Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (468 page)

“Agréez, je vous prie, Monsieur, l’expression respectueuse de mes sentiments de haute considération.

“C. HÉGER.”

There was so much truth, as well as so much kindness in this letter — it was so obvious that a second year of instruction would be far more valuable than the first, that there was no long hesitation before it was decided that Charlotte should return to Brussels.

Meanwhile, they enjoyed their Christmas all together inexpressibly.  Branwell was with them; that was always a pleasure at this time; whatever might be his faults, or even his vices, his sisters yet held him up as their family hope, as they trusted that he would some day be their family pride.  They blinded themselves to the magnitude of the failings of which they were now and then told, by persuading themselves that such failings were common to all men of any strength of character; for, till sad experience taught them better, they fell into the usual error of confounding strong passions with strong character.

Charlotte’s friend came over to see her, and she returned the visit.  Her Brussels life must have seemed like a dream, so completely, in this short space of time, did she fall back into the old household ways; with more of household independence than she could ever have had during her aunt’s lifetime.  Winter though it was, the sisters took their accustomed walks on the snow-covered moors; or went often down the long road to Keighley, for such books as had been added to the library there during their absence from England.

CHAPTER XII

Towards the end of January, the time came for Charlotte to return to Brussels.  Her journey thither was rather disastrous.  She had to make her way alone; and the train from Leeds to London, which should have reached Euston-square early in the afternoon, was so much delayed that it did not get in till ten at night.  She had intended to seek out the Chapter Coffee-house, where she had stayed before, and which would have been near the place where the steam-boats lay; but she appears to have been frightened by the idea of arriving at an hour which, to Yorkshire notions, was so late and unseemly; and taking a cab, therefore, at the station, she drove straight to the London Bridge Wharf, and desired a waterman to row her to the Ostend packet, which was to sail the next morning.  She described to me, pretty much as she has since described it in “Villette,” her sense of loneliness, and yet her strange pleasure in the excitement of the situation, as in the dead of that winter’s night she went swiftly over the dark river to the black hull’s side, and was at first refused leave to ascend to the deck.  “No passengers might sleep on board,” they said, with some appearance of disrespect.  She looked back to the lights and subdued noises of London — that “Mighty Heart” in which she had no place — and, standing up in the rocking boat, she asked to speak to some one in authority on board the packet.  He came, and her quiet simple statement of her wish, and her reason for it, quelled the feeling of sneering distrust in those who had first heard her request; and impressed the authority so favourably that he allowed her to come on board, and take possession of a berth.  The next morning she sailed; and at seven on Sunday evening she reached the Rue d’Isabelle once more; having only left Haworth on Friday morning at an early hour.

Her salary was 16
l
. a year; out of which she had to pay for her German lessons, for which she was charged as much (the lessons being probably rated by time) as when Emily learnt with her and divided the expense, viz., ten francs a month.  By Miss Brontë’s own desire, she gave her English lessons in the
classe
, or schoolroom, without the supervision of Madame or M. Héger.  They offered to be present, with a view to maintain order among the unruly Belgian girls; but she declined this, saying that she would rather enforce discipline by her own manner and character than be indebted for obedience to the presence of a
gendarme
.  She ruled over a new schoolroom, which had been built on the space in the play-ground adjoining the house.  Over that First Class she was
surveillante
at all hours; and henceforward she was called
Mademoiselle
Charlotte by M. Héger’s orders.  She continued her own studies, principally attending to German, and to Literature; and every Sunday she went alone to the German and English chapels.  Her walks too were solitary, and principally taken in the allée défendue, where she was secure from intrusion.  This solitude was a perilous luxury to one of her temperament; so liable as she was to morbid and acute mental suffering.

On March 6th, 1843, she writes thus: —

“I am settled by this time, of course.  I am not too much overloaded with occupation; and besides teaching English, I have time to improve myself in German.  I ought to consider myself well off, and to be thankful for my good fortunes.  I hope I am thankful; and if I could always keep up my spirits and never feel lonely, or long for companionship, or friendship, or whatever they call it, I should do very well.  As I told you before, M. and Madame Héger are the only two persons in the house for whom I really experience regard and esteem, and of course, I cannot be always with them, nor even very often.  They told me, when I first returned, that I was to consider their sitting-room my sitting-room also, and to go there whenever I was not engaged in the schoolroom.  This, however, I cannot do.  In the daytime it is a public room, where music-masters and mistresses are constantly passing in and out; and in the evening, I will not, and ought not to intrude on M. and Madame Héger and their children.  Thus I am a good deal by myself, out of school-hours; but that does not signify.  I now regularly give English lessons to M. Héger and his brother-in-law.  They get on with wonderful rapidity; especially the first.  He already begins to speak English very decently.  If you could see and hear the efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like Englishmen, and their unavailing attempts to imitate, you would laugh to all eternity.

“The Carnival is just over, and we have entered upon the gloom and abstinence of Lent.  The first day of Lent we had coffee without milk for breakfast; vinegar and vegetables, with a very little salt fish, for dinner; and bread for supper.  The Carnival was nothing but masking and mummery.  M. Héger took me and one of the pupils into the town to see the masks.  It was animating to see the immense crowds, and the general gaiety, but the masks were nothing.  I have been twice to the D.’s” (those cousins of “Mary’s” of whom I have before made mention).  “When she leaves Bruxelles, I shall have nowhere to go to.  I have had two letters from Mary.  She does not tell me she has been ill, and she does not complain; but her letters are not the letters of a person in the enjoyment of great happiness.  She has nobody to be as good to her as M. Héger is to me; to lend her books; to converse with her sometimes, &c.

“Good-bye.  When I say so, it seems to me that you will hardly hear me; all the waves of the Channel heaving and roaring between must deaden the sound.”

From the tone of this letter, it may easily be perceived that the Brussels of 1843 was a different place from that of 1842.  Then she had Emily for a daily and nightly solace and companion.  She had the weekly variety of a visit to the family of the D.s; and she had the frequent happiness of seeing “Mary” and Martha.  Now Emily was far away in Haworth — where she or any other loved one, might die, before Charlotte, with her utmost speed, could reach them, as experience, in her aunt’s case, had taught her.  The D.s were leaving Brussels; so, henceforth, her weekly holiday would have to be passed in the Rue d’Isabelle, or so she thought.  “Mary” was gone off on her own independent course; Martha alone remained — still and quiet for ever, in the cemetery beyond the Porte de Louvain.  The weather, too, for the first few weeks after Charlotte’s return, had been piercingly cold; and her feeble constitution was always painfully sensitive to an inclement season.  Mere bodily pain, however acute, she could always put aside; but too often ill-health assailed her in a part far more to be dreaded.  Her depression of spirits, when she was not well, was pitiful in its extremity.  She was aware that it was constitutional, and could reason about it; but no reasoning prevented her suffering mental agony, while the bodily cause remained in force.

The Hégers have discovered, since the publication of “Villette,” that at this beginning of her career as English teacher in their school, the conduct of her pupils was often impertinent and mutinous in the highest degree.  But of this they were unaware at the time, as she had declined their presence, and never made any complaint.  Still it must have been a depressing thought to her at this period, that her joyous, healthy, obtuse pupils were so little answerable to the powers she could bring to bear upon them; and though from their own testimony, her patience, firmness, and resolution, at length obtained their just reward, yet with one so weak in health and spirits, the reaction after such struggles as she frequently had with her pupils, must have been very sad and painful.

She thus writes to her friend E.: —

“April, 1843.

“Is there any talk of your coming to Brussels?  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.  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.  However, more genial weather is coming now, and I wish you were here.  Yet I never have pressed you, and never would press you too warmly to come.  There are privations and 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.  The Protestant, the foreigner, is a solitary being, whether as teacher or pupil.  I do not say this by way of complaining of my own lot; for though I acknowledge that there are certain disadvantages in my present position, what position on earth is without them?  And, whenever I turn back to compare what I am with what I was — my place here with my place at Mrs. — -’s for instance — I am thankful.  There was an observation in your last letter which excited, for a moment, my wrath.  At first, I thought it would be folly to reply to it, and I would let it die.  Afterwards, I determined to give one answer, once for all.  ‘Three or four people,’ it seems, ‘have the idea that the future
époux
of Mademoiselle Brontë is on the Continent.’  These people are wiser than I am.  They could not believe that I crossed the sea merely to return as teacher to Madame Hégers.  I must have some more powerful motive than respect for my master and mistress, gratitude for their kindness, &c., to induce me to refuse a salary of 50
l
. in England, and accept one of 16
l
. in Belgium.  I must, forsooth, have some remote hope of entrapping a husband somehow, or somewhere.  If these charitable people knew the total seclusion of the life I lead, — that I never exchange a word with any other man than Monsieur Héger, and seldom indeed with him, — they would, perhaps, cease to suppose that any such chimerical and groundless notion had influenced my proceedings.  Have I said enough to clear myself of so silly an imputation?  Not that it is a crime to marry, or a crime to wish to be married; but it is an imbecility, which I reject with contempt, for women, who have neither fortune nor beauty, to make marriage the principal object of their wishes and hopes, and the aim of all their actions; not to be able to convince themselves that they are unattractive, and that they had better be quiet, and think of other things than wedlock.”

The following is an extract, from one of the few letters which have been preserved, of her correspondence with her sister Emily: —

“May 29, 1843

“I get on here from day to day in a Robinson-Crusoe-like sort of way, very lonely, but that does not signify.  In other respects, I have nothing substantial to complain of, nor is this a cause for complaint.  I hope you are well.  Walk out often on the moors.  My love to Tabby.  I hope she keeps well.”

And about this time she wrote to her father,

“June 2nd, 1818,

“I was very glad to hear from home.  I had begun to get low-spirited at not receiving any news, and to entertain indefinite fears that something was wrong.  You do not say anything about your own health, but I hope you are well, and Emily also.  I am afraid she will have a good deal of hard work to do now that Hannah” (a servant-girl who had been assisting Tabby) “is gone.  I am exceedingly glad to hear that you still keep Tabby” (considerably upwards of seventy).  “It is an act of great charity to her, and I do not think it will be unrewarded, for she is very faithful, and will always serve you, when she has occasion, to the best of her abilities; besides, she will be company for Emily, who, without her, would be very lonely.”

I gave a
devoir
, written after she had been four months under M. Héger’s tuition.  I will now copy out another, written nearly a year later, during which the progress made appears to me very great.

“31 Mai, 1843.

“SUR LA MORT DE NAPOLÉON.

“Napoléon naquit en Corse et mourut à Ste. Hélène.  Entre ces deux îles rien qu’un vaste et brûlant désert et l’océan immense.  Il naquit fils d’un simple gentilhomme, et mourut empereur, mais sans couronne et dans les fers.  Entre son berceau et sa tombe qu’y a-t-il? la carrière d’un soldat parvenu, des champs de bataille, une mer de sang, un trône, puis du sang encore, et des fers.  Sa vie, c’est l’arc en ciel; les deux points extrêmes touchent la terre, la comble lumi-neuse mesure les cieux.  Sur Napoléon au berceau une mère brillait; dans la maison paternelle il avait des frères et des soeurs; plus tard dans son palais il eut une femme qui l’aimait. 
Mais sur son lit de mort Napoléon est seul; plus de mère, ni de frère, ni de soeur, ni de femme, ni d’enfant!!  D’autres ont dit et rediront ses exploits, moi, je m’arrête à contempler l’abandonnement de sa dernière heure!

“Il est là, exilé et captif, enchaîné sur un écueil.  Nouveau Prométhée il subit le châtiment de son orgueil!  Prométhée avait voulu être Dieu et Créateur; il déroba le feu du Ciel pour animer le corps qu’il avait formé.  Et lui, Buonaparte, il a voulu créer, non pas un homme, mais un empire, et pour donner une existence, une âme, à son œuvre gigantesque, il n’a pas hésité à arracher la vie à des nations entières.  Jupiter indigné de l’impiété de Prométhée, le riva vivant à la cime du Caucase.  Ainsi, pour punir l’ambition rapace de Buonaparte, la Providence l’a enchaîné, jusqu’à ce que la mort s’en suivit, sur un roc isolé de l’Atlantique.  Peut-être là aussi a-t-il senti lui fouillant le flanc cet insatiable vautour dont parle la fable, peut-être a-t-il souffert aussi cette soif du coeur, cette faim de l’âme, qui torturent l’exilé, loin de sa famille et de sa patrie.  Mais parler ainsi n’est-ce pas attribuer gratuitement à Napoléon une humaine faiblesse qu’il n’éprouva jamais?  Quand donc s’est-il laissé enchaîner par un lien d’affection?  Sans doute d’autres conquérants ont hésité dans leur carrière de gloire, arrêtés par un obstacle d’amour ou d’amitié, retenus par la main d’une femme, rappéles par la voix d’un ami — lui, jamais!  Il n’eut pas besoin, comme Ulysse, de se lier au mât du navire, ni de se boucher les oreilles avec de la cire; il ne redoutait pas le chant des Sirènes — il le dédaignait; il se fit marbre et fer pour exécuter ses grands projets. 
Napoléon ne se regardait pas comme un homme, mais comme l’incarnation d’un peuple.  Il n’aimait pas; il ne considérait ses amis et ses proches que comme des instruments auxquels il tint, tant qu’ils furent utiles, et qu’il jeta de côté quand ils cessèrent de l’être. 
Qu’on ne se permette donc pas d’approcher du sépulcre du Corse avec sentiments de pitié, ou de souiller de larmes la pierre qui couvre ses restes, son âme répudierait tout cela.  On a dit, je le sais, qu’elle fut cruelle la main qui le sépara de sa femme et de son enfant.  Non, c’était une main qui, comme la sienne, ne tremblait ni de passion ni de crainte, c’était la main d’un homme froid, convaincu, qui avait su deviner Buonaparte; et voici ce que disait cet homme que la défaite n’a pu humilier, ni la victoire enorgueiller.  ‘Marie-Louise n’est pas la femme de Napoléon; c’est la France que Napoléon a épousée; c’est la France qu’il aime, leur union enfante la perte de l’Europe; voilà la divorce que je veux; voilà l’union qu’il faut briser.’