Charlotte was faced with a conflict of loyalties. She wanted, from a sense of duty, pride and growing personal inclination, to please Monsieur Heger, but the sister with whom she was so interdependent emotionally had an antipathy towards him, and an unsubmissive attitude to his pedagogy. Monsieur Heger and Emily “don’t draw well together at all,” Charlotte reported in May, and though by July she was relieved to note that the Hegers were beginning to appreciate “the valuable points of [Emily’s] character under her singularities,” one feels that their hosts were the ones making allowances, not the younger Brontë.
Emily clearly accentuated her “singularities” to keep herself at a remove. A strange account of her reception in Brussels filtered through to Elizabeth Gaskell when she was writing Charlotte’s biography that Emily had “absolutely repelled people by her cold sullen manner.” It is clear from what Charlotte said later that Emily was struggling valiantly against feelings of profound homesickness. In February 1843 Mary Taylor wrote to Ellen from Germany, eager for gossip about how Emily’s exposure to society (the most extended ordeal of the kind she ever underwent) had affected her. How could “the newly acquired qualities…fit in, in the same head & heart that is occupied by the old ones”? Mary marvelled. “Imagine Emily turning over prints or ‘taking wine’ with any stupid fop & preserving her temper & politeness!”
The answer was, the newly acquired qualities didn’t fit in at all, as Emily’s devoirs for Monsieur Heger indicate. Asked to compose a letter of invitation and reply, Emily took the opportunity to write a letter from a piano teacher to her pupil, crying off a musical party and advising her pupil to “choose a time when everyone is occupied with something other than music, for I fear that your performance will be a little too remarkable.” It’s a joke as acidic as Mr. Bennet’s in Pride and Prejudice about his daughter Mary having “delighted us long enough” (and makes one wonder if Emily had read Austen’s novel—Charlotte had not at this date). Heger must have learnt to be on his mettle when he opened Emily’s cahiers: given the subject of “Filial Love,” she handed in something like a harangue from a pulpit. God takes a dim view of human baseness, the schoolgirl argued, and knows that his commandment “Honour thy father and thy mother” can be enforced only through fear and threats.
When he was interviewed by Elizabeth Gaskell fifteen years later, Constantin Heger said he felt Emily to have been the more remarkable of the two Brontë sisters, with a head for logic and argument “unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a woman.” “She should have been a man—a great navigator,” he said. “Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty; never have given way but with life.” But, while this formidable will that “rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned” might have benefited a Magellan or a Drake, he acknowledged that it was hard to domesticate, and both he and his wife clearly found Emily an unsettling presence. Monsieur had also noticed how “egotistical and exacting” she was compared with Charlotte and how “in the anxiety of the elder to make her younger sister contented, she allowed [Emily] to exercise a kind of unconscious tyranny over her,” an interesting insight both into the sisters’ relationship and into Heger’s keen observation of them.
Charlotte’s essays, on the other hand, anticipated her teacher’s responses in a much more collaborative way. She knew what would appeal to his sensibility and indulged it; she also delighted in his marks of approval—“B” for “Bon,” “Tr. B” for “Très Bon”—which were as often about the content of her work as its correctness.
Charlotte’s essays had none of Emily’s bite, but showed an alertness to his suggestions that impressed Heger, as a pedagogue, very much indeed. At the end of an essay called “Le Nid” (“The Nest”), which Charlotte wrote for him in April, Heger—having extensively corrected and commented throughout—wrote the following pungent advice:
What importance should be given to details, in developing a subject?—
Remorselessly sacrifice everything that does not contribute to clarity, verisimilitude, and effect.
Accentuate everything that sets the main idea in relief, so that the impression be colourful, picturesque. It’s sufficient that the rest be in its proper place, but in half-tone. That is what gives to style, as to painting, unity, perspective, and effect.
Read Harmony XIV of Lamartine, The Infinite: we will analyse it together, from the point of view of the details.
With what pleasure and interest Charlotte must have read this message from her master, and hastened to find Lamartine’s poem. Her subsequent essay “L’Immensité de Dieu” is heavily influenced by it, even down to Lamartine’s imagery and language; traces of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Chateaubriand—two more of Monsieur’s favourites—are also apparent. Monsieur’s carefully chosen words had been heeded in every way, and were bearing remarkable fruit, albeit in a foreign language, now that she had a sufficiently demanding reader.
Heger’s devotion to excellence was unusual in a teacher of young ladies. It could be thought of as educational idealism, or, in the economic theory of the day, perhaps as conspicuous waste: the most that any of his female pupils would be able or expected to do with their opened minds would be to teach in turn, in conditions of less promise, for salaries much lower than those of their male counterparts. The idea of nurturing in his bosom future women of letters, who could take their place on the bookshelf alongside the venerated writers and poets to whom he introduced them, would not have crossed Heger’s mind at all. Yet he had two in the class before him: one taking notes assiduously, the other giving him an unsmiling stare.
With his natural acting ability and electrifying enthusiasms, it must have been an arresting experience to hear him read and comment on his favourite authors. When he was in “insane Tom-cat” mode, however, he would shout and rage at his pupils, and deliver withering critiques. Emily sat through such performances stony-faced, but Charlotte was much more susceptible to criticism, though pleased to report to Ellen that if Monsieur ever reduced her to tears, his demeanour changed immediately, “& that sets all things straight.”
No one has left an account of how Constantin Heger behaved with a class of boys, who occupied by far the greater part of his teaching life. The ex-pupils who rallied to his defence in later years were all female, and Heger’s power over girls seems to have pleased him particularly. Charlotte’s depiction in The Professor of William Crimsworth’s pleasure in domineering over a class of girls shows her complete awareness of the erotics of the classroom. Having deliberately dictated too fast, to discompose his new pupil, Crimsworth enjoys her confusion and anticipation of getting a bad mark, all the more to savour her relief at finding “Bon” at the bottom of her returned book: “she smiled, at first incredulously, then as if reassured, but did not lift her eyes; she could look at me, it seemed, when perplexed and bewildered, but not when gratified.”
Elsewhere, keen to scotch the idea that a classful of nubile females could be some sort of erotic free-for-all for a male teacher, Charlotte has Crimsworth explain how girls who in society might seem charming are revealed in their true colours in the schoolroom: “sullen tempers are shewn, disfiguring frowns spoil the symmetry of the face, sometimes coarse gestures banish grace from the deportment while muttered expressions, redolent of native and ineradicable vulgarity, desecrate the sweetness of the voice.” They are Belgians, in other words. The conscientious tutor doesn’t look for charm, beauty or flirtation in such a situation but “glories chiefly in certain mental qualities; application, love of knowledge, natural capacity, docility, truthfulness, gratefulness…These he seeks but seldom meets; these if by chance he finds he would fain retain for ever, and when Separation deprives him of them, he feels as if some ruthless hand had snatched from him his only ewe-lamb.”
The Hegers’ joint approach to the care of their charges was parental
, attentive and, in many cases, affectionate. Writing to a favourite former pupil many years later, Madame reminded her of an incident when she was convalescent from an illness at school and Monsieur Heger had been so affected by her “large languid eyes” that he kissed her and “allowed himself to make a sort of discreet declaration. ‘Who,’ he asked the little invalid, ‘is my best girl?’ ‘Your wife,’ said K— dryly, turning her face to the wall.” Madame was recalling this story fondly, as a joint possession of herself and her husband (“we do not separate what God has so happily joined” she told the same pupil on another occasion, “and in our affection husband and wife are one”), but it evokes a way of dealing with pupils that the stiff-necked Brontës may well have found surprising. Monsieur’s vulnerability to tears was well known, and the fact that he kept bon-bons in his pocket to hand out to the girls, and himself, whenever the mood took him. K’s reminiscence of Monsieur at her sickbed makes one wonder about the inspiration behind Charlotte’s poem “I gave, at first, Attention close” (written in 1845–6). Was the tender scene it depicts between a teacher and student purely imaginary, or based on experience?
One day when summoned to the bed
Where Pain and I did strive,
I heard him, as he bent his head,
Say, “God, she must revive!”
I felt his hand, with gentle stress
A moment laid on mine,
And wished to mark my consciousness
By some responsive sign.
There is a similar hint in Charlotte’s poem “Frances” (a poem spoken as by the heroine of The Professor) of “a thrilling clasp” of the hand that persuaded the speaker that “another heart esteemed [hers] dear.” If Constantin Heger made a habit of such gestures, it is not surprising that Charlotte, love-starved and sensual, did indeed feel the yearning to make “some responsive sign.”
—
THE SUMMER VACATION began on the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August, when the Heger family, with their three little girls, new baby son Prospère and English nanny Martha Trotman, departed for the seaside, and all the boarders except Emily and Charlotte Brontë went home. But before she left for her annual holiday, Madame made the sisters an offer that shows how pleased she was with their progress and keen to help them as well as herself. She proposed that they stay another half-year to continue their lessons in French and German, with free board, in exchange for Charlotte taking on all the teaching of English (Madame could then save quite a bit by dismissing the current English master) and Emily teaching music “some part of each day.”
Mary Taylor, on the other hand (who had gone home to Yorkshire for the holidays with Martha), was ready to move on from Brussels to Germany, where she intended to live with a friend’s family and look for work as a teacher of English. She wrote to Ellen, “I am going to shut my eyes for a cold plunge—when I come up again I [will] tell you all what its like.” “You all” included their mutual friends the Brontës, whom Mary reported “well; not only in health but in mind & hope. They are content with their present position & even gay & I think they do quite right not to return to England though one of them at least could earn more at the beautiful town of Bradford than she is now doing”—that is, they’d be better off as mill-hands. “[I]f you can’t see or rather feel why they are right,” she continued, in a mild reprimand to the only one of their circle who had yet to show a dash of independence, “I could not make you understand them. It is a matter of taste & feeling, & I think you feel pent up enough where you are to see why they are right in staying outside the cage—though it is somewhat cold.”
Charlotte appreciated the goodwill behind Madame Heger’s proposal, and was glad to accept—not least because they would be saving money (there was no extra charge for staying through the vacation) and generally furthering the school plan. Emily’s feelings were very different: her views of what it meant to run a school must have been changing rapidly and “the cage” is hardly how she thought of home—that description better fitted everywhere else, in her eyes. Only disgust at her own feebleness, as at Roe Head, kept her from giving up and begging to accompany the Taylors back to Yorkshire. Charlotte bore witness later to the struggle Emily went through in her ten months abroad: “the same suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her upright, heretic and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system,” she wrote with heartfelt sympathy. “Once more she seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere force of resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on her former failure, and resolved to conquer in this second ordeal.”
The summer heat was intense, and the Brontë sisters had the schoolrooms, and the beautiful garden, almost to themselves. They also had each other’s company and the resources of the great city around them. They walked along the boulevards that followed the course of the old city walls, around the winding streets of the Basse-Ville and the tree-lined streets of the new faubourgs. They climbed the steep steps up to the Parc, and wandered along its pathways, between the bandstands and theatres, watching the Bruxellois promenading on foot or in carriages. They took excursions into the countryside to make sketches and spent much time and effort copying from printed sources, as before. A drawing by Charlotte known as Watermill dates from this time, almost certainly copied from an engraving and finished to an extremely high level: the tower, the mill, the water, every leaf on every tree and shrub have been rendered with stifling care. It is the opposite of lively, and represents days of effort.
During the holiday, the Brontës tutored the Wheelwright girls, whose parents had gone on a trip on the Rhine. Emily was meant to be teaching the three youngest ones piano, but she always arranged the lessons to suit her own convenience, and antagonised them as a result. It must have been clear to Charlotte, when considering her own plans to start a school, that Emily was not likely to make a very promising member of staff.
There was bad news from Haworth: Branwell had yet again been dismissed from a job. Leaving the work of running the station at Luddenden Foot to the porter, Branwell had been spending more and more time in the local inn, and when the station’s accounts were investigated, and a significant shortfall detected (of £11.1s.6d.), he was naturally held responsible. Francis Grundy imagined the porter, not Branwell, had been the thief, but the outcome was the same.
Though it looked strange that the only son was back at home, unemployed, while his three sisters were all out in the world, struggling to pay their way, Branwell was still sustained by his dream of becoming known as a writer, and his success of the previous year was at last opening doors for him. Between leaving Luddenden Foot (where he had clearly been able to fit in quite a bit of scribbling between trains) and having to take up another post in January 1843, he published no fewer than nine poems, and articles too, all under his pseudonym “Northangerland.” And he was as assiduously as ever soliciting the attention of established writers—James Martineau and the current editor of Blackwood’s—in the hope of getting published further afield.
Being at home alone with his disappointed elders made Branwell restless and uncomfortable, though: “nothing to listen to except the wind moaning among old chimneys” (it was May) and “nothing to look at except heathery hills walked over when life had all to hope for and nothing to regret with me.” His sisters’ letters from Brussels and his father’s recent journey abroad stung him with a craving to travel, perhaps get a job with a railway company on the Continent, where the system was just getting under way. He must have known his chances of employment in the same area at home were over, though he kept asking Grundy to look out for juicy vacancies.
Branwell had got to know William Weightman much better on his return to Haworth in the spring and found in the scholarly and charming curate a much more suitable companion than the town had offered him before, though one who stood so high in his father’s opinion that it must have been hard for Branwell not to feel discomforted by comparisons. Weightman was never found loung
ing in the snug of the Black Bull or lying late in bed. Weightman hadn’t been sent home time and again in defeat; he had used his talents and applied himself to work with ardour. God’s work too. Branwell was hardly ever seen in church.
But Weightman’s dedication to his duties had a tragic outcome in the autumn of 1842, when he contracted cholera while visiting the sick. It was then an incurable disease, and his death on 6 September, aged only twenty-eight, profoundly shocked the whole parish. Branwell, who had attended the curate’s dying bed in distress for two weeks, felt he had lost “one of my dearest friends”; Patrick Brontë mourned him as deeply, saying in a heartfelt funeral address, to a full congregation and to the accompaniment of Branwell’s audible sobs, that he had considered Weightman as a son. But at least, for Patrick, there was real comfort in Weightman’s exemplary deathbed, where the young man had “expressed his entire dependence on the merits of the Saviour” and closed his eyes “on this bustling, vain, selfish world…in tranquillity.”
Anne was away from home at her job with the Robinsons at Thorp Green Hall when Weightman died, and did not come home for the funeral, but the likelihood that she had been secretly in love with Weightman is strengthened by a poem she wrote that winter, “I will not mourn thee, lovely one,” which expressed much more than a general loss:
I’ll weep no more thine early doom
But O I still must mourn—
The pleasures buried in thy tomb
For they will not return!
In Brussels, the two elder sisters were about to face another shocking and rapid death from cholera, that of Martha Taylor, the youngest of their little circle of expatriate Yorkshire friends. Martha was taken ill at the end of September, and, despite Mary’s desperate efforts, “watching—nursing—cherishing her—so tenderly, so unweariedly,” she died on 12 October, aged twenty-three. Charlotte only heard that Martha was ill the day before, as she told Ellen: “I hastened to Kokleberg [sic] the next morning—unconscious that she was in great danger—and was told that it was finished, she had died in the night.” After so many alarms and vigils over her own and her family’s feeble health over the years, Martha’s swift removal by cholera, so prevalent in cities and areas of high population where water supplies could become quickly infected, was doubly shocking. Lively, flirtatious Miss Boisterous, who had always prompted “adventures” and jollity at Roe Head and Gomersal, had to be buried far from home, in the Protestant Cemetery of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, two miles north-east of Brussels’s city walls.
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