The Bronte Family Volume Ii Part 1

The Bronte Family.

Vol. 2.

by Francis A. Leyland.

CHAPTER I.

CHARLOTTE AND EMILY IN BRUSSELS.

The Sojourn in Brussels Resolved upon--Why Charlotte fixed on Brussels for Higher Education--Charlotte and Emily take up their Residence with Madame Heger--A Picture of the Prospect in 'Villette'

--At the Pensionnat--Madame Heger--Monsieur Heger--Charlotte likes Brussels--Her Contrast between the Belgians and the English--Death of Miss Branwell--Return to Haworth.

It was more than a month before Charlotte received the reply from her Aunt Branwell. Meanwhile she had waited patiently, pending the anxious discussions at the parsonage, and she breathed not a single word of the great project to her friend. It was her way to work in obscurity, and to let her efforts 'be known by their results.' But at last, as I have said, consent was given to her plan; the necessary money was forthcoming; and it only remained for her to make the arrangements for her journey, and Emily had arrangements to make also. There was much of letter-writing to do, letters to Brussels--whither Charlotte would of all cities prefer to go,--and to many other places; and there were clothes to make, and farewells to be said.

It was a great disappointment to Charlotte,--when, having left her situation at Christmas, 1841, she came to Haworth to join the family circle,--that Branwell could not be there, and it troubled him very much too. But the plans were talked over, the letters were written, and Charlotte did not repent her boldness,--nay, she looked forward confidently to the venture. It seems a strange ambitious plan to us, and one showing little knowledge of the world, this of spending six months in Brussels, in that short time to become thoroughly acquainted with French, to be improved in Italian, and get a dash of German; and, so provided with accomplishments, to set up a successful school at Burlington,--for the Dewsbury Moor project had already been relinquished.

Brussels was fixed upon by Charlotte for several reasons: because it was a cheap journey, because education could be had there at any rate as good as at any other place in Europe, and perhaps better; and then, Mary and Martha T----, her friends, were staying at Brussels at the Chateau de Kokleberg, and Mary, with Mrs. Jenkins, the wife of the English chaplain, would find the desired _pensionnat_. But there was a temporary disappointment: it was reported that the schools in Brussels were not good; and Charlotte immediately set to work to discover another establishment, which was found at Lille--one that Baptist Noel recommended, where the terms were 50 for each pupil. It had been at last arranged that Charlotte and Emily should journey to this place, about the middle of February, 1842, under the escort of Madame Marzials, a lady then in London, when again the plans were changed. Mrs. Jenkins, the chaplain's wife, had discovered, to Charlotte's great delight, the establishment of Madame Heger in the Rue d'Isabelle, at Brussels, which was greatly eulogized, and thither it was finally decided that the two sisters could go.

Charlotte went to Brussels with a stout heart and in perfect confidence, and she left no regrets behind her; but it was not so with Emily. The elder sister was cast in a different mould from the younger; there was a spice of adventure in her composition, and the pleasure, too, of seeing new places was keen. It had been said to her by some inward voice, as to Lucy Snowe, who is the truest portrait of Charlotte, 'Leave this wilderness, and go out hence;' and she answered the query, 'Where?' with a sharp determination; and went out to enter into the spirit of the things she met, wherever her mental const.i.tution would enable her to do so. 'For background,' she says of her journey in 'Villette,' 'spread a sky, solemn and dark blue, and--grand with imperial promise, with tints of enchantment--strode from north to south a G.o.d-bent bow, an arch of hope:' but that was to be struck out. 'Cancel that, reader--or rather let it stand, and draw thence a moral--an alliterative, text-hand copy:

'"Day-dreams are delusions of the demon."'

So was Charlotte to be disillusioned. But what a fairyland had she fashioned to herself of that gay Belgian capital, and what painful memories she brought thence! For, according to Mr. Wemyss Reid,--and doubtless he is right--her stay in Brussels with Emily, and afterwards alone, was the turning-point in Charlotte's career, and the record of it in 'Villette' was wrung from her as her heart's blood, amid paroxysms of positive anguish. But of these things she knew nothing in the January of 1842; then the future slept in sunny calm, so sunny, indeed, that to part from Haworth, and those she knew there, her father and her brother and sister, gave her scarcely a pang; and afterwards, so far as one can trace, from her letters, and from 'Villette,' which expresses even more, the troubles of the parsonage were never acute troubles to her. Her joys and troubles abroad were in fact her own, and they were borne and suffered alone.

But, with Emily, Haworth was no wilderness, a paradise rather, and with bitter pain she left the moors that the coming summer should cover with purple billows. For Emily Bronte was inspired far more than her sister with the influences of locality and of her home. Amidst the distant Yorkshire hills dwelt, too, her father, with Branwell and Anne, whom she loved more than all else in the world; and many an hour, sitting in the bare rooms of the _pensionnat_, she pondered on their hopes and their sorrows. We cannot say that Emily's sojourn in Brussels changed her in any way whatever, nor that she was made by it of any nearer kinship with the outside world.

Mr. Bronte accompanied his daughters, and Mary and her brother, who travelled with them to Brussels. They stayed a day or two in London, at the Chapter coffee-house in Paternoster Row, and a good deal of sight-seeing was done before they left for the Belgian capital. In 'Villette' Charlotte has told us of her first visit to London, and of the travelling to Laba.s.secour, but the actual details refer more probably to her second journey thither. Yet we may feel sure that it was with the same spirit that she saw the metropolis, that she revelled in its busy life and in the earnestness that moved it. We may imagine her on the dome of St. Paul's looking over the river with its bridges, and, alongside it, the Temple Gardens, and Westminster beyond; and we may see her in the cla.s.sic ground of Paternoster Row.

Emily has left no record of her feelings on this journey, but we may be sure they differed very much from Charlotte's. We have an account in 'The Professor' of William Crimsworth's feelings when he entered Belgium, and they were doubtless Charlotte's also. 'This is Belgium, reader. Look! don't call the picture flat or a dull one--it was neither flat nor dull to me when I first beheld it. When I left Ostend on a fine February morning, and found myself on the road to Brussels, nothing could look vapid to me. My sense of enjoyment possessed an edge whetted to the finest; untouched, keen, exquisite.... Liberty I clasped in my arms for the first time, and the influence of her smile and embrace revived my life like the sun and the west wind.'

It was proposed at the time that the two sisters should remain in the _pensionnat_ until the _grandes vacances_ in September, when they were to return home. They were in Brussels then to work, and the boisterous schoolgirls found no companions in them, for they remained together for a long time, and read and studied apart. These two sisters did not easily make friends; they were shy, and their companions thought them peculiar--Charlotte, clad in her plain, home-made dress, and Emily, with her gigot sleeves and long, straight skirts, walking in the garden together. Mrs. Jenkins told Mrs. Gaskell that she asked them to spend Sundays and holidays with her, but at last she found that even these visits gave them more pain than pleasure, and thenceforth they remained away. This reserve never pa.s.sed from Emily entirely, but Charlotte afterwards gained confidence and made friends.

There were memories, as Mrs. Gaskell records, connected with Madame Heger's house in the Rue d'Isabelle, of mediaeval chivalry and romance, which are doubtless reflected in the visits of the nun to the _grenier_ and the old garden where Lucy Snowe is. From the gay, bright Rue Royale four flights of steps lead down to the Rue d'Isabelle, and the chimneys of its houses are level with one's feet as one stands at the top of them. The quiet street was called the Fosse aux Chiens in the thirteenth century, because the ducal kennels were there, on the site of Madame Heger's house; but these gave place later to a hospital for the homeless and the poor. Afterwards the Arbaletriers du Grand Serment had their place there, and n.o.ble company visited them, and great ceremonials and feasts they gave. Later again the street was called the Rue d'Isabelle, because the Infanta Isabella induced the Arbaletriers to allow a road to be made through their grounds, and built them in return a n.o.ble mansion close by, which was afterwards Madame Heger's.

William Crimsworth saw the establishment. 'I remember, before entering the park, I stood awhile to contemplate the statue of General Belliard, and then I advanced to the top of the great staircase just beyond, and I looked down into a narrow back street, which I afterwards learnt was called the Rue d'Isabelle. I well recollect that my eye rested on the green door of a rather large house opposite, where, on a bra.s.s plate, was inscribed, "Pensionnat de Demoiselles."'

Madame Heger, the mistress of this _pensionnat_, was a woman of capacity, and understood the duties of her position, but apparently Charlotte did not get on very well with her, and in the second year of the residence in Brussels they were estranged. It was said that the _directrice_ had 'quelque chose de froid et de compa.s.se dans son maintien,' which did not prepossess people in her favour; and Charlotte, it appears, had little tolerance of her beliefs or her prejudices. Monsieur Heger, unlike his wife, was of a quick and energetic nature, choleric and irritable in temperament, but withal gentle and benevolent also. It was said that there were few characters so n.o.ble and admirable as his, that he was a zealous member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and that, after days occupied in arduous educational work, he was wont to gather the poor together in order that he might amuse and instruct them at the same time. He gave up his lucrative position, too, as prefect of the studies at the Athenee because he could not succeed in introducing religious instruction into the curriculum there. Very many traits of Monsieur Heger's character are reproduced in that of Paul Emanuel.

The school was a large and prosperous one, conducted as continental schools usually are, and Charlotte, in a short time, was happy in the busy life she led there. She has left an admirable picture, a veritable photograph, of the establishment in the pages of 'Villette,'

which indeed contains her mental history during her sojourn there. The training through which she and Emily were put was different from that of the other pupils. Monsieur Heger was quick to perceive that they were capable of greater things than most people, so he took the bold step of putting them to the higher walks of French literature, omitting the general work of grammar and vocabulary; and his experiment was justified by its success.

Charlotte and Emily, with one other girl and the _governante_ of Madame Heger's children, were the only exceptions to the Catholicism of the house, and the Brontes found that this difference cut them off in sympathy from the rest of the inhabitants. 'We are completely isolated in the midst of numbers,' says Charlotte; but she adds, 'I think I am never unhappy; my present life is so delightful, so congenial to my own nature, compared with that of a governess. My time, constantly occupied, pa.s.ses too rapidly.' We do not find that news from home gave her trouble, nor that she was particularly uneasy in her absence. 'I don't deny,' she says later, 'that I have brief attacks of home-sickness; but, on the whole, I have borne a very valiant heart so far; and I have been happy in Brussels, because I have always been fully occupied with the employments that I like.'

Charlotte's happiness at this time was in herself. She lived in bright antic.i.p.ation of the time when it should be possible to the sisters to open a school, which was to be the reward of their arduous studies, and of that love for work and that perseverance of which Monsieur Heger spoke in his letter to Mr. Bronte, written when Charlotte and Emily were called to Haworth. Lucy Snowe in 'Villette' tells of such hopes; of the tenement which she shall take, with its one large room and two or three smaller ones; of the few benches and desks, the black tableau, and the _estrade_, with its chair, tables, chalks, and sponge, where she shall teach the day-scholars. 'Madame Beck's commencement was--as I have often heard her say--from no higher starting-point, and where is she now?' This was the hope which Lucy Snowe repeated to Monsieur Paul, and it pleased him, though he called it 'an Alnaschar dream.' But it was the salt of Charlotte's life during the first months of her residence in Brussels.

Brussels was liked by Charlotte, and she calls it a beautiful city; and she liked the country about it, though it differed so much from her own hilly Haworth. But she did not like its inhabitants; the Belgians were to her people of a lower order; she could not enter into their pleasures, and she did not understand them. Charlotte, with her restricted views of life, came into the midst of strangers; she found them different from her ideal, and she was repulsed by them. The two books in which she has recorded her impressions of the Belgians are occupied with a frequent contrast of 'the daughter of Albion and nursling of Protestantism' with 'the foster-child of Rome, the protegee of Jesuitry,' always to the disadvantage of the latter.

Mesdemoiselles Eulalie, Hortense, and Caroline in 'The Professor,'

and Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angelique in 'Villette,'

are Charlotte's types of the Belgian female--heavy, stolid, unimpressionable to good, sensual, gross, and unintellectual. The Laba.s.se-couriennes were 'a swinish mult.i.tude,' not to be driven by force; 'whenever a lie was necessary for their occasions, they brought it out with a careless ease and breadth, altogether untroubled by any rebuke of conscience;' and they were cold, animal, and selfish.

Nevertheless, occupied in her duties, Charlotte was happy, even with these companions. We have no actual means of knowing what Emily thought of them, for her life amongst them was never reproduced in her writings, and it made but little permanent impression upon her.

Charlotte said that her sister worked 'like a horse,' and that she did not get on well with Monsieur Heger.

The two sisters had now friends in Brussels, for they sometimes saw Mary and Martha T---- who were staying there at the Chateau de Kokleberg, and these young ladies had cousins in the city, whose house was often a pleasant meeting-place. But Emily made little progress with these friendships.

The _grandes vacances_ began in September, but Charlotte and Emily did not return home then as had been intended; all was well at Haworth, and there was no reason why they should. Madame Heger made a proposal that they should remain six months more, Charlotte as English teacher, and Emily to instruct some pupils in music; and they were to continue their studies and have board without payment, but they were offered no salary. These terms were at last accepted, and the sisters remained through the long _vacances_ with a few boarders who were also there, and Charlotte, at least, was happy.

But a year later, when the rooms of the _pensionnat_ were once more deserted, and Emily far away in the parsonage at Haworth, there can be no doubt that she became again subject to that melancholia which had previously been remarked in her when she was at Miss Wooler's. The excitement of her first sojourn at Brussels wore off, she found no novelty in the things she saw, and she was left to solitary reflection a great deal. But her melancholy began with herself. 'My youth is leaving me,' she said to Mary; 'I can never do better than I have done, and I have done nothing yet,' and she seemed at such times, according to this friend, 'to think that most human beings were destined by the pressure of worldly interests to lose one faculty and feeling after another, till they went dead altogether. I hope I shall be put in my grave as soon as I'm dead; I don't want to walk about so,' she added. Mary advised her to go home or elsewhere, when she was in this state, for the sake of change, and Charlotte thanked her for the advice, but did not take it.

'That vacation! Shall I ever forget it? I think not,' says Lucy Snowe.... 'My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its cords. How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless!

How vast and void seemed the desolate premises! How gloomy the forsaken garden,--grey now with the dust of a town summer departed!'

To Lucy Snowe the future gave no promise of comfort; and a sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed upon her,--a 'despairing resignation to reach betimes the end of all things earthly.' She found the future but a hopeless desert: 'tawny sands, with no green fields, no palm-tree, no well in view.' And these were the thoughts, too, that oppressed Charlotte Bronte in Brussels and sorely weighed her down. It was in one of these fits of depression, overcome with melancholy, that she found consolation in the confessional, when she poured her tale of solitary sorrow into the ear of a priest--a Pere Silas, like him in 'Villette,' who spoke of peace and hope to Lucy Snowe.

Troubles of another kind had, however, broken in sadly enough on the close of Charlotte's first _vacances_ in Brussels in 1842, when she and Emily were greatly shocked by the death of Martha T---- at the Chateau de Kokleberg, after a very short illness. This was a great grief to the little circle in Brussels, for the dead girl had been a bright and affectionate companion,--bewailed under the name of Jessie in 'Shirley,'--and she was deeply lamented. But another grief awaited the Bronte sisters; they heard that their aunt Branwell was ill,--was dead; they were wanted at home; and at once, after very hasty preparation, they left Brussels, Emily not to return. They came back to the parsonage at Haworth, to find the funeral over, and the house deprived of one who had been its support and guardian for years.

Thus their stay in Brussels was suddenly cut short, and their studies were interrupted; but they had learned a good deal during their stay there. Monsieur Heger wrote to console Mr. Bronte on his loss; and said that in another year the two girls would have been secured against the eventualities of the future. They were being instructed, and, at the same time, were acquiring the art of instruction: Emily was learning the piano, and receiving lessons from the best Belgian professors; and she had little pupils herself. 'Elle perdait donc a la fois un reste d'ignorance et un reste plus genant encore de timidite.'

Charlotte was beginning to give French lessons, and to gain 'cette a.s.surance, cet aplomb si necessaire dans l'enseignement.' It was this kind letter from Monsieur Heger that afterwards induced Mr. Bronte to allow Charlotte to return to Brussels.

CHAPTER II.

OTHER POEMS.

Branwell at the Parsonage: his Loneliness--'The Epicurean's Song'--'Song'--Northangerland--'Noah's Warning over Methusaleh's Grave'--Letter to Mr. Grundy--Miss Branwell's Death--Her Will--Her Nephew Remembered--Injustice done to Him in this Matter by the Biographers of his Sisters.

During the absence of his sisters Charlotte and Emily in Brussels, and while Anne was away as a governess, Branwell no doubt felt lonely at the parsonage at Haworth; but he appears to have sought consolation from his troubles in the soothing influences of music and poetry. He knew that these employments softened many of the difficulties that beset the road of human life, and that they introduced men into a purer and n.o.bler sphere than that which is called reality. He felt that they led 'the spirit on, in an ecstasy of admiration, of sweet sorrow, or of unearthly joy, to the music of harmonious, and not wholly intelligible words, raising in the mind beauteous and transcendent images.' Whatever may have been said as to Branwell's p.r.o.neness to self-indulgence, and his enjoyment of society, even that of 'The Bull,' and of the corrupt of Haworth, none of his alleged depravity and coa.r.s.eness of disposition disfigured his verses, however deficient his early effusions may have been in the higher excellencies of the Muse. From the general tenor of his writings, which is religious and sometimes philosophical, he seems, under his misfortunes, which were ever with him in one shape or another, to have sought consolation in the shadowed paths of poetry and reflection.

Some lights now and then diversify the general gloom of his stanzas; but, even then, an air of sadness still pervades them. More I shall find to say on the special features of Branwell's poems in the later pages of the present work.

He wrote the following verses in 1842:

THE EPICUREAN'S SONG.

'The visits of Sorrow Say, why should we mourn?

Since the sun of to-morrow May shine on its urn; And all that we think such pain Will have departed,--then Bear for a moment what cannot return;

'For past time has taken Each hour that it gave, And they never awaken From yesterday's grave; So surely we may defy Shadows, like memory, Feeble and fleeting as midsummer wave.

'From the depths where they're falling Nor pleasure, nor pain, Despite our recalling, Can reach us again; Though we brood over them, Nought can recover them, Where they are laid, they must ever remain.

'So seize we the present, And gather its flowers, For,--mournful or pleasant,-- 'Tis all that is ours; While daylight we're wasting, The evening is hasting, And night follows fast on vanishing hours.

'Yes,--and we, when night comes, Whatever betide, Must die as our fate dooms, And sleep by their side; For _change_ is the only thing Always continuing; And it sweeps creation away with its tide.'

Here Branwell, writing, contrary to his custom, in a gay mood, forgets the failures of the past, diverting his mind from them by seeking serenity in the diversions which now and then lighten his path. He is perfectly conscious of the fleeting nature of earthly things; and, with that natural and felicitous faculty of versification with which his images and figures are invariably described, he invests the Epicurean with the hopes of the Optimist, or with the indifference of the Stoic to the shadows which ever and anon dim the pleasures of human existence. There is nothing a.s.suredly in this lyric of the 'pulpit tw.a.n.g,' to which Miss Robinson refers, nor is it a 'weak and characterless effusion.'