The Secret of Charlotte Bronte Part 4

'What you do is wrong,' pursued madame; 'it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament--a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent--a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.'

'You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me,'

said he, 'but you shall see; the event shall teach you.

Modeste,' he continued, less fiercely, 'be gentle, be pitying, be a woman. Look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty, but my heart is pained by what I see. It _must_ have and give solace. _Leave me!_'

This time, in the '_leave me_' there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience. But she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eyes, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort. I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire. I can hardly tell how he managed the movement. It did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy. He gave his hand; it scarce touched her, I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.

The flash of pa.s.sion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself--rea.s.sured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life and seeking death.

'It made you very sad, then, to lose your friend?' said he.

'It kills me to be forgotten, monsieur,' I said. 'All these weary days I have not heard from you one word, and I was crushed with the possibility, growing to certainty, that you would depart without saying farewell.'

'Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck--that you do not know me? Must I show and teach you my character? You _will_ have proof that I can be a firm friend? Without clear proof this hand will not lie still in mine, it will not trust my shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof is ready. I come to justify myself.'

'Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, monsieur; I can listen now.'

After this, in _Villette_, the story drifts away from the real experience of Charlotte herself, not only in the circ.u.mstances related, but even in the emotions pictured, now painted, not from what she has felt herself, but from what she imagines for her heroine, that other happier self, lifted up into the heaven of romance, who, a.s.sured of Paul Emanuel's love, and his betrothed, waits and works in the school where he has appointed her Directress; in patient expectation of his return,--_that never comes to pa.s.s!_ For (why or wherefore, no literary critic of _Villette_ who measures the book by simply artistic standards can find any reason to explain) Charlotte won't let Lucy Snowe, the heroine, who is her other self, find happiness at last with Paul Emanuel: or even find him again, after that cruel separation, all due to the wicked craft and selfish jealousy of Madame Beck. Destiny interferes; a storm; a shipwreck--one is not told _what_ has happened: one is made to hear wailing winds and moaning ocean, that is all; we know nothing further than this: _Lucy Snowe waited and hoped; hoped and waited; but Paul Emanuel never came back._

But, at any rate, before he sailed on that last fatal voyage, all misunderstandings, all doubts had been swept away. He had driven Madame Beck from the room, and shown her his contempt and indignation. He had, with tenderness and pa.s.sion, declared his love for Lucy; and had asked her to be his wife. This is what had followed after those scenes between Lucy and Madame Beck in the late night scene in the cla.s.s-rooms and between Lucy and Paul Emanuel, when Madame Beck is put out of the room by Paul Emanuel, who insists upon saying good-bye to Lucy.

All that we know of what followed these scenes, enacted under different circ.u.mstances, in Charlotte's life, must be gathered, not by a quite literal acceptance, but by an intelligent and impartial weighing, of her statements, contained in a letter written on the 23rd January 1844, three weeks after her return to Haworth.

'I suffered much before I left Brussels. I think, however long I live, I shall not forget what the parting with M. Heger cost me: it grieved me so much to grieve him, who had been so true, kind and disinterested a friend. At parting, he gave me a kind of diploma certifying my abilities as a teacher sealed with the seal of the Athenee Royal of which he is a professor.... I do not know whether you feel as I do, but there are times when it appears to me as if all my ideas and feelings, except a few friendships and affections, are changed from what they used to be.

Something in me which used to be enthusiasm is tamed down and broken. I no longer regard myself as young--indeed I shall soon be twenty-eight--and it seems as if I ought to be working and having the rough realities of the world as other people do.'[2]

[1] New Year's Day, perhaps? Charlotte left Bruxelles 2nd January 1843.

[2] _Life_, p. 273.

CHAPTER VI

THE LOVE-LETTERS OF A ROMANTIC[1]

Taking up the study of Charlotte's letters written to M. Heger after her return to Haworth, and reading them in the light of what we know of the circ.u.mstances and emotions that have formed the feelings, and decided the tone and att.i.tude of the writer, what do we find to be the sentiment they reveal to us?

Is it the 'enthusiasm for a great man,' and the desire (for the sake of vanity, or of amus.e.m.e.nt) to keep up a correspondence with him?

Or is it the intellectual need of this teacher's instructions and advice, as a means of mental improvement?

Or is it the want of a companion to exchange ideas with, who is a brighter and more cultivated being than the Nusseys, Taylors, Woolers, and the others?

Or is it the pleasure of having a man friend, in the case of a woman who is neither pretty, nor young, nor silly, enough to indulge in an ordinary flirtation?

Or is it none amongst these several forms of desire, or want, that seeks its own good?

Is it love?--a love so exalted, so pa.s.sionate, so personal, so distinct from any other instinct or interest, physical, social or intellectual, that this sentiment stands out, in the order of human feelings, as honourable not only to the heart that feels it, but to human nature: so that brought into touch with it, one's own heart is uplifted above the common world, and gladdened '_by the sense_,' as Byron said,[2] '_of the existence of Love in its most extended and sublime capacity and of our own partic.i.p.ation of its good and of its glory._[3]

My contention is that it _is_ this romantic Love that reveals itself in Charlotte's letters to M. Heger. And for this reason, I agree with Mr.

Clement Shorter that they put her upon a higher pedestal than ever. For to have a heart capable of this great and glorious, albeit often tragical, romantic Love, that 'seeketh not its own,' and compared with which all other sorts of love, that _do_ seek their own, are as sounding bra.s.s and a tinkling cymbal is, _independently of deeds or works_, greatly to serve mankind. For it is to stand as a witness, amongst the meannesses of mortal and worldly things, to the existence of Something personal and immortal in the soul and heart of man, helping him '_to gild his dross thereby_.'[4] Something sovereign, that, quite independently of forms of belief, or fashions of opinion, '_rules by every school, till love and longing die_.' Something indestructible, confined to no epoch, ancient, mediaeval or modern, but, '_that was, or yet the lights were set, a whisper in the void; that will be sung in planets young when this is clean destroyed_.' In other words, I esteem human nature honoured in Charlotte Bronte, and Charlotte Bronte honoured in these Letters, _because they are love-letters of a rare and wonderful sort amongst the most beautiful, although they are the most sad ever written_. If they were _not_ love-letters, but expressed the enthusiasm of a woman wanting comradeship with a great man, I should esteem them discreditable to any hero-worshipper. Because one should not pester one's hero with letters, nor conceive the conceit of comradeship with an object of worship. And it is not true that Charlotte's letters to Thackeray, George Henry Lewes and other men of letters after she became famous, had the same character as these love-letters written to M.

Heger before her name was known; because in her letters to different celebrated writers, Charlotte talked about books or the criticism of books. But to M. Heger she throws open the secret chamber of her heart: she pours out its treasures of pa.s.sionate feelings (as pure as they were pa.s.sionate) at the feet of the man she loves; all she asks for from him in return is not to reprove her, nor refuse the offering; not to withdraw himself from her life altogether. To let her hear from him sometimes: not to leave her utterly alone, in the darkness, without any knowledge of what good or evil may befall one so dear to her.

Unfortunately we do not possess the first Letters of this correspondence. The four Letters given by Dr. Paul Heger to the British Museum all belong to a period when the Professor, who had answered (one does not know precisely in what way) Charlotte's first epistles, had left off replying to her; and the consistent motive of these four appeals is for some tidings of him, some proof that the 'estrangement from her Master,' to which she says she will never 'voluntarily'

consent, has not, in spite of her own unaltered devotion, irrevocably taken place.

'Tell me about anything you like, my Master,' she writes, 'only tell me something! No doubt, to write to a former under-mistress (no, I will not remember my employment as under-mistress, I refuse to recall it), but to write to an old pupil, cannot be, for you, an interesting occupation. I realise this; but for _me_, it is life. Your last letter served to keep me alive, to nourish me during six months. Now I must have another one; and you will give me one. Not because you bear me friendship (you cannot bear me much!), but because you have a compa.s.sionate soul, and because you would not condemn any one to slow suffering, simply to spare yourself a few moments of fatigue! To forbid me to write to you, to refuse to reply to me, would be to tear from me the only joy that I have in the world; to deprive me of my last privilege, a privilege which I will never _voluntarily_ renounce. Believe me, my Master! by writing to me, you do a good action--so long as I can believe you are not angry with me, so long as the hope is left me of news of you, I can be tranquil, and not too sad. But when a gloomy and prolonged silence warns me of the estrangement from me of my Master, when from day to day I expect a letter, and when, day after day, comes disappointment, to plunge me in overwhelming grief; and when the sweet and dear consolation of seeing your handwriting, of reading your counsels, fades from me like a vain vision,--then fever attacks me, appet.i.te and sleep fail: I feel that life wastes away.'[5]

This pa.s.sage is quoted from the Letter dated by Charlotte 18_th November_, without any indication of the year. Mr. Spielmann (who is responsible for the order given the Letters in the _Times_) esteems this one to be the last of the series; that is to say, to have been written ten months after the Letter dated by Charlotte 8 January, supposed by him to belong to the year 1845. With Dr. Paul Heger, I believe, on the contrary, that the Letter of the 18th November is the first of the series: and that it belongs to the year 1844; that is to say, was written ten months after Charlotte's return to England. This opinion seems to me established by the contents of the Letter, and by the account it gives of the conditions of affairs at Haworth, which were those that we find (if we consult Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_) did prevail in November 1844, but not in November 1845, and still less in November 1846.

My father (she writes) is in good health, but his eyesight is all but gone; he can no longer either read or write: and yet the doctors advise waiting some months longer before attempting any operation. This winter will be for him one long night. He rarely complains: and I admire his patience.

If Providence has the same calamity in reserve for me, may it grant me the same patience to endure it. It seems to me, Monsieur, that what is most bitter in severe physical afflictions, is that they compel us to share our sufferings with those who surround us. One can hide the maladies of the soul; but those that attack the body and enfeeble our faculties cannot be hidden. My father now allows me to read to and to write for him. He shows much more confidence in me than he has ever done before; and this is a great consolation to me.

Charlotte's account in this Letter of her father's patient resignation and increased confidence in her under the trial, to a man of his independent and somewhat domineering temper, of compulsory reliance on the a.s.sistance of a daughter from whom he had exacted complete submission heretofore and from her childhood upwards, is confirmed in Mrs. Gaskell's biography by the testimony of other letters belonging to the first year of her return from Belgium. But by November 1845 Mr.

Bronte's philosophy, before his own unmerited misfortune, had been troubled and transformed into acute misery and anxious forebodings by the downfall, both moral and physical, of his favourite amongst his children, Bramwell, the unhappy son--the only one--in this family of gifted daughters, whose perversion seems also to have had something of the irresponsibility of genius about it. Writing on the 4th November 1845 to Ellen Nussey,[6] Charlotte says:--

I hoped to be able to ask you to come to Haworth. It almost seemed as if Bramwell had a chance of getting employment; and I waited to know the results of his efforts, in order to say 'Dear Ellen, come and see us.' But the place is given to another person. Bramwell still remains at home, and whilst _he_ is here, _you_ shall not come.'

Here is Mrs. Gaskell's account of Mr. Bronte's experiences in this period, that are not to be reconciled with the account given of his good health and philosophical patience and resignation to dependence upon Charlotte given by her a year earlier:

For the last three years of his life, Bramwell took opium habitually, by way of stunning conscience: he drank, moreover, whenever he could get the opportunity.... He slept in his father's room; and he would sometimes declare that either he or his father would be dead before the morning!

The trembling sisters, sick with fright, would implore their father not to expose himself to this danger. But Mr. Bronte was no timid man; and perhaps he felt that he could possibly influence his son to some self-restraint more by showing trust in him than by showing fear. The sisters often listened for the report of a pistol in the dead of night, till watchful eye and hearkening ear grew heavy and dull with the perpetual strain upon their nerves. In the mornings, young Bronte would saunter out saying, with a drunkard's incontinence of speech, 'The poor old man and I have had a terrible night of it; he does his best, the poor old man, but it's all over with me.'

One may safely affirm that if Charlotte had been writing in November 1845 it would not have been only his patience under the trial of loss of sight that she would have found to admire in her father. In November 1846 Mr. Bronte had successfully undergone the operation for cataract that saved him from blindness: and Charlotte herself, ten months after the overwhelming evidence of her 'master's estrangement,' given in his silence after her Letter of the 8th January, had saved her own soul from the malady she had endured without sharing her sufferings with any one; and was already writing _Jane Eyre_ ... so that the conclusion is surely forced upon us that the Letter of the 18th November belongs to the year 1844, and written ten months after her return to Haworth, 2nd January 1844, and represents the first, and not the last of these four Letters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REDUCED FROM A DRAWING BY CHARLOTTE BRONTe OF ASHBURNHAM CHURCH SENT TO M. HEGER. The drawing showing the date 1846 was given to the author by Mlle. Louise Heger]

It is important to establish this, because one has to read these Letters in their right order before one can understand the story they disclose of the long training in deferred hope, in expectation, crowned with disappointment, in vain pursuit of shadows that eluded her grasp, and of illusions that reveal themselves as forms of self-deceit only in the very hour when they have conquered belief; in other words, of the long training in personal suffering it took to create and fashion the genius of a writer whose magical gift was to be the power of transforming words into feelings.

Carrying through the examination of these doc.u.ments by the rule that recognises the Letter of the 18th November as written ten months after Charlotte's return to England, we discover in the opening sentence the fact that the last letter Charlotte had received from her Professor must have been in May of this same year; that is to say, four months after the sentimental leave-taking with her Professor, which sent Charlotte home to England with illusions about the extent to which her own pa.s.sionate grief at their separation was shared by M. Heger. By November these illusions have been dispelled; Charlotte understands perfectly now (although this does not make her any more just to Madame Heger) that the 'grief' of her 'Master,' that she had said she would 'never forget, never mind how long she might live,' was a very short-lived affair on his side; merely the transient regret of a teacher who will miss a favourite pupil from his cla.s.s.

'_Que ne puis-je avoir pour vous juste autant d'amitie que vous avez pour moi_,' she writes to him, '_ni plus, ni moins? Je serais alors si tranquille, si libre: je pourrais garder le silence pendant six mois sans effort_.'

There is a note of bitterness in this. In what precedes it there is no bitterness, but we have one of the pa.s.sages in these wonderful letters that seem to me to place them above all the other love-letters preserved in the world, as immortal records of the Romantic Love that honours human nature in the hearts that cherish it.

'The six months of silence are over: we are now at the 18th of November,' she writes:--

I may, then, write to you, without breaking my promise. The summer and winter have seemed very long to me: in truth, it has cost me painful efforts to endure up to now the privation I have imposed upon myself. You, for your part, cannot understand this! But, Monsieur, try to imagine, for one moment, that one of your children is a hundred and sixty leagues away from you; and that you are condemned to remain for six months, without writing to him; without receiving any news from him; without hearing anything about him; without knowing how he is;--well, then you may be able to understand, perhaps, how hard is such an obligation imposed upon me.

In connection with the opening phrase, we must recognise in it the confirmation of an a.s.sertion made in my article in the _Woman at Home_ published twenty years before these Letters were published, but which had for its authority the information given me by Dr. Paul Heger upon the occasion of a conversation, when he very kindly talked over with me the questions connected with events in his parents' life that, inasmuch as they happened before his birth, he knew as family traditions chiefly--but still as traditions derived from the only authentic sources of information that exist: Dr. Paul Heger's theory was that until Charlotte had left Bruxelles and commenced to write to his father letters in a tone of exaltation that announced an exaggerated attachment, Monsieur Heger himself had never suspected the existence of any such sentiment; and that he, and Madame Heger (?)--were disposed to regard it as an attack of morbid regret for the more animated life she had led in Bruxelles, and the dulness of her home surroundings. And that, acting upon this supposition, they had thought it advisable (and this in Charlotte's own interests chiefly) to let her know that they were both of them distressed and displeased by the tone of her letters; and that if she wished to keep up the correspondence, she must become more reasonable and temperate in her way of expressing herself; and that, as the exchange of letters between busy people became onerous, there must be only two letters every year at intervals of six months. We find Charlotte acknowledging this condition, as one that she had accepted, but that she complained of as a great 'privation': and she then goes on to explain (as only one taught by romantic, that is to say by unselfish, and unsensual, love, that 'does not seek its own,' could explain it) in what this 'privation' consists.

Did any woman, neglected by the man she loves, ever discover a device, at once so pa.s.sionate, and so poetically pure as Charlotte's, who makes the man who does not love her, but whom she knows is an adoring father, try to realise what she feels, so far away from him, and left without tidings _by asking him to picture what he would feel if separated by a hundred and sixty leagues from his little child, he were left without news of him?_