Brontës

by Juliet Barker

  My Lord, I believe that I have talent. Do not be indignant at my presumption, do not accuse me of arrogance, I do not know that feeble feeling, the child of vanity; but I know well another feeling, Respect for myself, a feeling born of independence and integrity. My Lord I believe that I have Genius.

  This declaration shocks you; you find it arrogant, I find it perfectly simple. Is it not universally recognised that without genius no artist can succeed? Would it not then be sheer stupidity to devote oneself to the arts without being sure that one has this indispensible quality?18

  In describing the poor artist’s early difficulties, however, Charlotte spoke with the voice of bitter personal experience.

  Throughout all my early youth the difference which existed between me and most of the people who surrounded me, was an embarrassing enigma to me which I did not know how to resolve; I thought myself inferior to everyone and it distressed me. I thought it was my duty to follow the example set by the majority of my acquaintances, an example sanctioned by the approbation of prudent and legitimate mediocrity, and yet I felt myself incapable of feeling and behaving as that majority felt and behaved … There was always excess in what I did; I was either too excited or too despondent; without wanting to I allowed everything that passed through my heart to be seen and sometimes there were storms passing through it; in vain I tried to imitate the sweet gaiety, the serene and equable spirits which I saw in the faces of my companions and which I found so worthy of admiration; all my efforts were useless; I could not restrain the ebb and flow of blood in my arteries and that ebb and flow always showed itself in my face and in my hard and unattractive features. I wept in secret.19

  This, as Monsieur Heger could not fail to recognize, was a cri de coeur from his pupil; it was not the poor painter speaking but the Charlotte Brontë who had told Ellen Nussey, ‘I am not like you’, and who had longed to be more like her conventional friend. Once again, but this time explicitly, she utterly rejected the idea that she was ‘mediocre’ and demanded recognition of the genius which made her stand out from the crowd. The difference now was that she accepted the need to hone her talents. Her poor painter spent four years in Italy learning the technicalities of his art. Echoing the words Monsieur Heger had written at the bottom of her essay on ‘La Chute des Feuilles’, she wrote:

  I suffered much in Florence, Venice and Rome and there I gained what I wanted to possess; an intimate knowledge of all the technical mysteries of Painting, a taste cultivated according to the rules of art. As for natural genius, neither Titian, nor Raphael nor Michaelangelo would have known how to give me that which comes from God alone; the little I have, I have got from my Creator …20

  Only a month before she wrote this essay, Monsieur Heger had presented Charlotte with a copy of his speech at the annual prizegiving at the Athénée Royal.21 In it, he had stoutly defended the importance of encouraging pupils to strive to emulate the best in everything they did; emulation was the key to self-improvement. The speech had obviously struck a chord in Charlotte’s nature as she drew on it in her essay; having left his country and gone abroad, the poor painter declared:

  I lacked neither courage nor fortitude, I set to work immediately; sometimes, it is true, despair overwhelmed me for an instant, for when I saw the works of the great masters of my art, I felt myself truly despicable; but the fever of emulation came to drive away that momentary demoralisation and from that profound consciousness of inferiority, I drew new strength for work – it aroused in me a fixed resolution – ‘I wish to do all, to suffer all, in order to win all’22

  Through the medium of her poor painter addressing his patron, Charlotte, the writer, could speak out far more boldly to her tutor than she could in the flesh. Essays like this one were the key elements in Charlotte’s relationship with Monsieur Heger, as her later novels make abundantly clear. Three out of Charlotte’s four novels contain an essay written by a pupil for her teacher, Jane Eyre being the only exception. In each case the essay serves as the midwife of love, the means by which the hero is brought to a recognition of the intellectual powers and emotional depth hidden beneath the otherwise unexceptional exterior of an apparently conventional young woman. William Crimsworth, in The Professor, for instance, receives a devoir from his Anglo-Swiss pupil, Frances Henri, on the subject of King Alfred.

  ‘Now,’ thought I, ‘I shall see a glimpse of what she really is; I shall get an idea of the nature and extent of her powers; not that she can be expected to express herself well in a foreign tongue, but still, if she has any mind, here will be a reflection of it.’ … There were errors of orthography, there were foreign idioms, there were some faults of construction, there were verbs irregular transformed into verbs regular; it was mostly made up, as the above example shews, of short and somewhat rude sentences, and the style stood in great need of polish and sustained dignity; yet such as it was, I had hitherto seen nothing like it in the course of my professoral experience.23

  Lucy Snowe in Villette also produces essays for her teacher, Monsieur Paul Emanuel, which he rates highly enough to compel her to reproduce them before two examiners to prove her exceptional ability. In Shirley, Louis Moore is so struck that he is able to recite from memory the whole of Shirley’s devoir on ‘The First Blue-Stocking’ years after she has written it.24 Significantly, in each case, greater prominence is given to the teacher’s reaction to the essay than to the pupil’s production of it. Clearly Charlotte, consciously or subconsciously, had hoped to win more than simple intellectual admiration from Monsieur Heger.

  The vexed question of Charlotte’s relationship with Monsieur Heger has haunted Brontë scholars since the revelation, at the beginning of this century, of the letters she wrote to him after her return to England. Their passionate and frank admissions of attachment might suggest that there was even an adulterous affair, particularly as Monsieur Heger’s side of the correspondence is missing. One of his surviving letters, written to another former pupil several decades later, suggests otherwise. Though this relationship was beyond all doubt entirely proper, the letter breathes an intimacy and sensuality which a susceptible woman would find deeply erotic. ‘I only have to think of you to see you’, he told the lady in question.

  I often give myself the pleasure when my duties are over, when the light fades. I postpone lighting the gas lamp in my library, I sit down, smoking my cigar, and with a hearty will I evoke your image – and you come (without wishing to, I dare say) but I see you, I talk with you – you, with that little air, affectionate undoubtedly, but independent and resolute, firmly determined not to allow any opinion without being previously convinced, demanding to be convinced before allowing yourself to submit – in fact, just as I knew you, my dear L –, and as I have esteemed and loved you25

  This could be Mr Rochester talking to Jane Eyre. It was hardly surprising that Charlotte was seduced – mentally and morally, if not physically. ‘He made much of her, & drew her out, & petted her, & won her love’, a friend of the Hegers wrote in 1870, long before Charlotte’s passion had become public knowledge.

  There was no such fore-gone intention on his part, – that was his practise with all his wife’s most intellectual pupils, & let me hasten to add, there was no illicit affection on his part either. – He was a worshipper of intellect & he worshipped Charlotte Brontë thus far & no further.26

  Lonely, vulnerable and acutely aware that the mental powers which estranged her from most people made her special in Monsieur Heger’s eyes, Charlotte was easily won. During the course of 1843 she gradually slipped from normal feelings of respect and esteem for her teacher into an unhealthy and obsessive dependency on Monsieur Heger’s every expression of approval.

  After her return to Brussels at the beginning of the year, Charlotte had begun to give English lessons to him and Monsieur Chapelle, his brother-in-law: ‘if you could see and hear the efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like Englishmen and their unavailing attempts to imitate,’ she told Ellen Nussey in March, ‘you would
laugh to all eternity.’ Monsieur Heger had taken her and another pupil, presumably also a foreigner, out into Brussels to see the Carnival celebrations before Lent: though she dismissed the experience as ‘nothing but masking and mum[m]ery’, it was later to provide valuable material for Villette.27

  The optimism with which Charlotte had returned to Brussels gradually wore away. ‘We have entered upon the gloom and abstinence of Lent’, she told Ellen, ‘– the first day of Lent we had coffee without milk for breakfast – vinegar & vegetables with a very little salt-fish for dinner and bread for supper –’.28 The hardship of the diet was increased by a prolonged season of harsh weather. February had already been bitterly cold and this continued throughout most of March. Though Charlotte had hoped that Ellen might be able to join her in Brussels, she was now glad that her friend was safe at home in England.

  If I had seen you shivering as I shivered myself – if I had seen your hands and feet as red and swelled as mine were – my discomfort would just have been doubled – I can do very well under this sort of thing – it does not fret me – it only makes me numb and silent – but if you were to pass a winter in Belgium you would be ill –29

  Even though better weather was on the way and the Lenten diet was coming to an end, Charlotte still did not press her friend to join her in Brussels: ‘there are privations & humiliations to submit to – there is monotony and uniformity of life – and above all there is a constant sense of solitude in the midst of numbers’.30 Though Charlotte still found her employment at the Pensionnat Heger infinitely preferable to her earlier posts as a teacher at Roe Head and as a private governess, she was already complaining of the monotony and sense of exclusion which had brought her to breaking point in her previous careers. Indeed, the whole progress of her career in Brussels had begun to follow a now familiar pattern. By the beginning of May she was telling Branwell of her increasing distaste for her pupils.

  the people here are no go whatsoever – amongst 120 persons, which compose the daily/ population of this house I can discern only 1 or 2 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 – They have no sensations themselves and they excite none – but one wearies from day to day of caring nothing, fearing nothing, liking nothing hating nothing – being nothing, doing nothing – yes, I teach & sometimes get red-in-the face with impatience at their stupidity – but don’t think I ever scold or fly into a passion – if I spoke warmly, as warmly as I sometimes used to do at Roe-Head they would think me mad – nobody ever gets into a passion here – such a thing is not known – the phlegm that thickens their blood is too gluey to boil.31

  Monsieur Heger was the only exception to this rule, though Charlotte had little contact with him now that her formal lessons had ceased. ‘I am still indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement I have’, she declared. He loaded her with books and, even as Charlotte was writing to Branwell, called in to present her with a little German Testament, no doubt in an attempt to encourage her studies of that language. Charlotte ended her letter with a confession which she could probably have made to no one but Branwell.

  It is a curious metaphysical fact that always in the evening when I am in the great Dormitory alone – having no other company than a number of beds with white curtains I always recur as fanatically as ever to the old ideas the old faces & the old scenes in the world below32

  A resumption of Angrian imaginings was probably the last thing Charlotte needed at this juncture. It was a sign not only that the novelty of her continental education had well and truly worn off but also that she was no longer finding intellectual fulfilment in it.

  Charlotte’s disillusionment was also reflected in a significant shift in her attitude towards Madame Heger, repeating the familiar pattern of her relationships with previous employers. From being grateful and appreciative of her kindness, Charlotte had now begun actively to dislike her – but, typically, blamed it on Madame Heger’s attitude towards herself. ‘I am convinced that she does not like me’, Charlotte wrote to Emily at the end of May, ‘– why, I can’t tell, nor do I think she herself has any definite reason for the aversion.’33 As Charlotte herself pointed out, though, Madame Heger could not understand why her new teacher refused to socialize with her fellow teachers. The obvious contempt with which Charlotte regarded them and her pupils cannot have helped to make relations easy in a boarding school of such small proportions. This must have been a matter of concern to Madame Heger, particularly as Charlotte was not even on speaking terms with Mademoiselle Blanche, one of the three schoolmistresses.34 Nor can it have escaped Madame Heger’s notice that her husband was the one person excepted from Charlotte’s general condemnatory attitude. As she was the directrice of the school, it was too easy for Charlotte to lay the blame for all her own problems at Madame Heger’s door. Just as she had done at the Sidgwicks’ and the Whites’, Charlotte directed all her venom at the mistress and found every excuse for the master.

  M. Heger is wondrously influenced by Madame, and I should not wonder if he disapproves very much of my unamiable want of sociability. He has already given me a brief lecture on universal bienveillance, and, perceiving that I don’t improve in consequence, I fancy he has taken to considering me as a person to be let alone – left to the error of her ways; and consequently he has in a great measure withdrawn the light of his countenance, and I get on from day to day in a Robinson-Crusoe-like condition – very lonely.35

  A few weeks later, she poured out her misery to Ellen.

  To-day the weather is gloomy and I am stupefied with a bad cold and a headache I have nothing to tell you my dear Ellen one day is like another in this place – I know you, living in the country can hardly believe that it is possible life can be monotonous in the centre of a brilliant capital like Brussels – but so it is – I feel it most on the holidays – when all the girls and teachers go out to visit – and it sometimes happens that I am left during several hours quite alone – with 4 great desolate schoolrooms at my disposition – I try to read, I try to write but in vain I then wander about from room to room – but the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs down one’s spirits like lead – you will hardly believe it when I tell you that Mde Heger (good & kind as I have described her) never comes near me on these occasions – she is a reasonable and calm woman but Nelly as to warmheartedness She has as much of that article as Mrs Allbutt – I own I was astonished the first time I was left alone thus – when everybody else was enjoying the pleasures of a féte-day with their friends – and she knew I was quite by myself and never took the least notice of me – Yet I understand she praises me very much to everybody and says what excellent lessons I give &c. – She is not colder to me than she is to the other teachers – but they are less dependant on her than I am – they have relations & acquaintances in Bruxelles.

  You remember the letter she wrote me when I was in England how kind and affectionate it was – is it not odd –? I fancy I begin to perceive the reason of this mighty distance & reserve it sometimes makes me laugh & at other times nearly cry –. When I am sure of it/ I will tell it you.36

  If Charlotte thought Madame Heger was estranged from her because she had uncovered her guilty secret, then one can only sympathize with Madame Heger. However, it seems more likely that Charlotte’s uneasy conscience simply misinterpreted what she herself described as Madame Heger’s habitual reserve with all the teachers. Significantly, too, Monsieur Heger’s implied neglect met with no complaints from his besotted pupil.

  Charlotte’s loneliness – which one cannot help feeling was largely self-imposed – was compounded by the removal of the Dixon and the Jenkins families from Brussels. Mary Dixon, Mary Taylor’s cousin and Charlotte’s closest friend in the family, had already left for Germany earlier in the year. By the m
iddle of August, Abraham Dixon had given up his house in the Rue de la Régence and removed, with the rest of the family, to cheaper accommodation in Ostend. Mr Jenkins, the Episcopal clergyman in Brussels who had been so kind to the Brontës on their first arrival, was away for the best part of the summer. Shortly after his return from a visit to England he fell seriously ill of a brain fever; though he recovered, he seems to have spent the rest of the summer convalescing in Ostend and then England.37 Only the five Wheelwright girls remained out of all Charlotte’s English friends in Brussels, but even they went away on holiday in the latter part of August. For the two other English girls now at the Pensionnat Heger, Charlotte had little time or sympathy: Susanna Mills made no impression upon her at all and Maria Miller she considered selfish, worldly and sly.38

  It was therefore no wonder that Charlotte dreaded the prospect of the long vacation. Writing to Ellen on 6 August, she told her:

  I forewarn you that I am in low spirits and that Earth and Heaven seem dreary and empty to me at this moment – In a few days our vacations will begin – everybody is joyous and animated at the prospect because everybody is to go home – I know that I am to stay here during the 5 weeks that the holidays last and that I shall be much alone and consequently get downcast and find both days & nights of a weary length – It is the first time in my life that I have really dreaded the vacation … Alas I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart – and I do so wish to go home – is not this childish? Pardon me Nell, I cannot help it39

  Being on her own at Roe Head for a few weeks over Easter in 1838 had reduced Charlotte to mental and physical breakdown. Three weeks into this vacation, therefore, Charlotte could write with some relief to Emily that ‘more than half the holidays are now past, and rather better than I expected’. She had, she said, spent much of the time wandering rather aimlessly through the streets of Brussels but one incident showed just how low her morale had sunk. She related her little adventure to Emily with a casualness deliberately designed to play down its startling unorthodoxy. After a walk to visit Martha Taylor’s grave in the Protestant cemetery outside Brussels, she had returned to the city and almost accidentally found herself in the great Cathedral of Ste Gudule where vespers was taking place. She sat through the service but then could not find the will to leave.