The brontes in brussels, p.5
The Brontës in Brussels, page 5
When I disembarked on the shores of Italy a light seemed to fall upon my future; I saw it full of uncertainty but also full of hope. It stretched before me like a large and uncultivated field. I knew that wheat was not sprouting in it yet, but already I was dreaming of the harvest. I lacked neither courage nor fortitude; immediately I set to work. 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 only too contemptible; but the fever of emulation came to drive away that momentary prostration and from that deep consciousness of inferiority, I derived new energy for work; there was born in me a fixed resolution: ‘I will do all, suffer all, in order to win all.’ And so I suffered much in Florence, in Venice and in Rome, and in those places I won what I wished to possess: an intimate knowledge of all the technical mysteries of Painting, a taste cultivated in accord with the rules of art. As for natural genius, neither Titian nor Raphael nor Michelangelo would have known how to give me that which comes from God alone; the little I have, I possess from my Creator, and within my soul I carefully guard that one drop of the river of life which Mercy has poured out to sweeten so much bitterness: I believe I make good use of it in employing it to add something to the pure pleasures of my fellow men.
Milord, it is to put myself in a position to exercise that faculty that I entreat your help; I could begin my career alone, but then I would still have to work for many years in obscurity and indigence. I know that in the long run true merit always triumphs, but if power does not offer a helping hand, the day of success can be a long time in coming. Sometimes, indeed, death precedes victory, and what is the good of throwing laurels on a grave?
Milord, excuse me if this letter seems long to you. I did not think to count the lines; I thought only of speaking to you sincerely.
Milord, I am
Your obedient servant,
George Howard
But now we leave these essays, written in a language not her own in Charlotte’s years of apprenticeship as a writer, for Villette, the novel of her maturity that revisited her years at the Pensionnat and her contact with Heger.
‘Currer Bell’s Pear-tree Garden’; artist’s impression of the Pensionnat garden
Illustration for the article ‘Vagabondizing in Belgium’, Harper’s Monthly magazine, August 1858
7
Lucy Snowe’s Pensionnat
I was sitting on the hidden seat [in the garden] … listening to what seemed the far-off sounds of the city. Far off, in truth, they were not: this school was in the city’s centre; hence, it was but five minutes’ walk to the park, scarce ten to buildings of palatial splendour. Quite near were wide streets brightly lit, teeming at this moment with life: carriages were rolling through them, to balls or to the opera. The same hour which tolled curfew for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, and dropped the curtain round each couch, rung for the gay city about us the summons to festal enjoyment. (Villette, Chapter 12)
In winter I sought the long classes, and paced them fast to keep myself warm … In summer it was never quite dark, and then I went up stairs to my own quarter of the long dormitory, opened my own casement … and leaning out, looked forth upon the city beyond the garden, and listened to band-music from the park or the palace-square, thinking meantime my own thoughts, living my own life in my own still, shadow-world. (Villette, Chapter 13)
‘I was conscious of rapport between you and myself. You are patient, and I am choleric; you are quiet and pale, and I am tanned and fiery; you are a strict Protestant, and I am a sort of lay Jesuit: but we are alike – there is affinity. Do you see it, mademoiselle, when you look in the glass? Do you observe that your forehead is shaped like mine – that your eyes are cut like mine? Do you hear that you have some of my tones of voice? Do you know that you have many of my looks? I perceive all this, and believe that you were born under my star. Yes, you were born under my star! Tremble! for where that is the case with mortals, the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle; knottings and catchings occur – sudden breaks leave damage in the web.’ (M. Paul addressing Lucy in Villette, Chapter 31)
‘Will Miss Lucy be the sister of a very poor, fettered, burdened, encumbered man?’ (Villette, Chapter 35)
I envied no girl her lover, no bride her bridegroom, no wife her husband. (Villette, Chapter 35, after M. Paul asks Lucy to be his friend)
Lucy Snowe’s Pensionnat is in all essentials the Pensionnat Heger as seen by Charlotte. Many aspects of the teachers and pupils of the real Pensionnat are incorporated into characters in the novel. M. Paul Emanuel is of course partly inspired by Constantin Heger, and Villette gives a very good idea of what it must have been like being taught by him. Zoë Heger fared less well in Charlotte’s version of her, assuming that Charlotte did have her in mind for Lucy’s employer Mme Beck, who, cold, calculating and unscrupulous, spies, lies and subjects everyone under her to constant surveillance.
It is possible that some of the traits actually observed by Charlotte in her employer found their way into Mme Beck and also into Zoraïde Reuter, the directress of the girls’ school in The Professor – apparently ‘sensible, sagacious, affable’ but in reality hypocritical and ruthless. However, by most accounts the real woman genuinely possessed the admirable qualities that in them were no more than skin deep.
Written a decade after Charlotte’s time at the Pensionnat, Villette shows how deeply it was etched in her memory. She remembers every detail of every room that provides the backdrop for the unfolding drama of Lucy’s emotions, as her passion for the handsome young English doctor ‘Dr John’ (John Graham Bretton), dominating the first half of the novel, is gradually replaced by the burgeoning relationship with M. Paul – Charlotte’s imaginative reworking of her real-life relationship with Heger.
Sometimes this drama is enacted in rooms full of pupils and teachers, as Lucy and Paul Emanuel spar with each other and advance along the tortuous path to mutual understanding in crowded classrooms or in the refectory where the girls sit sewing at two long tables at the end of the day. Preparing to read aloud to them one evening, he thinks Lucy is snubbing him because she moves aside as he seats himself by her. In revenge, he makes all the girls crowd together at one of the tables, placing himself and Lucy at opposite ends of the other one. When annoyed he has no scruples about throwing dignity to the winds and often comes across as childish and absurd. But his fits of pique are endearing because what is behind them is his wish for Lucy to like him and because the essential person underneath is kind and generous. There is the occasion when Lucy interrupts a class to give him a message when he is in a particularly bad mood. The interruption does nothing to improve his humour, and she is so nervous that while handing him the note she accidentally knocks his spectacles off the desk, breaking them. To her relief he turns it into a joke to spare her feelings.
At other times we see Lucy alone in a deserted room while the rest of the school is at play or at prayer. The loneliness Charlotte felt so often amid the bustle of the school and the big city pervades the whole novel. Lucy paces the empty classrooms at dusk, hearing not far away the carriages in Rue Royale taking people to dances or the theatre while she is immured in her ‘convent’. She sits alone with her thoughts in the dormitory. (But even with the other girls around her she is an isolated figure, opening the dormitory window, in true Brontëan fashion, to revel in one of Villette’s violent thunder storms and leaning out into the night to enjoy it while the terrified girls say prayers.) The place where she is most sure of being alone is in the attic where she hides to read letters from Graham Bretton. It is here that she has one of several sightings of the ghostly nun who haunts the school.
As at the Pensionnat Heger, through the casement windows of Mme Beck’s school we are always aware of the garden with its ancient pear tree, ‘Methusaleh’, at whose foot Lucy buries Graham’s letters when she gives up all hope of his love. It is a romantic place into which billets-doux, love letters, are thrown over the wall from nearby buildings by lovesick young men and where Lucy has occasional glimpses of the alarming nun. She walks alone there in the cool of the evening, or falls into conversation with M. Paul as he smokes his cigars. Their rambles are similar to those taken in the grounds of Thornfield Hall by Jane and Rochester, another cigar smoker. On summer evenings the action shifts from the classrooms to the tree-lined paths outside as Lucy’s and Paul Emanuel’s feelings deepen into love and Charlotte’s imagination transports the Belgian schoolmaster on whom his character was originally based into the realm of wish-fulfilment.
8
Extract from Villette (I)
Lucy Receives a Letter from Graham Bretton and M. Paul Is Not Pleased
Abridged from Chapter 21 of Villette
One afternoon … on my way to the first class, where I was expected to assist at a lesson of ‘style and literature’, I saw … Rosine, the portress. Her attitude, as usual, was quite nonchalante … One of her hands rested in her apron-pocket, the other, at this moment, held to her eyes a letter, whereof Mademoiselle coolly perused the address, and deliberately studied the seal.
A letter! The shape of a letter similar to that had haunted my brain in its very core for seven days past. I had dreamed of a letter last night … (But I heard) the rapid step of the Professor of Literature measuring the corridor. I fled before him … I had time to get seated … ere M. Emanuel entered …
As usual he broke upon us like a clap of thunder; but instead of flashing lightning-wise from the door to the estrade, his career halted midway at my desk. Setting his face towards me and the window, his back to the pupils and the room, he gave me a look – such a look as might have licensed me to stand straight up and demand what he meant – a look of scowling distrust.
Lucy and Rosine
Edmund Dulac, illustration for Villette
‘Voilà! pour vous,’1 said he, drawing his hand from his waisticoat, and placing on my desk a letter – the very letter I had seen in Rosine’s hand … I knew it, I felt it to be the letter of my hope, the fruition of my wish, the release from my doubt, the ransom from my terror. This letter M. Paul, with his unwarrantably interfering habits, had taken from the portress, and now delivered it himself.
I might have been angry, but had not a second for the sensation. Yes: I held in my hand not a slight note, but an envelope, which must, at least, contain a sheet: it felt, not flimsy, but firm, substantial, satisfying. And here was the direction, ‘Miss Lucy Snowe’, in a clean, clear, equal, decided hand; and there was the seal … stamped with the well-cut impress of initials, ‘J. G. B.’ I experienced a happy feeling – a glad emotion which went warm to my heart, and ran lively through all my veins. For once a hope was realized. I held in my hand a morsel of real solid joy: not a dream, not an image of the brain, not one of those shadowy chances imagination pictures … It was a godsend; and I inwardly thanked the God who had vouchsafed it. Outwardly I only thanked man, crying, ‘Thank you, thank you, Monsieur!’
Monsieur curled his lip, gave me a vicious glance of the eye, and strode to his estrade. M. Paul was not at all a good little man, though he had good points.
Did I read my letter there and then? … I knew better. The cover with its address; the seal, with its three clear letters, was bounty and abundance for the present. I stole from the room, I procured the key of the great dormitory which was kept locked by day. I went to my bureau; with a sort of haste and trembling lest Madame should creep up-stairs and spy me, I opened a drawer, unlocked a box, and took out a case, and … folded the untasted treasure, yet all fair and inviolate, in silver paper, committed it to the case, shut up box and drawer, reclosed, relocked the dormitory, and returned to class, feeling as if fairy tales were true and fairy gifts no dream. Strange, sweet insanity! And this letter, the source of my joy, I had not yet read: did not yet know the number of its lines.
When I re-entered the schoolroom, behold M. Paul raging like a pestilence! Some pupil had not spoken audibly or distinctly enough to suit his ear and taste, and now she and others were weeping, and he was raving from his estrade almost livid. Curious to mention, as I appeared, he fell on me.
‘Was I the mistress of these girls? Did I profess to teach them the conduct befitting ladies? – and did I permit and, he doubted not, encourage them to strangle their mother-tongue in their throats, to mince and mash it between their teeth, as if they had some base cause to be ashamed of the words they uttered? …’
What could I say to all this? Really nothing; and I hoped he would allow me to be silent. The storm recommenced.
‘Every answer to his queries was then refused? It seemed to be considered … that the Professor of Literature was not worthy of a reply! These were new ideas; imported, he did not doubt, straight from “la Grande Bretaigne”; they savoured of island insolence and arrogance.’
Lull the second – the girls, not one of whom was ever known to weep a tear for the rebukes of any other master, now all melting like snow-statues before the intemperate heat of M. Emanuel: I, not yet much shaken, sitting down, and venturing to resume my work.
Something – either in my continued silence or in the movement of my hand, stitching – transported M. Emanuel beyond the last boundary of patience; he actually sprang from his estrade …
‘Est-ce que vous avez l’intention de m’insulter?’2 said he to me, in a low, furious voice …
It was time to soothe him a little if possible.
‘Mais, Monsieur,’ said I, ‘I would not insult you for the world. I remember too well that you once said we should be friends.’
I did not intend my voice to falter, but it did: more, I think, through the agitation of late delight than in any spasm of present fear. Still there certainly was something in M. Paul’s anger – a kind of passion of emotion – that specially tended to draw tears. I was not unhappy, nor much afraid, yet I wept.
‘Allons, allons!’3 said he presently, looking round and seeing the deluge universal. ‘Decidedly I am a monster and a ruffian. I have only one pocket-handkerchief,’ he added, ‘but if I had twenty, I would offer you each one. Your teacher shall be your representative. Here, Miss Lucy.’
And he took forth and held out to me a clean silk handkerchief
… A very eloquent lesson he gave, and very kind and friendly was he to the close. Ere he had done, the clouds were dispersed and the sun shining out – tears were exchanged for smiles.
In quitting the room he paused once more at my desk.
‘And your letter?’ said he, this time not quite fiercely.
‘I have not yet read it, Monsieur.’
‘Ah! it is too good to read at once: you save it, as, when I was a boy, I used to save a peach whose bloom was very ripe?’
The guess came so near the truth, I could not prevent a suddenly-rising warmth in my face from revealing as much.
‘You promise yourself a pleasant moment,’ said he, ‘in reading that letter; you will open it when alone – n’est-ce pas?4 Ah! a smile answers. Well, well! one should not be too harsh; “la jeunesse n’a qu’un temps”.’5
‘Monsieur, Monsieur!’ I cried or rather whispered after him, as he turned to go, ‘do not leave me under a mistake. This is merely a friend’s letter. Without reading it, I can vouch for that.’
‘Je conçois, je conçois: on sait ce que c’est qu’un ami. Bonjour, Mademoiselle!’6
‘But, Monsieur, here is your handkerchief.’
‘Keep it, keep it, till the letter is read, then bring it me; I shall read the billet’s tenor in your eyes.’
When he was gone, the pupils having already poured out of the school-room into the berceau, and thence into the garden and court to take their customary recreation before the five-o’clock dinner, I stood a moment thinking, and absently twisting the handkerchief round my arm. For some reason – gladdened, I think, by a sudden return of the golden glimmer of childhood, roused by an unwonted renewal of its buoyancy, made merry by the liberty of the closing hour, and, above all, solaced at heart by the joyous consciousness of that treasure in the case, box, drawer up-stairs, – I fell to playing with the handkerchief as if it were a ball, casting it into the air and catching it as it fell. The game was stopped by another hand than mine – a hand … stretched over my shoulder; it caught the extemporized plaything and bore it away with these sullen words:
‘Je vois bien que vous vous moquez de moi et de mes effets.’7
Really that little man was dreadful: a mere sprite of caprice and ubiquity: one never knew either his whim or his whereabout.
9
A Look Back at the History of the Isabelle Quarter
The Pensionnat dated from the early nineteenth century. Constructed in the French style, it was one of the more recent buildings in a street that had an interesting history. Rue d’Isabelle followed the line of the earliest (thirteenth-century) medieval city wall, although by the 1840s little remained visible of its ramparts and towers.
This street, so quiet yet so close to the royal palace, had been a much grander one in its day. It was created in the early seventeenth century by the Archduchess Isabella, daughter of Philip II of Spain and Governor of the Low Countries, to be used by the royal household when they went to services in the Collegiate Church of St Michael and St Gudule – later to become the Cathedral. When the construction of Rue Royale in the 1770s created a new route for that purpose, Rue d’Isabelle sank into obscurity and became a tranquil backwater. Even in the Brontës’ day, visitors to the city would stumble on it only by chance, descending the steep steps from the Upper Town built in the late eighteenth century to the very different world of the Isabelle quarter on the hill sloping down to the oldest and lowest-lying part of the city, the Lower Town around Grand Place.
