TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Upperwood House, June 10th, 1841.
‘Dear Nell, — If I don’t scrawl you a line of some sort I know you will begin to fancy that I neglect you, in spite of all I said last time we met. You can hardly fancy it possible, I dare say, that I cannot find a quarter of an hour to scribble a note in; but when a note is written it is to be carried a mile to the post, and consumes nearly an hour, which is a large portion of the day. Mr. and Mrs. White have been gone a week. I heard from them this morning; they are now at Hexham. No time is fixed for their return, but I hope it will not be delayed long, or I shall miss the chance of seeing Anne this vacation. She came home, I understand, last Wednesday, and is only to be allowed three weeks’ holidays, because the family she is with are going to Scarborough. I should like to see her to judge for myself of the state of her health. I cannot trust any other person’s report, no one seems minute enough in their observations. I should also very much have liked you to see her.
‘I have got on very well with the servants and children so far, yet it is dreary, solitary work. You can tell as well as me the lonely feeling of being without a companion. I offered the Irish concern to Mary Taylor, but she is so circumstanced that she cannot accept it. Her brothers have a feeling of pride that revolts at the thought of their sister “going out.” I hardly knew that it was such a degradation till lately.
‘Your visit did me much good. I wish Mary Taylor would come, and yet I hardly know how to find time to be with her. Good-bye. God bless you.
‘C. Brontë.
‘I am very well, and I continue to get to bed before twelve o’clock p.m. I don’t tell people that I am dissatisfied with my situation. I can drive on; there is no use in complaining. I have lost my chance of going to Ireland.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, July 1st, 1841.
‘Dear Nell, — I was not at home when I got your letter, but I am at home now, and it feels like paradise. I came last night. When I asked for a vacation, Mrs. White offered me a week or ten days, but I demanded three weeks, and stood to my tackle with a tenacity worthy of yourself, lassie. I gained the point, but I don’t like such victories. I have gained another point. You are unanimously requested to come here next Tuesday and stay as long as you can. Aunt is in high good-humour. I need not write a long letter. — Good-bye, dear Nell.
‘C. B.
‘P.S. — I have lost the chance of seeing Anne. She is gone back to “The land of Egypt and the house of bondage.” Also, little black Tom is dead. Every cup, however sweet, has its drop of bitterness in it. Probably you will be at a loss to ascertain the identity of black Tom, but don’t fret about it, I’ll tell you when you come. Keeper is as well, big, and grim as ever. I’m too happy to write. Come, come, lassie.’
It must have been during this holiday that the resolution concerning a school of their own assumed definite shape. Miss Wooler talked of giving up Dewsbury Moor — should Charlotte and Emily take it? Charlotte’s recollections of her illness there settled the question in the negative, and Brussels was coming to the front.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Upperwood House, October 17th, 1841.
‘Dear Nell, — It is a cruel thing of you to be always upbraiding me when I am a trifle remiss or so in writing a letter. I see I can’t make you comprehend that I have not quite as much time on my hands as Miss Harris or Mrs. Mills. I never neglect you on purpose. I could not do it, you little teazing, faithless wretch.
‘The humour I am in is worse than words can describe. I have had a hideous dinner of some abominable spiced-up indescribable mess and it has exasperated me against the world at large. So you are coming home, are you? Then don’t expect me to write a long letter. I am not going to Dewsbury Moor, as far as I can see at present. It was a decent friendly proposal on Miss Wooler’s part, and cancels all or most of her little foibles, in my estimation; but Dewsbury Moor is a poisoned place to me; besides, I burn to go somewhere else. I think, Nell, I see a chance of getting to Brussels. Mary Taylor advises me to this step. My own mind and feelings urge me. I can’t write a word more.
‘C. B.’
TO MISS EMILY J. BRONTË
‘Upperwood House, Rawdon,
‘Nov. 7th, 1841.
‘Dear E. J., — You are not to suppose that this note is written with a view of communicating any information on the subject we both have considerably at heart: I have written letters but I have received no letters in reply yet. Belgium is a long way off, and people are everywhere hard to spur up to the proper speed. Mary Taylor says we can scarcely expect to get off before January. I have wished and intended to write to both Anne and Branwell, but really I have not had time.
‘Mr. Jenkins I find was mistakenly termed the British Consul at Brussels; he is in fact the English Episcopal clergyman.
‘I think perhaps we shall find that the best plan will be for papa to write a letter to him by and bye, but not yet. I will give an intimation when this should be done, and also some idea of what had best be said. Grieve not over Dewsbury Moor. You were cut out there to all intents and purposes, so in fact was Anne, Miss Wooler would hear of neither for the first half year.
‘Anne seems omitted in the present plan, but if all goes right I trust she will derive her full share of benefit from it in the end. I exhort all to hope. I believe in my heart this is acting for the best, my only fear is lest others should doubt and be dismayed. Before our half year in Brussels is completed, you and I will have to seek employment abroad. It is not my intention to retrace my steps home till twelve months, if all continues well and we and those at home retain good health.
‘I shall probably take my leave of Upperwood about the 15th or 17th of December. When does Anne talk of returning? How is she? What does W. W. say to these matters? How are papa and aunt, do they flag? How will Anne get on with Martha? Has W. W. been seen or heard of lately? Love to all. Write quickly. — Good-bye.
‘C. Brontë.
‘I am well.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Rawdon, December 10th, 1841.
‘My dear Ellen, — I hear from Mary Taylor that you are come home, and also that you have been ill. If you are able to write comfortably, let me know the feelings that preceded your illness, and also its effects. I wish to see you. Mary Taylor reports that your looks are much as usual. I expect to get back to Haworth in the course of a fortnight or three weeks. I hope I shall then see you. I would rather you came to Haworth than I went to Brookroyd. My plans advance slowly and I am not yet certain where I shall go, or what I shall do when I leave Upperwood House. Brussels is still my promised land, but there is still the wilderness of time and space to cross before I reach it. I am not likely, I think, to go to the Château de Kockleberg. I have heard of a less expensive establishment. So far I had written when I received your letter. I was glad to get it. Why don’t you mention your illness. I had intended to have got this note off two or three days past, but I am more straitened for time than ever just now. We have gone to bed at twelve or one o’clock during the last three nights. I must get this scrawl off to-day or you will think me negligent. The new governess, that is to be, has been to see my plans, etc. My dear Ellen, Good-bye. — Believe me, in heart and soul, your sincere friend,
‘C. B.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘December 17th, 1841.
‘My dear Ellen, — I am yet uncertain when I shall leave Upperwood, but of one thing I am very certain, when I do leave I must go straight home. It is absolutely necessary that some definite arrangement should be commenced for our future plans before I go visiting anywhere. That I wish to see you I know, that I intend and hope to see you before long I also know, that you will at the first impulse accuse me of neglect, I fear, that upon consideration you will acquit me, I devoutly trust. Dear Ellen, come to Haworth if you can, if you cannot I will endeavour to come for a day at least to Brookroyd, but do not depend on this — come to Haworth. I thank yo
u for Mr. Jenkins’ address. You always think of other people’s convenience, however ill and affected you are yourself. How very much I wish to see you, you do not know; but if I were to go to Brookroyd now, it would deeply disappoint those at home. I have some hopes of seeing Branwell at Xmas, and when I shall be able to see him afterwards I cannot tell. He has never been at home for the last five months. — Good-night, dear Ellen,
‘C. B.’
TO MISS MERCY NUSSEY
‘Rawdon, December 17th.
‘My dear Miss Mercy, — Though I am very much engaged I must find time to thank you for the kind and polite contents of your note. I should act in the manner most consonant with my own feelings if I at once, and without qualification, accepted your invitation. I do not however consider it advisable to indulge myself so far at present. When I leave Upperwood I must go straight home. Whether I shall afterwards have time to pay a short visit to Brookroyd I do not yet know — circumstances must determine that. I would fain see Ellen at Haworth instead; our visitations are not shared with any show of justice. It shocked me very much to hear of her illness — may it be the first and last time she ever experiences such an attack! Ellen, I fear, has thought I neglected her, in not writing sufficiently long or frequent letters. It is a painful idea to me that she has had this feeling — it could not be more groundless. I know her value, and I would not lose her affection for any probable compensation I can imagine. Remember me to your mother. I trust she will soon regain her health. — Believe me, my dear Miss Mercy, yours sincerely,
‘C. Brontë.’
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘Haworth, January 10th, 1842.
‘My dear Ellen, — Will you write as soon as you get this and fix your own day for coming to Haworth? I got home on Christmas Eve. The parting scene between me and my late employers was such as to efface the memory of much that annoyed me while I was there, but indeed, during the whole of the last six months they only made too much of me. Anne has rendered herself so valuable in her difficult situation that they have entreated her to return to them, if it be but for a short time. I almost think she will go back, if we can get a good servant who will do all our work. We want one about forty or fifty years old, good-tempered, clean, and honest. You shall hear all about Brussels, etc., when you come. Mr. Weightman is still here, just the same as ever. I have a curiosity to see a meeting between you and him. He will be again desperately in love, I am convinced. Come.
‘C. B.’
CHAPTER IV: THE PENSIONNAT HÉGER, BRUSSELS
Had not the impulse come to Charlotte Brontë to add somewhat to her scholastic accomplishments by a sojourn in Brussels, our literature would have lost that powerful novel Villette, and the singularly charming Professor. The impulse came from the persuasion that without ‘languages’ the school project was an entirely hopeless one. Mary and Martha Taylor were at Brussels, staying with friends, and thence they had sent kindly presents to Charlotte, at this time raging under the yoke of governess at Upperwood House. Charlotte wrote the diplomatic letter to her aunt which ended so satisfactorily. The good lady — Miss Branwell was then about sixty years of age — behaved handsomely by her nieces, and it was agreed that Charlotte and Emily were to go to the Continent, Anne retaining her post of governess with Mrs. Robinson at Thorp Green. But Brussels schools did not seem at the first blush to be very satisfactory. Something better promised at Lille.
Here is a letter written at this period of hesitation and doubt. A portion of it only was printed by Mrs. Gaskell.
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
‘January 20th, 1842.
‘Dear Ellen, — I cannot quite enter into your friends’ reasons for not permitting you to come to Haworth; but as it is at present, and in all human probability will be for an indefinite time to come, impossible for me to get to Brookroyd, the balance of accounts is not so unequal as it might otherwise be. We expect to leave England in less than three weeks, but we are not yet certain of the day, as it will depend upon the convenience of a French lady now in London, Madame Marzials, under whose escort we are to sail. Our place of destination is changed. Papa received an unfavourable account from Mr. or rather Mrs. Jenkins of the French schools in Brussels, and on further inquiry, an Institution in Lille, in the North of France, was recommended by Baptist Noel and other clergymen, and to that place it is decided that we are to go. The terms are fifty pounds for each pupil for board and French alone.
‘I considered it kind in aunt to consent to an extra sum for a separate room. We shall find it a great privilege in many ways. I regret the change from Brussels to Lille on many accounts, chiefly that I shall not see Martha Taylor. Mary has been indefatigably kind in providing me with information. She has grudged no labour, and scarcely any expense, to that end. Mary’s price is above rubies. I have, in fact, two friends — you and her — staunch and true, in whose faith and sincerity I have as strong a belief as I have in the Bible. I have bothered you both, you especially; but you always get the tongs and heap coals of fire upon my head. I have had letters to write lately to Brussels, to Lille, and to London. I have lots of chemises, night-gowns, pocket-handkerchiefs, and pockets to make, besides clothes to repair. I have been, every week since I came home, expecting to see Branwell, and he has never been able to get over yet. We fully expect him, however, next Saturday. Under these circumstances how can I go visiting? You tantalise me to death with talking of conversations by the fireside. Depend upon it, we are not to have any such for many a long month to come. I get an interesting impression of old age upon my face, and when you see me next I shall certainly wear caps and spectacles. — Yours affectionately,
‘C. B.’
This Mr. Jenkins was chaplain to the British Embassy at Brussels, and not Consul, as Charlotte at first supposed. The brother of his wife was a clergyman living in the neighbourhood of Haworth. Mr. Jenkins, whose English Episcopal chapel Charlotte attended during her stay in Brussels, finally recommended the Pensionnat Héger in the Rue d’Isabelle. Madame Héger wrote, accepting the two girls as pupils, and to Brussels their father escorted them in February 1842, staying one night at the house of Mr. Jenkins and then returning to Haworth.
The life of Charlotte Brontë at Brussels has been mirrored for us with absolute accuracy in Villette and The Professor. That, indeed, from the point of view of local colour, is made sufficiently plain to the casual visitor of to-day who calls in the Rue d’Isabelle. The house, it is true, is dismantled with a view to its incorporation into some city buildings in the background, but one may still eat pears from the ‘old and huge fruit-trees’ which flourished when Charlotte and Emily walked under them half a century ago; one may still wander through the school-rooms, the long dormitories, and into the ‘vine-draped berceau’ — little enough is changed within and without. Here is the dormitory with its twenty beds, the two end ones being occupied by Emily and Charlotte, they alone securing the privilege of age or English eccentricity to curtain off their beds from the gaze of the eighteen girls who shared the room with them. The crucifix, indeed, has been removed from the niche in the Oratoire where the children offered up prayer every morning; but with a copy of Villette in hand it is possible to restore every feature of the place, not excluding the adjoining Athenée with its small window overlooking the garden of the Pensionnat and the allée défendu. It was from this window that Mr. Crimsworth of The Professor looked down upon the girls at play. It was here, indeed, at the Royal Athenée, that M. Héger was Professor of Latin. Externally, then, the Pensionnat Héger remains practically the same as it appeared to Charlotte and Emily Brontë in February 1842, when they made their first appearance in Brussels. The Rue Fossette of Villette, the Rue d’Isabelle of The Professor, is the veritable Rue d’Isabelle of Currer Bell’s experience.
What, however, shall we say of the people who wandered through these rooms and gardens — the hundred or more children, the three or four governesses, the professor and his wife? Here there has been much speculation and not a little misrea
ding of the actual facts. Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to learn. They did learn with energy. It was their first experience of foreign travel, and it came too late in life for them to enter into it with that breadth of mind and tolerance of the customs of other lands, lacking which the Englishman abroad is always an offence. Charlotte and Emily hated the land and people. They had been brought up ultra-Protestants. Their father was an Ulster man, and his one venture into the polemics of his age was to attack the proposals for Catholic emancipation. With this inheritance of intolerance, how could Charlotte and Emily face with kindliness the Romanism which they saw around them? How heartily they disapproved of it many a picture in Villette has made plain to us.
Charlotte had been in Brussels three months when she made the friendship to which I am indebted for anything that there may be to add to this episode in her life. Miss Lætitia Wheelwright was one of five sisters, the daughters of a doctor in Lower Phillimore Place, Kensington. Dr. Wheelwright went to Brussels for his health and for his children’s education. The girls were day boarders at the Pensionnat, but they lived in the house for a full month or more at a time when their father and mother were on a trip up the Rhine. Otherwise their abode was a flat in the Hotel Clusyenaar in the Rue Royale, and there during her later stay in Brussels Charlotte frequently paid them visits. In this earlier period Charlotte and Emily were too busy with their books to think of ‘calls’ and the like frivolities, and it must be confessed also that at this stage Lætitia Wheelwright would have thought it too high a price for a visit from Charlotte to receive as a fellow-guest the apparently unamiable Emily. Miss Wheelwright, who was herself fourteen years of age when she entered the Pensionnat Héger, recalls the two sisters, thin and sallow-looking, pacing up and down the garden, friendless and alone. It was the sight of Lætitia standing up in the class-room and glancing round with a semi-contemptuous air at all these Belgian girls which attracted Charlotte Brontë to her. ‘It was so very English,’ Miss Brontë laughingly remarked at a later period to her friend. There was one other English girl at this time of sufficient age to be companionable; but with Miss Maria Miller, whom Charlotte Brontë has depicted under the guise of Ginevra Fanshawe, she had less in common. In later years Miss Miller became Mrs. Robertson, the wife of an author in one form or another.
Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Page 488