Powerless to detain me, she rose and followed,
     close as my shadow. I turned on the last step of the stair.

     'Are you coming too?' I asked.

     'Yes,' she said, meeting my glance with a peculiar aspect--a
     look clouded, yet resolute. We proceeded then, not together,
     but she walked in my steps.

     He was come. Entering the first _classe_, I saw him. There
     once more appeared the form most familiar. I doubt not they
     had tried to keep him away, but he was come.

     The girls stood in a semicircle; he was passing round,
     giving his farewells, pressing each hand, touching with his
     lips each cheek. This last ceremony foreign custom permitted
     at such a parting--so solemn, to last so long.

     I felt it hard that Madame Beck should dog me thus,
     following and watching me close. My neck and shoulder shrank
     in fever under her breath; I became terribly goaded.

     He was approaching; the semicircle was almost travelled
     round; he came to the last pupil; he turned. But Madame was
     before me; she had stepped out suddenly; she seemed to
     magnify her proportions and amplify her drapery; she
     eclipsed me; I was hid. She knew my weakness and deficiency;
     she could calculate the degree of moral paralysis, the total
     default of self-assertion, with which, in a crisis, I could
     be struck. She hastened to her kinsman, she broke upon him
     volubly, she mastered his attention, she hurried him to the
     door--the glass door opening on the garden. I think he
     looked round. Could I but have caught his eye, courage, I
     think, would have rushed in to aid feeling, and there would
     have been a charge, and, perhaps, a rescue; but already the
     room was all confusion, the semicircle broken into groups,
     my figure was lost among thirty more conspicuous. Madame had
     her will. Yes, she got him away, and he had not seen me. He
     thought me absent. Five o'clock struck, the loud dismissal
     bell rang, the school separated, the room emptied.

     There seems, to my memory, an entire darkness and
     distraction in some certain minutes I then passed alone--a
     grief inexpressible over a loss unendurable. _What_ should I
     do--oh! _what_ should I do--when all my life's hope was thus
     torn by the roots out of my riven, outraged heart?

     What I _should_ have done I know not, when a little
     child--the least child in the school--broke with its
     simplicity and its unconsciousness into the raging yet
     silent centre of that inward conflict.

     'Mademoiselle,' lisped the treble voice, 'I am to give you
     that. M. Paul said I was to seek you all over the house,
     from the _grenier_ to the cellar, and when I found you to
     give you that.'

     And the child delivered a note. The little dove dropped on
     my knee, its olive leaf plucked off. I found neither address
     nor name, only these words,--

     'It was not my intention to take leave of you when I said
     good-bye to the rest, but I hoped to see you in _classe_. I
     was disappointed. The interview is deferred. Be ready for
     me. Ere I sail, I must see you at leisure, and speak with
     you at length. Be ready. My moments are numbered, and, just
     now, monopolized; besides, I have a private business on hand
     which I will not share with any, nor communicate, even to
     you.--Paul.'

     'Be ready!' Then it must be this evening. Was he not to go
     on the morrow? Yes; of that point I was certain. I had seen
     the date of his vessel's departure advertised. Oh! _I_ would
     be ready. But could that longed-for meeting really be
     achieved? The time was so short, the schemers seemed so
     watchful, so active, so hostile. The way of access appeared
     strait as a gully, deep as a chasm; Apollyon straddled
     across it, breathing flames. Could my Greatheart overcome?
     Could my guide reach me?

     Who might tell? Yet I began to take some courage, some
     comfort. It seemed to me that I felt a pulse of his heart
     beating yet true to the whole throb of mine.

     I waited my champion. Apollyon came trailing his hell behind
     him. I think if eternity held torment, its form would not be
     fiery rack, nor its nature despair. I think that on a
     certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will
     not set, an angel entered Hades, stood, shone, smiled,
     delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a
     doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and
     hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur
     the height and compass of his promise--spoke thus, then
     towering, became a star, and vanished into his own heaven.
     His legacy was suspense--a worse born than despair.

     All that evening I waited, trusting in the dove-sent olive
     leaf, yet in the midst of my trust terribly fearing. My fear
     pressed heavy. Cold and peculiar, I knew it for the partner
     of a rarely-belied presentiment. The first hours seemed long
     and slow; in spirit I clung to the flying skirts of the
     last. They passed like drift cloud--like the rack scudding
     before a storm.

     Prayers were over; it was bed-time; my co-inmates were all
     retired. I still remained in the gloomy first _classe_,
     forgetting, or at least disregarding, rules I had never
     forgotten or disregarded before.

     How long I paced that _classe_, I cannot tell; I must have
     been afoot many hours. Mechanically had I moved aside
     benches and desks, and had made for myself a path down its
     length. There I walked, and there, when certain that the
     whole household were abed and quite out of hearing, there I
     at last wept. Reliant on night, confiding in solitude, I
     kept my tears sealed, my sobs chained, no longer. They
     heaved my heart; they tore their way. In this house, what
     grief could be sacred!

     Soon after eleven o'clock--a very late hour in the Rue
     Fossette--the door unclosed, quietly, but not stealthily; a
     lamp's flame invaded the moonlight. Madame Beck entered,
     with the same composed air as if coming on an ordinary
     occasion, at an ordinary season. Instead of at once
     addressing me, she went to her desk, took her keys, and
     seemed to seek something. She loitered over this feigned
     search long, too long. She was calm, too calm. My mood
     scarce endured the pretence. Driven beyond common rage, two
     hours since I had left behind me wonted respects and fears.
     Led by a touch and ruled by a word under usual
     circumstances, no yoke could now be borne, no curb obeyed.

     'It is more than time for retirement,' said madame. 'The
     rule of the house has already been transgressed too long.'

     Madame met no answer. I did not check my walk. When she came
     in my way I put her out of it.

     'Let me persuade you to calm, Meess; let me lead you to your
     chamber,' said she, trying to speak softly.

     'No!' I said. 'Neither you nor another shall persuade or
     lead me.'

     'Your bed shall be warmed. Goton is sitting up still. She
     shall make you comfortable. She shall give you a sedative.'

     'Madame,' I broke out, 'you are a sensualist. Under all your
     serenity, your peace, and your decorum, you are an undenied
     sensualist. Make your own bed warm and soft; take sedatives
     and meats, and drinks spiced and sweet, as much as you will.
     If you have any sorrow or disappointment (and perhaps you
     have--nay, I _know_ you have) seek your own palliatives in
     your own chosen resources. Leave me, however. _Leave me_, I
     say!'

     'I must send another to watch you, Meess; I must send
     Goton.'

     'I forbid it. Let me alone. Keep your hand off me, and my
     life, and my troubles. O madame! in _your_ hand there is
     both chill and poison. You envenom and you paralyse.'

     'What have I done, Meess? You must not marry Paul. He cannot
     marry.'

     'Dog in the manger!' I said, for I knew she secretly wanted
     him, and had always wanted him. She called him
     'insupportable'; she railed at him for a 'devot.' She did
     not love; but she wanted to marry that she might bind him to
     her interest. Deep into some of madame's secrets I had
     entered, I know not how--by an intuition or an inspiration
     which came to me, I know not whence. In the course of living
     with her, too, I had slowly learned that, unless with an
     inferior, she must ever be a rival. She was _my_ rival,
     heart and soul, though secretly, under the smoothest
     bearing, and utterly unknown to all save her and myself.

     Two minutes I stood over madame, feeling that the whole
     woman was in my power, because in some moods, such as the
     present, in some stimulated states of perception, like that
     of this instant, her habitual disguise, her mask, and her
     domino were to me a mere network reticulated with holes; and
     I saw underneath a being heartless, self-indulgent, and
     ignoble. She quietly retreated from me. Meek and
     self-possessed, though very uneasy, she said, 'If I would
     not be persuaded to take rest, she must reluctantly leave
     me.' Which she did incontinent, perhaps even more glad to
     get away than I was to see her vanish.

     This was the sole flash-eliciting, truth-extorting rencontre
     which ever occurred between me and Madame Beck; this short
     night scene was never repeated. It did not one whit change
     her manner to me. I do not know that she revenged it. I do
     not know that she hated me the worse for my fell candour. I
     think she bucklered herself with the secret philosophy of
     her strong mind, and resolved to forget what it irked her to
     remember. I know that to the end of our mutual lives there
     occurred no repetition of, no allusion to, that fiery
     passage.


Is it possible to doubt that this 'fiery passage,'--or one strangely
like it--went to the building up of the impressions and emotions that
transformed the early memories of Madame Heger, of whom Charlotte once
spoke so kindly in her letters, as a generous friend who had offered her
a post in her school more from a kind wish to help her than from selfish
motives?

We have another scene of which again, it seems to me, we cannot doubt
the autobiographical reality. If one need proof of this, it may be
found in the admirable criticism of _Villette_ by Mrs. Humphry Ward, who
judges the book exclusively as the author's _literary masterpiece_. In
this masterpiece, Mrs. Humphry Ward finds one notable flaw:--_it is this
very passage_--which the critic affirms (and no doubt she is quite
right) does not strike her as a convincing nor even as a credible
account of the sentiments or behaviour that could have belonged to Lucy
Snowe, the heroine in _Villette._ 'Lucy Snowe,' this critic complains,
'could never have broken down, never have appealed for mercy, never have
cried "_My heart will break_" before her treacherous rival Madame Beck
in Paul Emanuel's presence! A reader by virtue of the very force of the
effect produced upon him by the whole creation has a right to protest,
incredible. No woman, least of all Lucy Snowe, could have so understood
her own cause, could have so fought her own battle.'

I am ready to accept this sentence as an entirely authoritative literary
sentence, first of all on account of the unquestionable claims of the
critic who utters it to pronounce judgment on these matters; and then
because I feel myself entirely unable, by reason of my personal
acquaintanceships with the real people dressed up in strange disguises
in this book, and placed in positions that the real people never
occupied, to judge this particular novel, _Villette_, from a purely
literary standpoint. Thus I agree that Mrs. Humphry Ward is right when
she says that Lucy Snowe, _by virtue of the very force of the effect
produced by this creation_, could not have said, '_My heart will break,'
before her treacherous rival Madame Beck, in Paul Emanuel's presence_. I
admit this, because Lucy Snowe, Madame Beck and Paul Emanuel, if not
absolutely 'creations,' in the sense of being imaginary characters, are
nevertheless different people from Charlotte Brontë, Madame Heger and
Monsieur Heger, and their relationships to each other are different.
Thus, in the novel Lucy Snowe is not only in love with Paul Emanuel, but
she has a perfect right to be in love with him, not only because he is
unmarried, but also because he has given her very good reason to
believe he is in love with her: and Madame Beck has no sort of right to
interfere with the lover of her English governess, and her cousin the
Professor; and all her schemes to keep these two sympathetic creatures
apart are absolutely unjustifiable, and the results of jealousy and
selfishness. In other words, Lucy has the _beau rôle_ in the piece,--she
has no reason to say, 'My heart will break,' because Madame Beck
intrudes upon her interview with Paul Emanuel.

But Charlotte had not the _beau rôle_, but the tragic one, in the real
drama. The Directress, who stands between her and the beloved Professor,
is not her rival, but the Professor's wife. And the _beau rôle_, in the
sense of having the right to stand in the way, and also in being the
woman preferred by the man whom both women love, is Madame Heger's in
every way, for Madame Heger is charming to look at, and Charlotte plain.
Therefore it is not in the least incredible, but it seems so natural as
to be almost inevitably true, that when in the very moment that poor
Charlotte has obtained, after so much suspense and waiting, and as the
result of a heaven-sent accident, the almost despaired of chance of a
personal interview with her loved Professor, before she loses sight of
him, perhaps for ever, and when in this moment, and just when he has
taken her hand in his,... Madame Heger enters, and thrusts herself
between them, and commands her husband, _'Come, Constantin_,' and
Charlotte believes he will obey, it seems to me so eminently credible as
to be almost inevitably true, that what Charlotte describes happened,
and that _then_, in dread of this new frustration of the hope so long
deferred, an anguish that 'defied suppression' rang out in the cry 'My
heart will break!' Put oneself in Charlotte's place, and it seems to me
the emotion startled to expression by this new shock, expresses just
what one knows she felt. And, therefore, I find it myself impossible to
doubt that this account is literally true, and may and should be studied
in the light of the assurance that we have here the faithful description
of what really took place, upon the very day, perhaps, when Charlotte
left Bruxelles.

Let us leave Lucy Snowe's love-story on one side, and judge this page as
one torn out of Charlotte's life--and then decide whether it rings true.

     Shall I yet see him before he goes? Will he bear me in mind?
     Does he purpose to come? Will this day--will the next hour
     bring him? or must I again essay that corroding pain of long
     attent, that rude agony of rupture at the close, that mute,
     mortal wrench, which, in at once uprooting hope and doubt,
     shakes life, while the hand that does the violence cannot be
     caressed to pity, because absence interposes her barrier.

     It was the _Feast of the Assumption_[1]; no school was held.
     The boarders and teachers, after attending mass in the
     morning, were gone a long walk into the country to take
     their _goûter_, or afternoon meal, at some farmhouse. I did
     not go with them, for now but two days remained ere the
     _Paul et Virginie_ must sail, and I was clinging to my last
     chance, as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last
     raft or cable.

     There was some joiner-work to do in the first _classe_, some
     bench or desk to repair. Holidays were often turned to
     account for the performance of these operations, which
     could not be executed when the rooms were filled with
     pupils. As I sat solitary, purposing to adjourn to the
     garden and leave the coast clear, but too listless to fulfil
     my own intent, I heard the workmen coming.

     Foreign artisans and servants do everything by couples. I
     believe it would take two Labassecourian carpenters to drive
     a nail. While tying on my bonnet, which had hitherto hung by
     its ribbons from my idle hand, I vaguely and momentarily
     wondered to hear the step of but one _ouvrier_. I noted,
     too--as captives in dungeons find sometimes dreary leisure
     to note the merest trifles--that this man wore shoes, and
     not sabots. I concluded that it must be the master-carpenter
     coming to inspect before he sent his journeymen. I threw
     round me my scarf. He advanced; he opened the door. My back
     was towards it. I felt a little thrill, a curious sensation,
     too quick and transient to be analysed. I turned, I stood in
     the supposed master-artisan's presence. Looking towards the
     doorway I saw it filled with a figure, and my eyes printed
     upon my brain the picture of M. Paul.

     Hundreds of the prayers with which we weary Heaven bring to
     the suppliant no fulfilment. Once haply in life one golden
     gift falls prone in the lap--one boon full and bright,
     perfect from Fruition's mint.

     M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he probably purposed to
     travel--a surtout, guarded with velvet. I thought him
     prepared for instant departure, and yet I had understood
     that two days were yet to run before the ship sailed. He
     looked well and cheerful. He looked kind and benign. He came
     in with eagerness; he was close to me in one second; he was
     all amity. It might be his bridegroom-mood which thus
     brightened him. Whatever the cause, I could not meet his
     sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I
     would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved
     him well--too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy
     herself, when she would have obstructed a kind farewell. A
     cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes,
     would do me good for all the span of life that remained to
     me. It would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness. I
     would take it--I would taste the elixir, and pride should
     not spill the cup.

     The interview would be short, of course. He would say to me
     just what he had said to each of the assembled pupils. He
     would take and hold my hand two minutes. He would touch my
     cheek with his lips for the first, last, only time, and
     then--no more. Then, indeed, the final parting, then the
     wide separation, the great gulf I could not pass to go to
     him, across which, haply, he would not glance to remember
     me.

     He took my hand in one of his; with the other he put back my
     bonnet. He looked into my face, his luminous smile went out,
     his lips expressed something almost like the wordless
     language of a mother who finds a child greatly and
     unexpectedly changed, broken with illness, or worn out by
     want. A check supervened.

     'Paul, Paul!' said a woman's hurried voice behind--'Paul,
     come into the _salon_. I have yet a great many things to say
     to you--conversation for the whole day--and so has Victor;
     and Josef is here. Come, Paul--come to your friends.'

     Madame Beck, brought to the spot by vigilance or an
     inscrutable instinct, pressed so near she almost thrust
     herself between me and M. Emanuel. 'Come, Paul!' she
     reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a
     steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he
     receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could
     endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried,--

     'My heart will break!'

     What I felt seemed literal heartbreak; but the seal of
     another fountain yielded under the strain. One breath from
     M. Paul, the whisper, 'Trust me!' lifted a load, opened an
     outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy
     shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief, I wept.

     'Leave her to me; it is a crisis. I will give her a cordial,
     and it will pass,' said the calm Madame Beck.

     To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something
     like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul
     answered deeply, harshly, and briefly, 'Laissez-moi!' in the
     grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving.

     'Laissez-moi!' he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his
     facial muscles all quivering as he spoke.

     'But this will never do,' said madame with sternness.

     More sternly rejoined her kinsman,--

     'Sortez d'ici!'

     'I will send for Père Silas; on the spot I will send for
     him,' she threatened pertinaciously.

     'Femme!' cried the professor, not now in his deep tones, but
     in his highest and most excited key--'femme! sortez à
     l'instant!'

     He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion
     beyond what I had yet felt.

     'What you do is wrong,' pursued madame; 'it is an act
     characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative
     temperament--a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent--a
     proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of
     persons of steadier and more resolute character.'

     'You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me,'
     said he, 'but you shall see; the event shall teach you.
     Modeste,' he continued, less fiercely, 'be gentle, be
     pitying, be a woman. Look at this poor face, and relent. You
     know I am your friend and the friend of your friends; in
     spite of your taunts you well and deeply know I may be
     trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty, but my
     heart is pained by what I see. It _must_ have and give
     solace. _Leave me!_'

     This time, in the '_leave me_' there was an intonation so
     bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck
     herself could for one moment delay obedience. But she stood
     firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eyes,
     forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to
     retort. I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light
     and fire. I can hardly tell how he managed the movement. It
     did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy. He gave
     his hand; it scarce touched her, I thought; she ran, she
     whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in
     one second.

     The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he
     told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm,
     dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere
     long I sat beside him once more myself--reassured, not
     desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless,
     not sick of life and seeking death.

     'It made you very sad, then, to lose your friend?' said he.

     'It kills me to be forgotten, monsieur,' I said. 'All these
     weary days I have not heard from you one word, and I was
     crushed with the possibility, growing to certainty, that you
     would depart without saying farewell.'

     'Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck--that you do not
     know me? Must I show and teach you my character? You _will_
     have proof that I can be a firm friend? Without clear proof
     this hand will not lie still in mine, it will not trust my
     shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof is ready. I come to
     justify myself.'

     'Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, monsieur; I
     can listen now.'

After this, in _Villette_, the story drifts away from the real
experience of Charlotte herself, not only in the circumstances related,
but even in the emotions pictured, now painted, not from what she has
felt herself, but from what she imagines for her heroine, that other
happier self, lifted up into the heaven of romance, who, assured of Paul
Emanuel's love, and his betrothed, waits and works in the school where
he has appointed her Directress; in patient expectation of his
return,--_that never comes to pass!_ For (why or wherefore, no literary
critic of _Villette_ who measures the book by simply artistic standards
can find any reason to explain) Charlotte won't let Lucy Snowe, the
heroine, who is her other self, find happiness at last with Paul
Emanuel: or even find him again, after that cruel separation, all due to
the wicked craft and selfish jealousy of Madame Beck. Destiny
interferes; a storm; a shipwreck--one is not told _what_ has happened:
one is made to hear wailing winds and moaning ocean, that is all; we
know nothing further than this: _Lucy Snowe waited and hoped; hoped and
waited; but Paul Emanuel never came back._

But, at any rate, before he sailed on that last fatal voyage, all
misunderstandings, all doubts had been swept away. He had driven Madame
Beck from the room, and shown her his contempt and indignation. He had,
with tenderness and passion, declared his love for Lucy; and had asked
her to be his wife. This is what had followed after those scenes
between Lucy and Madame Beck in the late night scene in the class-rooms
and between Lucy and Paul Emanuel, when Madame Beck is put out of the
room by Paul Emanuel, who insists upon saying good-bye to Lucy.

All that we know of what followed these scenes, enacted under different
circumstances, in Charlotte's life, must be gathered, not by a quite
literal acceptance, but by an intelligent and impartial weighing, of her
statements, contained in a letter written on the 23rd January 1844,
three weeks after her return to Haworth.

'I suffered much before I left Brussels. I think, however long I live, I
shall not forget what the parting with M. Heger cost me: it grieved me
so much to grieve him, who had been so true, kind and disinterested a
friend. At parting, he gave me a kind of diploma certifying my abilities
as a teacher sealed with the seal of the Athenée Royal of which he is a
professor.... I do not know whether you feel as I do, but there are
times when it appears to me as if all my ideas and feelings, except a
few friendships and affections, are changed from what they used to be.
Something in me which used to be enthusiasm is tamed down and broken. I
no longer regard myself as young--indeed I shall soon be
twenty-eight--and it seems as if I ought to be working and having the
rough realities of the world as other people do.'[2]


[1] New Year's Day, perhaps? Charlotte left Bruxelles 2nd January 1843.

[2] _Life_, p. 273.



CHAPTER VI

THE LOVE-LETTERS OF A ROMANTIC[1]


Taking up the study of Charlotte's letters written to M. Heger after her
return to Haworth, and reading them in the light of what we know of the
circumstances and emotions that have formed the feelings, and decided
the tone and attitude of the writer, what do we find to be the sentiment
they reveal to us?

Is it the 'enthusiasm for a great man,' and the desire (for the sake of
vanity, or of amusement) to keep up a correspondence with him?

Or is it the intellectual need of this teacher's instructions and
advice, as a means of mental improvement?

Or is it the want of a companion to exchange ideas with, who is a
brighter and more cultivated being than the Nusseys, Taylors, Woolers,
and the others?

Or is it the pleasure of having a man friend, in the case of a woman who
is neither pretty, nor young, nor silly, enough to indulge in an
ordinary flirtation?

Or is it none amongst these several forms of desire, or want, that seeks
its own good?

Is it love?--a love so exalted, so passionate, so personal, so distinct
from any other instinct or interest, physical, social or intellectual,
that this sentiment stands out, in the order of human feelings, as
honourable not only to the heart that feels it, but to human nature: so
that brought into touch with it, one's own heart is uplifted above the
common world, and gladdened '_by the sense_,' as Byron said,[2] '_of the
existence of Love in its most extended and sublime capacity and of our
own participation of its good and of its glory._[3]

My contention is that it _is_ this romantic Love that reveals itself in
Charlotte's letters to M. Heger. And for this reason, I agree with Mr.
Clement Shorter that they put her upon a higher pedestal than ever. For
to have a heart capable of this great and glorious, albeit often
tragical, romantic Love, that 'seeketh not its own,' and compared with
which all other sorts of love, that _do_ seek their own, are as sounding
brass and a tinkling cymbal is, _independently of deeds or works_,
greatly to serve mankind. For it is to stand as a witness, amongst the
meannesses of mortal and worldly things, to the existence of Something
personal and immortal in the soul and heart of man, helping him '_to
gild his dross thereby_.'[4] Something sovereign, that, quite
independently of forms of belief, or fashions of opinion, '_rules by
every school, till love and longing die_.' Something indestructible,
confined to no epoch, ancient, mediæval or modern, but, '_that was, or
yet the lights were set, a whisper in the void; that will be sung in
planets young when this is clean destroyed_.' In other words, I esteem
human nature honoured in Charlotte Brontë, and Charlotte Brontë honoured
in these Letters, _because they are love-letters of a rare and wonderful
sort amongst the most beautiful, although they are the most sad ever
written_. If they were _not_ love-letters, but expressed the enthusiasm
of a woman wanting comradeship with a great man, I should esteem them
discreditable to any hero-worshipper. Because one should not pester
one's hero with letters, nor conceive the conceit of comradeship with an
object of worship. And it is not true that Charlotte's letters to
Thackeray, George Henry Lewes and other men of letters after she became
famous, had the same character as these love-letters written to M.
Heger before her name was known; because in her letters to different
celebrated writers, Charlotte talked about books or the criticism of
books. But to M. Heger she throws open the secret chamber of her heart:
she pours out its treasures of passionate feelings (as pure as they were
passionate) at the feet of the man she loves; all she asks for from him
in return is not to reprove her, nor refuse the offering; not to
withdraw himself from her life altogether. To let her hear from him
sometimes: not to leave her utterly alone, in the darkness, without any
knowledge of what good or evil may befall one so dear to her.

Unfortunately we do not possess the first Letters of this
correspondence. The four Letters given by Dr. Paul Heger to the British
Museum all belong to a period when the Professor, who had answered (one
does not know precisely in what way) Charlotte's first epistles, had
left off replying to her; and the consistent motive of these four
appeals is for some tidings of him, some proof that the 'estrangement
from her Master,' to which she says she will never 'voluntarily'
consent, has not, in spite of her own unaltered devotion, irrevocably
taken place.

'Tell me about anything you like, my Master,' she writes, 'only tell me
something! No doubt, to write to a former under-mistress (no, I will not
remember my employment as under-mistress, I refuse to recall it), but to
write to an old pupil, cannot be, for you, an interesting occupation. I
realise this; but for _me_, it is life. Your last letter served to keep
me alive, to nourish me during six months. Now I must have another one;
and you will give me one. Not because you bear me friendship (you cannot
bear me much!), but because you have a compassionate soul, and because
you would not condemn any one to slow suffering, simply to spare
yourself a few moments of fatigue! To forbid me to write to you, to
refuse to reply to me, would be to tear from me the only joy that I have
in the world; to deprive me of my last privilege, a privilege which I
will never _voluntarily_ renounce. Believe me, my Master! by writing to
me, you do a good action--so long as I can believe you are not angry
with me, so long as the hope is left me of news of you, I can be
tranquil, and not too sad. But when a gloomy and prolonged silence warns
me of the estrangement from me of my Master, when from day to day I
expect a letter, and when, day after day, comes disappointment, to
plunge me in overwhelming grief; and when the sweet and dear consolation
of seeing your handwriting, of reading your counsels, fades from me like
a vain vision,--then fever attacks me, appetite and sleep fail: I feel
that life wastes away.'[5]

This passage is quoted from the Letter dated by Charlotte 18_th
November_, without any indication of the year. Mr. Spielmann (who is
responsible for the order given the Letters in the _Times_) esteems this
one to be the last of the series; that is to say, to have been written
ten months after the Letter dated by Charlotte 8 January, supposed by
him to belong to the year 1845. With Dr. Paul Heger, I believe, on the
contrary, that the Letter of the 18th November is the first of the
series: and that it belongs to the year 1844; that is to say, was
written ten months after Charlotte's return to England. This opinion
seems to me established by the contents of the Letter, and by the
account it gives of the conditions of affairs at Haworth, which were
those that we find (if we consult Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte
Brontë_) did prevail in November 1844, but not in November 1845, and
still less in November 1846.

     My father (she writes) is in good health, but his eyesight
     is all but gone; he can no longer either read or write: and
     yet the doctors advise waiting some months longer before
     attempting any operation. This winter will be for him one
     long night. He rarely complains: and I admire his patience.
     If Providence has the same calamity in reserve for me, may
     it grant me the same patience to endure it. It seems to me,
     Monsieur, that what is most bitter in severe physical
     afflictions, is that they compel us to share our sufferings
     with those who surround us. One can hide the maladies of the
     soul; but those that attack the body and enfeeble our
     faculties cannot be hidden. My father now allows me to read
     to and to write for him. He shows much more confidence in me
     than he has ever done before; and this is a great
     consolation to me.

Charlotte's account in this Letter of her father's patient resignation
and increased confidence in her under the trial, to a man of his
independent and somewhat domineering temper, of compulsory reliance on
the assistance of a daughter from whom he had exacted complete
submission heretofore and from her childhood upwards, is confirmed in
Mrs. Gaskell's biography by the testimony of other letters belonging to
the first year of her return from Belgium. But by November 1845 Mr.
Brontë's philosophy, before his own unmerited misfortune, had been
troubled and transformed into acute misery and anxious forebodings by
the downfall, both moral and physical, of his favourite amongst his
children, Bramwell, the unhappy son--the only one--in this family of
gifted daughters, whose perversion seems also to have had something of
the irresponsibility of genius about it. Writing on the 4th November
1845 to Ellen Nussey,[6] Charlotte says:--

     I hoped to be able to ask you to come to Haworth. It almost
     seemed as if Bramwell had a chance of getting employment;
     and I waited to know the results of his efforts, in order to
     say 'Dear Ellen, come and see us.' But the place is given to
     another person. Bramwell still remains at home, and whilst
     _he_ is here, _you_ shall not come.'

Here is Mrs. Gaskell's account of Mr. Brontë's experiences in this
period, that are not to be reconciled with the account given of his good
health and philosophical patience and resignation to dependence upon
Charlotte given by her a year earlier:

     For the last three years of his life, Bramwell took opium
     habitually, by way of stunning conscience: he drank,
     moreover, whenever he could get the opportunity.... He slept
     in his father's room; and he would sometimes declare that
     either he or his father would be dead before the morning!
     The trembling sisters, sick with fright, would implore their
     father not to expose himself to this danger. But Mr. Brontë
     was no timid man; and perhaps he felt that he could possibly
     influence his son to some self-restraint more by showing
     trust in him than by showing fear. The sisters often
     listened for the report of a pistol in the dead of night,
     till watchful eye and hearkening ear grew heavy and dull
     with the perpetual strain upon their nerves. In the
     mornings, young Brontë would saunter out saying, with a
     drunkard's incontinence of speech, 'The poor old man and I
     have had a terrible night of it; he does his best, the poor
     old man, but it's all over with me.'

One may safely affirm that if Charlotte had been writing in November
1845 it would not have been only his patience under the trial of loss of
sight that she would have found to admire in her father. In November
1846 Mr. Brontë had successfully undergone the operation for cataract
that saved him from blindness: and Charlotte herself, ten months after
the overwhelming evidence of her 'master's estrangement,' given in his
silence after her Letter of the 8th January, had saved her own soul
from the malady she had endured without sharing her sufferings with any
one; and was already writing _Jane Eyre_ ... so that the conclusion is
surely forced upon us that the Letter of the 18th November belongs to
the year 1844, and written ten months after her return to Haworth, 2nd
January 1844, and represents the first, and not the last of these four
Letters.


[Illustration: REDUCED FROM A DRAWING BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË OF ASHBURNHAM
CHURCH SENT TO M. HEGER. The drawing showing the date 1846 was given to
the author by Mlle. Louise Heger]


It is important to establish this, because one has to read these Letters
in their right order before one can understand the story they disclose
of the long training in deferred hope, in expectation, crowned with
disappointment, in vain pursuit of shadows that eluded her grasp, and of
illusions that reveal themselves as forms of self-deceit only in the
very hour when they have conquered belief; in other words, of the long
training in personal suffering it took to create and fashion the genius
of a writer whose magical gift was to be the power of transforming words
into feelings.

Carrying through the examination of these documents by the rule that
recognises the Letter of the 18th November as written ten months after
Charlotte's return to England, we discover in the opening sentence the
fact that the last letter Charlotte had received from her Professor must
have been in May of this same year; that is to say, four months after
the sentimental leave-taking with her Professor, which sent Charlotte
home to England with illusions about the extent to which her own
passionate grief at their separation was shared by M. Heger. By November
these illusions have been dispelled; Charlotte understands perfectly now
(although this does not make her any more just to Madame Heger) that the
'grief' of her 'Master,' that she had said she would 'never forget,
never mind how long she might live,' was a very short-lived affair on
his side; merely the transient regret of a teacher who will miss a
favourite pupil from his class.

'_Que ne puis-je avoir pour vous juste autant d'amitié que vous avez
pour moi_,' she writes to him, '_ni plus, ni moins? Je serais alors si
tranquille, si libre: je pourrais garder le silence pendant six mois
sans effort_.'

There is a note of bitterness in this. In what precedes it there is no
bitterness, but we have one of the passages in these wonderful letters
that seem to me to place them above all the other love-letters preserved
in the world, as immortal records of the Romantic Love that honours
human nature in the hearts that cherish it.

'The six months of silence are over: we are now at the 18th of
November,' she writes:--

     I may, then, write to you, without breaking my promise. The
     summer and winter have seemed very long to me: in truth, it
     has cost me painful efforts to endure up to now the
     privation I have imposed upon myself. You, for your part,
     cannot understand this! But, Monsieur, try to imagine, for
     one moment, that one of your children is a hundred and sixty
     leagues away from you; and that you are condemned to remain
     for six months, without writing to him; without receiving
     any news from him; without hearing anything about him;
     without knowing how he is;--well, then you may be able to
     understand, perhaps, how hard is such an obligation imposed
     upon me.

In connection with the opening phrase, we must recognise in it the
confirmation of an assertion made in my article in the _Woman at Home_
published twenty years before these Letters were published, but which
had for its authority the information given me by Dr. Paul Heger upon
the occasion of a conversation, when he very kindly talked over with me
the questions connected with events in his parents' life that, inasmuch
as they happened before his birth, he knew as family traditions
chiefly--but still as traditions derived from the only authentic sources
of information that exist: Dr. Paul Heger's theory was that until
Charlotte had left Bruxelles and commenced to write to his father
letters in a tone of exaltation that announced an exaggerated
attachment, Monsieur Heger himself had never suspected the existence of
any such sentiment; and that he, and Madame Heger (?)--were disposed to
regard it as an attack of morbid regret for the more animated life she
had led in Bruxelles, and the dulness of her home surroundings. And
that, acting upon this supposition, they had thought it advisable (and
this in Charlotte's own interests chiefly) to let her know that they
were both of them distressed and displeased by the tone of her letters;
and that if she wished to keep up the correspondence, she must become
more reasonable and temperate in her way of expressing herself; and
that, as the exchange of letters between busy people became onerous,
there must be only two letters every year at intervals of six months. We
find Charlotte acknowledging this condition, as one that she had
accepted, but that she complained of as a great 'privation': and she
then goes on to explain (as only one taught by romantic, that is to say
by unselfish, and unsensual, love, that 'does not seek its own,' could
explain it) in what this 'privation' consists.

Did any woman, neglected by the man she loves, ever discover a device,
at once so passionate, and so poetically pure as Charlotte's, who makes
the man who does not love her, but whom she knows is an adoring father,
try to realise what she feels, so far away from him, and left without
tidings _by asking him to picture what he would feel if separated by a
hundred and sixty leagues from his little child, he were left without
news of him?_

But now if we consult honestly our own impressions, does this letter
reveal that '_it is no cause of grief to Charlotte that M. Heger is
married_'? Is it true that _there 'is nothing in it that any
enthusiastic woman might not write to a married man with a family who
had been her teacher_'?

What the letter does reveal (thus it seems to me at least) is one
supreme thing before all others: that the writer of it is past saving,
by this time, from the destiny she prophesied for herself ten months ago
in Bruxelles. '_My heart will break_,' Charlotte said then: when fate
(in the garb of Madame Heger) thrust herself between her and her beloved
Professor.

And now, touching and eloquent as it all is, what escape is there from
the conclusion that the writer of this letter _must_ break her heart?

What else can happen? Let us recognise her plight. Here one has an
entirely honourable, passionately tender, tenderly passionate, very
serious woman, her mind dominated (as she says herself) by one
tyrannical fixed idea; let us rather say by one tragical passion; and
who sees her own life, and her claims upon the man she loves through the
medium of this tragical passion: _and who gives her life an impossible
purpose; and who makes impossible claims_. They are very small claims,
she pleads. And so they are, very small in comparison with what she
gives, her whole life's devotion poured out at the feet of her 'Master,'
from whom she only asks in return that he will not forbid her worship;
that, now and again, he will give her the joy of seeing his handwriting,
and of knowing that he is well. But small as these claims are, they are
unreasonable:--'_to the last degree "inconvenient" and impossible_,' as
Madame would have said,--in the particular case of this 'Master'; a
married man and an attached husband with five children, the Director of
a Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles who has need to be especially circumspect;
and who cannot discreetly, nor even honourably, allow a former
under-mistress to address him passionate, romantic love-letters, even
every six months. Nor can this loyal husband and self-respecting
Catholic and Professor undertake to appear to sanction this
indiscretion, by keeping her informed of his health and welfare at
regular intervals. So that, building her heart's desires upon false
hopes, that, from day to day, wear themselves out in disappointment, and
looking for consolation to things necessarily withdrawn; and that she
pursues in vain like 'fading visions,'--how is our poor Charlotte to
find any escape from the heart-break that is the natural term of the
path along which this Love, that has become her destiny, leads her? No
way of escape is there for Charlotte: not in heaven above, nor on the
earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth. For no miracle can
give her love a happy ending; say that even a thunderbolt fell from
heaven to remove Madame Heger,--it would be extremely unjust--but admit
that a murderous miracle be granted--even so, it would not alter the
fact that M. Heger is not in love with Charlotte. And no earthly scheme
either can bridge the separation--wider than the 160 leagues between
Yorkshire and Brussels--that now severs Charlotte, breaking her heart in
Yorkshire, from her Master in literature, carrying on, as stormily and
triumphantly as when she assisted at them, his lessons in the
class-rooms in the Rue d'Isabelle: those memory-haunted class-rooms she
will never see again; because although we find her in these Letters
speaking of projects of earning money that she may return to Bruxelles,
if only to see her professor once again, one knows that there would be
Madame to count with; and even Monsieur Heger's obstinate neglect to
reply to these appealing Letters does not indicate any answering wish on
his side to see his former pupil again. Nor yet does there exist in the
waters under the earth any pool of magical power of healing sufficient
to soothe these bitter regrets and reproaches; nor any well deep enough
to drown rebellious desires and memories: for Charlotte has too splendid
a soul to think of suicide; or to quench anguish by drugs. So that one
knows that Charlotte's fate is sealed: and that we must follow her
through these last steps to the end, with pity and admiration and love
for her--but still not with injustice to others. Because no one outside
of herself, not Madame Heger, nor Monsieur Heger, is responsible for
what has happened, and what is going to happen; but only the Love that
has Charlotte's soul in thrall, the Love that 'seeketh not its
own,'--romantic, or if it be preferred, Platonic Love; who as the wise
woman, Diotima, told Socrates, is 'not a god, but an immortal spirit,
who spans the gulf between heaven and earth, carrying to the gods the
prayers of men, and to the earth the commands of the gods.' Love, who is
'the child of plenty and of poverty, often, like his mother, without
house or home to cover him' (and who consequently is not highly esteemed
by respectable householders). Love, the 'instinct of immortality in a
mortal creature,' leading him amongst mortal conditions to where
Charlotte is being led to,--the grave of hope,--_but not leaving hope
there entombed, but raising it, not clogged with the pollution of
mortality._

All this, that the wise Diotima related, is a true parable of Charlotte
Brontë. And the proof that Diotima was a good psychologist, and had
based her opinions upon the study of facts, is found in the assertion
that Love, although an immortal spirit, is _not a god_. Because a god
sees clearly, and does not make mistakes: whereas Love, as every one
knows, is often blind, and never very clear-sighted; and _is_ liable to
make mistakes, and to be unjust even: and to attribute his own errors to
other people. Thus Charlotte, under the dominion of Love, was unjust,
and made mistakes: she attributed to Madame Heger disappointments and
misadventures and pangs, that were not of Madame Heger's preparation at
all, but were simply the imprudences of this 'Child of plenty and
poverty,' who inherits from both parents and is so often extravagant and
houseless, and consequently in bad odour with householders and the
worshippers of 'convenience,' because 'he has no home to cover him.'
Charlotte should not have attributed, for instance, malevolence or
jealousy or the cruel pleasure of tantalising and torturing her in
Bruxelles to Madame Heger, simply because, as the Directress of a
Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles and wife of M. Heger, she did not want to
take in Romantic Love as a boarder; nor to permit this 'Child of plenty
and poverty' to disorganise the well-balanced domestic and conjugal
relationships between herself and M. Heger. In all this Madame Heger was
not persecuting Charlotte, but protecting her own rights. And if we
examine the circumstances even in the narrative of the scene in the
class-room between the Directress and her English teacher, and the scene
of the farewell interview between the Professor and his pupil, where the
Directress of the Pensionnat is put out of the room because she objects
to this sentimental leave-taking, we shall find that recognising the
true relationships between these three people, if Madame Heger behaved
exactly as Madame Beck is said to have done, then there is not any fault
whatever to be found with Madame Heger. Nay, one does not see how she
could have been more considerate. Another false impression of
Charlotte's--that Madame Heger intercepted her letters, and that M.
Heger did not answer because he did not receive them--has no evidence to
support it. Nor is this all; there is undeniable proof that the letter
we have just considered (_which M. Heger did not answer_) _was_
received by him: and that he was not very much affected by the
passionate homage of his worshipper. 'On the edge of this letter he has
made some commonplace notes in pencil;--one of them is the name and
address of a shoemaker,' Mr. Spielmann tells us.

There is a natural feeling of indignation against this masculine
insensibility to a woman's tragical passion, even though one recognises
that honour stood in the way of any responsive sentiment. But one must
not forget M. Heger's special vocation and his daily occupations and
preoccupations. Here you have a Professor of literature in a Pensionnat
de Jeunes Filles who spends, week by week, several days in correcting
and improving 'compositions' and exercises in 'style' of numberless
schoolgirls, full of the eloquent sentimentality that belongs to young
writers between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Monsieur Heger had
been Charlotte's master in literature, remember: and there is another
fact to be realised also, one that upon the authority of my own
knowledge of him, in the character of my own Professor, I am allowed to
testify to: _he was before all things a born teacher, and one who saw
the world as his class-room, and his fellow-creatures in the light of
pupils_. Applying this knowledge of him to the criticism of what we know
about his relations with Charlotte Brontë, we arrive at entirely
different opinions to those formed by people who either see M. Heger
through the medium of Charlotte's passion for him and as she painted him
in _Villette_; or outside of any personal knowledge of him at all, as he
appears to them judged in the light of the impression that he played
with Charlotte's feelings: first of all encouraging by sentimental
flattery her affection for him, and then, when he found that she had
become inconveniently fond of him, behaving with cruel indifference.
None of these decisions is based on a correct knowledge of M. Heger, nor
of his true behaviour and character. The true M. Heger was not the Paul
Emanuel who was _the lover of Lucy Snowe_, because he is very truthfully
and admirably painted in the domineering but interesting,
terror-striking but captivating, masterful and masterly Professor of
literature, so full of talent, and fiery captivating ardour for
beautiful thoughts nobly expressed. The real Professor was _not_
tender-hearted; nor very tender in manner; nor even very pleasant and
considerate; nor even kind, outside of his professorial character: and
he had no sympathy whatever to spare for people who were not his pupils.
And his sympathy for his pupils, _as his pupils_, led him to work upon
their sympathies, as a way of inducing a frame of mind in them and an
emotional state of feeling, rendering them susceptible to literary
impressions, and putting them in key with himself, in this very fine
enthusiasm of his, not only for enjoying literature himself, but for
throwing open to others, and to young votaries especially, the worship
of beautiful literature--as the record of the best that has been thought
and said in the world.

But the very exclusive literary temperament of M. Heger left him rather
cold-blooded than particularly warm-hearted, where his pupils' feelings
interfered with their good style in writing; or good accent when
speaking; or with their sense of the first importance of a warm
appreciation of the beauties of literature. If one reversed directly the
description of Charlotte Brontë herself, as a writer whose _words became
feelings_, one might justly say of M. Heger that for him, feelings were
chiefly good with reference to their effects upon words, and the
creation of beautiful language--so that Charlotte's love-letters to him
would be no more than the '_Devoirs de Style_' of a former pupil sent
him for criticism. The shoemaker's address may have been jotted down by
accident, when he was running his eye down the page? If the further
notes signified by Mr. Spielmann on this page, where poor Charlotte's
heart's Secret lay exposed and quivering, had been '_Bon--mais un peu
trop d'exaltation--la Ponctuation n'est pas soignée_,' no one who knew
M. Heger would blame him for _voluntary_ unkindness. But upon this
matter no more must be said at present: we have to return to Charlotte,
and her Letters.

The second in the order in which I am studying them (that seems to me
unmistakably indicated by the context) would have been written--if we
take the year 1845 as the date--eight, instead of six, months after the
one, dated November, that refers to a preceding letter in the May of the
same year--when Charlotte would have accepted the obligation laid upon
her not to write again for six months. This Letter, dated 24th July,
indicates by the opening sentence, not that she is writing outside of
the appointed time, but _outside of her turn_: that is to say, it shows
that M. Heger had not answered her November Letter; that she had waited
for his reply, but could not wait longer, and so wrote a second letter,
before M. Heger's reply to the first. The custom shows us that poor
Charlotte is uneasily conscious that her former one in November may have
given offence. She apologises for it, as we shall see; and works hard to
write with cheerfulness in a more temperate tone:--

     Ah, Monsieur! I know I once wrote you a letter that was not
     a reasonable one, because my heart was choked with grief;
     but I will not do it again! I will try not to be selfish;
     although I cannot but feel your letters the greatest
     happiness I know. I will wait patiently to receive one,
     until it pleases you, and it is convenient to write one. At
     the same time, I may write you a little letter from time to
     time; you authorised me to do that.

The effort she is putting upon herself in this Letter is evident. She
has become reasonable; she does not reproach him for not writing, but
only asks him to remember how much she desires it. She tells him of her
plans, as she was recommended to do, instead of dwelling on her
feelings. She humours and flatters his vanity and taste by her
acknowledgment of all she owes him; and of her unfailing gratitude and
wish to dedicate a book to him--she even sends a message to Madame!--

     _Please present to Madame the assurance of my esteem_. I
     fear that Maria, Louise and Claire will have forgotten me.
     Prospère and Victorine never knew me, but I remember all
     five of them, and especially Louise. There was so much
     character, so much naïveté expressed in her little face.
     Farewell, Monsieur--Your grateful pupil,

     C. Brontë.


     _July_ 24.--I have not begged you to write to me soon,
     because I am afraid of troubling you, but you are too kind
     to forget how much I desire it. Yes! I do desire it so much.
     But that is enough. After all, do as you like, Monsieur, for
     if I received a letter from you and I thought you wrote it
     out of pity, it would hurt me very much.... Oh I shall
     certainly see you some day. It must come to pass. Because as
     soon as I earn any money, I shall go to Bruxelles--and I
     shall see you again, if only for a moment.

It is all of no avail! No answer does M. Heger vouchsafe. October comes
round, and she writes again. This time she imagines that she has found a
means of making her Letter reach its destination. In other words, she is
convinced, or tries to be convinced, that it is all Madame Heger's fault
again; she it is who will not allow her husband to receive Charlotte's
Letters.

     _October_ 24.--Monsieur--I am quite joyous to-day. A thing
     that has not often happened during the last two years.[7]
     The reason is that a gentleman amongst my friends is
     passing through Bruxelles, and he has offered to take charge
     of a letter for you, and to give this same letter into your
     hands; or else his sister will do this, so that I shall be
     quite certain that you receive it.

Now comes the final blow to this faithful worshipper. Up to this hour,
she has hoped and waited, waited and hoped. But all this time there has
been the suspicion of Madame Heger--that has kept alive in her the
belief in M. Heger's friendship, who (perhaps?) writes, although his
letters never arrive: who (perhaps?) never receives her letters,
although whenever she dares, and even in defiance of the terms laid down
for her, she writes him letters where the vibration of her passionate
attachment is felt. Now, however, he _has_ received her letter placed in
his own hand. Had he written she would now have held in her turn the
talisman of the beloved handwriting her eyes were weary with waiting to
see again. But he remained obdurate and silent.

     Mr. Taylor has returned (she writes): I asked him if he had
     no letter for me. 'No: nothing.' Be patient, I told myself:
     soon his sister will return. Miss Taylor came back: 'I have
     nothing for you from Monsieur Heger,' she said; 'neither
     letter, nor any message.'

     Understanding only too well what this meant, I told myself
     just what I should have told any one else in the same
     circumstances: Resign yourself to what you cannot alter, and
     before all things do not grieve for a misfortune that you
     have not deserved. I would not allow myself to weep nor
     complain. But when one refuses to oneself the right to tears
     and lamentations in certain cases, one is a tyrant; and
     natural faculties revolt; so that one buys outward calm at
     the price of an inner conflict that cannot be subdued.

     Neither by day, nor by night can I find rest nor peace: even
     if I sleep, I have tormenting dreams, where I see you,
     always severe, gloomy, angry with me. Forgive me, Monsieur,
     if I am driven to take the course of writing to you once
     more. How can I endure my life, if I am forbidden to make
     any effort to alleviate my sufferings?

She continues in this piteous strain. She pleads with him not to reprove
her again as she has been reproved before, for exaggeration, morbidness,
sentimentality. She tells him all this may be true--she is not going to
defend herself--but the case is as she states it. She _cannot_ resign
herself to the loss of her master's friendship without one last effort
to preserve it.

     I submit to all the reproaches you may make against me; if
     my master withdraws his friendship from me entirely, I shall
     remain without hope; if he keeps a little for me (never mind
     though it be _very_ little) I shall have some motive for
     living, for working.

     Monsieur (she continues), the poor do not need much to keep
     them alive; they ask only for the crumbs that fall from the
     rich man's table, but if these crumbs are refused them,
     _then_ they die of hunger! For me too, I make no claim
     either to great affection from those I love; I should hardly
     know how to understand an exclusive and perfect friendship,
     I have so little experience of it! But once upon a time, at
     Bruxelles, when I was your pupil, you _did_ show me a little
     interest: and just this small amount of interest you gave me
     then, I hold to and I care for and prize, as I hold to and
     care for life itself....

     ... I will not re-read this letter, I must send it as it is
     written. And yet I know, by some secret instinct, that
     certain absolutely reasonable and cool-headed people reading
     it through will say:--'She appears to have gone mad.' By
     way of revenge on such judges, all I would wish them is that
     they too might endure, _for one day only_, the sufferings I
     have borne for eight months--then, one would see, if they
     too did not 'appear to have gone mad.'

     One endures in silence whilst one has his strength to do it.
     But when this strength fails one, one speaks without
     weighing one's words. I wish Monsieur all happiness and
     prosperity.

     Haworth, Bradford, Yorkshire, 8_th January_.

The Letter obtained no answer. And thus the end was reached. We now know
where in Charlotte Brontë's life lay her experiences that formed her
genius and made her the great Romantic--whose quality was that she saw
all events and personages through the medium of one passion--the passion
of a predestined tragical and unrequited love.


END OF PART I.



[1] I have to thank Mr. Clement Shorter, who has purchased the copyright
of Charlotte Brontë's manuscripts, for his generous permission to quote
from these letters freely for the purposes of my criticism.--(F.M.)

[2] _Childe Harold_, note 9 to canto iii.

[3] The author of _Childe Harold_ adds on this note as a comment upon
what he has said of 'Love' as the inspiration of the greatest of all
Romantics, J.-J. Rousseau:--

  'His love was passion's essence--as a tree
  On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
  Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
  Thus, and enamour'd, were in him the same.
  But his was not the love of living dame,
  Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
  But of Ideal beauty, which became
  In him existence and o'erflowing teems
  Along his burning page, distemper'd tho' it seems.

  This breathed itself to life in Julie, this
  Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
  This hallow'd too the memorable kiss
  Which every morn his fever'd lip would greet,
  From hers, who but with friendship his would meet:
  But to that gentle touch, thro' brain and breast
  Flash'd the thrill'd spirit's love-devouring heat;
  In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest
  Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.'


[4] Rudyard Kipling.

[5] See Letter, 18 Nov. I am giving my own translation from the French
of Charlotte's Letters in these extracts, not certainly on account of
any dissatisfaction with Mr. Spielmann's English versions of them, but
in order to avoid the risk of any infringement of Mr. Spielmann's
copyright in his Introduction.

[6] Mrs. Gaskell's _Life, p._ 290.

[7] Charlotte had been a year and ten months in England in October 1845.
This phrase, however, proves that the Letter belongs to this year and
not to 1844, and consequently that the Letter that follows it, January
8, is 1846.



PART II

SOME REMINISCENCES OF THE

REAL MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER


THIS SECOND PART IS

DEDICATED TO

MY BROTHER

THE LATE ABBÉ AUSTIN RICHARDSON

WHO DIED SUDDENLY, 20TH AUG. 1913


  Dearest, before you went away
    And left me here behind you,
  How often would you talk to me,
    And I, too, would remind you
  Of stories in this book retold,
    That for us two could ne'er grow old;
  Of scenes that we could live through yet,
    Just you and I,--and not forget:
  And now I feel, since you are gone,
    I wrote this book for you alone.



PART II

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL DIFFICULTY: TO DISENTANGLE

FACT FROM FICTION


The purpose of the First Part of this study was to show that with the
knowledge of the Secret of Charlotte Brontë, brought to us by Dr. Paul
Heger's generous gift of these pathetic and beautiful Love-letters, the
'Problem of Charlotte Brontë,' as so many very clever but inattentive
psychological critics have stated it, has lost all claim to serious
attention.

The basis of the 'Problem' was the alleged 'dissonance' between
Charlotte's personality and her genius--between her dreary, desolate,
dull, well-tamed existence, uncoloured, untroubled by romance (as Mrs.
Gaskell painted it), and the passionate atmosphere of her novels, where
all events and personages are seen through the medium of one
sentiment--tragical romantic love.

We now know that the dissonance did not exist; that from her
twenty-sixth year downwards, Charlotte's life was, not only coloured,
but governed by a tragical romantic love: that, in its first stage,
threw her into a hopeless conflict against the force of things and broke
her heart: but that, because the battle was fought in the force, and in
the cause, of noble emotions, saved her soul alive; and called her
genius forth to life: so that it rose as an immortal spirit from the
grave of personal hopes.

Understanding this, we know that there is no 'Problem' of Charlotte
Brontë: but that her personality and her genius and her life and her
books were all those of a Romantic. But although there is no
psychological Problem, a difficulty that concerns the historical
criticism of Charlotte's life and her books does remain. And this
difficulty has to be faced and conquered, not by speculations nor
arguments, but by methods of enquiry.

When we study Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece _Villette_ in comparison
with what we now know about the romance in her own life, we recognise
two facts: the first is that, _in this work especially_, she has painted
with such power the emotions she has undergone that her words become
feelings that lift and ennoble the reader's sensibility: and thus serve
him--in the way that it belongs to Romantics to serve mankind.

But the second fact we discover is that,--again, _in this book
particularly_,--historical personages and real events are used as the
materials for an imaginary story, in a way that has produced critical
confusion: and what is graver still--has caused false and injurious
opinions to be formed about historical people. And the difficulty we
have to face is, not what amount of blame belongs to Charlotte for
misrepresenting historical facts, nor even need we ask ourselves what
reason she had for thus misrepresenting them. Because the reason becomes
plain when we take the trouble to realise that the motive the writer of
this work of genius had in view was one that concerned her own personal
liberation from haunting memories, rather than any motive concerning
the impressions she might produce.

There can be no doubt that Charlotte's motive in _Villette_, judged as a
method of personal salvation, was not only a permissible, but a noble
one. It is the one that Pater attributed to Michael Angelo: '_the effort
of a strong nature to attune itself to tranquillise vehement emotions by
withdrawing them into the region of ideal sentiments':--'an effort to
throw off the clutch of cruel and humiliating facts by translating them
into the imaginative realm, where the artist, the author, the dreamer
even, has things as he wills, because the hold of outward things_' (such
a stern and merciless one in the case of Charlotte Brontë!) '_is thrown
off at pleasure_.'

But, judged as a literary and historical method, was Charlotte Brontë's
manner of treating the real Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in
the Rue d'Isabelle a justifiable or fair one? Can she be held without
fault in this; that in Paul Emanuel and in Madame Beck she painted
Monsieur and Madame Heger in a way that rendered them visible to every
one who knew them; and then placed them in fictitious circumstances
that altered the character of their actions and feelings, in such a way
as to misrepresent their true behaviour? It seems to me that we must
admit that the authoress of the _Professor_ and of _Villette_ adopted an
unjust literary and historical method in so far as these real people are
concerned: and that in the case of Madame Heger especially, passion and
prejudice betrayed her: and rendered her guilty of a fault that must be
recognised as a very grave one. But when this fault has been recognised
and admitted, it seems to me a conscientious critic's duty does not
compel him to scold this woman of genius for having the passions of her
kind. A great Romantic is not an angel: and in this case the main facts
about Charlotte are not her shortcomings as a celestial being, but her
transcendent merits as an interpreter of the human heart. For my own
part, I confess that after reading Charlotte's Love-letters, I am in no
mood to look for faults in her, nor even to lend much attention to some
faults that, without looking for them, one is bound to recognise. For
what a thankless and unseemly, as well as what an unprofitable, sort of
criticism is that represented in ancient days by the youngest amongst
Job's Friends, who had such a delightfully expressive name, Elihu, the
son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram! Elihu's criticism of
Job (the man of genius, plunged into dire misfortune, not by any fault
or folly of his own, but by the will of the Higher Powers, who desired
to prove his virtue and to call forth his genius), is exactly the same
method of criticising men and women of genius in the same case as Job,
practised by Elihu's intellectual descendents, Buzites of the kindred of
Ram, in all countries and in every age, down to England in the twentieth
century. The fundamental doctrine of this critical method was, and is,
that '_great men are not always wise_,' and that it is the vocation of
smaller men to teach them wisdom, without 'respecting their persons or
giving them flattering titles' (truly, as a matter of fact, by calling
them names--knaves, hypocrites, sentimental cads, blackguards, etc.). In
other words, the rule with these Buzites is that the main purpose of
criticising great people is _to find fault with them_; to surprise them
in their 'unwise' moments, to concentrate attention upon the faults they
may, or may not, have committed in these moments; and to build upon
these occasional real, or imaginary, faults, psychological and
pathological theories about the madness, wickedness, or folly of people
capable of them. And to conclude that there is 'very much to reprobate
and a great deal to laugh at' in these men and women of genius--and that
the fact that they had genius, and that as witnesses to the 'instinct of
immortality in mortal creatures' they have served and honoured mankind,
and also have bequeathed to us treasures of ideal beauty, is a mere
accident, and may be left unnoticed.

But let not _my_ portion ever be with these fault-finders, who '_darken
counsel by words without knowledge_,' as the original Elihu was told,
'out of the Whirlwind,' by the Supreme Critic; 'in whose stead' the son
of Barachel had arrogated to himself the right to scold and scoff at
Job; and to tell him that his misfortunes were all the result of his
bad character and of his uncontrolled emotions. I refuse, then, to
recognise as a question of vital importance Charlotte's forgetfulness of
historical exactitude in _Villette_; and I do not myself understand how
any one (except a Buzite) who has read these Letters given to us by Dr.
Paul Heger, and especially the last one, that received no answer, can
help feeling that the suffering the writer of the Letters must have
undergone, in the unbroken silent solitude that followed her unanswered
appeal, must have made the hold upon her memory of 'outward things' so
hard to bear, that to break that hold, to live in the realm of
imagination free from it, _having things as she would_, justified almost
any method of self-liberation.

Still the fact of the critical confusion of the personages in the novel
with the historical Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue
d'Isabelle does create difficulties in the way of forming right
opinions. And to remove them, we have to follow the plan already
recommended,--to make sure of our facts, before calling in the aid of
psychological arguments. And in this case, to see the position clearly,
we must disentangle from the imaginary story in _Villette_ the real
personages and events woven into the fabric of a parable where, as I
have said, they appear amongst fictitious circumstances and produce
consequently false impressions. In other words, we have to recover a
clear knowledge of the true Monsieur Heger before we can determine where
'Paul Emanuel' resembles, and where he differs from, the Professor,
_whom Charlotte loved: but who never showed any particle of love for
Charlotte, such as Paul Emanuel bestowed on Lucy Snowe_. And then we
have to re-establish in her true place, as Monsieur Heger's wife and the
mother of his five children, the true Directress of the Pensionnat in
the Rue d'Isabelle--who must be contrasted, rather than compared, with
the crafty, jealous and pitiless Madame Beck of the novel, selfishly and
cruelly interfering with the true course of an entirely legitimate and
romantic attachment between her English teacher and her cousin, the
Professor of literature. And the relative positions of these two
Directresses clearly seen, we have to ask ourselves, Whether the real
Madame Heger is proved to have had the base and detestable character of
the hateful Madame Beck? and whether she really _was_, in any voluntary
or even involuntary, way, the direct cause of poor Charlotte's anguish,
suspense and final heart-break? And whether, given the positions and the
different views of life and sense of duty of the different people whose
destinies become entangled in this tragical romance, we can find fault
with any person concerned in these events,--unless, indeed, we follow
Greek methods, and drag in the Eumenides? Or, else, suppose it a
parallel case with Job's: and decide that it was the will of the Higher
Powers to prove Charlotte's virtue and to call forth her genius? But in
so far as mere mortals are concerned, we have to see whether anything
else could have happened, and whether poor Charlotte was not bound to
break her heart?

So that the purpose of the Second Part of this study of the 'Secret of
Charlotte Brontë' really lies outside of the 'Secret' itself, and
becomes an effort to know 'as in themselves they really were,' and
independently of their relationships with Charlotte, the Professor whom
she loved (probably much more than he deserved), and the Directress of
the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle--whom she certainly hated, without
any reasonable cause for this hatred, although this hatred had a natural
cause--that if only we will use psychology for the purpose of
penetrating facts, and not for playing with such fictions as that _it
was 'no serious grief to Charlotte that Monsieur Heger was married'_ we
may easily discover. After all, one must not ask for entire
'reasonableness' from Romantics, who see personages and events through
the medium of one great Passion. And one must not demand from them
absolute impartiality, when judging the impediment that divides them
from the object of this passion.

We are not judges then in this case, but enquirers into the facts of the
personality and true characters of the Director and Directress of the
Bruxelles school and of their environment, as the influences that so
largely created the Romantic atmosphere where Charlotte's genius lived
and moved and had its being. And, by the special circumstances of my own
life, I am able to assist in a way that is not (so I am tempted to
believe) possible to any other living critic. The difficulty that stands
in the way of most modern investigators is that long ago the historical
people with their environment 'have become ghostly.' Long ago, for most
readers of _Villette_, the once famous Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles in
the Rue d'Isabelle, with its memory-haunted class-rooms, with its
high-walled garden in the heart of a city whose voices reached one, as
from a world far away, and 'down whose peaceful alleys it was pleasant
to stray and hear the bells of St Jean Baptiste peal out with their
sweet, soft, exalted sound,' have vanished out of life. _Yes--but out of
my life they have not vanished!_ For me--the historical Monsieur and
Madame Heger exist quite independently of all associations with the
imaginary personages Paul Emanuel and Madame Beck. For me--the old
school, the class-rooms, the walled garden, with its ancient pear-trees
that still 'faithfully renewed their perfumed snow in spring and
honey-sweet pendants in autumn,' remain--as they were planted vivid
images and visions in my memory half a century ago, when, as a
schoolgirl, I knew nothing about Charlotte Brontë nor _Villette_: but
when I sat, twenty years after Charlotte, in the class-rooms where she
had waited for M. Heger, on the eve of her departure from Bruxelles,
myself an attentive pupil of her Professor, and a witness, half
terrified, and half exasperated, of his varying moods. And when, too, I
saw, rather than heard, Madame Heger, moving noiselessly, where M.
Heger's movements were always attended with shock and excitement; only
to me, Madame Heger appeared always a friendly rather than an adverse
presence--an abiding influence of serenity that reassured one, after
sudden recurrent gusts of nerve-disturbing storms.

And I would point out that the value of my testimony about the personal
impressions I derived, quite independently of any knowledge of Charlotte
Brontë's residence in what was for me _my_ school, and of her
enthusiasm for _my_ Professor, or her dislike of _my_ schoolmistress, is
enhanced both by the resemblances and by the differences of our several
points of view. Thus--like Charlotte--I was an English pupil and a
Protestant in this Belgian and Catholic school. Like her--my vocation
was to be that of a woman of letters. And although, when she was brought
under M. Heger's influence, she was a woman of genius, already well
acquainted with good literature, and not without experience as a writer,
whereas I was only an unformed girl, with very little reading and no
culture: and merely by force of an inborn desire to follow a certain
purpose in life that filled me with happiness, even in anticipation,
justified in supposing that I had a literary vocation at all, and
although no doubt I have not turned my advantages to account as
Charlotte did, yet I myself owe to M. Heger, not only admirable rules
for criticism and practice, that have always claimed and still claim my
absolute belief, but also I owe to him, as she did, a full enjoyment of
beautiful thoughts, beautifully expressed, and of treasures of the mind
and of the imagination, that, lying outside of the recognised paths of
English study, I might never have found, nor even have recognised as
treasures, had I not been cured of insularity of taste by M. Heger.

So that upon this point I am able to say of M. Heger what Charlotte
said: he was the only master in literature I ever had; and up to the
present hour I esteem him, in this domain of literary composition, the
only master whose rules I trust.

But if my judgment of M. Heger, as a Professor, coincides with
Charlotte's, my judgment of him, outside of this capacity, does not show
him to me at all as the model of the man from whom she painted Paul
Emanuel. In other words, I never found nor saw in the real Monsieur
Heger the lovableness under the outward harshness,--the depths of
tenderness under the very apparent severity and irritability,--the
concealed consideration for the feelings of others, under the outer
indifference to the feelings of any one who ruffled his temper; nor yet
did I ever discover meekness and modesty in him, under the dogmatic and
imperious manner that swept aside all opposition. In fact, I never found
out that M. Heger wore a mask. But, irritable, imperious, harsh, not
_unkind_, but certainly the reverse of tender, and without any
consideration for any one's feelings, or any respect for any one's
opinions, thus, _just as he seemed to be, so in reality, in my opinion,
M. Heger actually was_. And what one must remember is that Charlotte's
point of view, from which she formed the opinion that M. Heger _was_
tender-hearted, and modest and meek, was the point of view of a woman in
love; and this standpoint is not one that ensures impartiality.

My own point of view, between 1859 and 1861, was that of an English
schoolgirl, under sixteen, of a Belgian schoolmaster, over fifty, who in
his capacity of a literary Professor, was almost a deity to her; but
who, outside of this capacity, was not a lovable, but a formidable man:
a 'Terror,' in the sense children and nursery-maids give the term; that
is to say, some one who is sure to appear upon the scene when one is
least prepared to face him, and who is constantly finding fault with
one. Now a 'Terror,' in this popular sense of the term, although he is
not a lovable, is not necessarily a hateful personage. There may belong
to him an interest of excitement, and even a secret admiration for his
cleverness in fulfilling his role of taking one unawares and finding
something in one to quarrel about. And most certainly this interest of
excitement, and even of a sense of amusement, entered into my sentiment
for M. Heger, whom I recognised as a double-being, an admirable literary
Professor, but an alarming and irritating personality. But although I
never hated him, I yet had some special grievances against this
'Terror,' not only because he had a trick of surprising me in weak
moments, and of finding out my worst sides, but also because he was
really, in my own particular case, unjust; and full of prejudice and
impatience against my nationality, and personal idiosyncrasies that were
not faults; and that I couldn't help. Thus he stirred up in me
rebellious protests, that could not be uttered; because how was an
English schoolgirl of fifteen to protest against the injustice of a
Belgian 'Master,' in his own country, and his own school: who was a man
past fifty, too; and what was more, in his capacity of literary
Professor, if not quite a deity, at least, in my own opinion, the keeper
of the keys of palaces where dwelt the Immortals?

And that my opinion of M. Heger's personality, as that of a 'Terror' (in
the childish and popular sense) did really show me the man apart from
the Professor very much as he really was, is confirmed by the first
impression he made upon Charlotte herself before the glamour of romantic
love had interfered with her critical perspicacity. Here is the original
description of M. Heger, in the early days of her residence in
Bruxelles:

'There is one individual of whom I have not yet spoken,' she wrote to
Ellen Nussey, 'M. Heger, the husband of Madame. He is Professor of
rhetoric: a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in
temperament, a little black being, with a face that varies in
expression. Sometimes he borrows the lineaments of a tom-cat: sometimes
those of a delirious hyena: occasionally, but very seldom, he discards
these perilous attractions and assumes an air not above one hundred
degrees removed from mild and gentleman-like. He is very angry with me
just now, because I have written a translation which he stigmatises as
_peu correct_. He did not tell me so, but wrote the word on the margin
of my book and asked me, in very stern _phrase_, how it happened that my
compositions were always better than my translations, adding that the
thing seemed to him inexplicable. The fact is that three weeks ago in a
high-flown humour he forbade me to use either dictionary or grammar when
translating the most difficult English composition into French. This
makes the task rather arduous, and compels me every now and then to
introduce an English word, which nearly plucks the eyes out of his head
when he sees it. Emily and he don't draw well together at all.'

I am quoting this view of M. Heger's personality, taken by Charlotte
Brontë before she became a partial witness, because, by and by, when I
am giving my own reminiscences, it will be found that in 1842 M. Heger
was very much the same Professor whom I knew in 1861.

And Madame Heger? Here too my impressions are obtained from a point of
view unquestionably more impartial than Charlotte Brontë's. And it will
be found that, when the alteration of clear power of vision that
personal prejudices make has been realised, my opposite judgment of the
Directress of the Pensionnat to the judgment of the authoress of
_Villette_, is not the result of any difference in the _facts_ of Madame
Heger's characteristics and behaviour, but in the difference between the
standpoints from which we severally judge them.

Charlotte's standpoint was the one of the devotee, of the great spirit
who is neither a god nor a mortal, but the 'Child of plenty and poverty,
who is often houseless and homeless'--and who cannot well see 'as in
herself she really is,' the Mistress of the house; who prudently, _not
necessarily with cruelty_, closes the doors of her home against
intruders--that standpoint also is not one conducive to impartial
judgments.

My own point of view was that of a girl on the threshold of womanhood,
who saw in Madame Heger an embodiment of two qualities especially, that,
perhaps because I did not possess them and could never possess them
(passionate as I was by nature and with strong personal likings and
dislikings), inspired me with a sentiment of reverence and wonder, as
for a remote perfection, that, though unattainable, it did one good to
know existed somewhere; just as it does one good, with feet planted on
the earth, to see the stars. The qualities I saw in Madame Heger were
serene sweetness, a kindness without preferences, covering her little
world of pupils and teachers with a watchful care. _Tranquillité,
Douceur, Bonté:_ the French words express better than English ones the
commingled qualities I felt existed in Madame Heger as she moved
noiselessly (as Charlotte Brontë has described), whilst the more
brilliant and gifted Professor's movements were always stormy.

When relating these reminiscences of Monsieur and Madame Heger and of
the old school and garden, as I myself treasure them, and quite
independently of their associations with Charlotte Brontë, I shall not
be losing sight of the purpose that justifies this record (as an
endeavour to disentangle fact from fiction) if, in so far as the facts
that concern my own experiences are concerned, I ask now to be allowed
to relate them in a different tone--that is to say, not any longer in
the tone of a literary critic, nor as one supporting any thesis or
argument, but simply as a story-teller 'who has been young and now is
old.' And who, before the darkening day has turned to night, calls to
remembrance scenes and personages long since vanished out of the world,
but still alive for me, bathed in the light that shines upon the
undimmed visions of my youth--although to almost every one else now
alive these scenes have become 'as it were a tale that is told.'



CHAPTER II

MY FIRST INTRODUCTION TO CHARLOTTE
BRONTË'S PROFESSOR[1]

'Madame,--quelquefois, donner, c'est semer'--_Speech
made to my Mother by M. Heger_.


In 1859 this memorable thing happened:--I was introduced by my mother to
M. Heger as his future pupil. I was fourteen years of age: but I
remember everything in connection with this event as though it had
happened yesterday. We were staying at Ostend, where my mother had taken
my brother and myself for a long summer holiday, because she believed we
had been previously overworked at our former schools, from which she had
removed us. She was convinced that we both of us stood in need of
sea-air, exercise and healthy recreation, before we could take up our
studies again, after the strain we had undergone. Upon this point my
brother and I were entirely of one mind with our mother.

But after a holiday of three months, we had also begun to feel, with
her, that this state of things could not go on for ever, and that--as
she expressed it--'something had to be done with us.' What was done with
us was the result of circumstances that I cannot but regard as
fortunate, in my own case at any rate. They brought into my life, at a
very impressionable age, influences and memories that have always been,
and that are still, after more than half a century, extraordinarily
serviceable and sweet to me.

The first of these fortunate circumstances was the renewal (due to an
accidental meeting at Ostend) of my mother's friendship with a relative
whom she had lost sight of for a great many years; who had married a
Dutch lady and settled in Holland. The eldest daughter of these
re-discovered cousins was an exceptionally charming girl of nineteen;
and upon enquiry my mother found out that she had been educated at a
school in Brussels, _situated in the Rue d'Isabelle, and kept by a
certain Madame Heger_. How it came to pass that, only four years after
the publication of _Villette_, and two years after Mrs. Gaskell's _Life
of Charlotte Brontë_, it did not occur to my mother to identify this
particular Brussels school with the one where the Director was the fiery
and perilously attractive 'Professor Paul Emanuel' and where the
Directress was painted as the crafty and treacherous 'Madame Beck,' I
really cannot say; but, so it was. There can be no doubt that it was
solely because the account rendered by her delightful young kinswoman of
the school where she had spent three years was thoroughly satisfactory
to my mother, and because the unaffected and accomplished girl herself
was an excellent proof of the happy results of the education she had
received, that my mother made up her mind that the best thing that could
be 'done with me,' was to send me to Madame Heger's school. She had
entered into correspondence with this lady, and the plan had developed
into a further arrangement, that my brother was to be placed with a
French tutor recommended by Madame Heger, and who was the Professor of
History at her establishment. All these conditions were very nearly
settled, when M. Heger came to visit my mother at Ostend; to talk
matters over and to make final arrangements.

Of course from the point of view of my own humble interest I recognised
that the visit of this Brussels Professor was an event of great
importance. I was fully conscious of this, because my cousin had told me
a great deal about M. Heger, explaining that _he_ was the ruling spirit
in the Pensionnat; that he was rather a terrible personage; and that _if
he took a dislike to one,--well, he could be very disagreeable_. I had
received so much advice upon this particular subject from my cousin that
I had talked the matter over very seriously with my brother afterwards,
and asked him what he thought I ought to do in order to avoid the
misfortune of offending M. Heger. My brother's advice was
sound:--'Don't let the man see you are afraid of him,' he said, 'and
then, whatever you do, don't show off.'

Keeping these counsels in mind, after M. Heger's arrival, I sat upon the
extreme edge of the rickety sofa that filled the darkest corner in the
little salle-à-manger of our Ostend apartments over the Patissier's shop
in the Rue de la Chapelle--I remember the very name of the Patissier; it
was Dubois--watching and listening eagerly to the conversation of the
Professor with my mother, who, strange to say, did not seem to be in the
least afraid of him; nor to recognise that he was in any way different
to ordinary mortals! And I must say, looking back to that September
afternoon to-day, and realising our attitude of mind, my mother's and
mine, towards this interesting personage to us, but interesting solely
in his character of _my_ future teacher, there does seem to me something
amazing--so amazing as to be almost amusing--in our total
unconsciousness of his already well-established real, or rather ideal
claims as a personage immortalised in English literature, by an
illustrious writer who, four years before my birth, had been his pupil;
and whose romantic love for him, whilst it had broken her heart, had
served as the inspiration of her genius; so that her literary
masterpiece was precisely a book where the very school I was going to
inhabit was painted, with extraordinary veracity, in so far as outward
and local points of resemblance were concerned.

As for my own ignorance of all these circumstances there is nothing
strange in that. Fifty-four years ago a schoolgirl of my age was not
very likely to have read _Villette_. But what one may pause to inquire
is whether if by any accident the book _had_ come into my hands, and
thus revealed to me my true position, should I have gone down on
my bended knees to my mother, or to express the case more exactly,
should I have flung my arms round her dear neck, and prayed, '_Don't
send me to this school; I am afraid of Professor Paul Emanuel; I
loathe Madame Beck; I shall never make friends with these horrid
Lesbassecouriennes?_' Well, really, I don't think I should have done
anything of the sort! At fourteen one adores an adventure. It seems to
me probable that the excitement of going to the same school, and
learning my lessons in the same class-rooms, and treading the paths of
the same garden, and being instructed by the same teachers as a writer
of genius, who had left these scenes haunted by romance, would have made
me hold under all apprehensions of the Lesbassecouriennes as
school-fellows, of the perfidious Directress with her stealthy methods
of espionage, of the explosive, nerve-wrecking Professor, always
breaking in upon one like a clap of thunder. Yes; but though held under,
the apprehension would have troubled my inner soul a good deal all the
same; and this would have been a pity. Because, in so far as the real
Directress and real Belgian schoolgirls whom I was going to know in the
Rue d'Isabelle went, these apprehensions would have been superfluous and
misleading.

But now if there were no danger of my finding in the real Pensionnat any
spiritual counterparts of either the fictitious Madame Beck, or of the
perverted Lesbassecouriennes pupils, was it equally certain that, if I
had read _Villette_, I should not have recognised and been justified in
recognising in Monsieur Heger the original model and living image of
that immortal figure in English fiction, '_the magnificent-minded,
grand-hearted, dear, faulty little man_'--Professor Paul Emanuel?

We shall perhaps be able to decide this question better at the end of
these reminiscences than here. But what must be realised is, that the
very fact that lends some general interest to my mother's first
impressions and my own about M. Heger is chiefly this: that it expresses
observations made from a purely personal standpoint; out of sight of any
literary views about 'Paul Emanuel,' or historical judgments upon his
relations with Charlotte Brontë. The perfectly simple purpose we had in
view was to see clearly what sort of a Professor M. Heger was going to
prove, and whether I was going to do well as his pupil, and get on
satisfactorily, amongst these foreign surroundings.

My mother formed a most favourable opinion of our visitor, and decided
that I was fortunate in obtaining such a Professor. What had especially
impressed her was a sentence delivered by M. Heger, with a masterly
little gesture, that, as she herself said, entirely won her over to his
opinions upon a question where elaborate arguments might have left her
unconvinced. And I may observe here, that this belonged to M. Heger's
methods, not so much of arguing, as of dispensing with arguments. His
mind was made up upon most subjects, and as he had got into the habit of
regarding the world as his class-room, and his fellow-creatures as
pupils, he did not argue; he told people what they ought to think about
things. And in order to make this method of settling questions not only
convincing, but stimulating, to his most intelligent pupils, he held in
reserve a store of these really luminous phrases, that he would use as
little Lanterns, flashing them, now in this direction, now in that, but
always with a special and appropriate direction given to the
illuminative phrase, so that it lit up the point of view upon which he
desired to fix attention. The particular sentence that conquered my
mother's admiration and acquiescence in M. Heger's point of view was the
one I have made the heading of this chapter. Here was how he contrived
to introduce it. After discussing the plan of _my_ studies, and the
arrangements for my being taken to the English church by my brother
every Sunday, and allowed to take walks with him upon half-holidays (to
all of which of course I listened with passionate attention), they
passed on to discuss the terms asked by the tutor whom the Hegers had
recommended. My mother had been told by her Dutch cousin that they were
exorbitant terms; and, as a matter of fact, I believe they were exactly
twice the amount charged by the Hegers themselves: '_I am not a rich
woman_,' my mother had said, apologetically, '_and I have put aside a
fixed sum for my children's education; I doubt if I can give this_.' ...
Then did the Professor see, and seize, his opportunity: '_Madame,'_ he
said, with a gesture, '_quelquefois, donner, c'est semer_.' My mother,
dazzled with this prophetic utterance, remained speechless and
vanquished. In the evening of the same day I heard her quote to the
Dutch cousin, who did not approve of her consent to these charges,
'_what that clever man, Professor Heger) said so well_,' as though it
had been unanswerable. In the course of the next two years I often heard
the same luminous phrase used, with equal appropriateness, to light up
other propositions. (I have heard M. Heger use it in a sense where it
became a different formula for expressing a fundamental doctrine of
Rousseau, thus, '_Instruire, ce n'est pas donner, c'est semer_,' but I
never heard the words without going back to the first impression, and to
the vision it called up. I would see again the little _salle-à-manger_
in the Rue de la Chapelle at Ostend, I would watch the masterly gesture
of the Professor's hand when he delivered his triumphant sentence, that
is not an argument, but is worth more; I would see the look of
admiration and sudden conviction come into my dear mother's face; I
would feel myself sitting upon the little rickety sofa in the dark
corner, _and I would shudder with the foreknowledge of what was coming_,
for, woebetide me that I should have to tell it, this first interview
_did not leave with me the same impression of confidence in M. Heger as
my future teacher and guardian that it did with my mother;_ it left with
me, on the contrary, the miserable conviction that the very worst thing
that could have happened had happened; that M. Heger had taken a
vehement dislike to me, and consequently that all hope of happiness for
me in the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle was over and done with.

And the worst of it was, that it was all my own fault; or rather, to be
just, it was my misfortune.

For I had had a really very bad time of it, sitting on that rickety
little sofa. My mother, who had only too flattering an opinion of me in
every way, had meant to say the kindest things about me to M. Heger, and
I knew this perfectly. But unfortunately, although she spoke French with
the greatest fluency and self-confidence (because as she was a very
charming woman, and as Frenchmen are always polite in their criticism of
the French of charming English women, she had been very often
complimented upon her command of the language),--unfortunately, I say,
her French was really English, literally translated; and every one who
has experience of what false meanings can be conveyed by this sort of
French will realise what I had suffered, because, though I only spoke
French badly at this time, I understood the language better than my
mother. And this is how I had heard myself described to my future
Professor. My mother had _wished_ to say that I was more fond of study
and of reading than was good for the health of a girl of my age; but
what she _actually_ said was that I was fond of reading things that were
not healthy or suitable (_convenable_) for a young girl. Again, she had
_meant_ to say that as I had worked too hard, she had let me run wild a
little; and that consequently I might find it difficult to get into
working habits again; but that as I had a capital head of my own, and
plenty of courage, I should, no doubt, soon get into good ways again.
But instead of all these flattering things (that might have been rather
irritating too, only a Professor of experience knows how to forgive a
parent's partiality), I had heard this fond mother of mine say that her
daughter had recently contracted the habits of a little savage; and that
it would require courageous discipline, as she was very headstrong, to
bring her into the right way again. It will be understood that to sit
and listen to all this about oneself was anguish. But, carefully
watching M. Heger's face, I had a notion that he had found out there was
some mistake. Still I was depressed and bewildered; and in dread of what
I was going to say, when the time came, as I knew it must, when he would
say something to me, and I should have a chance of answering for myself.
And the misfortune was, that _when_ the critical moment came, I wasn't
expecting it; because, here, at least, what the author of _Villette_
says of Professor Paul Emanuel was true of M. Heger--everything he did
was sudden; and he always contrived to take one by surprise.

It was immediately after he had won his triumph over my mother, and in
the moment when I myself was under the spell of admiration for his
talent, that he turned upon me, in a sort of flash, smiling down upon me
(very red and startled to find him so near), and nodding his head with
an irritating look of amusement as his penetrating eyes searched my
doleful face. '_Aa-ah_,' he said, in a half-playful, but as it sounded
to me, more mocking, than kindly tone, '_Aa-ah_' (another nod of the
head), 'so this is the little Savage I have to discipline and vanquish,
is it? And she is headstrong (_têtue_). Tell me, Mees, am I to be too
indulgent? or too severe? (_Dois-je être trop indulgent? ou trop
sévère?_') Now, if only I had made the natural reply, the one obviously
expected from me--the one any girl in my position would have made, and
which I myself should have made if I hadn't been addressed as 'a little
savage,' and if I hadn't been smarting under the sense that he must have
the worst possible opinion of me, and that I ought to vindicate my
honour in some way,--if only, in short, I had remembered my brother's
wholesome advice, '_Don't show off_,' that is to say, if only I had
said, amiably and nicely, with a timid little smile, '_Trop indulgent,
s'il vous plait, Monsieur_,' THEN all would have been well with me; M.
Heger would have continued to smile; we should have exchanged amiable
glances and parted the best of friends.... But of what use are these
speculations? What I _did_ reply to his question of whether he was to be
too indulgent or too severe was--'_Ni l'un ni l'autre, Monsieur; soyez
juste, celà suffit_' ... and I listened to the broadness of my own
British accent, whilst I said it, in despairing wonder! M. Heger's
smiles vanished; there came what I took to be a 'look of undying hatred'
into his face--it was not perhaps so bad as all that, but ... well, I
certainly hadn't conquered his favour. He said something disagreeable
about Les Anglaises being over wise, too philosophical for him, which my
mother thought was a compliment to my cleverness. But I knew what I had
done, and that it could never be undone, henceforth ...

Well, but the case really was not quite so desperate perhaps?


[1] This chapter is reproduced from the _Cornhill_ by the kind
permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co.



CHAPTER III

MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER AS I SAW
THEM; AND BELGIAN SCHOOLGIRLS AS I
KNEW THEM


Let me give here my mother's, and my own, account of the impressions
made upon us by M. Heger's personal appearance at this time.

'He is very like one of those selected Roman Catholic Priests,' my
mother told her Dutch relatives, 'who go into society and look after the
eldest sons of Catholic noblemen. He has too good a nose for a Belgian
and, I should say, he has Italian blood in him.'

My own report, to my brother, who made anxious inquiries of me, was less
flattering perhaps, but it was not intended to be disrespectful. I
always see M. Heger as I saw him then: as too interesting to be
alarming; but too alarming to be lovable.

'He is rather like Punch,' I said, 'but better looking of course; and
not so good-tempered.'

Let me justify these two descriptions by showing that both of them were
based upon an accurate observation of the man himself.

M. Heger, as I remember him, was no longer what Charlotte called him,
angrily, in her letter to Ellen Nussey, a _little Black Being_, and,
affectionately, under the disguise of Paul Emanuel, '_a spare, alert
man, showing the velvet blackness of a close-shorn head, and the sallow
ivory of his brow beneath_.' M. Heger in 1859 was still alert, but he
was not spare, he was inclining towards stoutness. His hair was not
velvet black, but grizzled, and he was bald on the crown of his head, in
a way that might have been mistaken for a tonsure; and this no doubt
added to the resemblance my mother saw in him to a Priest. He did not
look in the least old, however. His brow, not sallow but bronzed, was
unwrinkled; his eyes were still clear and penetrating (Charlotte said
they were violet blue; and certainly she ought to have known. Still, _do
violet eyes penetrate one's soul like points of steel?_) The Roman
nose, that my mother thought too good a nose to be Belgian, and that
reminded me of Punch (but a good-looking Punch) was a commanding
feature. And the curved chin (also suggesting a good-looking Punch, to a
young and irreverent observer), although it indicated humour, meant
sarcasm, rather than a sense of fun. But Monsieur Heger had one really
beautiful feature, that I remember often watching with extreme pleasure
when he recited fine poetry or read noble prose:--his mouth, when
uttering words that moved him, had a delightful smile, not in the least
tender towards ordinary mortals, but almost tender in its homage to the
excellence of writers of genius.

In brief, what M. Heger's face revealed when studied as the index of his
natural qualities, was intellectual superiority, an imperious temper, a
good deal of impatience against stupidity, and very little patience with
his fellow-creatures generally; it revealed too a good deal of humour;
and a very little kind-heartedness, to be weighed against any amount of
irritability. It was a sort of face bound to interest one; but not, so
it seems to me, to conquer affection. For with all these qualities of
intellect, power, humour, and a little kind-heartedness, one quality was
totally lacking: there was no love in M. Heger's face, nor in his
character, as I recall it; and, oddly enough, looking back now to him as
one of the personages in my own past to whom I owe most, and whose mind
I most admire, I have to recognise that in my sentiment towards M. Heger
to-day even, made up as it is half of admiration and half of amusement,
there is not one particle of love.

I have said--in connection with my first impression, that 'undying hate'
was the sentiment that M. Heger had conceived for me--that really 'it
was not so bad as all that.' Still, what happened at this first
interview, if it did not determine any deep-rooted antipathy to me,
planted from this moment in M. Heger's breast, did indicate, to a
certain extent, what the character of our future relationships was to
be--_out of lesson-hours._ In these hours, our relationships of
Professor and pupil were ideal. Seldom did an occasional
misunderstanding trouble them. Certainly, in my own day, no other pupil
entered with so much sympathetic admiration into the spirit of M.
Heger's teaching as I did. He saw and felt this; and here I, too, was
for him, and _as a pupil_, sympathetic. But in our personal
relationships, there were certain things in me that were antipathetic to
M. Heger, and that rubbed him so much the wrong way, that he was
constantly (so it still seems to me) unjust to what were not faults, but
idiosyncrasies, that belonged to my nationality and my character. First
of all, there was my English accent: and here this singular remark has
to be made: I never spoke such purely British French to any one as to M.
Heger; and this was the result of my constant endeavour to be very
careful to avoid the accent he disliked, when speaking to him. The
second cause of offence in me was also due to my nationality, or rather
to my upbringing. Like all English children of my generation, I had been
brought up to esteem it undignified, and even a breach of good manners,
to cry in public: and although I was tender-hearted and emotional, I was
not in the least hysterical; and except under the stress of extreme
distress, it cost me very little self-control not to weep, as my Belgian
schoolfellows did, very often, at the smallest scolding; or even without
a scolding, and simply because they were bored--'_ennuyée_.' I remember
now my surprise, at first hearing the reply to my question to a sobbing
schoolfellow: '_Pourquoi pleures-tu?_ '_Parce que je m'ennuie._' 'Why?'
'_Mais je te le dis parce que je m'ennuie_.' Well, but M. Heger liked
his pupils to cry, when he said disagreeable things: or, in any case, he
became gentle, and melted, when they wept, and was amiable at once. But
when one did not weep, but appeared either unmoved, or indignant, he
became more and more disagreeable: and, at length, exasperated. A third
idiosyncrasy in me that he disliked was not national, but personal. It
was due to a sort of incipient Rousseau-ism,--that must have been
inborn, because I was never taught it, even in England. And yet there
it was, implanted in me as a sentiment, long before I recognised it as
an opinion or conviction, that I could express in words! This natural
sentiment, or principle, was the belief that '_I was born free: that my
soul was my own: and that there was no virtue, wisdom, nor happiness
possible for me outside of the laws of my own constitution_.'
Unformulated, but inherent in me, this fundamental belief in myself as a
law to myself, no doubt betrayed itself in a sort of independence of
mind and manner very aggravating to my elders and betters, and to those
put in authority over me. And especially aggravating to an authoritative
Professor, who was, in all domains, opposed to individualism, and the
doctrine of personal rights and liberty. Thus in literature M. Heger was
a classic; in religion he was a dogmatic Catholic; in politics he was an
anti-democrat, a lover of vigorous kings; and by constitution he was a
king in his own right: a masterful man, not only a law to himself, but a
lord, by virtue of his sense of superiority, to everyone else.

For these reasons, M. Heger and myself--on ideal terms as Professor
and pupil--were on bad terms outside of lesson-hours. We could not quite
dislike each other; but our relationships were stormy. There were,
however, intervals of calm.

I have said that with a good deal of admiration, gratitude, and some
amusement, there is no _love_ for M. Heger intermingled with my
remembrances of him.

There is, on the contrary, a good deal of love in the sentiment I retain
for Madame Heger,--although, as a matter of fact, in the days when I was
her pupil I never remember any strong or warm feeling of personal
affection for her; nor have I any distinct personal obligation to her,
as to one who, like M. Heger, rendered me direct services by her
instructions or counsels. Nor yet again had Madame Heger any strong
personal liking for me; nor did she show me any special kindness. But
her kindness was of an all-embracing character. And so was her liking
for, or rather love of, all the inhabitants of the little world she
governed: a world that extended beyond the boundaries of the actual
walls of the Pensionnat, in any stated year; a world, made up of all
the girls who, before that year, and afterwards, through several
generations, had been and ever would be, her 'dear pupils'; '_mes chères
élèves_';--terms that, uttered by her, were no mere formula, but
expressed a true sentiment, and a serious and, so it seems to me, a
beautiful and sweet idealism. This idealism in Madame Heger, this
constant love and care and watchfulness for the community of girls, who,
passing out of her hands, were to go out into the world by and by, to
fulfil there what Madame Heger saw to be the kind and sweet and
tranquil, and sometimes self-sacrificing and sorrowful, mission of
womanhood, enveloped the ideal school-mistress with a sort of unfailing
benevolence, that became a pervading influence in the Pensionnat,
singling out no particular pupils, and withdrawn from none of them.

Here, it seems to me, and not at all in the reasons imagined by
Charlotte in the case of Madame Beck, we have the secret of Madame
Heger's system of government. I really am not, at this distance of time,
able to say positively whether there was, or was not, a surveillance
that might be called a system of _espionage_ carried on, keeping the
head-mistress informed of the conversation and behaviour of this large
number of girls, amongst whom one or two black sheep might have sufficed
to contaminate the flock. I was not a faultless, nor a model girl by any
means: but I was a simple sort of young creature with nothing of the
black sheep in me; and I never remember in my own case having my desk
explored, nor my pockets turned inside out. But if even this had been
done, it would not have gravely affected me; because neither in my
pockets nor in my desk, would anything have been found of a mysterious
or interesting character. But I should think it very probable that, in
this very large school, a watchful surveillance _was_ kept up; and that
if any of these schoolgirls, most of them under sixteen, had attempted,
after their return from the monthly holiday, to bring back to school
illegal stores of sweets, or a naughty story book, and had concealed
such things in their school desks, well, I admit, I think it possible,
that the sweets or naughty book _might_ have been missing from the desk
next day. And also that, in the course of the afternoon, a not entirely
welcome invitation would have been received by the imprudent smuggler of
forbidden goods to pay Madame Heger a visit in the Salon? These things
took place occasionally I know: and naturally, amongst the girls public
sympathy was with the smuggler. But I am not sure, if one takes the
point of view of a Directress, if a large girls' school could be carried
on successfully, were it made a point of honour that there should be no
surveillance, and that pupils might use their lockers as cupboards for
sweets, or as hiding-places for light literature.

But, apart from the fact that Madame Heger was, no doubt, both watchful
and uncompromising in her surveillance, based upon a firm resolution
that nothing 'inconvenient' must be smuggled in, or hidden out of sight,
as a source of mischief in the school, there was in her no resemblance
to the odious Madame Beck; that is to say, no _moral_ resemblance. In
physical appearance, the author of _Villette_ did use Madame Heger
evidently as the model for the picture of an entirely different moral
person. '_Her complexion was fresh and sanguine, her eye blue and
serene. Her face offered contrasts--its features were by no means such
as are usually seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended
freshness and repose; their outline was stern; her forehead was high,
but narrow; it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no
expanse.... I know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person._'[1]

Taking this portrait from _Villette_, as it is given of Madame Beck, and
comparing it with my own recollections, and also with the photograph I
am fortunate enough to possess of Madame Heger at the age of sixty, it
seems to me that this _is_ a very accurate physical description of the
real Directress of the school in the Rue d'Isabelle; who morally was as
unlike the fictitious Madame Beck as truth is unlike falsehood. About
the physical resemblance, I may say that, if I had trusted to my own
impressions, I should have rejected the assertion that the 'outline
of her features was stern.' I never remember associating sternness
with Madame Heger; though her supreme quality of serenity imposed a sort
of respect that had a little touch of fear in it. Upon re-examining the
photograph attentively, however, I find that it is true that the outline
of the features _is_ stern; but I do not think that this impression was
conveyed by the younger face, remembered with softened colouring; and
lit up, as a characteristic expression, by a normal expression of
serenity and of kindliness. '_I know not what of harmony pervaded her
whole person_': that sentence of Charlotte's (used by her of the
unspeakable Madame Beck) exactly expresses the impression I still retain
of the very estimable and, by myself, affectionately remembered, Madame
Heger.


[Illustration: MADAME HEGER AT SIXTY. (She was thirty years younger when
Charlotte knew her) From a portrait given to the author by Madame
Heger's daughter (Author's _Copyright_)]


In the same way, as I have said, the apprehensions as to my future
companions in this foreign school, that would infallibly have been
awakened in me if I had read, before meeting them, the account given by
the author of _Villette_ of Belgian schoolgirls, as differing, not only
in nationality, but in human nature, from English schoolgirls, would
have been groundless. When I call up around me to-day the recollections
of my Bruxelles schoolfellows, amongst whom I was the only English girl
and the only Protestant, there does not come back to me any painful
remembrance that I ever felt myself an alien amongst them. On the
contrary, I remember privileges granted me as 'la petite Anglaise,' who
was further away than others from home, and must be treated with special
kindness. I see around me in this large company of girls, no 'perverted'
nor precociously formed young women, _whose 'eyes are full of an
insolent light, and their brows hard and unblushing as marble_.' In
brief, I see no '_swinish multitude_'--such as insular prejudice, and a
disturbed imagination, showed Charlotte; but I see very much the same
mixed crowd of youthful faces, fair and dark, pretty and plain, smiling
and serious, stupid and intelligent, coarse and fine, sympathetic and
unlikeable, that one would get in such a large collection of English
schoolgirls; but in all this crowd of my Belgian schoolfellows just what
my memory does _not_ show me anywhere, are the '_eyes full of an
insolent light, and the brow hard and unblushing as marble_,'[2]--that
are not characteristics of the schoolgirl in any nation or country I
have ever known; and I have been a traveller in my time, and enjoyed
opportunities of observing different national peculiarities, that never
fell in the way of Charlotte, who spent two years in Bruxelles; but
lived the rest of her life in Yorkshire.

As for the hundred (or more perhaps than a hundred) schoolgirls that
made up in my day the little world ruled by Madame Heger as the
administrator of a system based on the authority of _Douceur, Bonté_,
and _les Convenances_ (in the sense of what was seemly, and opposed to
violence and ugliness), amongst them were many girls whom I only knew by
name and sight; many of whom I knew slightly better, and whom I rather
liked than disliked; a few whom I disliked heartily (very few of
these)--and a few whom I loved dearly (very few again)--but amongst
these friends, chosen because their hearts were in tune with my own,
the difference of nationality and creed did not stand in the way of
mutual affection. In some cases, it is true, life, with its exacting
claims of duties and occupations and cares, rushed in to divide me
afterwards from these companions of my best years; when everything that
I am glad, and not sorry, to have been, and to have done, in a long
life, was prepared and made possible for me--but at least one of these
friendships formed with a Belgian schoolgirl in those days, I may
describe as a life-long friendship: because it remains an unaltered
sentiment that lives in me to-day, unquenched by the fact that, only a
few years ago--after half a century had passed since we met--my girl
friend that had been then, a white-haired woman now, died; in the same
year, as it strangely happened, that our old school (transformed into a
boys' college during the last twenty years of its existence), that had
stood in the Rue d'Isabelle until 1909, was swept away, with its
beautiful old walled garden and time-honoured pear-trees, that to the
end of their lives 'renewed their perfumed snowy blossom every spring.'

I am told a handsome building now replaces the long, plain straggling
façade of the historic school--but I have no wish to see it.


[1] _Villette_, chapter viii.

[2] See _Villette_, chapter viii.



CHAPTER IV

MY SECOND INTERVIEW WITH M. HEGER.
THE WASHING OF 'PEPPER.' THE
LESSON IN ARITHMETIC


I had been an inmate of the school in the Rue d'Isabelle a fortnight. In
this interval I had lived through a great deal. Thanks to attentive
self-doctoring and a strict _régime_, where no luxuries in the way of
private crying were allowed, I had pulled myself through the first acute
stage of the sort of sickness that attacks every 'new' girl, as the
result of being plunged into the cold atmosphere of a strange, and
especially of a foreign, school. Now I was out of danger of the peril
that had threatened me during about a week, the possible disaster of
some sudden access of violent weeping over my sense of desolation, in
the sight of these foreign teachers and pupils, that would have seemed
to me profoundly humiliating, on patriotic, as well as upon private
grounds. For, as the one English girl in this Belgian school, was not
the honour of my country, or, at any rate, of the girls of my country,
at stake? And then I realised, also, that politeness to the foreigner,
as well as duty to myself and my country, forbade any exhibition of
vehement home-sickness. Thus, might not these Belgian teachers and girls
reasonably take offence, and say, 'Why do you come to school in our
country if you don't like it? We didn't ask you to come here. Why don't
you go home?'

By these methods, then, of what it pleased me to regard as a sort of
philosophy of my own, I had lived through the worst, and if I was not
entirely cured of occasional inward sinkings of the heart and the
feeling of desolation, I felt I had mastered the temptation to make any
public display of them. And having reached this point by my own effort,
now help came to me in the shape of a friendly tribute and encouragement
from a girl who was a sort of philosopher, also by a rule of her own,
which she kindly explained to me, and which I entirely approved of.
This girl was fair and small, and had broad brows and clear green eyes
under them. Her name was Marie Hazard. She had not spoken to me before,
but on several occasions had shown me little kindnesses, and given me
nice smiles and nods of greeting. Finally she came up to me in the
garden and took my arm:--

'Do you know why I have a friendship for you?' she asked.

'No,' I answered. 'But have you _really_? I _am_ so glad.'

'Yes,' she proceeded to explain; 'I like you, because you are
reasonable, and don't sit down and cry, as, of course, you _could_ if
you liked. I have as much heart as another; but it irritates me, and
does not touch me one bit, to see some of the pupils here, the big ones
too, crying and crying, and _why? because they have come back to school,
and would rather be at home!_ Evidently that is the case with all of us.
And evidently, what is more, it's going to be the case for ten months.
But for some insignificant holidays at the New Year, from now until
August, thus it will be with us. We shall be all of us in this school,
and we would all of us prefer to be in our homes. But why cry, then? or
if one begins to cry, why leave off? Is one, then, to cry for ten
months? And what eyes will one have at the end? And what good is it?'

I laughed, not only because she seemed to me to put it humorously, but
because I was full of happiness that I had found a friend.

'Yes,' she said, 'you laugh, and that is well, too. It's the thing to
do. Now, if _you_ cried there might be an excuse; you are farther away
from your people than we are. But you ask yourself, What is the good?
And you say to yourself, No, I won't discourage the others. And that is
English. And that is why I like the English; they are at least
reasonable.'

This was balm to me. The sense of desolation had vanished. Here was the
proof that I had been a good witness, and served to uphold the good name
of England, and also that I had conquered a friend.

I think it was the same afternoon, because there were Catechism classes,
from which, as a Protestant, I was exempted, that I was sent out into
the garden, for the first time, at an hour when no other pupils were
there. Later on this privilege was very often accorded me, for the same
reason; so that, in my own day at any rate, no one else in the school
had the opportunity I had given me, and that I used, of taking
possession of the enchanted place and making it my very own. And this
was so because there was no knowledge in my mind at the time that Some
One had been beforehand with me here; and that although for my inner
self it became (and must always be for me exclusively) my own beautiful,
well-enclosed, flower-scented, turf-carpeted, Eden where the spirit of
my youth had its home before any worldly influences, or any knowledge of
evil, had come between it and the poetry of its aspirations and its
dreams, yet for every one _but_ myself, it is Charlotte Brontë's Garden
of Imagination, where _she_ used to '_stray down the pleasant alleys and
hear the bells of St. Jean Baptiste peal out with their sweet, soft,
exalted sound._[1]

And although no angel with a flaming sword--no, nor yet any Belgian
architects and masons, who have broken down the walls and uprooted the
old trees, and made the old historical garden in the Rue d'Isabelle a
place of stones--can drive me out of _my_ garden of memories where still
(and more often than before as the day darkens) I walk 'in the cool of
the evening' with the spirit of my youth; yet, for English readers, it
is not I, but Charlotte Brontë who must describe, what I could never
dare nor desire to paint after her, the famous _Allée défendue_ that
holds such a romantic place in her novel of Lucy Snowe, and that was
also the scene of my second meeting with M. Heger.

'In the garden there _was a large berceau_,' wrote the author of
_Villette_, '_above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a
smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran 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 ... this alley, which ran parallel
with the very high wall on that side of the garden, was forbidden to be
entered by the pupils; it was called indeed l'Allée défendue._'

In my day there was no prohibition of the _Allée défendue_, although the
name survived. It was only forbidden to play noisy or disturbing games
there; as it was to be reserved for studious pupils, or for the
mistresses who wished to read or converse there in quietude.


[Illustration: THE "ALLÉE DÉFENDUE"]


If I had a lesson to learn, it was to the _Allée défendue_ that I took
my book; and in this _allée_ I had already discovered and appropriated a
sheltered nook, at the furthest end of the _berceau_, where one was
nearly hidden oneself in the vine's curtain, but had a delightful view
of the garden. Before reaching this low bench, I had noticed, when
entering the _berceau_, that a ladder stood in the centre; and that, out
of view in so far as his head went, a man, in his shirt sleeves, was
clipping and thinning the vines. I took it for granted he was a
gardener, and paid no attention to him; but, in a quite happy frame of
mind, sat down to learn some poetry by heart. My impression is that it
was Lamartine's _Chûte des Feuilles_. Shutting my eyes, whilst repeating
the verses out aloud (a trick I had), I opened them, _to see M. Heger_.
He it was who had been thinning the vine; it was a favourite occupation
of his (had I read _Villette_ I should have known it).[2] Once again he
took me by surprise, and I was full of anxiety as to what might come of
it. Since I entered the school I had, indeed, caught distant views of
him, hurrying through the class-rooms to or from his lessons in the
First and Second divisions. But until my French had improved I was
placed in the Third division, where M. Heger only taught occasionally,
so that I had not yet received any lesson from him.

It was a relief to see that he looked amiable, and even friendly; if
only I didn't lose my head and say the wrong thing again! One thing I
kept steadily in view; nothing must induce me to forget my brother's
advice this time; there must be no attempt at fine phrases, this time
nothing that could possibly appear like showing off.... But all my
anxieties upon this occasion were dispelled by the purpose of my
Professor's disturbance of my studies. He invited me to assist him in
washing a very stout but very affectionate white dog, to whom I was told
I owed this service as he was a compatriot of mine, an English dog, with
an English name: a very inappropriate one, for he was sweet-tempered and
white, and the name was Pepper. For this operation of washing Pepper, I
was invited upstairs into M. Heger's library, which was, in this
beautifully clean and orderly house, a model of disorder; clouded as to
air, and soaked as to scent, with the smoke of living and the
accumulated ashes of dead cigars. But the shelves laden from floor to
ceiling with books made a delightful spectacle.

Upon the occasion of this first visit to his library, M. Heger made me
the present of a book that marked a new epoch in my life, because,
before I was fifteen, it put before me in a vivid and amusing way the
problem of personality, _Le Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ of Xavier de
Maistre, was my introduction to thoughts and speculations that led me to
a later interest in Oriental philosophy, and especially in Buddhism. I
must not forget another present in the form of one more of those
luminous little sentences that, as I have said, he used as Lanterns,
turning them to send light in different directions. I had confided to
him, not my own methods of philosophy--I did not dare incur the
risk--but my newly found friend's methods of helping herself to be
'reasonable.' M. Heger showed no enthusiasm, nor even approval: and I
found out that he had a strong dislike to my elected friend. Personally
he would have preferred and recommended _Religious_ methods of prayer,
and docile submission to spiritual direction, to any philosophy,
especially in the case of women. But he quoted to me and wrote down for
me, and exhorted me to learn by heart and repeat aloud (as I actually
did), a definition of the philosophy of life of an Eighteenth-century
Woman, as '_Une façon de tirer parti de sa raison pour son bonheur_.' I
discovered this sentence a great many years afterwards in a book of the
de Goncourts. But M. Heger first gave it to me in my girlhood.

Although it was, of course, as Professor of Literature that M. Heger
excelled, he was in other domains--in every domain he entered--an
original and an effective teacher. Let me give the history of a famous
Lesson in Arithmetic by M. Heger that took place, I am not quite sure
why, in the large central hall, or _Galerie_ as it was called, that
flanked the square, enclosing the court or playground of daily boarders,
whilst the _Galerie_ divided the court from the garden. For some special
reason, all the classes attended this particular lesson; where the
subject was the _Different effects upon value, of multiplication and
division in the several cases of fractions and integers_. Madame Heger
and the Mesdemoiselles Heger, and all the governesses were there. I had
been promoted into the first class (passing the second class over
altogether) before this, so that I was a regular pupil of M. Heger's in
literature, and certainly in this class, a favourite. But I was a
complete dunce at arithmetic, and it was a settled conviction in my mind
that my stupidity was written against me in the book of destiny; and I
admit that, as it did not seem of any use for me to try to do anything
in this field, I had given up trying, and when arithmetic lessons were
being given I employed my thoughts elsewhere. But a lesson from M. Heger
was another thing; even a lesson in arithmetic by him might be worth
while. So that I really did, with all the power of brain that was in me,
try to apply myself to the understanding of his lesson. But it was of no
use; after about five minutes, the usual arithmetic brain-symptoms
began; words ceased to mean anything at all intelligible. It was really
a sort of madness; and therefore in self-defence I left the thing alone
and looked out of the window, whilst the lesson lasted. It never entered
my head that _I_ was in any danger of being questioned: no one ever took
any notice of me at the arithmetic lessons. It was recognised that,
here, I was no good; and as I was good elsewhere, they left me alone.
Yes, but M. Heger wasn't going to leave me alone. Evidently he had taken
a great deal of trouble, and wanted the lesson to be a success. And it
had not succeeded. He was dissatisfied with all the answers he received.
He ran about on the _estrade_ getting angrier and angrier. And then at
last, to my horror, he called upon _me_; and what cut me to the soul, I
saw that there was a look of confidence in his face, as if to say 'Here
is some one who will have understood!'

... Well of course the thing was hopeless. I had a sort of mad notion
that a miracle might happen, and that Providence might interfere, and
that if by accident I repeated some words I had heard him say there
might be some sense in them--but, as Matthew Arnold said, miracles don't
happen. It was deplorable. I saw him turn to Madame Heger with a shrug
of the shoulders: and that he must have said of the whole English race
abominable things, and of this English girl in particular, may be taken
for granted; because Madame Heger hardly ever spoke a word when he was
angry. But now she said something soothing about the English nation, and
in my praise. Well, my case being settled, M. Heger began: and he did
not leave off until the whole Galerie was a house of mourning. In the
whole place, the only dry eyes were mine, and here I had to exercise no
self-control; for although at first I had been sorry for him, now I was
really so angry with him for attacking these harmless girls, and
attributing to them abominable heartlessness, although the place rang
with their sobs, that I don't think I should have minded a slight attack
of apoplexy--only I shouldn't have liked him to have died.

It was really a bewildering and almost maddening thing, because on both
sides it was so absurd. First of all, what had all these weeping girls
done to deserve the reproaches the Professor heaped upon them? 'They
said to themselves,' he told them: '"What does this old Papa-Heger
matter? Let him sit up at night, let him get up early, let him spend all
his days in thinking how he can serve _us_, make difficulties light,
and dark things clear to _us. We_ are not going to take any trouble on
our side, not we! why should we? Indeed, it amuses us to see him
_navré_--for us, it is a good farce."'

The wail rose up--'_Mais non, Monsieur, ce n'est pas vrai, cela ne nous
amuse pas; nous sommes tristes, nous pleurons, voyez._'

The Professor took no heed; he continued. 'They said to themselves "Ah!
the old man, _le pauvre vieux_, takes an interest in us, he loves us; it
pleases him to think when he is dead, and has disappeared, these little
pupils whom he has tried to render intelligent, and well instructed, and
adorned with gifts of the mind, will think of his lessons, and wish they
had been more attentive. Foolish old thing! not at all," they say, "as
if _we_ had any care for him or his lessons."'

The wail rose up--'_Ce n'est pas gentil ce que vous dites là, Monsieur:
nous avons beaucoup de respect pour vous, nous aimons vos leçons; oui,
nous travaillerons bien, vous allez voir, pardonnez-nous_.'

'Frankly, now, does that touch you?' I heard behind me. 'It is not
reasonable! I find it even stupid (_je le trouve même bête_).' Marie
Hazard, of course. I made a mistake when I said _my_ eyes were the only
dry ones. Here was my philosopher-friend, amongst the pupils in the
Galerie, and her eyes were quite as dry as mine.

But the story of the Lesson in Arithmetic does not finish here; and
nothing would be more ungrateful were I to hide the ending: by which I
was the person to benefit most. To my alarm, in the recreation hour next
day, M. Heger came up to me, still with a frowning brow and a strong
look of dislike, and told me he wished to prove to himself whether I was
negligent or incapable. Because if I was incapable, it was idle to waste
time on me--so much the worse for my poor mother, who deceived herself!
On the other hand, if I was negligent, it was high time I should correct
myself. This was what had to be seen. I followed him up to his library,
not joyously like the willing assistant in the washing of Pepper, but
like a trembling criminal led to execution. I felt he was going again
over 'fractions' and the 'integers.' I knew I shouldn't understand
them; and that he wouldn't understand that I was 'incapable,' that when
arithmetic began my brain was sure to go!

The funny and pleasant thing about M. Heger was that he was so fond of
teaching, and so truly in his element when he began it, that his temper
became sweet at once; and I loved his face when it got the look upon it
that came in lesson-hours: so that, whereas we were hating each other
when we crossed the threshold of the door, we liked each other very much
when we sat down to the table; and I had an excited feeling that he was
going to make me understand. _It took him rather less than a quarter of
an hour._

On the table before us he had a bag of macaroon biscuits, and half a
Brioche cake. He presented me with a macaroon. There you have one whole
macaroon (_intègre_): well, but let us be generous. Suppose I multiply
my gift, by eight: now you have eight whole macaroons and _are eight
times richer_, hein? But that's too many; _eight_ whole macaroons! I
divide them between you and me. As the result, you have half the eight.
But now for our _half-Brioche_; we have one piece only: and we are _two
people_, so we multiply the pieces. But _each is smaller_, the more
pieces, the smaller slice of cake; here are eight pieces; they are
really too small for anything, we will divide this collection of pieces
into two parts. Now does not this division make you better off, hein?
Then he folded his arms across his chest in a Napoleonic attitude, and
nodding his head at me, asked, '_Que c'est difficile,--n'est-ce pas_?'

Of course in this, and indeed in all his personal and special methods,
M. Heger followed Rousseau faithfully. But, then, where is the modern
educationalist since 1762 who does _not_ found himself upon Rousseau?

It was not, however, in rescuing one from the slough of despond, where
natural defects would have left one without his aid, that M. Heger
excelled--it was rather in calling out one's best faculties; in
stimulating one's natural gifts; in lifting one above satisfaction with
mediocrity; in fastening one's attention on models of perfection; in
inspiring one with a sense of reverence and love for them, that M.
Heger's peculiar talent lay.

I may attempt only to sum up a _few_ maxims of his, that have constantly
lived in my own mind: but I feel painfully my inability to convey the
impression they produced when given by this incomparable Professor;
whose power belonged to his personality; and was consequently a power
that cannot be reproduced, nor continued by any disciple. The Teacher of
genius is born and not made.

The first of these maxims was that, before entering upon the study of
any noble or high order of thoughts, one had to follow the methods
symbolised by the Eastern practice of leaving one's shoes outside of the
Mosque doors. There were any number of ways of 'putting off the shoes'
of vulgarity, suggested to one's choice by M. Heger: the reading of some
beautiful passage in a favourite book; the repetition of a familiar
verse: attention to some very beautiful object: the deliberate
recollection of some heroic action, _etc._ With different temperaments
different plans might be followed:--what was necessary was that one did
not enter the sacred place without some _deliberate_ renunciation of
vulgarity and earthliness: by _some_ mental act, or process, one must
have 'put off one's shoes.' There is here a strange circumstance that I
was too young to feel the true importance of at the time, but that I
have often wondered over since then. There can be no doubt of M. Heger's
rigid orthodoxy as a Catholic. Yet whilst the recitation of the Rosary
inaugurated the daily lessons, M, Heger had a special invocation[3] of
'the Spirits of _Wisdom_, _Truth_, _Justice_, _and Equanimity_,' that
was recited by some chosen pupil; who had to come out of her place in
class and stand near him; and who was not allowed by him to gabble. And
this was the invariable introduction to _his_ lesson. I can't feel it
was an orthodox proceeding: _There was not a Saint's name anywhere!_ But
I feel the infallible impression it produced upon me now. One effect, in
the sense of 'putting off one's shoes,' that it had for myself was that
the Professor of Literature appeared to me without any of the dislikable
qualities of the everyday M. Heger.

Another maxim of M. Heger's was certainly borrowed from Voltaire: That
one must give one's soul as many forms as possible. _Il faut donner à
son âme toutes les formes possibles_. Again, that every sort of
literature and literary style has its merits, _except the literature
that is not literary and the style that is bad:_ here again, one has, of
course, Voltaire's well-known phrases: _J'admets tous les genres, hors
le genre ennuyeux_.'

A third maxim was that one must never employ, nor tolerate the
employment of, a literary image as _an argument_. The purpose of a
literary image is to illuminate as a vision, and to interpret as a
parable. An image that does not serve both these purposes is a fault in
style.

_A fourth maxim_ is that one must never neglect the warning one's ear
gives one of a _fault_ in style; and never trust one's ear exclusively
about the merits of a literary style.

_A fifth rule_:--One must not fight with a difficult sentence; but take
it for a walk with one; or sleep with the thought of it present in one's
mind; and let the difficulty arrange itself whilst one looks on.

_A sixth rule_:--One must not read, before sitting down to write, a
great stylist with a marked manner of his own; unless this manner
happens to resemble one's own.

Now I shall be told that these rules and maxims, whether true or false,
are 'known to nearly every one,' and are of assistance to no one;
because people who can write do not obey rules: and people who can't
write are not taught to do so by rules. If this were literally true then
there would be no room in the world for a Professor of Literature. My
own opinion is that there are very few good writers who do not obey
rules; and that these rules are, if contracted in youth, of great use as
a discipline that saves original writers from the defect of their
quality of originality, in a proneness to mannerisms and whims.

In connection with the possible complaint that I am putting forward as
M. Heger's maxims, sentences that were not originally invented nor
uttered by him, my reply is that I do not affirm that he invented his
own maxims, but simply that he chose them from an enormous store he had
collected by study and fine taste and by a sound critical judgment, the
result of an extensive acquaintanceship with the best that has been said
and thought in the world by philosophers, poets, and literary artists
and connoisseurs. In his character of a Professor of literature I find
it hard to imagine that any gift of original thought, or personal power
of expressing his own thoughts, could have placed M. Heger's pupils
under the same obligations as did his knowledge of beautiful ideas,
beautifully expressed, gathered from north, south, east and west, in
classical, mediæval and modern times. To be given these precious and
luminous thoughts in one's youth, when they have a special power to
'rouse, incite and gladden one,' is a supreme boon:--and in my own case
my gratitude to M. Heger has never been in the least disturbed by the
discovery that he was not the inventor of the maxims that have
constantly been a light to my feet and a lantern to my path during the
half-century that has elapsed since I received them from him in the
historical Pensionnat, that stood for many years, after Monsieur Heger
himself had vanished out of life, but that stands no longer in the Rue
d'Isabelle.


[1] From Mlle. Louise Heger I have this note: '_Les cloches de St.
Jacques et non pas St. Jean Baptiste, église qui se trouve à l'autre
côté de la ville près du canal: quartier du Père Silas dans
"Villette."_'

[2] _Villette_, chapter xii.

[3] Esprit de Sagesse, conduisez-nous:
    Esprit de Vérité, enseignez-nous:
    Esprit de Charité, vivifiez-nous:
    Esprit de Prudence, préservez-nous:
    Esprit de Force, défendez-nous:
    Esprit de Justice, éclairez-nous:
    Esprit Consolateur, apaisez-nous.

Here is the invocation, sent me by Mlle. Heger; who has, with extreme
kindness, endeavoured to recover it for me.



CHAPTER V

THE STORY OF A CHAPEAU D'UNIFORME


In connection with the particular Belgian schoolgirls whom I knew, who
still, in 1860, learnt their lessons in the class-rooms where Charlotte
Brontë once taught, and who were still taught by M. Heger, and still
surrounded with the benign and serene influences of Madame Heger, let me
prove that these schoolgirls had not the characteristics of the
_Lesbassecouriennes_; and that Charlotte Brontë displayed insular
prejudice, as well as an imagination coloured by the distress of an
unhappy passion, when she said of them, '_The Continental female is
quite a different being to the insular female of the same age and
class._'[1]

Inasmuch as the story I have to tell is the story of a Bonnet, it will
be recognised as one that is calculated to display the qualities and
intimate and essential peculiarities of the 'Continental female' (under
sixteen) in a light, and under the stress and strain of passions and
interests, too serious to permit of any tampering with, or disguise of,
nature. One has to realise, also, that the question is not merely of a
bonnet, but of a Best Bonnet, a Sunday Bonnet. For, in the remote days
of which I am now writing modern young people should realise even
schoolgirls of ten or twelve wore bonnets on Sunday, and even upon
week-days, when they went beyond the borders of their garden: a hat was
thought indecorous on the head of any girl in her 'teens--a form of
undress rather than of dress. To wear a hat was like wearing a
pinafore--a confession that one had not forgotten the nursery. To save
one's best Sunday Bonnet, in the garden, one might go about in a hat,
and in the bosom of one's family wear a pinafore to save a new dress;
but in the same way that one did not go into the drawing-room with a
pinafore on, one did not, in those days, pay visits in a hat: and to go
to church in one would have been thought irreverent. So that a Sunday
Bonnet meant that childish ways were done with, and that one had
attained the age of reason. Like a barrister's wig it imposed
seriousness on the wearer, who had to live up to it. Madame Heger, when
establishing the rules for the uniform that was worn by all the pupils
of the school in the Rue d'Isabelle, paid great attention to the Sunday
Bonnet. Following the sense she lent to the law of her system of
government, the love of dress was not to be allowed amongst her pupils
to become an encouragement to vanity and rivalship, and hence one
uniform, for rich and poor alike, avoided any chance of vain, unkind,
and envious feelings; but at the same time the love of dress was not to
be discouraged altogether; because it was serviceable to taste, and the
care for appearance, without which a young person remains deficient in
femininity. Therefore although every boarder wore the same uniform, what
this uniform was to be was made quite an important question: and the
girls were invited to choose a committee to decide it, in consultation
with their head-mistress. And to this consultation Madame Heger brought
a large spirit of indulgence, especially where the Sunday Bonnet was
concerned. The Sunday Dress had to be black silk--about the _façon_
there might be discussion, but not about the colour or material. On the
other hand, about the Bonnet, everything was left an open question. It
might be fashionable: it might be becoming: and even serviceableness was
not made a too stringent obligation. Indeed in the first year of my
school career the Sunday Bonnet selected for the summer months was the
reverse of serviceable. It was white chip; it was decorated with pink
rosebuds, where blonde and tulle mingled with the rosebuds; it had broad
white ribands edged with black velvet--in short, a very charming Bonnet:
but sown with perils. Everything about it could get easily soiled; and
nothing about it would stand exposure to rain.

Madame Heger, recognising these material inconveniences, had
nevertheless seen that, on the educational side, there were compensating
advantages--the cultivation of neatness and order. She had not then
discouraged the white chip, rosebuds and the rest; at the same time,
she had stated the case for a yellow straw, with a plaid-ribbon that
would not easily soil.

'On the one hand,' she had said, 'you may, with merely simple
precautions, carry your Bonnet through the summer to the big holidays,
without anxiety. On the other hand, no doubt there will be anxiety: the
white chip is extremely pretty, but do not forget that it will require
almost incessant care. Never must this Bonnet be put on one side without
a clean white handkerchief to cover it. Not only so, one storm, if you
have no umbrella, will suffice; everything will need renewal. And I warn
you, my children, that if this misfortune arrive, it is not I, but
_you_, who will have to ask your good mammas for another Bonnet. _I_ ask
from your parents a _chapeau d'uniforme_, and one only, each term: no
more. So now decide as you please.'

_The decision had been for the white chip, arrive what may_. My own
point of view, whilst the subject was being discussed around me, was
that nothing could interest me less. Fancy troubling one's head about a
Bonnet! I did not say it, because I had no wish to make myself
unpopular, but the interest in the affair appeared to me puerile.
Happily these trifling matters had no importance for me; it did not
matter to me at all what sort of _chapeau d'uniforme_ they chose.

How wrong I was! It mattered to me more than to any one else in the
whole school, because no one wore their _chapeau d'uniforme_ so much,
and no one took the poor thing out so frequently into storm and rain.
All the other boarders attended early mass on Sunday mornings in a
convent chapel, within five minutes' walk of the school. The other
occasions when they wore the fragile white chip _chapeau_ were safe
occasions, when, if it rained, they took shelter in their own homes on
the monthly holidays, or were sent back to school in a _fiacre_. My case
was different. Every Sunday morning, in accordance with the arrangement
made by my mother, my brother called at the Rue d'Isabelle to take me to
the English Church, which in those days was a sort of hall, known as the
'_Temple Anglican_,' situated in a passage near the Bruxelles Museum.
The service was generally over by noon; but it was too late for me to
return to school in time for the déjeuner at mid-day, and this
authorised the custom of my taking lunch with my brother and enjoying a
short walk afterwards; so that I was taken back by him to the Rue
d'Isabelle before four o'clock. Now it will be easily understood that
this agreeable arrangement had temptations: and that _sometimes_, on
_very_ fine days, there would occur forgetfulness of the 'Temple
Anglican' altogether; and the whole of these four or five hours would be
spent in our favourite haunt, the Bois de la Cambre, where we would
picnic, on cakes and fruit, when there was pocket-money enough, or on
two halfpenny 'pistolets,' when, as often happened, ten centimes, that
ought to have gone into the plate at the Temple, was all we had. And
whether the lunch was of cakes, or of dry bread, it did not alter the
fact that we talked of home incessantly; and were supremely happy. Yes;
but no doubt our conduct was reprehensible, and did not deserve the
favour of Heaven. And my recollection is that almost invariably these
picnics in the Bois de la Cambre, to which an exceptionally fine day had
tempted us, ended in a downpour of rain. And how it rains at Brussels,
when it does rain! So now, think of the state of the white chip Bonnet,
and of the bunch of rosebuds, interwoven with blonde, and of the white
silk ribbon edged with black velvet, that I took back with me to the Rue
d'Isabelle.

And it is here where the beautiful nature of Belgian schoolgirls, or of
these particular Belgian schoolgirls who were my companions and
contemporaries, stands revealed. For upon one particular Sunday, having
hastily and silently fled to the dormitory upon my return, and being
discovered there, in dismayed contemplation of the lamentable saturated
mixture of mashed up tinted pulp and wires, that had once been rosebuds
and blonde, my depths of despondency moved these sympathetic young
hearts to compassion. As it was Sunday afternoon, one was allowed to
loiter over getting ready for dinner; a circle of consolers gathered
round me, and from it, forth stepped two rival aspirants to the honour
of sacrificing themselves on the altar of friendship. The first said:
'Now nothing is more simple: we shall wrap up this unhappy rag in my
handkerchief as you see;_--You shall have my chapeau d'uniforme_, and I
shall tell Maman everything--she interests herself in you; for when she
was young, she was at school in England. She will send me another
_chapeau d'uniforme_, and all is said.'

The other girl, whose name was Henriette--I forget her surname--said,
'My plan is easier: for here is an accident,--as though it were done on
purpose. Now what do you say: I have two _chapeaux d'uniforme_, if you
please! The first my mother sent me as a model to show Madame Heger, and
from this model she chose it. But now Madame had ordered mine with the
others: and when I told my mother, she said, 'Say nothing: an accident
may happen, the Bonnet will not support rain, you will have this one at
hand if a misfortune arrive. Well, and here is the misfortune: there's
no difficulty at all.'

Both of these girls had their homes in Brussels, and both of them I knew
had everything their own way with two fondly indulgent mammas. I had no
scruple in accepting their generous sacrifice, and I hugged them both,
and was really (I who despised tears) on the verge of crying. Between
the two, I hardly knew which offer to take, but it seemed to me that as
Henriette had two Bonnets, it was most reasonable to take hers. And we
all went down to dinner happily. And the 'Unhappy rag' '_cette
malheureuse loque_,' was buried in the _hangar_, the wood-house at the
bottom of the garden.

But under cloudless skies one is prone to forget the lessons of
misfortune. It took some time--but the Sunday came when, once again, it
seemed 'almost wrong' to waste summer hours in the Temple Anglican, when
one felt so good under the beautiful trees in the Bois de la Cambre. And
then there was pocket-money in hand, and a lunch of cakes, and not
halfpenny pistolets, could be obtained.

'I suppose you don't think it will rain?' I suggested.

'Rain!' My brother said with scorn. 'Look at that sky! How could it
rain?'

It managed to do it. True, it was only a brief shower: but the water
came down in sheets. In despair I took off the _chapeau d'uniforme_, and
my brother, who wore an Inverness cape, sheltered it under the flap. I
stood to hold the cape at a right angle, so that the precious object
might not be crushed, and we were watching it under this sheltering
wing, and my brother was assuring me it was all right when,--as I stood
there bareheaded and rain-beaten, beneath a tree by the side of the
broad path near the entrance to the wood--a short, stoutish man,
buttoned up to the chin in his greatcoat, and holding his umbrella
tightly, walked by us at a great pace, without (so at least it seemed)
looking at us at all. And that man was M. Heger. We gasped, and looked
at each other.

'He didn't see us,' said my brother cheerily. 'What a bit of luck!'

'You may be quite sure he did see us,' I answered. 'Well, I wonder what
will happen now?'

With this new anxiety on our hands, even the precious _chapeau
d'uniforme_ became a secondary consideration. But the shower having
passed, we examined it carefully. There was no disaster this time. The
rosebuds were still rosebuds and the blonde still blonde. It is true
that a splash had fallen on the white chip crown, but my brother was
always ready with comfort.


[Illustration: THE GALERIE AND GARDEN IN WINTER (The Allée Defendue is
on the left. The old pear-tree, whose lower branches still blossomed in
spring, is on the right)]


'When it's dry,' he told me, 'you'll easily get that off with a bit of
bread.'

This consoled me for the time being: but he was wrong as to the question
of facts. Bread had no effect upon that blot. It remained an island, or,
to speak more correctly, a coast-line, on the white chip, to the end of
that _chapeau d'uniforme_'s existence. But one dusted the stain over
with white powder before putting on one's Bonnet, and hoped no one
noticed it? So far as I know, no one did. But let it not be supposed
that I escaped moral punishment: I, who had once boasted in my pride
that nothing was less indifferent to me than my Sunday Bonnet, wore this
one uneasily to the end of the term, always conscious that the tell-tale
stain was there, and might suggest questions as to its origin.

Nor did I escape scot-free from M. Heger's hands, although he did behave
with a certain generosity, for he kept the secret. But he used his own
method of punishment.

Happy in the confidence given me by my brother's assurance that I should
easily get rid of the rain-blot, I went back to the Rue d'Isabelle, in
some anxiety about M. Heger, but _nearly_ persuaded that, after all,
perhaps, with his umbrella to think of and grasp, and the hurry he was
in, he _very likely_ hadn't seen us. But when the pupil's door was
opened in answer to my ring, and I was hoping to hurry through the
corridor to the staircase leading to the dormitories, I found M. Heger
waiting for me. He barred my path and looked down at me with his
penetrating, mocking eyes,--that, although I do not like to contradict
Charlotte, I still think had more green and steel, than violet-blue,
colour in them.

'A-ah,' he said with his long-drawn sigh, 'you are attentive at my
lessons, Mees; do you now listen with the same attention to the sermon
of the Minister at your Temple?'

Here was my opportunity; of course I ought to have said, '_No,
Monsieur, I don't listen to any one with so much attention as I do to
you: no one interests me so much_.' When I had got upstairs and had
taken off the _chapeau d'uniforme_, I realised that this was what any
rational being would have said. But it was too late then--all I did say
was, '_Je ne sais pas, Monsieur_' (a bad French accent too).

'A-ah,' he repeated, tightening his mouth, 'now I should like to see
whether you profit by the instructions of your Minister: Thus I shall be
glad if you will write me a _résumé_ in French of the sermon you heard
to-day at the Temple. It will be a good exercise for you in the French
language. And also I shall enjoy the happiness of knowing this wise
Minister's advice. It is understood, you will give me the _résumé_ of
this sermon to-morrow.'

'_Oui, Monsieur_.'

All through the evening recreation hours, and at night when I fought
against sleepiness in my bed, I worked over the composition of that
sermon. It is true that I did fall asleep in the middle of it myself;
but that does not prove it was a dull sermon, for I took it up again in
the morning with renewed zest. I gave up my whole recreation hour after
_déjeuner_ to writing it out. And I believed it to be as good a sermon
as was ever preached. And there was no vanity in this belief: because it
was not my own sermon, but one I had originally heard preached in my
childhood in an old village church, and the arguments in favour of being
good and simple had taken hold of my imagination, partly on account of
the associations with the place where I heard it. Well, but now, can my
readers deny that when I say M. Heger was a more irritating than lovable
man, I have sound reasons for my statement? _After ordering me to write
that sermon, and when I had stolen several hours from my sleep, and
given up two recreations to obey him, he never asked for it!_ And when I
told him I had written the sermon and that it was ready for him, he
merely looked down upon me with a strange twinkle in his eyes, and said,
'_A-ah, c'est bien. Vous l'avez donc bien retenu, ce fameux sermon? tant
mieux, tant mieux_.'


[1] _Villette_, chapter viii.



CHAPTER VI

MADAME HEGER'S SENTIMENT OF THE JUSTICE
OF RESIGNATION TO INJUSTICE


At the end of these reminiscences I have now to relate the incident that
stands out in my memory as, not only the most bitter experience I had
ever, up to this date, undergone of personal injustice in my brief life
of fifteen years, not only, what was of great moral importance to me, my
first lesson in the philosophy of refusing to torment oneself in order
to punish one's tormentors, but also the incident that revealed to me a
secret sorrow hidden away under Madame Heger's serenity; and that
convinces me, now, that the tragical romance of Charlotte Brontë was not
to her, as it must have been to M. Heger, misunderstood, and regarded as
an event of small importance; but that it 'entered into her life,' and
was to her a very serious trouble.

One day in June, I am not able to remember now upon what especial
occasion, nor in honour of what event, all the school was given an
entire holiday: and, for its better enjoyment, the girls were invited by
a former pupil in the Rue d'Isabelle, who had married and possessed a
fine château and a large garden within walking distance of Bruxelles, to
spend the whole day in her house and garden, where a mid-day collation
was prepared for them. I remember very little about the day's
enjoyments--the cruel impressions that followed the pleasant holiday
have effaced from my memory almost everything that preceded them. I
know, however, that all was sunshine and good humour: that my companions
whom I had trusted as friends were as friendly to me as ever; and that
with my two chosen companions, the philosopher Marie Hazard and the
other still dearer friend, who was a philosopher in a different sense,
as a profound Nature-worshipper,--where _I_ was supposed to be a
philosopher in a sense of my own as a worshipper of ideas--talked
'philosophy' wisely and well--in our own estimation, and ate red
gooseberries. As we talked other girls discovered these
gooseberry-bushes also, and came in flocks: so we three withdrew, and
sat down under some shady tree, and were very happy and at peace. Near
us, on a low cane chair, sat one of the under-mistresses, a Frenchwoman,
whom I liked extremely, and who also liked me: her name was Mlle.
Zélie--she was too young to have been one of the mistresses known to
Charlotte Brontë twenty years before. She may have been twenty-six: or
she may have been thirty.

As she sat there, doing embroidery, and watching all the time a swarm of
girls picking gooseberries,--we three, who had left off picking them,
were at rest upon the grass,--there came, suddenly, a servant in great
haste sent from the Rue d'Isabelle by Madame Heger, with a letter:
neither Monsieur nor Madame had arrived yet, they were to be there in
time for the collation in the afternoon. The letter was an urgent order
to Mlle. Zélie that the girls were not to _touch the fruit in the
kitchen garden_--this stipulation had been made by the generous hostess,
who had invited all this company to a feast of cakes and cream and good
things of every description, but who wanted her gooseberries and
currants for jam. Here of course was cause of great dismay: although the
bushes had not been entirely stripped, yet certainly thirty or forty
girls amongst the gooseberry-bushes alone had made their mark. We three
philosophers had trifled with one bush perhaps; but our share in the
depredation was comparatively slight. A bell was rung, and the message
read aloud. I am convinced from that moment onwards no one touched any
fruit:--still the mischief had been done; it was obvious to the naked
eye that the gooseberry-bushes had been attacked.

The person who seemed most distressed was poor Mlle. Zélie: she blamed
no one, but repeated constantly, 'Why then did not Madame warn me? Never
should I have permitted it, had I not supposed that it was understood
that these gooseberries, without value for that matter, were intended
to be eaten. It seemed to me, in the absence of instructions, so
natural.'

And a chorus of girls answered: 'We thought it too, Mademoiselle: never
would we have touched a gooseberry had we understood.'

There the matter remained. We were not particularly unhappy: as a matter
of fact all the gooseberries in the garden could have been purchased for
five francs in Bruxelles. No harm had been done the bushes: it was a
_mal entendu_--what would you have? The only person who seemed to take
it to heart was poor Mlle. Zélie.

'Quel malheur,' she kept repeating. 'Quel malheur! mais aussi, pourquoi
Madame ne m'a-t-elle rien dit?'

We continued, Marie Hazard and myself, sitting under our shady tree; our
third philosopher, the Nature-worshipper, always good at decoration, had
been called off to assist at laying out the tables, and arranging
flowers; groups of other girls were sitting in circles on the grass or
walking about arm in arm, when--suddenly arrived upon the scene M.
Heger. He came up with an amiable expression: but in a moment the look
changed to one black as night: he had seen the tell-tale signs of the
depredations inflicted on the gooseberry-bushes.

'Who is responsible for this?' he asked, '_c'est une bassesse!_ Mlle.
Zélie, what does this signify? Were you not told the fruit was to be
respected?'

Poor Mlle. Zélie stood there quivering with terror.

'Unhappily,' she said, 'Madame's letter arrived too late: without bad
intention, these young girls imagined themselves free to eat
gooseberries: from the moment it was known that it was forbidden, I am
sure there was no infraction of the rule: but alas! what was done, was
done. I regret it profoundly: and so I am sure do you, is it not so, my
children?' she asked, turning to Marie Hazard and myself:--there was a
clear and empty space around us--every other girl had somehow vanished.

'Yes, Mademoiselle, we are very sorry,' both of us answered at once.

M. Heger swooped round upon us in his wrath.

'And so,' he said, 'it is _you_, is it; you two who have so much pride,
both of you; who are so little sensitive to the counsels of your
teachers, you, who are so superior in your own esteem, who are the
guilty ones? It is you two, and you alone in the entire Pension, who
have been capable of this indignity? And see what ruin you have made!
Are you not ashamed--what gluttony!'

'Mais non, Monsieur, non,' pleaded Mademoiselle Zélie, 'these young
girls are not alone responsible; many others also took the fruit; you
must not blame them for everything.'

'Is that so, Mademoiselle Hazard? Is that so, Mees?'

'Il ne faut pas nous demander cela,' said I, with my usual bad accent in
agitated moments. 'C'est aux autres qu'il faut le demander.'

'Mais oui,' he said, 'and this is what I intend to do; Mlle. Zélie, do
me this pleasure: fetch me the _élèves_ who were here just now: call
them together. I must get to the bottom of this. Je dois approfondir
cela.'

Mlle. Zélie was some time about it: but in the end, she returned with a
good company of girls, forty or fifty at least; amongst them nearly all
of those who had been most busy amongst the gooseberry bushes. They
stood round us in a sort of circle; Marie Hazard, myself, and M. Heger.

M. Heger delivered a little speech: he explained, and enlarged upon, the
confidence that our kind hostess had placed in us; she had thrown open
her garden to us; she had prepared a feast for us; she had made only one
condition--respect my gooseberry-bushes. Was it possible, could one
suppose it possible, that any one could be found base enough, greedy
enough, to ignore her wishes?

'We were not told,' said Marie Hazard; 'This is not reasonable--one
would not have touched a gooseberry had one known. Is one a child of six
then, to love gooseberries to this extent?'

'Mlle. Hazard, it is not to _you_ I address myself,' said M. Heger. 'I
have no question to ask you. You admit, and indeed it is not possible
for you to deny, that you have committed this act of
gluttony--inexcusable in a child of six. It is to you all, my dear
pupils, outside of these two, who I know are guilty, that I ask it, and
with confidence--amongst you all, have any of you been guilty of this
indignity?'

Dead silence. Mlle. Zélie was fidgeting about, snapping her fingers
nervously. But she said nothing.

M. Heger again addressed the girls round him, and there was a note of
triumph in his voice:--

'Cela suffit,' he affirmed, 'I shall ask no more. If any of you are
guilty, you know it in your consciences: you know now what it remains
for you to do. For me, I believe, and I love to believe, that the only
pupil in this school capable of this unworthy conduct is a foreigner.'

'Pardon, Monsieur,' said a voice at my elbow, 'je suis Belge; et moi
aussi j'ai mangé des groseilles.'

M. Heger bowed towards her profoundly.

_Je fais une exception en votre faveur_, _Mademoiselle Hazard_,' he
said: and then he walked away.

I remained at first almost stupefied: the first shock rendered me unable
to distinguish between reality and fiction. I began to doubt my senses:
was I really, were Marie Hazard and myself, the only girls in the school
who had rifled the gooseberry-bushes? Did it mean that, if not
deliberately base, in some way there was a peculiar deficiency in
delicacy and honour in my constitution, rendering me capable of doing
base things without knowing it? Was it true that in this foreign country
I had disgraced my own? This was my first impression, confusion of mind;
because up to this date I had never known nor suffered from real
injustice. Here was an entirely new experience. And at first it baffled
me. I suppose I must have shown this desperation in my face: for M.
Heger was no sooner out of sight than attempts were made to console me:
but I was beyond consolation. Mlle. Zélie came first; she laid a
soothing hand on my shoulder.

'Do not afflict yourself, my child,' she said. 'This is a
misunderstanding: I shall explain everything to Madame Heger.'

Then several girls came bustling up, rather shamefacedly, assuring me
that it was nothing: '_Quelle affaire_,' they ejaculated. '_Et tout cela
à propos de quelques groseilles!_'

'It has nothing to do with the gooseberries,' I said; 'you are all
cowards, and I detest you; why couldn't you say you took them too?'

'What good would it have been, with M. Heger? We shall all go to Madame
and tell her everything. She will see how it is at once. _Voyons, Chou:
ne pleures pas_.'

'_Je ne pleure pas; vous mentez_:' and this was both impolite and
incorrect: I _was_ crying, but not ordinary tears, because they scalded
one.

What happens invariably with people who insist upon their own private
grievances too much, and too long, happened in my case that afternoon:
at first I had been an object of sympathy, but when I refused it, and
was ungracious, I became a bore. The case was stated to me in reasonable
terms:

'Say that we should have done differently and were cowardly. It was not
out of ill-will to you, but because we were afraid of M. Heger, with
whom one must not reason when he is in a bad humour, as every one knows.
You and Marie Hazard, for instance, who must always be in the right with
him, in what way does it serve you? Voyons: be frank; at least: _cela
vous réussit-il?_ Listen then: we will make it all plain with Madame
Heger. Mlle. Zélie will tell her we knew nothing when we ate those
gooseberries; we thought they were there for us--that it belonged to the
feast to eat this fruit: they were not so very good, these gooseberries
after all: it was a politeness on our part, not greediness. Every one
nearly ate gooseberries. When we were told it was a mistake, we ate no
more gooseberries, and were sorry. La petite Anglaise and Marie Hazard
did as the others did: and here is the whole history. Now all this is
known already to almost every one. It will be known to Madame Heger
before we go home to-night. What then do you want? Look at Marie Hazard:
she is in the same case as you are, and does not afflict herself.'

'Marie Hazard is at home here, and I am not at home. I am English; and I
am told by M. Heger before you all, that because I am English I am
capable of baseness.'

'And what does that do to you?' asked Marie Hazard, herself, turning
upon me with her cruel reasonableness. 'English or Belgian, one is not
capable of baseness, and one has not deserved any blame: that is what is
serious; the rest signifies nothing. One must not be a patriot to this
extent. It is not reasonable. If even you had been in the wrong about
those gooseberries, do you truly imagine to yourself that the honour of
England would have been affected by it?'

Just _because_ this was so reasonable and true, it stung me to the soul.
'_Ma chère et bonne amie_,' wrote Rousseau to Madame d'Epinay in the
days of their friendship, when explaining why he had burnt a letter to
her that seemed to him more reasonable than kind: '_Pythagore disait
qu'il ne faut jamais attiser le feu avec une épée. Cette sentence me
paraît être la plus importante et la plus sacrée des lois de l'amitié_.'
I knew nothing about the sayings of Pythagoras, nor the writings of
Rousseau in those days. But it did seem to me opposed to the sacred laws
of friendship, to remind me, in this moment, that it was absurd in me to
drag patriotism into this question.

'Leave me alone,' I said, turning my back upon them, 'you tire me, all
of you; none of you understand me.'

Although I sulked the whole afternoon, and was, as I deserved to be,
left to sulk, as 'insupportable,' I yet came round to the conviction
before we returned, that everything had been explained, and that even M.
Heger understood that an injustice had been done me; and that although,
of course, no apology could be looked for from such an obstinate man,
still _he knew he had been in the wrong_ and was secretly repentant. But
I was to be undeceived. After our return to the Rue d'Isabelle, the
lecture du soir in the refectory was given, as was the usual plan on
holidays, by M. Heger, seated at the head of the room, with Madame Heger
on his right hand, and a table before them, placed between the two long
lines of tables with benches stretching the length of the room against
the walls, and two ranges of chairs on the opposite side of the tables
facing the benches, where sat all the pupils. Having finished the
'reading,' M. Heger summed up in a few words the sentiments that 'he was
sure all there must feel of gratitude to their hostess, once an inmate
of this school; and who had contrived this little fête for her
successors. He asked their consent to a message of thanks that was to be
sent her; and he wound up his expression of confidence in the enjoyment
every one had derived from this holiday, by stating the satisfaction of
Madame Heger and himself at the good conduct of every one; and then came
this sentence:--There was only one regrettable exception to be made to
the perfect behaviour and sense of respect due to the lady who had
thrown open her house and garden to them, and this exception, he was, at
any rate, pleased to recognise, was not amongst those brought up in the
sentiments of religion and convenience cherished by almost all of them:
and hence though one had to deplore the fault, in the case of a
foreigner (_une étrangère_) one was more disposed to regard it with
indulgence.'

Marie Hazard rose from her seat:--but there really was no time for any
protest or objection. There was a shuffling of chairs, a movement of
benches. Monsieur and Madame Heger walked out of the Refectory by a
folding door behind them that opened into a passage leading to their own
part of the house; and the pupils filed out, under the surveillance of
the mistress in charge, by the opposite door towards the staircase
leading to the Oratory, for evening prayers. I alone remained sitting on
my bench, in my usual place in the Refectory, about half-way down the
right-hand line of tables. No one paid any attention to me, until the
room was nearly empty, and then the mistress at the door looked round,
and seeing me sitting there, said, 'Make haste, Mees; you will be late
for prayers: what _are_ you doing?'

I remained sitting there. She looked at me a moment; evidently didn't
like my looks; shrugged her shoulders, agitated her hands, said--

'One cannot wait for you any longer mademoiselle, _vous êtes notée_,'
and vanished.

I do not know now, and I hardly think I knew then, what I meant by the
resolution that was the only one firmly present to me, that no one,
nothing, should move me from the place where I was sitting in the
Refectory: that there I was going to remain all night, and for ever if
necessary, until this wrong was redressed, and until just excuses were
made to me. What had at first been a new and astonishing discovery to
me, that injustice could be done, and that people whom I respected and
even loved, could be unjust to me, had now become a well-established and
common fact, and I saw injustice everywhere and felt no use in living at
all, because I had become convinced that people would always be unjust
to me, _always_; it was the common rule of the world evidently. What was
I to do then? Resist, perish in resisting? Very possibly, but not
submit.

There I sat at fifteen years of age, on the bench, with my elbows
planted on the Refectory table, and my burning, throbbing head between
my hands, _in the frame of mind in which Anarchists are made._

But the influence was already approaching that was to transform anarchy
into the ideal socialism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, where the bitter
bitter rage of rebelliousness against the wrong done oneself becomes the
generous sympathy with all injustice throughout the world: '_Ce premier
sentiment de l'injustice est resté si profondément gravé dans mon âme,
que toutes les idées qui s'y rapportent me rendent ma première émotion;
et ce sentiment, relatif à moi dans son origine, a pris une telle
consistance en lui-même, et s'est si bien détaché de tout intérêt
personnel, que mon coeur s'enflamme au spectacle ou au récit de toute
action injuste, quel qu'en soit l'objet, et en quelque lieu qu'elle se
commette, comme si l'effet en retomboit sur moi_.'

The lesson that the author of the _Confessions_ learnt at an even
earlier age than I did was taught me by a Victim of injustice who
continued throughout her life so courageously undisturbed by it in
kindness and consideration for others, that her sensibility to it became
a less powerful feeling in her than her compassion for the suffering
and passionate woman who had wronged her.

I cannot say how long I had sat in the Refectory, when I saw the folding
doors at the head of the room open, and quietly and composedly as usual,
Madame Heger entered and approached me. She sat down on the chair
opposite my bench on the opposite side of the table.

'My child,' she said, 'you are wrong to take so seriously the reproach
addressed to you by M. Heger as the result of a mistake. Mlle. Zélie has
explained to M. Heger and to me the accident. It was a pity, no doubt,
that this happened: but you have not any more blame than the others. All
is forgotten and forgiven. But you, my child, are wrong in this. Why do
you remain here, when prayers are already over, and without permission?
You know well it is forbidden.'

I broke out passionately complaining that I could not be expected to
obey rules when I was unjustly treated: I could bear anything else, but
I could not support injustice.

'Pas l'injustice,' I protested, 'j'obéirais a tout, je supporterais
tout: mais, pas l'injustice, non, madame, non, je ne saurais supporter
l'injustice.'

'Cependant, mon enfant, il faut savoir la supporter. Que faire?
_Seriez-vous la seule personne au monde qui ne connaîtrait pas
l'injustice?_'

I shook my head obstinately: I made a show of resistance: but I was
already under Madame Heger's influence. A tremendous change had taken
place in me. I was no longer an Anarchist. It had already come to me as
a conviction that there was nothing grand, but rather something mean, in
refusing to bear anything that my other fellow-creatures had to bear,
that better and nobler people than I had borne.

'It saddens me,' continued Madame Heger--'(_Cela m'attriste_) to see a
young girl like you, who soon must enter life, and who takes the habit
of saying, "I cannot support this, everything else you like, _but not
this_": or "I will renounce everything else, _but not that_." It does
not depend upon us, my child, what we must support, nor what we may,
because _les convenances_ or the interests of others demand it, have to
renounce. Amongst the many pupils I have known, there have been some
passionate like yourself and exalted, who have said like you to-day, I
cannot support injustice, who have seen injustice, where there was no
intention to be unjust; who have refused counsel with anger and
impatience, and who in their refusal to bow to necessary obligations
have been themselves unjust. And they have been unhappy in their lives;
most unhappy. _Dominated by some fixed idea, the slave of some desire
that cannot be accomplished,_ they have seen enemies in those who would
have been their friends. They have created for themselves a sad fate;
and I know one of them who died of it (_j'en connais une qui en est
morte_).'

Something in Madame Heger's voice surprised me, for her even tones
quavered and broke. I looked up suddenly, her face was ashen white and
her lips blue. I was struck to the heart. I knew not why, but in some
way I instinctively felt that, through my fault, she was in pain: I was
full of remorse. The table was between us, or I should have thrown
myself upon my knees before her. My emotion had the usual effect upon my
French accent. 'Forgive me, oh forgive me,' I wanted to say, 'I am
ashamed of myself.' I said, 'Pardong, O pardong, j'ai honte de moi.'

As it happened, nothing could have been better timed than my relapse
into English barbarism. In a moment Madame's unusual emotion was under
control: the soft colour returned to her cheek and lips, she shook her
head gently, and said in her ordinary voice--

'You _must_ take care of your accent, my child. One says "pardon," not
"pardong "; and one does not say "J'ai honte de moi," but one says "Je
suis honteuse," or "J'ai honte."

'But I see you are now in a good disposition,' she went on, 'and I am
pleased to see it. Thus then, go quietly to bed without disturbing your
companions, and I will send Clothilde to you with some flower-of-orange
water that will tranquillise this hot head. Good night, and be very wise
in the future: and all will be well.'

Ever since I have known the story of Charlotte Brontë I have had the
firm conviction of what was in Madame Heger's mind when she spoke to me
of one who had imagined enemies in friends, and who, complaining of
injustice, had been unjust. But since I have read Charlotte's Letters,
the unmistakable proof is that Madame Heger, so far as my memory serves
me after all these years, actually quoted the very words of one of these
letters, about one dominated by a fixed idea, and the slave of vain
desires.

So then we may decide finally, that Madame Heger was not Madame Beck.
And of M. Heger we may decide that he was not Paul Emanuel either; for
Paul Emanuel having learnt that he had committed an injustice, would
have called his whole school together, and in full class-room repaired
his involuntary fault. But the real M. Heger did nothing of the sort.
For a time there was a great coldness towards him in my heart. But in
the hours of his lessons he remained, as ever, the 'Professor' of
unrivalled merit.

Summing up what may be gathered from these reminiscences, I think the
facts that can be affirmed are these:--

No moral likeness, but a physical resemblance, between Madame Heger and
the portrait of Madame Beck. A strong and lifelike resemblance, between
Paul Emanuel and M. Heger, up to the point when the Professor Paul falls
in love with Lucy Snowe. After this event, a dwindling resemblance
between the Professor in _Villette_, and the real Professor in the Rue
d'Isabelle, who was never in love with Charlotte Brontë, and who was the
lawful and attached husband of the Directress of the Pensionnat.

But when Professor Paul Emanuel becomes the docile disciple of Père
Silas, when he is caught in the 'Jesuitical cobwebs of mother Church,'
then he ceases to resemble the real man in the very least. M. Heger's
role in life was not that of a disciple but of a Master of other people,
and a very arbitrary and domineering Master too, for whom the world was
his class-room. He was under the thumb of no priest, nor spiritual
director. As for Jesuitical 'cobwebs,' the notion of M. Heger caught in
any cobweb is absurd!

Every one knows what happens when a bumble-bee in its courses comes in
contact with a cobweb. It is a mere incident in the career of the
bumble-bee--but it is a disaster for the cobweb.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Secret of Charlotte Brontë - Followed by Remiiscences of the real Monsieur and Madame Heger" ***

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