by E. F. Benson
Such a notion, considered as degrading and disfiguring to the image of Charlotte as presented by Mrs. Gaskell, brought down on these theorists vials of scorn and opprobrium. Her champions felt it to be a monstrous outrage that she should be suspected of having fallen in love with a married man. No one had suggested that there was any semblance of an actual love-affair arising out of this situation, or that Charlotte’s devotion to her professor was returned by him; but many ardent Brontëites, in no less ardent language, were unspeakably shocked by the mere suggestion that she loved him, and a furious indignation inspired their pens. They proved to their own satisfaction that not only was there no evidence to support so malevolent a notion, but that anyone who knew anything about Charlotte’s puritanical uprightness must have known also that she was incapable of such a spontaneous surrender, and they proved it by a hurricane of arguments that swept all before it. Then, nearly sixty years after her death, came the conclusive evidence that all they had proved to be false was perfectly true.
Charlotte returned then to Brussels alone during the last week of January 1843. Madame Héger, she wrote to Ellen, received her with great kindness, and both she and her husband, for whom alone she felt regard and esteem, did all they could to make her at home, telling her to use their sitting-room as if it was her own, whenever she was not engaged in the schoolroom. She gave lessons in English to M. Héger and his brother-in-law, M. Chapelle, whose wife was the sister of M. Héger’s first wife. They were both quick in learning, especially M. Héger, though the efforts they made to acquire an English pronunciation would have made Ellen ‘laugh to all eternity.’ Apparently there had been an idea that Ellen should have come out to Brussels with Charlotte, for she wrote again early in April, saying: ‘During the bitter cold weather we had through February and the principal part of March, I did not regret that you had not accompanied me.’ She was occasionally lonely, but happy, she affirmed, compared to what she had been when a governess. Then we infer that there must have been some badinage on Ellen’s part, such as the two friends indulged in over the susceptible Mr. Weightman, for Charlotte denies with considerable asperity the report that had reached Ellen that she had gone back to Brussels ‘in some remote hope of entrapping a husband.’ She lives, she assures her, in ‘total seclusion,’ never speaking to any man except M. Héger, and seldom to him. Possibly, then, the English lessons had already come to an end.
By May Charlotte had already been in Brussels for twelve months altogether, and there must have been some idea that she would then return, but in answer to an inquiry of Ellen’s, Emily wrote to tell her that ‘Charlotte has never mentioned a word about coming home.’ She adds a somewhat acid comment: ‘If you would go over for half a year, perhaps you might be able to bring her back with you, otherwise she might vegetate there till the age of Methuselah for mere lack of courage to face the voyage.’ Simultaneously Charlotte wrote to Branwell, saying: ‘I grieve that Emily is so solitary; but, however, you and Anne will soon be returning for the holidays, which will cheer the house for the time.’ Clearly, she had no intention of going home herself. Branwell, it may be noticed, who had now been four months with Anne at Thorp Green, must have been conducting himself decently, for Charlotte says: ‘I have received a general assurance that you do well and are in good odour.’
It is now that the first signs of trouble and disquietude begin to manifest themselves. Charlotte, as she herself most truly says in this same letter of May 1 to Branwell, ‘grows exceedingly misanthropic and sour.’ She launches out into bitter diatribe against the Belgian world:
Amongst 120 persons which compose the daily population of this house, I can discern only one or two who deserve anything like regard. This is not owing to foolish fastidiousness on my part, but to the absence of decent qualities on theirs. They have not intellect or politeness or good nature or good feeling. They are nothing. I don’t hate them — hatred would be too warm a feeling. But one wearies from day to day of caring nothing, fearing nothing, liking nothing, hating nothing, being nothing, doing nothing, — yes, I teach and sometimes get red in the face with impatience at their stupidity. But don’t think I ever scold or fly into a passion.... Nobody ever gets into a passion here. Such a thing is not known. The phlegm that thickens their blood is too gluey to boil. They are very false in their relations with each other, but they rarely quarrel and friendship is a folly they are unacquainted with.
If this was not hate, it was surely a very fair imitation of it; then follows a significant passage about M. Héger, lately ‘a delirious hyena,’ and his wife, who had welcomed Charlotte back with such kindness.
The black swan, M. Héger, is the only sole veritable exception to this rule (for Madame always cool and always reasoning is not quite an exception). But I rarely speak to Monsieur now, for not being a pupil I have little or nothing to do with him. From time to time he shows his kind-heartedness by loading me with books, so that I am still indebted to him for all the pleasure and amusement I have.
Her bitter censoriousness of others, though now no longer strangers, did not decrease. A month later she wrote to Emily about the three teachers, Mdlles. Blanche, Sophie, and Marie Haussé, whom previously Charlotte regarded with comparative indifference. These ladies appear to have had less gluey phlegm in their blood than the rest; there is also a fresh sidelight on Madame Héger:
Mdlle Blanche and Mdlle Haussé are at present on a system of war without quarter. They hate each other like two cats. Mdlle Blanche frightens Mdlle Haussé by her white passions (for they quarrel venomously). Mdlle Haussé complains that when Mdlle Blanche is in fury, ‘elle n’a pas de lèvres.’ I find also that Mdlle Sophie dislikes Mdlle Blanche extremely. She says she is heartless, insincere, and vindictive, which epithets, I assure you, are richly deserved. Also I find she is the regular spy of Mme Héger, to whom she reports everything. Also she invents — which I should not have thought. I have now the entire charge of the English lessons. I have given two lessons to the first class. Hortense Jannoy was a picture on these occasions, her face was black as a ‘blue-piled thunder-loft,’ and her two ears were red as raw beef. To all questions asked, her reply was ‘Je ne sais pas.’ It is a pity but her friends could meet with a person qualified to cast out a devil. I am richly off for companionship in these parts. Of late days, M. and Mme Héger rarely speak to me, and I really don’t pretend to care a fig for anybody else in the establishment. You are not to suppose by that expression that I am under the influence of warm affection for Mme Héger. I am convinced she does not like me, — why, I can’t tell, nor do I think she herself has any definite reason for the aversion; but for one thing, she cannot comprehend why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche, Sophie, and Haussé. M. Héger is wondrously influenced by Madame, and I should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of sociability ... consequently he has in a great measure withdrawn the light of his countenance.... Except for the loss of M. Héger’s good will (if I have lost it) I care for none of them.
Now this is very bitter invective about her pupils and her colleagues, and though Charlotte was at all times censorious, such violence taken in conjunction with the spyings of Madame and the coldness of Monsieur would not unnaturally lead us to suppose a more intimate agitation than any contempt of Belgian phlegm and furies would warrant. It reminds us of bubbles coming up through dark waters, and just beginning to prick the surface; we seem to hear a clamour, almost hysterical, designed half-subconsciously to overscore, even for herself, disquieting whispers within. There is some hidden agitation, some tumult in the heart of the city.
But at present she had no thought of putting an end to the situation which was already beginning to wreck her happiness and peace of mind. In June she wrote a letter to her father, hoping that he and Emily were well:
I am afraid she will have a good deal of hard work to do now that Hannah [a servant at Haworth] is gone. I am exceedingly glad that you will keep Tabby, besides she will be company for Emily, who with
out her would be very lonely.
So Emily was left to do most of the housework and console herself for her loneliness with the society of an old servant of over seventy years of age, and Anne to continue in her situation at Thorp Green, which she detested. After that there is no further letter from Charlotte till August 6, a few days before the summer vacation, when the pupils would disperse and the Hégers leave Brussels for a five weeks’ holiday. She was miserably home-sick, the prospect of being so much alone for all those weeks appalled her, and it is impossible to find any reason, now that Miss Branwell’s legacy had put her in funds, why she should not have gone back to Haworth for the holidays, except that she foresaw difficulties in returning again to Brussels when the vacation was over. ‘I will continue to stay (D.V.) some months longer,’ she wrote, ‘till I have acquired German.’
She wrote to Emily again on September 2, when the holidays were more than half over. Mlle. Blanche, who was Mme. Héger’s spy, had returned.
But [writes Charlotte] I am always alone except at meal times, for Mdlle Blanche’s character is so false and so contemptible, I can’t force myself to associate with her. She perceives my utter dislike, and never now speaks to me — a great relief.
Then follows this passage:
... So I go out and traverse the Boulevards and streets of Bruxelles sometimes for hours together. Yesterday I went on a pilgrimage to the cemetery, and far beyond it to a hill where there was nothing but fields as far as the horizon. When I came back it was evening.
Now Mrs. Gaskell clearly saw this letter for, though she does not actually quote it, she describes Charlotte’s days during the holidays as follows:
She went out and with weary steps would traverse the Boulevards and the streets sometimes for hours together.... Then up again ... anywhere but to the pensionnat — out to the cemetery where Martha lay — out beyond it to the hills, whence there is nothing to be seen but fields as far as the horizon. The shades of evening made her retrace her footsteps.
No coincidence can possibly account for the identity of phrasing. Mrs. Gaskell’s narrative shows that she wrote this description with Charlotte’s letter to Emily in front of her. But the actual letter from which with a bewraying fidelity Mrs. Gaskell paraphrased this paragraph, immediately proceeded to describe a very astonishing adventure, which she decided to omit, though it lay before her:
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 began. I stayed till they were over. Still I could not leave the church or 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.... I approached at last, and knelt down in a niche which was just vacated. I had to kneel there ten minutes waiting, for on the other side was another penitent invisible to me. At last that (one) went away, and a little wooden door inside the grating opened, and I saw the priest leaning his ear towards me. I was obliged to begin, and yet I did not know a word of the formula with which they commence their confessions.... I commenced with saying I was a foreigner, and had been brought up a Protestant. The priest asked if I was a Protestant then. I somehow could not tell a lie, and said ‘yes.’ He replied that in that case I could not ‘jouir du bonheur de la confesse,’ but I was determined to confess, and at last he said he would allow me because it might be the first step towards returning to the true church. I actually did confess — a real confession. When I had done, he told me his address, and said that every morning I was to go to the rue du Parc — to his house — and he would reason with me and try to convince me of the error and enormity of being a Protestant!!! I promised faithfully to go. Of course, however, the adventure stops there, and I hope I shall never see the priest again. I think you had better not tell papa of this.
That was certainly a wise precaution. Mr. Brontë’s adamantine Protestantism would not have looked upon his daughter’s going to a Catholic confessional as merely an ‘odd whim’; he would have called it by a much harder name. So also at heart would she herself, for she had already expressed her contempt of the Catholic religion in abundantly emphatic terms; she had advised any Protestant who felt in danger of changing his faith to attend Mass and note the ‘idiotic mercenary aspect of all the priests,’ and, so Mrs. Gaskell tells us,
one of the reasons for the silent estrangement between Mme Héger and Miss Brontë is to be found in the fact that the English Protestant’s dislike of Romanism increased with her knowledge of it, and its effects upon those who professed it: and when occasion called for an expression of opinion from Charlotte Brontë she was uncompromising truth.
Yet in spite of her contempt for it, she now availed herself of one of its Sacraments. It is true that she avowed herself a Protestant, when kneeling in the Confessional, but for the sake of the relief which confession would bring her, she insisted on making it, and ‘promised faithfully’ to go and receive instruction from the priest, which promise, she states, she had not the slightest intention of carrying out. Was this confession then, so strangely made, merely an ‘odd whim,’ as she told Emily, that ‘should yield a moment’s interest’? It is impossible to believe that. She had something on her mind which, in her lonely, nervous, hysterical state, she must confide to somebody for the human relief that the mere communication of it would bring. What could it possibly have been that lay so heavily and unhappily on her troubled soul? Something serious, or she could never have had recourse to the benefits of an institution which she so thoroughly despised. But there must be no chance that this communication should be betrayed, and it must be made under the seal of confession. Knowing what we do now, after the publication of Charlotte’s subsequent love-letters to M. Héger, we cannot doubt the nature of that confession. All points to the desire, which her essential uprightness of character abhorred, but which was terribly insistent and made the absence of M. Héger on holiday so intolerable.
Now Mrs. Gaskell having seen this letter (for she quotes from it) omits the incident, for in Villette, which minutely and accurately describes the pensionnat in the Rue d’Isabelle, which portrays under the name of Paul Emanuel the unmistakable lineaments of M. Héger, and under the name of Madame Beck those of Madame Héger, and her espionage, Lucy Snowe, though a Protestant, makes a precisely similar confession to a Roman Catholic priest, and no doubt it was better not to let it be known that that incident was a piece of authentic autobiography. It was discordant with Charlotte’s strongly expressed views about Catholicism, and it was inconsistent with the reason Mrs. Gaskell had given for the coolness between Charlotte and Madame Héger. On all counts, then, it was wise to suppress the confessional, and especially so because her readers might conceivably begin to conjecture what heart’s need drove Charlotte to make use of the benefits of a religion of which she was so contemptuous. It would have been too truly directed a pointer to regions best left unsuspected.
The Hégers returned during September, and the school reassembled again for the new term. Charlotte had determined (D.V.) to stop some months longer in order to acquire German, but the situation was beginning to break her, and early in October she wrote to Ellen:
I felt as if I could bear it no longer, and I went to Mme Héger and gave her notice. If it had depended on her, I should certainly have been soon at liberty; but M. Héger, having heard of what was in agitation, sent for me the day after, and pronounced with vehemence his decision that I should not leave. I could not, at that time, have persevered in my intention without exciting him to passion, so I promised to stay a little while longer....
How Charlotte, miserable though she was, must have adored his vehemence in forbidding her to go, and secretly, in the way of a woman’s heart, have whispered to herself the interpretation which her reason told her it could not bear! For M. Héger naturally did not want to lose his English teacher at the beginning of the term; he was thinking of the pupils learning English, not of their instructor, and there is no more evidence for supposing that he was ever in the slightest degree in love with Charlotte than that Mr. Weightman had been in love with Emily. But now at last Charlotte began to suspect that Madame Héger had some inkling of her secret, for writing to Ellen she hints at it:
I have much to say — many odd little things, queer and puzzling enough — but which one day perhaps or rather one evening — if ever we should find ourselves by the fireside at Haworth or at Brookroyd with our feet on the fender, curling our hair — I may communicate to you.
In her next letter she became more explicit as to what these were: ‘I fancy I begin to perceive the reason for this (Mme. Héger’s) mighty distance and reserve; it sometimes makes me laugh and at other times nearly cry.’
December came and once more Charlotte wrote to Emily, saying that she had no thought of coming home yet; she lacked a ‘real pretext’ for doing so. There was indeed every reason why she should go home and begin on her project of starting the school, for the sake of which, and for the further education it would give her, she had originally come to Brussels for a period of six months. Now she had been here for nearly two years, and still she could find no pretext to leave! She longed to get away, she was wretched with this misbegotten passion, but she could not endure to cut herself off from the source of it. She saw vivid and minute, in calenture, what was going on this Sunday morning in the kitchen at the Parsonage: