nj
!m
THE SECRET OF
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
* 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 j 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 j 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.)
THE SECRET OF
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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
PR
^(i
Mte
JUL 101964
Vo
Portrait by Richmond
CONTENTS
PART I
CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S LETTERS TO M. HEGER
(These Letters supply the Key to tbe Secret of Charlotte Bronte)
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF CHARLOTTE
BRONTE, CREATED BY A FALSE CRITICAL
METHOD ....... I
CHAPTER II
THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM . * • * . 28
CHAPTER III
CHARLOTTE'S LAST YEAR AT BRUXELLES, 1842-43 48
CHAPTER IV
THE CONFESSION AT STE. GUDULE ... 69
CHAPTER V
THE LEAVE-TAKING — THE SCENE IN THE CLASS-
ROOM— 'MY HEART WILL BREAK* . . 78
CHAPTER VI
THE LOVE-LETTERS OF A ROMANTIC 108
CONTENTS
PART II
SOME REMINISCENCES OF THE REAL
MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE HISTORICAL DIFFICULTY : TO DISENTANGLE
FACT FROM FICTION . . . .145
CHAPTER II
MY FIRST INTRODUCTION TO CHARLOTTE
BRONTE'S PROFESSOR . . . .167
CHAPTER III
MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER AS I SAW THEM :
AND BELGIAN SCHOOLGIRLS AS I KNEW
THEM . . . . . . 183
CHAPTER IV
MY SECOND INTERVIEW WITH M. HEGER. THE
WASHING OF 'PEPPER.' THE LESSON IN
ARITHMETIC 2OO
CHAPTER V
THE STORY OF A CHAPEAU o'UNIFORME . . 224
CHAPTER VI
MADAME HEGER'S SENTIMENT OF THE JUSTICE
OF RESIGNATION TO INJUSTICE . ; . 239
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CHARLOTTE BRONTE .... Frontispiece
M. HEGER AT SIXTY .... facing p. 82
DRAWING BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE OF
ASHBURNHAM CHURCH . . ,. „ Il8
(Copyright of Author]
THE FRONT OF THE SCHOOL IN THE RUE
D'ISABELLE ,,144
MADAME HEGER AT SIXTY „ 194
(Copyright of Author)
THE ALLEE DEFENDUE „ 206
( Copyright of Author)
THE GALERIE AND GARDEN IN WINTER „ 234
(Copyright of Author)
THE SECRET OF
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE ' PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM ' OF CHAR-
LOTTE BRONTE, 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 stand-
ards of judgment. Leading critics, whose
literary accomplishments, powers of per-
suasive 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
THE SECRET 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, some time s> 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 per-
fectly certain that he has clearly in view the
particular Soul he is undertaking to pene-
trate, 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
2
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 Bronte, 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 publica-
tion of her first novel, made her famous
throughout England ; and soon famous
throughout Europe : and that proved her
(since Charlotte has been c 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.
THE SECRET OF
But now whilst all these epochs in Mrs.
Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte were studied
by exact historical methods, there was one
epoch in her heroine's career that this, else-
where, 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 inade-
quately, 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 representa-
4
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
live 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 Direc-
tress, Monsieur and Madame Heger, are
supposed to have been painted in the char-
acters of ' Paul Emanuel ' and of c Madame
Beck,' in the famous novel of Villette.
How far that supposition is justified, and
to what extent Villette is an autobiograph-
ical 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 Bronte — not as an enthusiastic
and half-formed school-girl, as some reckless
modern impressionist critics, careless of the
5
THE SECRET OF
evidence of facts, would have us believe,
but as a woman, profoundly sincere, im-
passioned, exalted, unstained, and unstainable,
who, between twenty-six and twenty-eight
years of age, had long left girlish extrava-
gance behind her — underwent experiences
and emotions, that were not transient feel-
ings, 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 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 c 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 im-
mortality. 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
6
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 posi-
tively affirmed. But even before the final
settlement, for every critic who respects
historical evidence, of the now incontro-
vertible 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 Bronte was
that the biographer was, not negligently,
but deliberately, altering the true significance,
by underrating the importance, of Char-
lotte'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
7
THE SECRET OF
Bronte down to the present day) that
Charlotte obtained, certainly, great intellec-
tual stimulus, as well as literary culture, from
the lessons of M. Heger, as an accomplished
Professor ; but that, outside of these influ-
ences, her relationships with M. Heger were
of an entirely ordinary and tranquil char-
acter, 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 pro-
fessed, 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),
8
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 hand-
fuls 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 c all events
and personages are regarded through the medium
of one passion only — the passion of unrequited
/ove.'
THE SECRET OF
To return to Mrs. Gaskell and her
criticism of Charlotte Bronte. 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 Char-
lotte 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 Char-
lotte's relationships with Monsieur and
Madame Heger, an inadequate, or else a
false, criticism was inaugurated by her influ-
ence 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 nowknow were historical mistakes.
10
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
The first of these impressions is that
Charlotte Bronte has painted, not only her
own emotions, but her own actual ex-
periences, in Villette ; and that Lucy Snowe,
Paul Emanuel, and Madame Beck, are
pseudonyms, under which we ought to
recognise Charlotte herself, and the Direc-
tor and Directress of the Pensionnat in the
Rue d'Isabelle.
The second, and almost equally mischie-
vous impression is that no romantic nor
tragical sentiment whatever characterises
the relationships between Charlotte Bronte
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 Bronte, 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 c Romantic ' who counts with
George Sand ; but differs from her, as an
1 1
THE SECRET OF
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 stand-
point of the impression that Villette is an
autobiographical story, Charlotte Bronte
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 real-
istic 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-con-
fession ; — and of a dishonourable and a success-
ful, 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
12
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
to the world's detestation, either as the
contemptible and scheming Mile. Zorai'de
Reuter, of the Professor : — or the less con-
temptible 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 re-
lationships 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 Bronte
(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 char-
'3
THE SECRET OF
acteristics of these masterpieces and the char-
acteristics of her circumstances at Haworth
and of the circle of her familiar acquaint-
ances ! 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'
H
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
found her own romance, only at forty years
of age, in her marriage with the Rev. A. B.
Nicholls, an event she announces thus : —
c / trust the demands of both feeling and duty
will be in some measure reconciled by the step in
contemplation ' ; adding on to this the fol-
lowing description of the future bride-
groom : ' 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 c 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 ' — c 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 c dissonance ' between
Charlotte's personality and her books.
But there is one conclusion we are bound
THE SECRET OF
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 ^r ith the baby who
is cutting its teeth. xJ"o doubt the influ-
ences of Haworth and of Charlotte Bronte's
' Circle ' there, before she became famous,
did help to plant in her the immense depres-
sion 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
16
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
his masculine faults ,' she says, 'is a kind, con-
siderate 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 Char-
lotte's marriage with Mr. Nicholl, it is not
here that we must seek the ''Secret of Charlotte
Bronte* \ — 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
c the demands of both feeling and duty will
be in some measure reconciled ' — but upon
passionate emotions, compelling expression,
and forming a new w ^.iage almost ; as M.
Jules Lemaltre has 'said c introducing new
ways of feeling, and as it were a new vibra-
tion 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)
17 B
THE SECRET OF
never reached ; and to an intimate know-
ledge of moods and ecstasies and raptures,
that rule and torture and exalt human souls,
that much more subtle and scientific psycho-
logists than herself (George Eliot, for
instance, and Mrs. Humphry Ward) never
discovered.
The supreme gift of the authoress of
Villette and Jane Eyrey as a painter of emo-
tions, 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 re-
sult of judging her genius and her personal-
ity from the standpoint of false impressions,
18
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Charlotte Bronte 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 o^ every truly feminine hearty 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 c magic ' of
Charlotte Bronte ; 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 signal-
THE SECRET OF
ised 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 Bronte'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
Bronte 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
20
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
know/ wrote the frank Harriet; CI 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 pro-
test 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.
21
THE SECRET OF
' 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 admis-
sion 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
22
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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
Vilette 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 /ove.'
The mistake lay in assuming that Char-
lotte Bronte was an intellectual, instead
of an imaginative genius ; and that her
literary purpose was to affirm, or deny,
23
THE SECRET OF
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 sub-
servient 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 en-
thusiasm of humanity, in practical benevol-
ence 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 c common
people,' regarded as the 'lower orders,'
who should be kindly treated of course,
24
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
but kept in their place, and taught to
c order themselves lowly and reverently to
their betters/ indicates a defective humani-
tarianism ; 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 pro-
testantism, 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
Bronte'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 trans-
lating 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
25
THE SECRET OF
which we have to praise and thank, our
only English c 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 qual-
ities 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 Bronte 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
26
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
historical Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle,
at Bruxelles gave me of the facts of
Charlotte Bronte'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 in-
sight 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 c Secret ' of Charlotte Bronte.
27
THE SECRET OF
CHAPTER II
THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM
THE common saying, that c 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 beauti-
ful, Letters written by Charlotte Bronte 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
28
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 publica-
tion of these Letters was a duty to English
literature, the son of the late Director and
Directress of the Bruxelles Pensionnat — un-
warrantably supposed to have their literal
counterparts in the interesting Professor Paul
Emanuel, and in the abominable Madame
Beck — might well, in view of the unintelli-
gent and ungenerous criticism of his parents
by English readers, have refused to recognise
any obligation on his side to concern him-
self 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 Bronte herself is
not to be made responsible because a good
many of her critics have blundered. Indeed,
29
THE SECRET OF
the conduct of the whole Heger family since
the publication of Villette^ and the death of
Charlotte Bronte, has been distinguished by
this fine spirit of disinterestedness ; and by
a dignified indifference to undeserved re-
proaches. 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 1 853. In 1 854 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
3°
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 scrupu-
lously refrained from publishing these docu-
ments. Twenty years ago, when I was
collecting the materials for my article pub-
lished 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 / knew to be^
false impressions about their relationships
with Charlotte Bronte, I was told by my
honoured and dearly loved friend, Made-
moiselle 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 dis-
appeared 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
31
THE SECRET OF
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 :
c SIR, — In the name of my sisters and
myself (thus runs the opening sentence of
the Letter reprinted in the Times), c 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 Char-
lotte Bronte, which the great Novelist
addressed to our Father. These four im-
portant 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
32
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
lay open the true significance of what has
hitherto been spoken of as the " Secret of
Charlotte Bronte," and show how ground-
less is the suspicion which has resulted from
the natural speculations of critics and bio-
graphers ; 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 be-
tween 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 Bronte : 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 cir-
cumstances 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 ad-
33 c
THE SECRET OF
dressed. 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 litterateur^ foresaw
what has actually happened, and that the
defenders of the two ' legends ' of Charlotte
Bronte, 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 impres-
sions 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
c stubborn things ' are found arrayed in stern
and uncompromising opposition to the
impressions and convictions of the most
accomplished psychological theorists — well,
34
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 Bronte,
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 6 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 3Oth
July 1 9 1 3, 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 Snorter's case, it is not
35
THE SECRET OF
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 Bronte's, 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 per-
fectly 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
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
explore : and still less necessary to throw
open to the vulgar curiosity and malevolent
insinuations of a generation of critics, in-
fected with hero-phobia, and the unwhole-
some delight of discovering c a good deal to
reprobate and even more to laugh atj in the
sensibility of men and women of genius,
who have honoured the human race, and
enriched the world, because they have pos-
sessed 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 Bronte 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
37
THE SECRET OF
love - letters of Madame de Stael and
George Sand.
This point of view, however, is a mis-
taken one in the present case, because, to
commence with, Charlotte Bronte'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 sentimentfor her Professor — that explains
her attitude of mind 'when 'writing c Villette ' —
should be rightly understood. Then also,
whilst Madame de Stael's infatuation for
Benjamin Constant neither adds to nor
diminishes her claims, as the authoress of
Corinne and de rAllemagne^ 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 poi-
gnant revelation of the passing weakness
(through immense tenderness) of a splen-
didly strong and independent spirit, that
one is almost ashamed to be made the spec-
tator of, Charlotte Bronte's valorous martyr-
dom, undergone secretly and silently, and
38
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
'rewarded openly,' fills one with an extra-
ordinary sentiment of respect for her : and
justifies Mr. Clement Snorter's own fine
and generous utterances upon the impression
that the Letters that betray the anguish she
endured, and overcame, alone, produces
upon him.
c Charlotte Bronte^ said Mr. Clement
Shorter, by the report of an interviewer who
recorded his opinions in the Times, 3Oth July,
immediately after the publication of these
Letters, c 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, 'wel-
comed 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
39
THE SECRET OF
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
Bronte 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 Bronte 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 Brontes."
In his first contention Mr. Clement Shorter
is undeniably right : it is quite true that * the
publication of these Letters places Charlotte
Bronte on a higher pedestal than -ever.9 But
40
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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, recog-
nised 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 unselfish-
ness is a capacity of human nature. And,
again, these letters place Charlotte Bronte
'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 Helo'ise, and the letters in the
New Helo'ise of Saint-Preux to Julie, and of
THE SECRET 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 TEspinasse, Madame de la Popeliniere,
and Mademoiselle d'Aisse. 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 Bronte to
M. Heger, the ' vibration ' of this tragical,
hopeless, romantic love, that asks for no-
thing but acceptance, that does not c 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 'comrade-
ship with a great man'' : and that * 'after she had
become famous "she found that literary comrade-
ship she desired^ in half a dozen male correspon-
42
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
dents ) 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 Bronte 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 commend-
able sentiment. It is very often merely a
rather vulgar and selfish persistency in claim-
ing 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
harrassed by the c enthusiasm ' of professing
43
THE SECRET OF
admirers who have nothing to do them-
selves, 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 insist-
ing upon being the c 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
c 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 extra-
vagant language, and as a self-respecting
woman who should not have allowed her
enthusiasm for literary comradeship to in-
duce 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
44
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
writing of these Letters discreditable to Char-
lotte's reputation, can be accepted as in the
least credible. It is not credible that her
sentiment for M. Heger was that of intel-
lectual enthusiasm for a great man double
her age ; because, to begin with, M. Heger
was not double Charlotte Bronte's age, but
only seven years her senior. About this
question there can be no dispute. M. Heger
was born in 1809 ; and Charlotte Bronte in
1 8 1 6. In 1 844 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 sym-
pathetic 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 Pension-
nat in thejRue d'Isabelle, and the former
45
THE SECRET OF
Prefet des iLtudes at the Brussels Athene e (who
had resigned this post when religious instruc-
tion, 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 Bronte and M. Heger ^ that is to say
in the first twelve months that followed
Charlotte's farewell to the Director and the
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue
d'Isabelle, in January 1 844. 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 Pen-
sionnat in the Rue d'lsabelle 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.
47
THE SECRET OF
CHAPTER III
CHARLOTTE'S LAST YEAR AT BRUSSELS
1842-43
WHAT were Charlotte Bronte's real relation-
ships 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 impres-
sion they produce retranslate themselves to
her readers' imagination and sensibilities as
feelings.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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, Pere 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 e 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 relation-
ships, 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
49 D
THE SECRET OF
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, e 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
5°
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 vis-
ible. 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 elec-
tricity, and one knows the storm is gather-
ing. This time Charlotte is writing to
Emily, who never liked M. Heger for her
part. c Things wag on much as usual here,
only Mile. Blanche and Mile. Hausse are at
present on a system of war without quarter.
They hate each other like two cats. Mile.
Blanche frightens Mile. Hausse by her white
passions, for they quarrel venomously ;
Mile. Hausse complains that when Mile.
Blanche is in a fury " elle rfa pas de /evres."
I find also that Mile. Sophie dislikes Mile.
Blanche extremely. She says she is heartless,
insincere and vindictive, which epithets, I
assure you, are richly deserved. Also IJind
1 Life ofC. B., p. 254.
51
THE SECRET OF
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
Jig 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. / 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 Hausse. M. Heger is won-
drously 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 ;
5*
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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.' *
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.
1 Life, p. 258.
53
THE SECRET OF
Why does she not make friends 'with her com-
peer's, Mesdemoiselles Blanche^ Sophie and Hausse?
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 be-
tween 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 en-
courage the studies, and brighten by gifts
54
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 Char-
lotte herself had fully recognised what had
happened ? This discovery is that a
change has taken place in Charlotte's
sentiment towards her c Master in litera-
ture ' ; a sentiment that at first had not
transgressed the limits of a cordial and
affectionate appreciation of his kindness
55
THE SECRET OF
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, c convenable.' But as Char-
lotte's exclusive pleasure in M. Heger 's
society and conversation increases, with
her distaste for the society and conversa-
tion 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 her-
self and the self-controlled Directress, whose
rule of life is respect for what is con-
venient, in the French sense of la convey-
ance (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
56
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
the wife of Monsieur Heger — esteems e con-
venient/ 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
Bronte 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 profes-
sorial 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 c inconvenience '
— the unbecoming character of this un-
fortunate infatuation, that renders it entirely
intolerable ; something that must be got rid
of at once ; but as quietly as possible, with-
out 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 con-
cerned. For 'Mees Charlotte' herself,
57
THE SECRET OF
first of all — what a c malheur ' should this
'infatuation/ involuntary and blameless in
intention, no doubt, but so utterly incon-
venient, betray itself in some regrettable
exhibition of feeling, most humiliating to her-
self, and most distressing to her only parent,
the respectable widowed evangelical Pastor
in Yorkshire ! And then for the Pension-
nat, 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 know-
ledge 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 Bronte ' 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,
58
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 in-
timacy 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 conse-
quently 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 re-
criminations in connection with the reasons
for this decision, these mere reasons, well
59
THE SECRET OF
known to Miss Bronte herself, convince
her that it is not convenient c 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 c 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 vf$s 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
60
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 revela-
tion being given : and therefore she endeav-
ours 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 ;
61
THE SECRET OF
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 c convenience ' permitted,
and although no personal jealousy, vindic-
tiveness nor malice entered into them,
nevertheless from Charlotte s point of 'view
were intolerable1 and cruel ; and the torments
they inflicted upon her during the long
seven months she lived through this inces-
sant 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 Mile.
Zora'ide Reuter, Yes : — but there was all
the difference in the world between the cir-
cumstances arranged by the authoress in her
two novels, and the circumstances as a mis-
62
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
chievous 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, Pere 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, mis-
chievous 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 Mile. Zoraide Reuter is more
of a cat than Madame Beck, and less an evil
63
THE SECRET OF
genius, who demands admiration for her clever-
ness whilst Mile. Zora'ide, 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 c in-
convenient ' 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
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ex-
cited. 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 : c 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 c 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
65 E
THE SECRET OF
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 cir-
cumstances, all menacing what she most
valued, a watchful preservation of ' con-
venience,' 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 confi-
dently 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, be-
tween 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
66
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
women : each exasperated against the other,
under the strain of a forced politeness, during
the last seven months of Charlotte's resid-
ence 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 atten-
tion, the ' inconvenience ' of her presence in
the Pensionnat ; the necessity for her return
to England. All this time Charlotte — out-
wardly compliant with all the demands
made upon her, that keep her writing letters
at Madame's dictation (in the hours when
Monsieur is giving bis 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 con-
versation and his society, and the pleasant
home you share with him, all your life;
and who grudge me — I, who have nothing
THE SECRET OF
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.'
68
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 in-
cessant conflict with Madame Heger ; and
that help to form the basis of real experi-
ences, expressed in the portraits (that are
not historical pictures) of Zoraide 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 intro-
duce us to the Jesuit who is half a spy and
THE SECRET OF
Y -
half a saint — Pere 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, Char-
lotte 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 de-
scribing the desolation of this large house,
with its deserted class-rooms, % and silent
garden, and galerie, 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, c fall into
the gulf of low spirits if I stayed always by
myself. . . . Yesterday I went on a pil-
grimage 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 tread-
7°
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
ing the narrow streets in the neighbourhood
of the Rue d'lsabelle, and avoiding it. I
found myself opposite to Ste. Gudule ; and
the bell, whose voice you know, began to
toll for evening salut. 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 them-
selves they have singular fancies. A penitent
was occupied in confessing. They do not
go into the sort of pew or cloister the priest
71
THE SECRET OF
occupies, but kneel down on the steps and
confess through a grating. Both the con-
fessor 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, in-
visible 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
confessed but / '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 con-
fess— a real Confession. When I had done he
72
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
told me his address, and said that every
morning I was to go to the Rue du Pare
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 adven-
ture stops here : and / 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 c odd whim ' ?
Even without the knowledge of the special
facts we now possess, could any serious
student of Charlotte Bronte 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
73
THE SECRET OF
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 unburthen-
ing her soul by a c real Confession ' ? A
real Confession — of what ? What crime has
this poof innocent Charlotte on her con-
science that stands in such need of confes-
sion ? 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 c 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
74
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
One who is pledged, when he has given
pardon and consolation, never to betray what
be 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 c Con-
fession,' 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 c 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 Pare
— next morning. In so far as the last
recommendation went, we know Charlotte
did not follow it. The adventure — as she
75
THE SECRET OF
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, Pere
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 pro-
nounced with vehemence his decision that I
could not leave. I could not at that time
have persevered in my intentions without ex-
citing him to anger ; and promised to stay a
little while longer?
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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.
77
THE SECRET OF
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, and 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 de-
scribes them, because it is, not imagination,
but remembrance, that has given these pages
the magical touch of life, the < vibration '
that translates words c 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 re-
peated disappointment ; rage and indigna-
tion at the cruelty and injustice of this
outrage done to a Love, that has wronged
no one, robbed no one, that has no desire
78
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
to inflict injury on others ; yet that is re-
fused the right that even the condemned
criminal is not refused, — to bid farewell
to what he holds most dear on earth be-
fore he goes forth to execution — all these
feelings are painted in the wonderful pages,
where the circumstances of the story never-
theless are legendary, and belong to the
parable of Lucy Snowe : but where the suf-
ferings Lucy endures on the eve of her
separation from Paul Emanuel were facts
stored up in the experiences of Charlotte
Bronte.
Like the incident of Lucy Snowe's ' Con-
fession,' the passages that in Villette describe
the efforts made by Madame Beck and the
Jesuit, Pere Silas, to prevent Paul Emanuel
from bidding Lucy farewell, before he starts
for his voyage to Basseterres in Gaudeloupe,
are pages from the spiritual life of Charlotte
Bronte — taken out of their proper frame
of circumstances, and altered in some im-
portant details. But outside of these altera-
tions, one recognises their truthfulness, in
the vivid light they throw upon the facts
told us in Charlotte's correspondence.
79
THE SECRET OF
In the novel, Paul Emanuel is expected
to visit the class-room at a certain hour
and to take farewell of his pupils. In con-
nection with the real events, it has to be
remembered that Charlotte left Bruxelles
on the and 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 prac-
tice 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 holi-
days— the last lesson of his, that Charlotte,
before she quitted the Pensionnat for ever,
would have had the chance of attending.
But, like Madame Eeck^ Madame Heger
would have kept her English teacher em-
ployed in writing letters at her dictation, in
80
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 shut-
ting desks, proving the lesson ended. But
here also Madame Heger would have fol-
lowed 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 c 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
81 F
THE SECRET OF
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 warn-
ing Charlotte c that he must see her at
leisure before she /£/?, 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**
near time of departure and then had suddenly
remembered it, and that c Mees J 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.
82
M. HEGER AT SIXTY
(He was born in 1809 : hence thirty-four, in 1543, when Charlotte
bade him farewell)
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 hap-
pened is that the scene between Madame Heger
and Charlotte took place just as the authoress of
' Vilette ' 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 stag-
nant, 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 ?
83
THE SECRET OF
I had seen them unanimous in demand for the
merest trifle — a treat, a holiday, a lesson's remis-
sion ; they could not, they would not now band to
beseige Madame Beck, and insist on a last inter-
view 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 dis-
tance 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
goby.
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.
84
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
A little before five o'clock, the hour of dis-
missal, 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.
85
THE SECRET OF
* 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.1
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
86
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 dark-
ness 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
87
THE SECRET OF
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, c 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 in-
terview 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 num-
bered, 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.'
1 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 ! / 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
88
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 trail-
ing 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 unlocked for, revealed in
his own glory and grandeur the height and com-
pass 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.
THE SECRET OF
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 dis-
regarding, rules I had never forgotten or disre-
garded before.
How long I paced that cla sse, I cannot tell ; I
must have been afoot many hours. Mechanic-
ally 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 hear-
ing, there I at last wept. Reliant on night, con-
fiding 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 moon-
light. Madame Beck entered, with the same
composed air as if coming on an ordinary occasion,
at an ordinary season. Instead of at once address-
ing 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
90
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 1 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. Go ton is sitting
up still. She shall make you comfortable. She
shall give you a sedative.'
4 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 disappoint-
ment (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.'
' 1 forbid it. Let me alone. Keep your hand
91
THE SECRET OF
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 heart-
less, self-indulgent, and ignoble. She quietly
retreated from me. Meek and self-possessed,
though very uneasy, she said, ' If I would not be
92
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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,5 — or one strangely like it — went to
the building up of the impressions and
emotions that transformed the early mem-
ories of Madame Heger, of whom Charlotte
once spoke so kindly in her letters, as a gen-
erous 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 auto-
93
THE SECRET OF
biographical reality. If one need proof of
this, it may be found in the admirable criti-
cism of Villette by Mrs. Humphry Ward,
who judges the book exclusively as the
author's literary masterpiece. In this master-
piece, Mrs. Humphry Ward finds one notable
flaw : — // 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.
6 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 pro-
duced 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
94
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
claims of the critic who utters it to pro-
nounce 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 posi-
tions 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 crea-
tion^ could not have said, 'My heart 'will
breakj before her treacherous rival Madame
Beck) in Paul EmanueFs presence. I admit
this, because Lucy Snowe, Madame Beck
and Paul Emanuel, if not absolutely c crea-
tions,' in the sense of being imaginary
characters, are nevertheless different people
from Charlotte Bronte, 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
95
THE SECRET OF
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 Pro-
fessor ; and all her schemes to keep these
two sympathetic creatures apart are abso-
lutely unjustifiable, and the results of jeal-
ousy and selfishness. In other words, Lucy
has the beau role in the piece, — she has no
reason to say, ' My heart will break,' be-
cause Madame Beck intrudes upon her
interview with Paul Emanuel.
But Charlotte had not the beau role^ but the
tragic one, in the real drama. The Direc-
tress, who stands between her and the
beloved Professor, is not her rival, but the
Professor's wife. And the beau role^ 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 in-
credible, but it seems so natural as to be
almost inevitably true, that when in the
very moment that poor Charlotte has ob-
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
tained, 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 tben9 in dread of this
new frustration of the hope so long de-
ferred, an anguish that 'defied suppression*
rang out in the cry c My heart will break ! '
Put oneself in Charlotte's place, and it
seems to me the emotion startled to expres-
sion 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.
97 G
THE SECRET OF
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 up-
rooting 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 l ; no school
was held. The boarders and teachers, after attend-
ing mass in the morning, were gone a long walk
into the country to take their gouter^ or afternoon
meal, at some farmhouse. I did not go with
them, for now but two days remained ere the
Paul et Vlrgime must sail, and I was clinging to
my last chance, as the Hying 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
1 New Year's Day, perhaps ? Charlotte left Bruxelles 2nd
January 1843.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 Labasse-
courian 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. Look-
ing 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.
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THE SECRET OF
M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he pro-
bably purposed to travel — a surtout, guarded with
velvet. I thought him prepared for instant de-
parture, 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 sun-
shine with cloud. If this were my last moment
with him, I would not waste it in forced, un-
natural 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,
100
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ex-
pressed something almost like the wordless lan-
guage 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.1
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
IQI
THE SECRET OF
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, c Laissez-moi ! ' in the grim sound I
felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving.
4 Laissez-moi ! ' he repeated, his nostrils open-
ing, 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 Pere 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 a 1'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, in-
judicious, inconsistent — a proceeding vexatious,
and not estimable in the view of persons of
steadier and more resolute character.'
102
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
'You know not what I have of steady and
resolute in me/ said he, c 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 in-
tonation 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
THE SECRET OF
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.
4 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 with-
out 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.1
' 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
104
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
and works in the school where he has
appointed her Directress ; in patient expec-
tation 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 separa-
tion, all due to the wicked craft and selfish
jealousy of Madame Beck. Destiny inter-
feres ; 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 Emmanuel 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, de-
clared his love for Lucy ; and had asked her to
be his wife. This is what had followed
105
THE SECRET OF
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 circum-
stances, 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 Athenee 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
106
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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/1
1 Lift, p. 273.
I07
THE SECRET OF
CHAPTER VI
THE LOVE-LETTERS OF A ROMANTIC1
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
1 I have to thank Mr. Clement Shorter, who has purchased
the copyright of Charlotte Bronte's manuscripts, for his
generous permission to quote from these letters freely for
the purposes of my criticism. — (F. M.)
1 08
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 pas-
sionate, 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,1 c of the existence of Love in its
most extended and sublime capacity and of our
own participation of its good and of its glory? 2
My contention is that it is this romantic
1 Childe Harold^ note 9 to canto iii.
2 The author of Cbilde Harold adds on this note as a com-
ment 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 j with ethereal flame
IO9
THE SECRET OF
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
meanesses of mortal and worldly things, to
the existence of Something personal and
immortal in the soul and heart of man, help-
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 overflowing 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 thrilPd spirit's love-devouring heat ;
In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest
Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.'
I IO
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
ing him e to gild his dross thereby'^ Some-
thing sovereign, that, quite independently of
forms of belief, or fashions of opinion, c rules
by every school, till love and longing die.y
Something indestructible, confined to no
epoch, ancient, mediaeval or modern, but,
' that was, or yet the lights were sef, 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 Bronte, and Charlotte Bronte
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 con-
ceive 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
1 Rudyard Kipling.
I I I
THE SECRET OF
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 him-
self 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
I 12
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 some-
thing ! 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, can-
not 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 suf-
fering, 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
113 H
THE SECRET OF
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 pro-
longed 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 hand-
writing, 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/ l
This passage is quoted from the Letter
dated by Charlotte i%tb November, with-
out any indication of the year. Mr. Spiel-
mann (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
1 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. Spiel-
mann's English versions of them, but in order to avoid the
risk of any infringement of Mr. Spielmann's copyright in his
Introduction.
114
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 i8th
November is the first of the series : and
that it belongs to the year 1 844 ; 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. GaskeH's
Life of Charlotte Bronte} 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,
"5
THE SECRET OF
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 domineer-
ing 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 testi-
mony of other letters belonging to the first
year of her return from Belgium. But by
November 1845 Mr. Bronte's philosophy,
before his own unmerited misfortune, had
been troubled and transformed into acute
misery and anxious forebodings by the down-
fall, both moral and physical, of his favourite
amongst his children, Bramwell, the un-
happy son — the only one — in this family
116
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
of gifted daughters, whose perversion seems
also to have had something of the irresponsi-
bility of genius about it. Writing on
the 4th November 1845 to Ellen Nussey, l
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 T 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.
Bronte'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
1Mrs. Gaskell's Life, p. 290.
117 "
THE SECRET OF
dead before the morning ! The trembling sisters,
sick with fright, would implore their father not
to expose himself to this danger. But Mr.
Bronte 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 Bronte 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. Bronte had success-
fully undergone the operation for cataract
that saved him from blindness : and Char-
lotte herself, ten months after the over-
whelming evidence of her ' master's
estrangement/ given in his silence after her
Letter of the 8th January, had saved her own
118
REDUCED FROM A DRAWING BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE
OF ASHBURNHAM CHURCH SENT TO M. HEGER
The drawing showing the date 1846 was given to the author
by Mile. Louise Heger
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
soul from the malady she had endured
without sharihg 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 i8th November
belongs to the year 1 844, and written ten
months after her return to Haworth, 2nd
January 1844, and represents the first, and
not the last of these four Letters.
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 dis-
appointment, 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 con-
quered 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 i8th November as written
119
THE SECRET OF
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 e 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'amitie que vous avez pour moij she writes
to him, ' ni plus, ni moms ? Je serais alors si
tranquil le, si libre : je pourrais garder le silence
pendant six mois sans effort.'
There is a note of bitterness in . this. In
120
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
what precedes it there is no bitterness, but
we have one of the passages in these wonder-
ful 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.
e The six months of silence are over : we
are now at the i8th 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 pri-
vation I have imposed upon myself. You, for
your part, cannot understand this ! But, Mon-
sieur, 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 obliga-
tion imposed upon me.
In connection with the opening phrase,
we must recognise in it the confirmation of
121
THE SECRET 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 occa-
sion of a conversation, when he very kindly
talked over with me the questions connected
with events in his parents' life that, inas-
much 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 sus-
pected 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
122
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ex-
pressing 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 Char-
lotte'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 7f9
separated by a hundred and sixty leagues from
his little child) he 'were left 'without news of
him ?
123
THE SECRET OF
But now if we consult honestly our own
impressions, does this letter reveal that c 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. c 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 honour-
able, 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 ;
124
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 im-
possible 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:—'/^ 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
125
THE SECRET OF
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 dis-
appointment, 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 separa-
tion— 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,
126
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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
127
THE SECRET OF
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, Pla-
tonic Love ; who as the wise woman,
Diotima, told Socrates, is c 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 house-
holders). 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 Bronte. And
the proof that Diotima was a good psycho-
logist, and had based her opinions upon
the study of facts, is found in the assertion
128
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 disappoint-
ments 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 in-
herits from both parents and is so often
extravagant and houseless, and consequently
in bad odour with householders and the wor-
shippers 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 tanta- .
lising 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
129 i
THE SECRET OF
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 Direc-
tress and her English teacher, and the scene
of the farewell interview between the Pro-
fessor 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 un-
deniable proof that the letter we have just
130
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 c 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 know-
THE SECRET OF
ledge 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. Apply-
ing this knowledge of him to the criticism
of what we know about his relations with
Charlotte Bronte, 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 senti-
mental 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 /over of Lucy
Snowe, because he is very truthfully and
admirably painted in the domineering but
132
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
interesting, terror-striking but captivating,
masterful and masterly Professor of litera-
ture, 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, out-
side 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 enthu-
siasm 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 tempera-
ment of M. Heger left him rather cold-
blooded than particularly warm-hearted,
where his pupils' feelings interfered with
'33
THE SECRET OF
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 Bronte
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 c 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 'Eon — mats
un peu trop d* exaltation — la Ponctuation nest
pas soignee* no one who knew M. Heger
would blame him for voluntary unkind-
ness. 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
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
studying them (that seems to me un-
mistakably 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 sen-
tence, 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
135
THE SECRET OF
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 reason-
able ; 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 acknow-
ledgment 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. Prospere and Victorine
never knew me, but I remember all five of them,
and especially Louise. There was so much
character, so much naivete expressed in her little
face. Farewell, Monsieur — Your grateful pupil,
C. BRONT£.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ima-
gines that she has found a means of making
her Letter reach its destination. In other
words, she is convinced, or tries to be con-
vinced, 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.1 The reason is that a
1 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.
137
THE SECRET OF
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 faith-
ful 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 vibra-
tion 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
138
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
return. Miss Taylor came back: CI have nothing
for you from Monsieur Heger,' she said; f neither
letter, nor any message.'
Understanding only too well what this meant,
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
139
THE SECRET OF
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 friend-
ship 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 : — c She appears to have gone mad.' By
140
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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/£ January.
The Letter obtained no answer. And
thus the end was reached. We now know
where in Charlotte Bronte'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.
141
X
PART II
SOME REMINISCENCES OF THE
REAL MONSIEUR AND MADAME HEGER
THIS SECOND PART IS
DEDICATED TO
MY BROTHER
THE LATE ABBE 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 DIS-
ENTANGLE FACT FROM FICTION
THE purpose of the First Part of this study
was to show that with the knowledge of
the Secret of Charlotte Bronte, brought to
us by Dr. Paul Heger's generous gift of
these pathetic and beautiful Love-letters, the
'Problem of Charlotte Bronte,' 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
H5 K
THE SECRET OF
and personages arc 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 ro-
mantic love : that, in its first stage, threw her
into a hopeless conflict against the force of
things and broke her heart : but that, be-
cause 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 c Problem ' of Charlotte Bronte : 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 con-
cerns 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 Bronte's
146
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 feel-
ings that lift and ennoble the reader's sensi-
bility : 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 his-
torical 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 per-
sonal liberation from haunting memories,
'47
THE SECRET OF
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 permis-
sible, but a noble one. It is the one that
Pater attributed to Michael Angelo : c the
effort of a strong nature to attune itself ^ to
tranquillise vehement emotions by withdrawing
them into the region of ideal sentiments ' : — c 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
Bronte!) c is thrown off at pleasure*
But, judged as a literary and historical
method, was Charlotte Bronte'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 ;
148
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
and then placed them in fictitious circum-
stances 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 be-
trayed her : and rendered her guilty of a
fault that must be recognised as a very grave
one. But when this fault has been recog-
nised and admitted, it seems to me a con-
scientious 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 look-
ing for them, one is bound to recognise. For
149
THE SECRET OF
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 de-
scendents, 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 ' re-
specting their persons or giving them flatter-
ing 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
150
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 patho-
logical theories about the madness, wicked-
ness, 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 ; c 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
THE SECRET OF
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 under-
gone, in the unbroken silent solitude that
followed her unanswered appeal, must have
made the hold upon her memory of ' out-
ward things ' so hard to bear, that to break
that hold, to live in the realm of imagina-
tion 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
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 deter-
mine where c 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
'53
THE SECRET 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 in-
voluntary, way, the direct cause of poor
Charlotte's anguish, suspense and final
heart-break ? And whether, given the posi-
tions 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 Char-
lotte'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
Bronte ' really lies outside of the ' Secret '
J54
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 im-
partiality, 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
155
THE SECRET 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. Tes — but out of my life
they have not vanished! For me — the his-
torical Monsieur and Madame Heger exist
quite independently of all associations with
the imaginary personages Paul Emanuel and
Madame Beck. For me — the .old school,
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
the class-rooms, the walled garden, with its
ancient pear-trees that still 'faithfully re-
newed 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 Bronte 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 exas-
perated, 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 re-
current gusts of nerve-disturbing storms.
And I would point out that the value of
my testimony about the personal impres-
sions I derived, quite independently of any
knowledge of Charlotte Bronte's residence
JS7
THE SECRET OF
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 pur-
pose 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
158
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 insu-
larity 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 con-
cealed 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
*59
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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, im-
perious, harsh, not unkind^ but certainly the
reverse of tender, and without any con-
sideration 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 1 86 1, 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 c 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
1 60
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
least prepared to face him, and who is
constantly finding fault with one. Now a
c 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 fulfill-
ing 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 irri-
tating personality. But although I never
hated him, I yet had some special grievances
against this 'Terror,5 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 im-
patience 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
161 L
THE SECRET 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 Char-
lotte herself before the glamour of romantic
love had interfered with her critical perspi-
cacity. Here is the original description of
M. Heger, in the early days of her resid-
ence 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 :
162
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 pen 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 dic-
tionary or grammar when translating the
most difficult English composition into
French. This makes the task rather ardu-
ous, 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 Bronte
before she became a partial witness, because,
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THE SECRET OF
by and by, when I am giving my own
reminiscences, it will be found that in 1 842
M. Heger was very much the same Pro-
fessor whom I knew in 1861.
And Madame Heger ? Here too my
impressions are obtained from a point of
view unquestionably more impartial than
Charlotte Bronte'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 judg-
ment of the authoress of Villette^ is not the
result of any difference in the facts of
Madame Heger's characteristics and be-
haviour, 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 J — and who cannot well see c as in
herself she really is/ the Mistress of the
house ; who prudently, not necessarily with
cruelty^ closes the doors of her home against
164
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 dis-
likings), inspired me with a sentiment of
reverence and wonder, as for a remote per-
fection, 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. Tranquil/it^ Douceur,, Bonte :
the French words express better than English
ones the commingled qualities I felt existed
in Madame Heger as she moved noiselessly
(as Charlotte Bronte has described), whilst
the more brilliant and gifted Professor's
movements were always stormy.
When relating these reminiscences of
THE SECRET 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 Bronte,
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 sup-
porting 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 remem-
brance 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 yonth —
although to almost every one else now alive
these scenes have become c as it were a tale
that is told/
1 66
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
CHAPTER II
MY FIRST INTRODUCTION TO CHARLOTTE
BRONTE'S PROFESSOR l
' Madame, — quelquefois, donncr, c'est semer ' —
Speech made to my Mother by M. Heger.
IN 1859 this niemorable 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 re-
moved us. She was convinced that we
both of us stood in need of sea-air, exercise
and healthy recreation, before we could
1 This chapter is reproduced from the Cornhill by the
kind permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co,
167
THE SECRET OF
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 friend-
ship 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 en-
168
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
quiry my mother found out that she had
been educated at a school in Brussels,
situated in the Rue d'lsabelle^ and kept by a
certain Madame Heger. How it came to
pass that, only four years after the publica-
tion of Villette^ and two years after Mrs.
Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontf, it did
not occur to my mother to identify this
particular Brussels school with the one
where the Director was the fiery and peril-
ously attractive ' Professor Paul Emanuel
and where the Directress was painted
as the crafty and treacherous c 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 de-
lightful 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 c done with
me,' was to send me to Madame Heger's
school. She had entered into correspond-
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ence 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 arrange-
ments.
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, — welly 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
170
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
M. Heger. My brother's advice was sound :
— c Don't let the man see you are afraid
of him/ he said, c 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-a-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 interest-
ing 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
171
THE SECRET OF
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 master-
piece was precisely a book where the very
school I was going to inhabit was painted,
with extraordinary veracity, in so far as out-
ward 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 school-
girl 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 re-
vealed 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, c Don't send me to this
school ; I am afraid of Professor Paul Eman-
uel ; I loathe Madame Beck; I shall never
172
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
make friends 'with these horrid Lesbassecouri-
ennes ? ' Well, really, I don't think I should
have done anything of the sort ! At four-
teen 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 school-
girls whom I was going to know in the Rue
d'lsabelle 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
173
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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 reminis-
cences 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 Bronte. 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
'74
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 mas-
terly 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 direc-
tion, 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
'75
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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 : ' / am
not a rich woman,* my mother had said,
apologetically, c 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
176
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 we//,' 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, c Instruire, ce rfest
pas donner^ c'est semerj) 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-a-manger in
the Rue de la Chapelle at Ostend, I would
watch the masterly gesture of the Profes-
sor's hand when he delivered his triumph-
ant sentence, that is not an argument, but is
worth more; I would see the look of admira-
tion 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, woe-
177 M
THE SECRET OF
betide 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
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
women, she had been very often compli-
mented 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 mean-
ings 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 in-
stead of all these flattering things (that
might have been rather irritating too, only
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THE SECRET OF
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 head-
strong, to bring her into the right way
again. It will be understood that to sit
and listen to all this about oneself was an-
guish. But, carefully watching M. Heger's
face, I had a notion that he had found out
there was some mistake. Still I was de-
pressed 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 some-
thing 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 Vilette 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 ad-
180
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
miration 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. e 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 van-
quish, is it? And she is headstrong (tetue).
Tell me, Mees, am I to be too indulgent ? or
too severe ? (Dois-je etre trop indulgent? ou
trop severe ? ') 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 c a little
savage/ and if I hadn't been smarting under
the sense that he must have the worst pos-
sible 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
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THE SECRET OF
plait^ Monsieur 1 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 — 'NiFun ni Fautre, Monsieur; soy ez juste,
cela suffit ' . . . and I listened to the broad-
ness 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 c 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 clever-
ness. 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 ?
182
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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.
c 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.
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THE SECRET OF
c He is rather like Punch/ I said, e but
better looking of course ; and not so good-
tempered.'
Let me justify these two descriptions by
showing that both of them werebased 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, 4 a spare, alert man, showing
the velvet blackness of a close-shorn bead, and
the sallow ivory of his brow beneath? M.
Heger in 1859 was still alert, but he was
not spare, he was inclining towards stout-
ness. 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
184
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 beauti-
ful 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 to-
wards 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
185
THE SECRET OF
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 recog-
nise that in my sentiment towards M. Heger
to-day even, made up as it is half of admira-
tion and half of amusement, there is not one
particle of love.
I have said — in connection with my first
impression, that c undying hate ' was the
sentiment that M. Heger had conceived for
me — that really c 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
1 86
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 relation-
ships, 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 idiosyn-
crasies, 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
THE SECRET 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 — c ctmuyeeS I remember now my
surprise, at first hearing the reply to my
question to a sobbing schoolfellow : c Pour-
quoi pleures-tu?' 'Parce que je mennuie?
c Why ? * ' Mais je te le dis farce que je
rrfennuie? 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
188
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ' / 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 every-
one else.
For these reasons, M. Heger and myself
180
THE SECRET OF
— 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 ser-
vices 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 boun-
daries of the actual walls of the Pensionnat,
190
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
in any stated year ; a world, made up of all
the girls who, before that year, and after-
wards, through several generations, had been
and ever would be, her c dear pupils ' ; ' mes
cberes e/eves'; — 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 influ-
ence in the Pensionnat, singling out no par-
ticular pupils, and withdrawn from none ot
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
191
THE SECRET OF
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 interest-
ing 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
192
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ' incon-
venient ' 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 appear-
193 N
THE SECRET OF
ance, the author of Villette did use Madame
Heger evidently as the model for the picture
of an entirely different moral person. c Her
complexion 'was fresh and s anguine ^ 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? *
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 physi-
cal resemblance, I may say that, if I had
trusted to my own impressions, I should have
rejected the assertion that the 'outline of
1 See yillette, chapter viii.
194
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)
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 im-
pression 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 kind-
liness. ' 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.
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
195
THE SECRET OF
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 ' per-
verted ' nor precociously formed young
women, whose c 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 youth-
ful 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
196
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
memory does not show me anywhere, are the
* eyes full of an insolent light, and the brow
hard and unblushing as marble* 1 — 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,
Bonte, and les Convenances (in the sense of
what was seemly, and opposed to viol-
ence 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 dis-
liked ; 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
Villette, chapter viii.
197
THE SECRET OF
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 exact-
ing claims of duties and occupations and cares,
rushed in to divide me afterwards from these
companions of my best years ; when every-
thing 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 friend-
ship : because it remains an unaltered senti-
ment 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
198
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
lives ' renewed their perfumed snowy blos-
som every spring.'
I am told a handsome building now re-
places the long, plain straggling fa$ade of
the historic school — but I have no wish
to see it.
199
THE SECRET OF
CHAPTER IV
MY SECOND INTERVIEW WITH M. HEGER.
THE WASHING OF c 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 regime, 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
200
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ex-
hibition 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 in-
ward 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 ap-
201
THE SECRET OF
proved 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 : —
c Do you know why I have a friendship
for you ? ' she asked.
' No,' I answered. c 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 an-
other ; 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 ! Evi-
dently 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
202
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 Eng-
land, and also that I had conquered a
friend.
203
THE SECRET OF
I think it was the same afternoon, be-
cause 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 posses-
sion 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 know-
ledge of evil, had come between it and the
poetry of its aspirations and its dreams, yet
for every one but myself, it is Charlotte
Bronte's Garden of Imagination, where
she used to Astray down the pleasant alleys
and hear the bells of St. Jean Eaptiste
204
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 even-
ing ' with the spirit of my youth ; yet, for
English readers, it is not I, but Charlotte
Bronte who must describe, what I could
never dare nor desire to paint after her, the
famous Allee defendue 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
1 From Mile. Louise Heger I have this note : lLes cloches de
St. Jacques et non pas St. Jean Baptiste, eglise qui se trouve a
rautre cote de la ville pres du canal: quartier du Tere Si/as
dans "Alette." > .
205
THE SECRET OF
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 r Allee def endue'
In my day there was no prohibition of
the Allee def endue ^ although the name sur-
vived. It was only forbidden to play noisy
or disturbing games there ; as it was to be
reserved for studious pupils, or for the mis-
tresses who wished to read or converse
there in quietude.
If I had a lesson to learn, it was to the
Allee defendue that I took my book ; and in
this allee 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
206
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 im-
pression is that it was Lamartine's Chute
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).1 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
1 Villette, chapter xii.
207
THE SECRET OF
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 dis-
pelled 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 beauti-
fully 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
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CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 introduc-
tion 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, especi-
ally 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
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of life of an Eighteenth-century Woman, as
c Unefaf on de tirer parti de sa rats on pour son
bonbeur.' 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 pro-
moted into the first class (passing the second
class over altogether) before this, so that I was
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CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 under-
standing 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 there-
fore in self-defence I left the thing alone
and looked out of the window, whilst the
lesson lasted. It never entered my head
that /was in any danger of being questioned :
no one ever took any notice of me at the
arithmetic lessons. It was recognised that,
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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 under-
stood ! '
. . . 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
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CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 1 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 mad-
dening 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
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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 navre — for us, it is a good farce."
The wail rose up — c Mais non, Monsieur ', ce
nest pas vrai, eel a ne nous amuse pas ; nous
sommes tristes, nous pleurons, voyez.9
The Professor took no heed ; he continued.
c 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 rfest pas gentil ce que
vous dites /a, Monsieur: nous avons beaucoup de
respect pour vous, nous aimons vos lemons ; out,
nous travail lerons bien, vous allez voir, par-
donnez-nous?
' Frankly, now, does that touch you ? '
I heard behind me. ' It is not reasonable !
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CHARLOTTE BRONTE
I find it even stupid (je le troupe meme
bete)' 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 dis-
like, and told me he wished to prove to
himself whether I was negligent or incap-
able. 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 execu-
tion. I felt he was going again over
'fractions' and the 'integers/ I knew I
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shouldn't understand them ; and that he
wouldn't understand that I was c 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. // 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 (integre) : 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
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CHARLOTTE BRONTE
me. As the result, you have half the eight.
But now for our ba/f-Briocbe ; 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 ;
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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 beauti-
ful passage in a favourite book ; the repeti-
tion of a familiar verse : attention to some
very beautiful object : the deliberate recol-
218
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
lection 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 circum-
stance 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 1 of e 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
1 Esprit de Sagesse, conduisez-nous :
Esprit de Verite, enseignez-nous :
Esprit de Charite, vivifiez-nous :
Esprit de Prudence, preservez-nous :
Esprit de Force, defendez-nous :
Esprit de Justice, e'clairez-nous :
Esprit Consolateur, apaisez-nous.
Here is the invocation, sent me by Mile. Heger; who
has, with extreme kindness, endeavoured to recover it for me.
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and stand near him ; and who was not
allowed by him to gabble. And this
was the invariable introduction to bis
lesson. I can't feel it was an ortho-
dox 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 quali-
ties 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. II faut donner a son dme 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:
4 fadmets tons les genres -, hors le genre en-
nuyeuxJ
A third maxim was that one must never
employ, nor tolerate the employment of,
a literary image as an argument. The
220
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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.
Ajifth 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 c 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
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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 acquaint-
anceship 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 ex-
pressing his own thoughts, could have placed
M. Heger's pupils under the same obliga-
tions as did his knowledge of beautiful ideas,
beautifully expressed, gathered from north,
south, east and west, in classical, mediaeval
222
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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.
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CHAPTER V
THE STORY OF A CHAPEAU D'lJNIFORME
IN connection with the particular Belgian
schoolgirls whom I knew, who still, in
1860, learnt their lessons in the class-rooms
where Charlotte Bronte 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 charac-
teristics of the Lesbassecouriennes ; and that
Charlotte Bronte 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' *
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 quali-
1 Villette, chapter viii.
224
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
ties and intimate and essential peculiarities of
the e 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 pina-
fore 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
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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 appear-
ance, 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 in-
vited to choose a committee to decide it, in
consultation with their head-mistress. And
to this consultation Madame Heger brought
226
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
a large spirit of indulgence, especially where
the Sunday Bonnet was concerned. The
Sunday Dress had to be black silk — about
the fafon 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 serviceable-
ness 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 com-
pensating advantages — the cultivation of
neatness and order. She had not then dis-
couraged the white chip, rosebuds and the
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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 !
228
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 c Temple
Anglic an J situated in a passage near the
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Bruxelles Museum. The service was gener-
ally over by noon ; but it was too late for
me to return to school in time for the
dejeuner at mid-day, and this authorised
the custom of my taking lunch with my
brother and enjoying a short walk after-
wards ; 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,5 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
230
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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, inter-
woven 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 dis-
mayed contemplation of the lamentable satu-
rated mixture of mashed up tinted pulp and
wires, that had once been rosebuds and blonde,
my depths of despondency moved these sym-
pathetic 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
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honour of sacrificing themselves on the altar
of friendship. The first said : ' Now nothing
is more simple : we shall wrap up this un-
happy rag in my handkerchief as you see ;
— You shall have my chapeau auniforme^ 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 (funiforme^ and all is said.'
The other girl, whose name was
Henriette — I forget her surname — said,
c 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, c 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
232
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 ' Un-
happy 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 sum-
mer 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.
c I suppose you don't think it will rain ? '
I suggested.
c Rain ! ' My brother said with scorn.
c Look at that sky ! How could it rain ?'
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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.
6 He didn't see us,' said my brother
cheerily. 4 What a bit of luck ! '
* You may be quite sure he did see us/
I answered. cWell, I wonder what will
happen now ? '
With this new anxiety on our hands,
even the precious chapeau d* uniform* be-
234
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
came a secondary consideration. But the
shower having passed, we examined it care-
fully. 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.
c When it 's dry,5 he told me, ' you '11 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 cor-
rectly, a coast-line, on the white chip, to
the end of that chapeau cTuniformes ex-
istence. 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 punish-
ment : 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.
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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,
c 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
236
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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,
c Je ne sais pas, Monsieur ' (a bad French
accent too).
cA-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 resume
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 resume of this sermon to-
morrow/
c Out, Monsieur.'
All through the evening recreation hours,
and at night when I fought against sleepi-
ness in my bed, I worked over the com-
position of that sermon. It is true that I
did fall asleep in the middle of it myself;
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THE SECRET OF
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 recrea-
tion hour after dejeuner 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 im-
agination, partly on account of the associa-
tions 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 s/eep9 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-ab, c'est bien. Vous
I'avez done bien retenu^ ce fameux sermon ?
tant mieux, tant mieux.'
238
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 re-
vealed to me a secret sorrow hidden away
under Madame Heger's serenity ; and that
convinces me, now, that the tragical ro-
mance of Charlotte Bronte was not to her,
as it must have been to M. Heger, mis-
understood, and regarded as an event of
small importance ; but that it ' entered into
her life,' and was to her a very serious
trouble.
239
THE SECRET OF
One day in June, I am not able to
remember now upon what especial occa-
sion, 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
chateau 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 / was supposed to be
a philosopher in a sense of my own as
a worshipper of ideas — talked ' philosophy '
240
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 French-
woman, whom I liked extremely, and
who also liked me : her name was Mile.
Zelie — she was too young to have been
one of the mistresses known to Charlotte
Bronte 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 Mile.
241 Q
THE SECRET OF
Zelie 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 goose-
berries 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 mis-
chief 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 Mile. Zelie : she blamed no one,
but repeated constantly, c Why then did not
Madame warn me ? Never should I have
permitted it, had I not supposed that it
was understood that these .gooseberries,
242
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
without value for that matter, were in-
tended 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 mat entendu — what would
you have ? The only person who seemed to
take it to heart was poor Mile. Zelie.
' 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
243
THE SECRET OF
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.
c Who is responsible for this ? ' he asked,
c c'esf une bassesse ! Mile. Zelie, what does
this signify ? Were you not told the fruit
was to be respected ? '
Poor Mile. Zelie stood there quivering
with terror.
' Unhappily/ she said, c 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 chil-
dren ? ' she asked, turning to Marie Hazard
and myself : — there was a clear and empty
space around us — every other girl had some-
how vanished.
'Yes, Mademoiselle, we are very sorry,'
both of us answered at once.
244
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 Made-
moiselle Zelie, 'these young girls are not
alone responsible ; many others also took the
fruit ; you must not blame them for every-
thing.'
' Is that so, Mademoiselle Hazard ? Is
that so, Mees ? '
' II ne faut pas nous demander cela,J 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 ; Mile. Zelie, do me this
pleasure : fetch me the e'/eves who were here
245
THE SECRET OF
just now : call them together. I must get
to the bottom of this. Je dois approfondir
cela.'
Mile. Zelie was some time about it : but
in the end, she returned with a good com-
pany 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 ?
c We were not told,5 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 goose-
berries to this extent ? '
'Mile. Hazard, it is not to you I address my-
self,' said M. Heger. c I have no question to
246
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
ask you. You admit, and indeed it is not
possible for you to deny, that you have com-
mitted 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. Mile. Zelie 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, c 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.'
6 Pardon, Monsieur/ said a voice at my
elbow, cje suis Beige ; et moi aussi j'ai
mange des groseilles.'
M. Heger bowed towards her profoundly.
c Je fais une exception en votre
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THE SECRET OF
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 f Did it mean that, if not deliber-
ately 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 f 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 despera-
tion in my face : for M. Heger was no
sooner out of sight than attempts were
made to console me : but I was beyond
consolation. Mile. Zelie came first ; she laid
a soothing hand on my shoulder.
c Do not afflict yourself, my child/ she said.
248
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
' 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 h propos de quelques groseilles / '
* It has nothing to do with the goose-
berries,' I said ; c 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 f We shall all go to Madame
and tell her everything. She will see how
it is at once. Voyons^ Cbou : ne pleures pas.'
c Je ne pleure pas ; vous mentez : ' and this
was both impolite and incorrect : I ivas
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
249
THE SECRET OF
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 reussit-il ? Listen
then : we will make it all plain with
Madame Heger. Mile. Zelie will tell her
we knew nothing when we ate those goose-
berries ; we thought they were there for us —
that it belonged to the feast to eat this fruit :
they were not so very good, these goose-
berries 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 f Look
at Marie Hazard : she is in the same case
as you are, and does not afflict herself.'
250
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
e 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 base-
ness.'
' 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 chere
et bonne amiej 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 : c Pythagore disait qu'il ne faut
jamais attiser le feu avec une epee. Cette
sentence me parait etre la plus importante et
la plus sacree des lois de ramitie* I knew
THE SECRET OF
nojthing 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, c 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 con-
viction 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 be knew be 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
252
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 fete 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 enjoy-
ment every one had derived from this holi-
day, 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 etrangere)
253
THE SECRET OF
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 —
254
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
c One cannot wait for you any longer
mademoiselle, vous etes notee* 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 dis-
covery 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 un-
just 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
255
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head between my hands, in the frame of
mind in which Anarchists are made.
But the influence was already approach-
ing that was to transform anarchy into the
ideal socialism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
where the bitter bitter rage of rebellious-
ness against the wrong done oneself be-
comes the generous sympathy with all
injustice throughout the world: 'Ce premier
sentiment de f injustice est reste si profondement
grave dans mon dme^ que toutes les idees qui s'y
rapportent me rendent ma premiere emotion ; et
ce sentiment^ relatif a moi dans son origine^ a
pris une telle consistance en lui-meme^ et s*est si
bien detache de tout interet personnel^ que mon
cceur s'enflamme au spectacle ou au recit de toute
action injuste^ que I quen soit Fobjet^ et en que I-
que lieu quelle se commette^ comme si Feffet en
retomboit sur moi.y
The lesson that the author of the Con-
fessions 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 sensi-
bility to it became a less powerful feeling
256
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 mis-
take. Mile. Zelie 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 re-
main 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 any-
thing else, but I could not support injustice.
257 R
THE SECRET OF
cPas rinjustice,' I protested, 'j'obeirais a
tout, je supporterais tout : mais, pas Tinjus-
tice, non, madame, non, je ne saurais
supporter rinjustice.'
' Cependant, mon enfant, il faut savoir
la supporter. Que faire ? Seriez-vous la
seule personne au monde qui ne connaitrait pas
rinjustice ? '
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 no-
thing 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.
c It saddens me,5 continued Madame
Heger — c (Gela nfattriste) 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
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CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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 obliga-
tions 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 sur-
prised 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.
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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 —
4 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."
c But I see you are now in a good disposi-
tion,' 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.'
260
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Ever since I have known the story of
Charlotte Bronte I have had the firm con-
viction of what was in Madame Heger's
mind when she spoke to me of one who had
imagined enemies in friends, and who, com-
plaining 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 in-
justice, 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 re-
mained, as ever, the c Professor ' of unrivalled
merit.
Summing up what may be gathered from
261
THE SECRET OF
these reminiscences, I think the facts that
can be affirmed are these : —
;'(•-: No moral likeness, but a physical resem-
blance, 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 Bronte,
and who was the lawful and attached hus-
band of the Directress of the Pensionnat.
But when Professor Paul Emanuel becomes
the docile disciple of Pere 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 !
262
CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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.
THE END
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at the Edinburgh University Press
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