Another biographical passage occurs where Catherine Bell first sees the Miss Temple of "Lagrange's Manuscript," who herself, under the name of Ashton (Eshton),[59] is at times Miss Brontë, who took the name of the original of Miss Temple (Evans) for herself in the phase of Frances Evans Henri in The Professor, a work not published, we must note, till after Charlotte Brontë's death:—
"I love you, madam," I said.
"Your name, I believe, is Catherine Bell, is it not?"
"Kitty Bell, if you please, madam," I answered.
"Kitty Bell at home, my dear, but here we must call you Catherine; for a school, you know, is where many forms must be observed. How old are you?"
"I shall be ten next birthday, madam."
"And when will that be?"
"On the 23rd of April."
"Shakespeare's Day, I declare!"
The above is, of course, not in Jane Eyre. There is a stroke of sarcasm in the last sentence. It would appear that Currer Bell playfully had moved her birthday forward two days, in her private conversation with one from whom M. Sue had gleaned information—and this could be only M. Héger himself. Charlotte Brontë, as Lucy Snowe, in Villette, Chapter XLI., tells us that M. Paul Emanuel (M. Héger) said:—
"I wanted to prove to Miss Lucy that I could keep a secret. How often has she taunted me with lack of dignified reserve and needful caution! How many times has she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the secret of Polichinelle!" And this had doubtless a reference to some such indiscretions as resulted in M. Sue whilst at Brussels (and he was publishing L'Orgueil from Brussels in 1844, in the January of which year Charlotte Brontë arrived home from the Belgian capital), learning the literary secrets of Jane Eyre, and perhaps Wuthering Heights.
A further reference to Currer Bell's literary aspirations—in the spirit of Mdlle. Reuter's sneers, in The Professor, at Mdlle. Henri's literary ambition—occurs in M. Sue's feuilleton in another version of the fortune-telling incident of Jane Eyre:—
"Here," said I, to a brown, sunburnt damsel, ... "take this shilling and tell me when I shall be Empress of Morocco?"
I held out my hand.... The young girl looked at it, ... then shook her head doubtfully:—
"Your life, lady, will be a troubled one—full of hopes and fears!"
"So I suppose; most people's lives are pretty well divided in this manner."
"But not so much as yours will be.... First, you are without father or mother?... Without fortune, too?"
"True, what more?"
"You will be married and not married."
"That's impossible. What can you mean by married and not married?"
"That deserves another shilling!"
"No; I only want a shillingsworth, ... that will do for to-day."
"Mdlle. Lagrange's Manuscript" was bound in blue morocco leather, and the term "Empress of Morocco" may have a reference to a literary ambition, as has the "Shakspeare's Day, I declare!" passage.
For constructive purposes the West Indian girl, or Creole, in "Lagrange's Manuscript," is made to take the place of the Mrs. Rochester of Jane Eyre, who is therein represented as a Creole:—
I did my best [continues Catherine Bell] to make a friend of her, but to no purpose. Whatever was the reason she disliked me from the first. ["I am convinced she does not like me," wrote Charlotte to Emily of Madame Héger.] I felt intuitively she was my enemy.... Had we been thrown together when I was a child [!] I should probably have suited her ... for at that time I was a little given to flattery myself. But that was before I had learned how many better things there are than mere beauty.... Perhaps ... I preferred more solid advantages, because my vanity assured me that I had them myself, whilst my personal appearance was insignificant compared with hers. I was certainly fond of talking of what I knew, which answered very well with those who knew as much, and was rather pleasing to those who knew more. [M. Héger seems to have found pleasure in his intellectual talks with Currer Bell], but to Isabella [this, as I have said, is the name of Catherine's rival in Wuthering Heights, who was married to Heathcliffe] it was hateful. She imagined I wanted to expose her ignorance.
I have given some of the biographical facts respecting Miss Brontë embodied in Mdlle. Lagrange's story, and before closing this chapter dealing with that extraordinary manuscript I will print a further extract or so from it. The opening is as follows:—
"KITTY BELL, THE ORPHAN."
I was not above four years old when my mother died, my father having gone to his grave two years before.... Oh, it is a sad, sad thing to be an orphan!... My little head has been cut with more than one fall, and blood has flowed down my neck. But nobody cared.... It was only Kitty Bell.... There was no loving heart to take me to itself and soothe me.... I had been taken home by some relation of my mother, ... a widow [Mrs. Burke], and though she treated me with great rigour, she melted on her death-bed.
She is locked in the room wherein Mrs. Burke died, after the manner of the same incident in Jane Eyre, and the writer takes an opportunity of inserting the most distinctive feature of Jane Eyre, the light-bearing apparition, the original of which I have shown Charlotte Brontë found in Montagu's Gleanings in Craven:—
Suddenly there came a gleam of light through the key-hole, ... and now I could hear a short, heavy tread upon the stairs—it was coming up.... The gleam shot through the key-hole a third time, with treble radiance. But what had I seen?... Was it a vision? was it a ghost? It was a tall figure in white, like a winding sheet, with a hideous face and balls of gleaming fire where the eyes should be. The sight had stunned and levelled me almost like a blow on the temple.... I cannot say how long I continued in this swoon, but when I began to recover myself I was in my own bed.
She had received medical treatment, she learns as did Jane Eyre in the similar incident. The "ghost," however, had been only George Burke—the John Reed of Jane Eyre. Hence the choice of the name Burke by reason of its connection with the Hare of the Burke and Hare association, the writer by this choice showing his acquaintance with the fact that in real life the Reeds and Jane Eyre were relations. After this incident the story is for a while occupied with the petty happenings connected with this orphan who "was not yet nine years old." An aunt of the Burkes [? Aunt Branwell] comes to live with them, a "poor, quiet, elderly spinster who paid a small stipend in order to preserve her independence and keep up her dignity.... I must not attempt to describe her ... she was fully six feet high." This is palpably antithetical: Miss Branwell was not tall. And it is this aunt who provides the money for Catherine Bell to go to school. Under the guise of presenting the Lowood school in "Lagrange's Manuscript," M. Sue gives us often the Héger pensionnat. Aunt Branwell provided Charlotte Brontë the money that enabled her to go to the Hégers'.
I will give in parallel columns the arrival of Charlotte Brontë at the Clergy Daughters' Institute as it is described in "Mademoiselle Lagrange's Manuscript," and in Jane Eyre the original:—
| Jane Eyre. | "Kitty Bell, the Orphan." |
| By Currer Bell. | By the Mademoiselle Lagrange, of Eugène Sue's Miss Mary ou L'Institutrice. |
| The first days at the Institution. | The first days at the Institution. |
| ———— | ———— |
| The coach door was open
and ... a servant was standing at
it: I saw her ... by the light
of the lamps. "Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I answered "Yes," and was lifted out, my trunk was handed down. |
We got to Kendall House....
I had been sitting near my trunk
on the outside of the coach, and
my legs were numb with cold. I
was quite unable to move, so the
coachman lifted me down along
with my box. The door was
open when the coach stopped; a
servant was standing there with a
lamp. "Are you Catherine Bell
we expects down here to-day?"
she asked me. "My name is Kitty Bell, if you please," replied I. |
| The servant led me ... into a room, with a fire, where she left me alone.... I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze; ... there was no candle. | The girl returned no answer,
but having ushered me into a
spacious room with a fire in it,
she left me there by myself; ...
there was no candle. I stood
... warming my numb hands
and limbs. I heard the door
open ... and I saw a face ...
I never can forget. My heart
told me directly it was Miss Ashton
[Eshton]. Dear, noble girl!
her face was rather large, but
accurately oval—just as you see
them in the fine sacred pictures
of Murillo—those pictures of
grand female beauty. Everything in that face was great, open, frank, truthlike, ... and yet there was a grave ... melancholy overspreading that regal countenance.... It was singular to see a woman acting as the manager of a benevolent institution and living apart from the world who might have shone in any court in Europe and ... perhaps had no equal on any throne ... [!] She advanced towards me stately, but kindly, touched my cheek with her finger, and then seeing me smile, she smiled in return, and, after scanning my features a moment, she lifted me up and kissed me. |
| The door opened, and an individual entered, ... a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale and large forehead [Miss Temple. Her real name was Miss Evans], her countenance was grave, her bearing erect. | |
| She considered me attentively
for a minute or two. ... "Are you tired?" she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder. ... "A little, ma'am." |
"I love you, madam," I said.
Then she set me down ...
and, putting her hand upon my
head, she asked me:— "Your name is Catherine Bell, is it not?"... [Here follows the "Shakespeare's Day" reference I have already given.] |
| I have not ... alluded to
the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst
[Rev. Mr. Carus Wilson]; his
absence was a relief to me....
One afternoon (I had ... been
three weeks at Lowood) ... I
recognized almost instinctively
that gaunt outline, ... it was
Mr. Brocklehurst. After some lines we have the hair-cutting incident I have quoted already from "Lagrange's Manuscript." This incident comes after and not before Catherine (Jane) has been commanded to stand before the class. |
I had been at the Kendall
Institute about three weeks
without seeing Mr. King [Mr.
Brocklehurst] the master or registrar....
One morning when
I woke up I heard the bells in
the dormitories ringing louder
than ever.... I knew without being told this strange man was Mr. King. "Catherine Bell!" called out Miss Ashton. |
| ... "Fetch that stool," said
Mr. Brocklehurst.... "Place
the child upon it." And I was placed there. "Miss Temple, ... children, it becomes my duty to warn you that this girl ... is a little castaway, ... this girl is—a liar!... Let her stand ... on that stool." |
On hearing my name I left
my place in the rank, and
advanced.... "So! this is Catherine Bell, is it?" cried Mr. King. "I have heard her kind friends at home speak of Catherine Bell, and they tell me she is a naughty, vicious, headstrong child—very ungrateful to those for whose generosity she ought to have so much respect and gratitude! Is this true, Catherine Bell?" "No, sir; not a word of it." "What, child!... Are you a little liar as well as an ingrate? Stand here!" |
| What my sensations were no language can describe.... I mastered the rising hysteria ... and took a firm stand on the stool. | The passions and feelings of a child are only known to children. Grown-up people seem to have forgotten them.[60] I stood there with cheeks burning with shame, indignation, and anger.... My pride had been savagely assailed. I did not want pity. I wanted ... a refutation of the cruel charge; I was not a liar; and those who taxed me with ingratitude had no gratitude to claim from me. Great God! what emotions there were raging in my breast! and how my little heart did swell! |
Often Mdlle. Lagrange's "Kitty Bell the Orphan" is mysterious in its allusions. As when Catherine Bell says she does not like a French lady teacher. The seed-cake incident of Chapter VIII. of Jane Eyre, which is given at length in "Lagrange's Manuscript," is herewith worked in again:—
"I don't like Madame Dubois...."
"Why so? she is a very good sort of a woman."
"That may be, but she takes snuff...."
"What is that to you or me, Catherine Bell? Surely it is no business of ours?"
"Sometimes it is, though.... I gave her a slice of my seed-cake yesterday, and she returned me half of it."
"That showed a good disposition in poor Madame Dubois; did it not?"
"Yes; but when I was going to eat it myself I was seized with a fit of sneezing, which I shall not forget in a hurry, I promise you!"
"You took snuff then, Catherine Bell, for the first time in your life?"
"All in—all in—for school!" shouted the teachers and examples that moment.
The following is an extract dealing with the fever scenes of Jane Eyre:—
Fever and consumption had fixed their abode under the large roof of Kendall Institution, death was stealing along with its soft, wolf-like tread, to feed upon these poor children. The first symptoms I remember that startled me were certain cold shiverings and sudden fits of perspiration without warmth, which seized upon the younger children. Then sickness and nausea, followed immediately by vomiting. [M. Sue had been a surgeon.] ... Oh, how cruel, how bitter it was to us when we saw the first little coffin borne out of the school!... And now we began to hear, for the first time, the dismal word typhus uttered here and there in whispers through the school.... When we went to the church on Sundays, and saw the many little mounds of fresh black earth lying over our innocent playmates of yesterday, our heads sank upon our bosoms and we wept most sorrowfully.
Faithful to its model, "Lagrange's Manuscript" brings Isabella the Creole as the rival of Catherine Bell, and thus of the Creole's husband Catherine writes:—
Unwittingly, and quite unknown to myself, I became the object of his admiration—nay, of his marked preference; but I rejected indignantly the homage of an affection which he had sworn to another, and which it was his sacred duty to preserve undefiled.... In the hope of overcoming my persistency in refusing his so often proffered and as often rejected love, he urged on by every imaginable means the final decision, which in the eyes of man were to permit a second marriage, guilty in the sight of God. With the natural instinct of divination peculiar to female jealousy, his wife had guessed who was the deity at whose altar the captain was burning his incense.... Nor did she consider whether I encouraged or rebuked him. She suspected, she spied, she believed, and unscrupulously involved me in the hateful vengeance she swore to take both on her husband and myself.
For a portrait of Mdlle. Lagrange who, as the author of this version of Jane Eyre, is of course meant for Charlotte Brontë, we turn to the feuilleton itself:—
Meanwhile we have lost sight of our blue-stocking friend, Mdlle. Lagrange ['Madame herself deemed me a regular bas bleu,' says Lucy Snowe of Madame Beck (Madame Héger) in Villette] ... her character ... remains to be described. Now, to form any opinion of it by Madame de Morville's [Madame Héger's] appreciation of that girl's disposition, would be completely erroneous. Lagrange was not devoid of intellectual faculties; she possessed an imaginative mind, rather too fond of romance, and too little of practical truths; but, above all, cunning and ambition formed the main basis of her character: she had risen from nothing, and would become something. Imbued as she was with the ideas prevalent among the lower rank [Had Charlotte Brontë related her father's history to the Hégers? She had 'views' on money. M. Sue, however, never seems to have forgotten the rank of his own god-parents], she deemed it her right and duty to concentrate all the power of her faculties towards the end she sighed for—wealth and a name. Thus it was she displayed all the resources of her subtle nature to make every circumstance serve to the gratifying of her ambition. What, then, was to be her means of success? Marriage?—yes, that perpetual dream of maidens, and a dream which too often ends in an everlasting nightmare. But the task was not easy, for, it has been said, beauty had been forgotten by Dame Nature among the few gifts she had granted her.[61] What the appearance failed in, the mind should, at any cost, supply [!]. This had become her ruling desire. Thence the manuscript ['Catherine Bell, The Orphan'] we have already read had been the first ponderous lucubration of her fortune-seeking imagination: she had been praised for this first attempt by her friends, and also by one two distinguished critics.[62] This was already a point gained, and an encouragement to her literary propensities.
Thus far the Mdlle. Lagrange phase of Currer Bell according to Eugène Sue, and before the publication of The Professor, Villette, and Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. The next chapter shall deal with Eugène Sue's relation of her as "Miss Mary," the leading character of this extraordinary feuilleton, whereby it will be proved finally that in her works Charlotte Brontë has written from her own life-story.
I have said Eugène Sue, in Miss Mary ou l'Institutrice, gave two phases of Charlotte Brontë. With the one as Mdlle. Lagrange I dealt in the preceding chapter, and now I write concerning that wherein Miss Brontë is openly represented as the Irish governess at the de Morville establishment.[63] Easy it is to recognize this character is a phase of Charlotte Brontë, but as her pupil Alphonsine puts it plainly in describing her, she is "Mdlle. Lagrange, avec la beauté de plus"—Charlotte Brontë, with beauty and virtues exaggerated. The following incident I find only in the feuilleton (not the extant volume), the which circumstances support as history concerning the days of Miss Brontë's dejection at the Brussels pensionnat. It should be read in the light of the lines in Chapter XIX. of The Professor, where she, as Frances Evans Henri, tells Crimsworth, obviously M. Héger, that he remarked her devoirs dwelt a great deal on fortitude in bearing grief. In the evening Alphonsine, M. de Morville's daughter, who says many things we know must have issued from M. Héger's lips—(this is in palpable imitation of Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life. For further use of this method see also the close of Chapter XII. and elsewhere in The Professor, and my writing on Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre)—pays a visit to the chamber of the Irish governess:—
"Were you not reading?... I see a book on your work-table. May I look?... The Imitation of Christ!" exclaimed Alphonsine, after having read the title-page. "Oh! this is a beautiful book, is it not?"
"Truly beautiful!" answered Mary; "the cover is old, the pages worn out in many places. You must not wonder at it: from the age I began to read, I don't think I ever passed three nights without reading at least one chapter of this admirable work."
The Imitation of Christ in English was a book Charlotte Brontë was setting much store upon when she was but nine years of age.[64] Her copy was then an old one. Evidently she took the book with her to Brussels and read it at the pensionnat. It would seem M. Héger, whom she instructed in English, requested to hear the work in this English translation:—
"Pray what chapter were you reading?" continues Alphonsine. "I should so much like to hear you read it to me: I have occasionally read a page of The Imitation, but always in French; now, if you would be so good as to read slowly and pronounce very distinctly, I think I could understand this pious work in your language."
She read:—
"The Necessity of Humble Submission.
"Let your conscience be pure, and surely God will know how to defend you.... Learn to suffer in silence, without repining, and you will ... receive assistance from Him."
"What a truthful, becalming lesson!" observed Alphonsine; "you will read to me every evening some passage of your Imitation, will you not? English sounds so sweetly to my ear when spoken by you. We will begin to-morrow evening, n'est ce pas?"
Surely this is M. Héger and his sympathetic, depressed English teacher.
There is in the opening chapter of Miss Mary a long conversation regarding the departed governess Lagrange, and Madame de Morville (Madame Héger) avows she had been jealous of her, and that her harshness towards the governess had resulted in her abruptly leaving on a false plea of ill-health. Thus she says to M. de Morville:—
"I am speaking seriously to you of my foolish but most acute sufferings ... tandis que tu restais seul ici avec tes livres. You never suspected them;... I endeavoured to suppress them, to suffer no part of what I felt to transpire; for I must confess poor Lagrange was quite the lamb du bon Dieu, yet in spite of myself I sometimes broke out into fits of petulance and absurd irony, which wounded her. I saw it did by the sudden dejection of that excellent young person. But even this was not all."
"Louise! is it you who speaks thus? You whose kind, benevolent heart I have so often admired."
"Would you that I should avow something worse to you? What made me tolerate that poor Lagrange is that she was as ugly as the seven cardinal sins.... In fine, I cannot conceal from myself that the result of all this was that Mdlle. Lagrange gave up her situation on the plea of ill-health. ["Ah! she was not dismissed," said Mdlle. Reuter (Madame Héger) in The Professor, Chapter XVIII., when the Professor asked whether Mdlle. Frances Henri[65] (Miss Brontë) had left voluntarily. "... No need to have recourse to such extreme measures, I assure you."] Enfin, it faut bien me l'avouer, le résultat de tout ceci a été que Mademoiselle Lagrange a demandé à quitter la maison, sous prétexte de santé; véritable prétexte. For the rest I will do myself this justice, I would have suffered even to the end rather than have sent back that excellent girl."
The Hégers were surprised at Miss Brontë's sudden resolution to leave them, but she is said to have had her father's failing eyesight as a reason. "I suffered much before I left Brussels," wrote Charlotte, and this was in mind, not body.
"I have long concealed the greater part of these resentful sentiments from you," continues Madame de Morville, "notwithstanding the implicit trust reposed in you. I wish I alone had suffered by them. But no, poor Lagrange doubtless could not endure the thousand vexations and spites ('taquineries sournoises') to which she was subjected, and was thereby driven from our house."
All this should be read as in connection with the departure of Miss Mary, the other phase of Miss Brontë, towards the end of the book. "I think, however long I live I shall not forget what the parting with M. Héger cost me," said Charlotte Brontë.[66]
Here is M. Sue's version:—
M. de Morville started, then regarding the governess with stupor, for he could not believe what he heard, he cried:—
"Quoi! Miss Mary, vous dites?"
"I say, monsieur, that I return to England, where I am recalled by my family."
The real reason why Miss Brontë left is given in the Lagrange passages to which I have alluded.
"Partir! but that is impossible! A departure so brusque, si peu attendu!"
"Pray do not perceive, monsieur," says the Irish governess, "in this unlooked for departure any want of regard for you; ... il a fallu des raisons graves, very grave, to compel me to such a resolution."
"Partir!" wailed M. de Morville. "What! that this should be the last time that I should see you, that I should speak to you! But this is not possible! They do not kill a man thus by a single blow! For you well know that you kill me! You well know that I love you! Oh! do not say you were unaware of my unhappy love," he continues, "you know well enough what an irresistible charm has drawn me towards you, what happiness I have had to tell you my life, my secret thoughts, my wrongs even! A timid reserve followed the first entrancement, but it was the struggle of respect, of honour against a fatal passion. Ah! the traces of that struggle, should they not have been too evident to your eyes! What! have not you divined the cause of that sombre discouragement which made me seek solitude where I isolated myself from all interests, from all affection? And those nights without sleep passed in consuming my tears, exaggerating more the consequences of that fatal passion!... What! you have divined nothing, read nothing of mes traits, in my eyes red with tears and sleeplessness? Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! to have suffered so much ... suffered so much, and not to have even the consolation of saying: She knows that I have suffered."
The reader of Miss Mary will perceive throughout this scene in the extant and apparently re-written French volume that M. de Morville's unhappy love was that of an honourable and a loyal-hearted man, while the governess was also without reproach. (These extracts do not occur in the feuilleton as published in English.) As he asks:—
"Is it my fault if in the monotony of my existence est tout à coup apparue a person whose talents, education, and character have been appreciated by all and by me.... Have I attempted to pervert your mind, to seduce your heart? No, no! I have suffered, suffered in silence [see my reference to the Imitation of Christ], suffered alone, suffered always. And my crime, what is it?... It is to make to you the avowal of suffering on the day when you go to leave me for ever a prey to incurable despair!"
Thus have we real insight into the state of affairs at Brussels when Miss Brontë left. We see the divining, jealous Madame de Morville—Madame Héger, of course—subjecting her to the "taquineries sournoises"; we hear Madame saying of her: "Ce que me faisait tolérer cette pauvre Mdlle. Lagrange, c'est qu'elle était laide comme les sept péchés mortels," and sneering at the excuse she made to leave the establishment, calling it a "véritable prétexte" when the real reason was Madame's jealousy and its causes. Oh, the bitterness of it! And now in this light read the carefully worded representation of Mrs Gaskell that:—
Towards the end of 1843 various reasons conspired ... to make her [Charlotte Brontë] feel that her presence was absolutely and imperatively required at home, while she was ... no longer regarded with the former kindliness of feeling by Madame Héger. In consequence of this state of things working down with a sharp edge into a sensitive mind, she suddenly announced to that lady her immediate intention of returning to England.
Something of the foregoing I gave in my article "The Lifting of the Brontë Veil" in The Fortnightly Review, and I have to thank the press generally for their kind acknowledgment of my important discovery. The Spectator, in consonance with others, says:—"Mr. Malham-Dembleby has found a feuilleton by Eugène Sue which is curious, as it certainly indicates a knowledge of Charlotte Brontë and of Monsieur and Madame Héger at Brussels."
In the extant French copy Eugène Sue has given a dramatic version of the parting scene between "Miss Mary" and "Madame de Morville"—Charlotte Brontë and Madame Héger. The latter had surprised her husband and the Irish governess, tête-à-tête in the lonely pavilion, late in the evening. Monsieur protests:—
"Madame," he cries, "... I will not permit you, in my presence, to dare to calumniate and outrage Mademoiselle Lawson."
Miss Mary asks him not to defend her, as she does not wish to be a cause of irritating discussion between them.
"That is charming!" cried Madame de Morville, with a burst of sardonic laughter—"Grâce au bon accord du ménage, mademoiselle would desire to continue in perfect tranquillity the undignified rôle she has played at my house!"
Her husband protests that she outrages one of the purest characters in the world, but the governess interrupts by addressing the wife:—
"Madam, suspicions so odious, so senseless, are unable to wound an honourable soul.... I reply nothing to these words, which you will soon regret. The two years that I have been here [Charlotte Brontë was two years with the Hégers] I have learned to know you, madam; and if sometimes I have without complaint [see the Lagrange passages] suffered from the vivacité de vos premiers mouvements, I have also often been able to appreciate your goodness of heart."
"Enough, mademoiselle, enough! Believe you that you can dupe me by your hypocrisies and base flatteries? Do you think you can impose my silence by that pretended resignation?"
So the scene continues until Madame de Morville accuses the other of wishing to take the affections of her husband. To this, the governess retorts:—
"You accuse me, madam, of wishing to win the affections of M. de Morville, and of desiring to dominate at your house? Here is my reply."
And her reply is that she is returning to England.
"You go away!" cried Madame de Morville.... "No, no, that is a lie or a trick!"... Madame ... fut complètement déroutée par l'annonce du départ de Miss Mary.
The latter says she profoundly regrets if she had caused "malheurs," for she had been the involuntary cause.
"Involuntary or not," cried Madame de Morville, "you are un porte-malheur, and thus have been two years, since your arrival here. I have said it to M. de Morville, who, par prévision without doubt, took at once your part against me.... And on whom, then, will that responsibility fall!... We were all happy and peaceful before your advent here, and to-day, when you go you leave us dans le chagrin."
To which Miss Mary retorts:—
"Ah! madame, le jour le plus malheureux de ma vie serait celui où je quitterais votre famille avec la douloureuse conviction que mon nom y serait maudit."
There were, we see, conflicting views in Brussels social and literary circles, in the eighteen-forties, as to the degree of intimacy to which Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger attained. It is when we perceive the ambiguity of the relations existing between Miss Brontë and the professor that we recognize the fidelity of Eugène Sue's portrayal of Currer Bell's Brussels life. Even Charlotte Brontë herself, in Villette, published after M. Sue's story, relates that M. Paul Emanuel (M. Héger) said to her:—"I call myself your brother. I hardly know what I am—brother—friend—I cannot tell. I know I think of you—I feel I wish you well—but I must check myself; you are to be feared. My best friends point out danger and whisper caution." In Mdlle. Lagrange and Catherine Bell, Charlotte Brontë figures as represented by those who said ill of her; as Miss Mary Lawson, the Irish governess, she has "beauty, youth, and grace," which charms, Jane tells us, she possessed in Rochester's eyes. Of her, in the phase of Catherine Bell, we have many insinuations of a detractive character, the keynote to which is found in the fortune-telling incident, wherein Catherine is foretold she will be "married and not married"; while in Miss Mary Lawson we have a portrayal of un bon ange[67] of whom Madame de Morville is jealous, not without reason, though, to use Miss Mary's own words, she had been "la cause involontaire."
We must, therefore, set it to the credit of Eugène Sue that he placed two versions in the balance; and his evidence for ever sweeps away the illogical and unfair contention of some writers on the Brontës, that Charlotte Brontë may have cared for M. Héger, but that he, in his turn, had been only "intellectually" interested in her. M. Sue shows the attitude of M. Héger was ever unequivocal as regards Charlotte Brontë; whether in her phase as "Lagrange," as "Catherine Bell," or as "Miss Mary Lawson"—she was loved by him. We now see Morton of Jane Eyre was Haworth to Charlotte Brontë, and Thornfield, the home of Mr. Rochester, the Pensionnat Héger. And the flight from temptation at Thornfield and seeking refuge with the Rivers family were really representative of her leaving Brussels and returning home to her father and sisters. Obviously M. Sue wrote his feuilleton to aid, maliciously or not, in breaking the dangerous friendship between M. Héger and Miss Brontë. Charlotte Brontë's works are testimony it was not only Madame Héger's harsh jealousy that led her to leave Brussels. In Chapter XX. of The Professor, published years after M. Sue's work, but written before it, she gives us the reason for this determination. By her Method I., Interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life, Professor Crimsworth, who is alternately Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger, in this instance is Charlotte Brontë, while Mdlle. Reuter is M. Héger. Crimsworth [Miss Brontë] says:—
I could not conceal ... that it would not do for me to remain.... Her [his] present demeanour towards me was deficient neither in dignity nor propriety; but I knew her [his] former feeling was unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but Opportunity would be too strong for either of these—Temptation would shiver their restraints. I was no pope, ... in short, if I stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time, a practical modern French novel would be in full process of concoction.... From all this resulted the conclusion that I must leave, ... and that instantly.... The Spirit of Evil ... sought to lead me astray.[68] Rough and steep was the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which Temptation strewed flowers.
And thus at last do we understand why Charlotte Brontë asks herself as Jane Eyre when at home with the Rivers family—with her father, her sisters, and Tabby at Haworth:—
Which is better? To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort—no struggle; but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it ... to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress ... I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms.... Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a village schoolmistress [The Brontë school project was under contemplation in 1844], free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes, I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance.
And her fervent gratitude is as sincere when in the same connection she says in Villette of her confessor—her Fénelon[69]:—"He was kind when I needed kindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!" But we now see Charlotte Brontë did not suffer alone. Eugène Sue has given us an insight into the bitterness of M. de Morville's (M. Héger's) life, which resulted from their unhappy love, and doubtless those words of Heathcliffe to Catherine in Wuthering Heights were uttered or written by M. Héger in reproach to Charlotte Brontë:—
"Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy?... You loved me—then what right had you to leave me?... Because misery and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong."
Charlotte Brontë tells us in Jane Eyre she loved to imagine she and Mr. Rochester had met under happier conditions; and if the meeting of the runaway lovers Charlotte Brontë repeats so faithfully in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre did not refer to a private meeting subsequent to the beginning of 1844, between her and M. Héger, or to their meeting again when she returned to Brussels the second time, then have we evidence of the fact that she at one time perhaps believed Wuthering Heights would be never published. Assuredly nothing was sweeter to Currer Bell's fancy than a dream of the happiness that might have been hers, and well may she have written in the last sentences of Villette:—
Leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.
Charlotte Brontë and M. Constantin Gilles Romain Héger loved each other as those who are worshippers of two high ideals, when one of these ideals is love, the other honour. And this was tragedy. To the agonizing nature of unrequitable affection endured for honour's sake do we owe Charlotte Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
The elements that conduce to reaction and recoil are sometimes fatal to the best proposed and ablest evolved schemes of man. Priests and counsellors may gravely devise; knight and maid may devoutly swear; the pious neophyte and the exalted religionist may make solemn pledge, but reaction often brings catastrophe. Thus the Christian Church is rightfully a watchful Body, a militant Force, preaches the weakness of man and cries "Ora continenter!" And herein lies the value of a ponderous state procedure. Irritating in its slow gravity and indifferent to the passionate appeals of emotionalism, such procedure yet withstands the backward wave which comes as answer to courageous but costly proposals.
The unsupported and undisciplined individual, like communities, cannot always safely stand alone, and finally resolves into an automaton at the service of unlicensed and unconsidered impulse when the day of reaction comes. The anthropologist and the pathologist relate how exacting straitness suddenly has broken down with a lamentable demonstration of most morbid prurience; and relentless history has chronicled grievous moral declensions in the lives of men and women whose careers in the greater part were records of generous and unselfish devotion to a noble cause or an honourable work. Until the day of reaction is safely fought through the battle is not won.
Perhaps it was to prevent all possibility of a final and definite reconciliation between M. Héger and Miss Brontë that M. Sue, aided by his friends, ridiculed their attachment in his feuilleton, Miss Mary. Not that Eugène Sue would do this necessarily for Virtue's sake, but the position of moral reprehender gave him title to the rôle he had assumed. M. Héger was sorely punished to lose Miss Brontë, as M. Sue has shown, and as we have seen Charlotte Brontë herself tells us in a letter; and the intensity of his affection for her is only further accentuated by the light M. Sue throws upon the subject in a conversation which occurs between Alphonsine and the jealous mother, concerning Mdlle. Lagrange in the opening chapters of his feuilleton. As I have stated, evidence compels us to perceive M. Sue often presented by imitation of Charlotte Brontë's Method I., Interchange of the sexes for obfuscation's sake, M. Héger in Alphonsine: Madame de Morville (Madame Héger) has just said Mdlle. Lagrange (Miss Brontë) affected a little to speak of her humble origin.