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 Bronte's own desire, she gave her
English lessons in the _classe_, or schoolroom, without the supervision
of Madame or M. Heger. 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. Heger'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 allee defendue, 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 Heger 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 Heger 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. Heger 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. Heger 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. Heger 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 Hegers 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 _epoux_ of Mademoiselle
Bronte 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 Hegers. 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 Heger, 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.
Heger'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 NAPOLEON.
"Napoleon naquit en Corse et mourut a Ste. Helene. Entre ces deux
iles rien qu'un vaste et brulant desert et l'ocean 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
carriere d'un soldat parvenu, des champs de bataille, une mer de sang,
un trone, puis du sang encore, et des fers. Sa vie, c'est l'arc en
ciel; les deux points extremes touchent la terre, la comble lumi-neuse
mesure les cieux. Sur Napoleon au berceau une mere brillait; dans la
maison paternelle il avait des freres et des soeurs; plus tard dans
son palais il eut une femme qui l'aimait. Mais sur son lit de mort
Napoleon est seul; plus de mere, ni de frere, ni de soeur, ni de
femme, ni d'enfant!! D'autres ont dit et rediront ses exploits, moi,
je m'arrete a contempler l'abandonnement de sa derniere heure!
"Il est la, exile et captif, enchaine sur un ecueil. Nouveau
Promethee il subit le chatiment de son orgueil! Promethee avait voulu
etre Dieu et Createur; il deroba le feu du Ciel pour animer le corps
qu'il avait forme. Et lui, Buonaparte, il a voulu creer, non pas un
homme, mais un empire, et pour donner une existence, une ame, a son
oeuvre gigantesque, il n'a pas hesite a arracher la vie a des nations
entieres. Jupiter indigne de l'impiete de Promethee, le riva vivant a
la cime du Caucase. Ainsi, pour punir l'ambition rapace de
Buonaparte, la Providence l'a enchaine, jusqu'a ce que la mort s'en
suivit, sur un roc isole de l'Atlantique. Peut-etre la aussi a-t-il
senti lui fouillant le flanc cet insatiable vautour dont parle la
fable, peut-etre a-t-il souffert aussi cette soif du coeur, cette faim
de l'ame, qui torturent l'exile, loin de sa famille et de sa patrie.
Mais parler ainsi n'est-ce pas attribuer gratuitement a Napoleon une
humaine faiblesse qu'il n'eprouva jamais? Quand donc s'est-il laisse
enchainer par un lien d'affection? Sans doute d'autres conquerants
ont hesite dans leur carriere de gloire, arretes par un obstacle
d'amour ou d'amitie, retenus par la main d'une femme, rappeles par la
voix d'un ami--lui, jamais! Il n'eut pas besoin, comme Ulysse, de se
lier au mat du navire, ni de se boucher les oreilles avec de la cire;
il ne redoutait pas le chant des Sirenes--il le dedaignait; il se fit
marbre et fer pour executer ses grands projets. Napoleon ne se
regardait pas comme un homme, mais comme l'incarnation d'un peuple. Il
n'aimait pas; il ne considerait ses amis et ses proches que comme des
instruments auxquels il tint, tant qu'ils furent utiles, et qu'il jeta
de cote quand ils cesserent de l'etre. Qu'on ne se permette donc pas
d'approcher du sepulcre du Corse avec sentiments de pitie, ou de
souiller de larmes la pierre qui couvre ses restes, son ame
repudierait tout cela. On a dit, je le sais, qu'elle fut cruelle la
main qui le separa de sa femme et de son enfant. Non, c'etait une
main qui, comme la sienne, ne tremblait ni de passion ni de crainte,
c'etait la main d'un homme froid, convaincu, qui avait su deviner
Buonaparte; et voici ce que disait cet homme que la defaite n'a pu
humilier, ni la victoire enorgueiller. 'Marie-Louise n'est pas la
femme de Napoleon; c'est la France que Napoleon a epousee; c'est la
France qu'il aime, leur union enfante la perte de l'Europe; voila la
divorce que je veux; voila l'union qu'il faut briser.'
"La voix des timides et des traitres protesta contre cette sentence.
'C'est abuser de droit de la victoire! C'est fouler aux pieds le
vaincu! Que l'Angleterre se montre clemente, qu'elle ouvre ses bras
pour recevoir comme hote son ennemi desarme.' L'Angleterre aurait
peut-etre ecoute ce conseii, car partout et toujours il y a des ames
faibles et timorees bientot seduites par la flatterie ou effrayees par
le reproche. Mais la Providence permit qu'un homme se trouvat qui n'a
jamais su ce que c'est que la crainte; qui aima sa patrie mieux que sa
renommee; impenetrable devant les menaces, inaccessible aux louanges,
il se presenta devant le conseil de la nation, et levant son front
tranquille en haut, il osa dire: 'Que la trahison se taise! car c'est
trahir que de conseiller de temporiser avec Buonaparte. Moi je sais
ce que sont ces guerres dont l'Europe saigne encore, comme une victime
sous le couteau du boucher. Il faut en finir avec Napoleon
Buonaparte. Vous vous effrayez a tort d'un mot si dur! Je n'ai pas
de magnanimite, dit-on? Soit! que m'importe ce qu'on dit de moi? Je
n'ai pas ici a me faire une reputation de heros magnanime, mais a
guerir, si la cure est possible, l'Europe qui se meurt, epuisee de
ressources et de sang, l'Europe dont vous negligez les vrais interets,
pre-occupes que vous etes d'une vaine renommee de clemence. Vous etes
faibles! Eh bien! je viens vous aider. Envoyez Buonaparte a Ste.
Helene! n'hesitez pas, ne cherchez pas un autre endroit; c'est le seul
convenable. Je vous le dis, j'ai reflechi pour vous; c'est la qu'il
doit etre et non pas ailleurs. Quant a Napoleon, homme, soldat, je
n'ai rien contre lui; c'est un lion royal, aupres de qui vous n'etes
que des chacals. Mais Napoleon Empereur, c'est autre chose, je
l'extirperai du sol de l'Europe.' Et celui qui parla ainsi toujours
sut garder sa promesse, celle-la comme toutes les autres. Je l'ai
dit, et je le repete, cet homme est l'egal de Napoleon par le genie;
comme trempe de caractere, comme droiture, comme elevation de pensee
et de but, il est d'une tout autre espece. Napoleon Buonaparte etait
avide de renommee et de gloire; Arthur Wellesley ne se soucie ni de
l'une ni de l'autre; l'opinion publique, la popularite, etaient choses
de grand valeur aux yeux de Napoleon; pour Wellington l'opinion
publique est une rumeur, un rien que le souffle de son inflexible
volonte fait disparaitre comme une bulle de savon. Napoleon flattait
le peuple; Wellington le brusqne; l'un cherchait les
applau-dissements, l'autre ne se soucie que du temoignage de sa
conscience; quand elle approuve, c'est assez; toute autre louange
l'obsede. Aussi ce peuple, qui adorait Buonaparte s'irritait,
s'insurgeait contre la morgue de Wellington: parfois il lui temoigna
sa colere et sa haine par des grognements, par des hurlements de betes
fauves; et alors, avec une impassibilite de senateur romain, le
moderne Coriolan toisait du regard l'emeute furieuse; il croisait ses
bras nerveux sur sa large poitrine, et seul, debout sur son seuil, il
attendait, il bravait cette tempete populaire dont les flots venaient
mourir a quelques pas de lui: et quand la foule, honteuse de sa
rebellion, venait lecher les pieds du maitre, le hautain patricien
meprisait l'hommage d'aujourd'hui comme la haine d'hier, et dans les
rues de Londres, et devant son palais ducal d'Apsley, il repoussait
d'un genre plein de froid dedain l'incommode empressement du peuple
enthousiaste. Cette fierte neanmoins n'excluait pas en lui une rare
modestie; partout il se soustrait a l'eloge; se derobe au panegyrique;
jamais il ne parle de ses exploits, et jamais il ne souffre qu'un
autre lui en parle en sa presence. Son caractere egale en grandeur et
surpasse en verite celui de tout autre heros ancien ou moderne. La
gloire de Napoleon crut en une nuit, comme la vigne de Jonas, et il
suffit d'un jour pour la fletrir; la gloire de Wellington est comme
les vieux chenes qui ombragent le chateau de ses peres sur les rives
du Shannon; le chene croit lentement; il lui faut du temps pour
pousser vers le ciel ses branches noueuses, et pour enfoncer dans le
sol ces racines profondes qui s'enchevetrent dans les fondements
solides de la terre; mais alors, l'arbre seculaire, inebranlable comme
le roc ou il a sa base, brave et la faux du temps et l'effort des
vents et des tempetes. Il faudra peut-etre un siecle a l'Angleterre
pour qu'elle connaise la valeur de son heros. Dans un siecle,
l'Europe entiere saura combien Wellington a des droits a sa
reconnaissance."
How often in writing this paper "in a strange land," must Miss Bronte
have thought of the old childish disputes in the kitchen of Haworth
parsonage, touching the respective merits of Wellington and Buonaparte!
Although the title given to her _devoir_ is, "On the Death of Napoleon,"
she seems yet to have considered it a point of honour rather to sing
praises to an English hero than to dwell on the character of a foreigner,
placed as she was among those who cared little either for an England or
for Wellington. She now felt that she had made great progress towards
obtaining proficiency in the French language, which had been her main
object in coming to Brussels. But to the zealous learner "Alps on Alps
arise." No sooner is one difficulty surmounted than some other desirable
attainment appears, and must be laboured after. A knowledge of German
now became her object; and she resolved to compel herself to remain in
Brussels till that was gained. The strong yearning to go home came upon
her; the stronger self-denying will forbade. There was a great internal
struggle; every fibre of her heart quivered in the strain to master her
will; and, when she conquered herself, she remained, not like a victor
calm and supreme on the throne, but like a panting, torn, and suffering
victim. Her nerves and her spirits gave way. Her health became much
shaken.
"Brussels, August 1st, 1843.
"If I complain in this letter, have mercy and don't blame me, for, I
forewarn you, I am in low spirits, and that earth and heaven are
dreary and empty to me at this moment. In a few days our vacation
will begin; everybody is joyous and animated at the prospect, because
everybody is to go home. I know that I am to stay here during the
five weeks that the holidays last, and that I shall be much alone
during that time, and consequently get downcast, and find both days
and nights of a weary length. It is the first time in my life that I
have really dreaded the vacation. Alas! I can hardly write, I have
such a dreary weight at my heart; and I do so wish to go home. Is not
this childish? Pardon me, for I cannot help it. However, though I am
not strong enough to bear up cheerfully, I can still bear up; and I
will continue to stay (D. V.) some months longer, till I have acquired
German; and then I hope to see all your faces again. Would that the
vacation were well over! it will pass so slowly. Do have the
Christian charity to write me a long, long letter; fill it with the
minutest details; nothing will be uninteresting. Do not think it is
because people are unkind to me that I wish to leave Belgium; nothing
of the sort. Everybody is abundantly civil, but home-sickness keeps
creeping over me. I cannot shake it off. Believe me, very merrily,
vivaciously, gaily, yours,
"C.B."
The _grandes vacances_ began soon after the date of this letter, when she
was left in the great deserted pensionnat, with only one teacher for a
companion. This teacher, a Frenchwoman, had always been uncongenial to
her; but, left to each other's sole companionship, Charlotte soon
discovered that her associate was more profligate, more steeped in a kind
of cold, systematic sensuality, than she had before imagined it possible
for a human being to be; and her whole nature revolted from this woman's
society. A low nervous fever was gaining upon Miss Bronte. She had
never been a good sleeper, but now she could not sleep at all. Whatever
had been disagreeable, or obnoxious, to her during the day, was presented
when it was over with exaggerated vividness to her disordered fancy.
There were causes for distress and anxiety in the news from home,
particularly as regarded Branwell. In the dead of the night, lying awake
at the end of the long deserted dormitory, in the vast and silent house,
every fear respecting those whom she loved, and who were so far off in
another country, became a terrible reality, oppressing her and choking up
the very life-blood in her heart. Those nights were times of sick,
dreary, wakeful misery; precursors of many such in after years.
In the daytime, driven abroad by loathing of her companion and by the
weak restlessness of fever, she tried to walk herself into such a state
of bodily fatigue as would induce sleep. So she went out, and with weary
steps would traverse the Boulevards and the streets, sometimes for hours
together; faltering and resting occasionally on some of the many benches
placed for the repose of happy groups, or for solitary wanderers like
herself. Then up again--anywhere but to the pensionnat--out to the
cemetery where Martha lay--out beyond it, to the hills whence there is
nothing to be seen but fields as far as the horizon. The shades of
evening made her retrace her footsteps--sick for want of food, but not
hungry; fatigued with long continued exercise--yet restless still, and
doomed to another weary, haunted night of sleeplessness. She would
thread the streets in the neighbourhood of the Rue d'Isabelle, and yet
avoid it and its occupant, till as late an hour as she dared be out. At
last, she was compelled to keep her bed for some days, and this
compulsory rest did her good. She was weak, but less depressed in
spirits than she had been, when the school re-opened, and her positive
practical duties recommenced.
She writes thus:--
"October 13th, 1843
"Mary is getting on well, as she deserves to do. I often hear from her.
Her letters and yours are one of my few pleasures. She urges me very
much to leave Brussels and go to her; but, at present, however tempted to
take such a step, I should not feel justified in doing so. To leave a
certainty for a complete uncertainty, would be to the last degree
imprudent. Notwithstanding that, Brussels is indeed desolate to me now.
Since the D.s left, I have had no friend. I had, indeed, some very kind
acquaintances in the family of a Dr. ---, but they, too, are gone now.
They left in the latter part of August, and I am completely alone. I
cannot count the Belgians anything. It is a curious position to be so
utterly solitary in the midst of numbers. Sometimes the solitude
oppresses me to an excess. One day, lately, I felt as if I could bear it
no longer, and I went to Madame Heger, and gave her notice. If it had
depended on her, I should certainly have soon been at liberty; but M.
Heger, having heard of what was in agitation, sent for me the day after,
and pronounced with vehemence his decision, that I should not leave. I
could not, at that time, have persevered in my intention without exciting
him to anger; so I promised to stay a little while longer. How long that
will be, I do not know. I should not like to return to England to do
nothing. I am too old for that now; but if I could hear of a favourable
opportunity for commencing a school, I think I should embrace it. We
have as yet no fires here, and I suffer much from cold; otherwise, I am
well in health. Mr. --- will take this letter to England. He is a
pretty-looking and pretty behaved young man, apparently constructed
without a backbone; by which I don't allude to his corporal spine, which
is all right enough, but to his character.
"I get on here after a fashion; but now that Mary D. has left
Brussels, I have nobody to speak to, for I count the Belgians as
nothing. Sometimes I ask myself how long shall I stay here; but as
yet I have only asked the question; I have not answered it. However,
when I have acquired as much German as I think fit, I think I shall
pack up bag and baggage and depart. Twinges of home-sickness cut me
to the heart, every now and then. To-day the weather is glaring, and
I am stupified with a bad cold and headache. I have nothing to tell
you. One day is like another in this place. I know you, living in
the country, can hardly believe it is possible life can be monotonous
in the centre of a brilliant capital like Brussels; but so it is. I
feel it most on holidays, when all the girls and teachers go out to
visit, and it sometimes happens that I am left, during several hours,
quite alone, with four great desolate schoolrooms at my disposition. I
try to read, I try to write; but in vain. I then wander about from
room to room, but the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs
down one's spirits like lead. You will hardly believe that Madame
Heger (good and kind as I have described her) never comes near me on
these occasions. I own, I was astonished the first time I was left
alone thus; when everybody else was enjoying the pleasures of a fete
day with their friends, and she knew I was quite by myself, and never
took the least notice of me. Yet, I understand, she praises me very
much to everybody, and says what excellent lessons I give. She is not
colder to me than she is to the other teachers; but they are less
dependent on her than I am. They have relations and acquaintances in
Bruxelles. You remember the letter she wrote me, when I was in
England? How kind and affectionate that was? is it not odd? In the
meantime, the complaints I make at present are a sort of relief which
I permit myself. In all other respects I am well satisfied with my
position, and you may say so to people who inquire after me (if any
one does). Write to me, dear, whenever you can. You do a good deed
when you send me a letter, for you comfort a very desolate heart."
One of the reasons for the silent estrangement between Madame Heger and
Miss Bronte, in the second year of her residence at Brussels, is to be
found in the fact, that the English Protestant's dislike of Romanism
increased with her knowledge of it, and its effects upon those who
professed it; and when occasion called for an expression of opinion from
Charlotte Bronte, she was uncompromising truth. Madame Heger, on the
opposite side, was not merely a Roman Catholic, she was _devote_. Not of
a warm or impulsive temperament, she was naturally governed by her
conscience, rather than by her affections; and her conscience was in the
hands of her religious guides. She considered any slight thrown upon her
Church as blasphemy against the Holy Truth; and, though she was not given
to open expression of her thoughts and feelings, yet her increasing
coolness of behaviour showed how much her most cherished opinions had
been wounded. Thus, although there was never any explanation of Madame
Heger's change of manner, this may be given as one great reason why,
about this time, Charlotte was made painfully conscious of a silent
estrangement between them; an estrangement of which, perhaps, the former
was hardly aware. I have before alluded to intelligence from home,
calculated to distress Charlotte exceedingly with fears respecting
Branwell, which I shall speak of more at large when the realisation of
her worst apprehensions came to affect the daily life of herself and her
sisters. I allude to the subject again here, in order that the reader
may remember the gnawing, private cares, which she had to bury in her own
heart; and the pain of which could only be smothered for a time under the
diligent fulfilment of present duty. Another dim sorrow was faintly
perceived at this time. Her father's eyesight began to fail; it was not
unlikely that he might shortly become blind; more of his duty must
devolve on a curate, and Mr. Bronte, always liberal, would have to pay at
a higher rate than he had heretofore done for this assistance.
She wrote thus to Emily:--
"Dec.1st, 1843.
"This is Sunday morning. They are at their idolatrous 'messe,' and I am
here, that is in the Refectoire. I should like uncommonly to be in the
dining-room at home, or in the kitchen, or in the back kitchen. I should
like even to be cutting up the hash, with the clerk and some register
people at the other table, and you standing by, watching that I put
enough flour, not too much pepper, and, above all, that I save the best
pieces of the leg of mutton for Tiger and Keeper, the first of which
personages would be jumping about the dish and carving-knife, and the
latter standing like a devouring flame on the kitchen-floor. To complete
the picture, Tabby blowing the fire, in order to boil the potatoes to a
sort of vegetable glue! How divine are these recollections to me at this
moment! Yet I have no thought of coming home just now. I lack a real
pretext for doing so; it is true this place is dismal to me, but I cannot
go home without a fixed prospect when I get there; and this prospect must
not be a situation; that would be jumping out of the frying-pan into the
fire. _You_ call yourself idle! absurd, absurd! . . . Is papa well? Are
you well? and Tabby? You ask about Queen Victoria's visit to Brussels. I
saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and
six, surrounded by soldiers. She was laughing and talking very gaily.
She looked a little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed, not much
dignity or pretension about her. The Belgians liked her very well on the
whole. They said she enlivened the sombre court of King Leopold, which
is usually as gloomy as a conventicle. Write to me again soon. Tell me
whether papa really wants me very much to come home, and whether you do
likewise. I have an idea that I should be of no use there--a sort of
aged person upon the parish. I pray, with heart and soul, that all may
continue well at Haworth; above all in our grey half-inhabited house. God
bless the walls thereof! Safety, health, happiness, and prosperity to
you, papa, and Tabby. Amen.
"C. B."
Towards the end of this year (1843) various reasons conspired with the
causes of anxiety which have been mentioned, to make her feel that her
presence was absolutely and imperatively required at home, while she had
acquired all that she proposed to herself in coming to Brussels the
second time; and was, moreover, no longer regarded with the former
kindliness of feeling by Madame Heger. In consequence of this state of
things, working down with sharp edge into a sensitive mind, she suddenly
announced to that lady her immediate intention of returning to England.
Both M. and Madame Heger agreed that it would be for the best, when they
learnt only that part of the case which she could reveal to them--namely,
Mr. Bronte's increasing blindness. But as the inevitable moment of
separation from people and places, among which she had spent so many
happy hours, drew near, her spirits gave way; she had the natural
presentiment that she saw them all for the last time, and she received
but a dead kind of comfort from being reminded by her friends that
Brussels and Haworth were not so very far apart; that access from one
place to the other was not so difficult or impracticable as her tears
would seem to predicate; nay, there was some talk of one of Madame
Heger's daughters being sent to her as a pupil, if she fulfilled her
intention of trying to begin a school. To facilitate her success in this
plan, should she ever engage in it, M. Heger gave her a kind of diploma,
dated from, and sealed with the seal of the Athenee Royal de Bruxelles,
certifying that she was perfectly capable of teaching the French
language, having well studied the grammar and composition thereof, and,
moreover, having prepared herself for teaching by studying and practising
the best methods of instruction. This certificate is dated December 29th
1843, and on the 2nd of January, 1844, she arrived at Haworth.
On the 23rd of the month she writes as follows:--
"Every one asks me what I am going to do, now that I am returned home;
and every one seems to expect that I should immediately commence a
school. In truth, it is what I should wish to do. I desire it above all
things. I have sufficient money for the undertaking, and I hope now
sufficient qualifications to give me a fair chance of success; yet I
cannot yet permit myself to enter upon life--to touch the object which
seems now within my reach, and which I have been so long straining to
attain. You will ask me why? It is on papa's account; he is now, as you
know, getting old, and it grieves me to tell you that he is losing his
sight. I have felt for some months that I ought not to be away from him;
and I feel now that it would be too selfish to leave him (at least, as
long as Branwell and Anne are absent), in order to pursue selfish
interests of my own. With the help of God, I will try to deny myself in
this matter, and to wait.
"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 has 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
professor. I was surprised also at the degree of regret expressed by my
Belgian pupils, when they knew I was going to leave. I did not think it
had been in their phlegmatic nature . . . I do not know whether you feel
as I do, but there are times now 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 have fewer illusions; what I wish for now is
active exertion--a stake in life. Haworth seems such a lonely, quiet
spot, buried away from the world. 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 braving the rough realities of the world, as other
people do. It is, however, my duty to restrain this feeling at present,
and I will endeavour to do so."
Of course her absent sister and brother obtained a holiday to welcome her
return home, and in a few weeks she was spared to pay a visit to her
friend at B. But she was far from well or strong, and the short journey
of fourteen miles seems to have fatigued her greatly.
Soon after she came back to Haworth, in a letter to one of the household
in which she had been staying, there occurs this passage:--"Our poor
little cat has been ill two days, and is just dead. It is piteous to see
even an animal lying lifeless. Emily is sorry." These few words relate
to points in the characters of the two sisters, which I must dwell upon a
little. Charlotte was more than commonly tender in her treatment of all
dumb creatures, and they, with that fine instinct so often noticed, were
invariably attracted towards her. The deep and exaggerated consciousness
of her personal defects--the constitutional absence of hope, which made
her slow to trust in human affection, and, consequently, slow to respond
to any manifestation of it--made her manner shy and constrained to men
and women, and even to children. We have seen something of this
trembling distrust of her own capability of inspiring affection, in the
grateful surprise she expresses at the regret felt by her Belgian pupils
at her departure. But not merely were her actions kind, her words and
tones were ever gentle and caressing, towards animals: and she quickly
noticed the least want of care or tenderness on the part of others
towards any poor brute creature. The readers of "Shirley" may remember
that it is one of the tests which the heroine applies to her lover.
"Do you know what soothsayers I would consult?" . . . "The little
Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out
of the cranny in my wainscot; the bird in frost and snow that pecks at
my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my
knee. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb,
against whose shoulder and cheek it likes to purr. The old dog always
comes out of his kennel and wags his tail, and whines affectionately
when somebody passes." [For "somebody" and "he," read "Charlotte
Bronte" and "she."] "He quietly strokes the cat, and lets her sit
while he conveniently can; and when he must disturb her by rising, he
puts her softly down, and never flings her from him roughly: he always
whistles to the dog, and gives him a caress."
The feeling, which in Charlotte partook of something of the nature of an
affection, was, with Emily, more of a passion. Some one speaking of her
to me, in a careless kind of strength of expression, said, "she never
showed regard to any human creature; all her love was reserved for
animals." The helplessness of an animal was its passport to Charlotte's
heart; the fierce, wild, intractability of its nature was what often
recommended it to Emily. Speaking of her dead sister, the former told me
that from her many traits in Shirley's character were taken; her way of
sitting on the rug reading, with her arm round her rough bull-dog's neck;
her calling to a strange dog, running past, with hanging head and lolling
tongue, to give it a merciful draught of water, its maddened snap at her,
her nobly stern presence of mind, going right into the kitchen, and
taking up one of Tabby's red-hot Italian irons to sear the bitten place,
and telling no one, till the danger was well-nigh over, for fear of the
terrors that might beset their weaker minds. All this, looked upon as a
well-invented fiction in "Shirley," was written down by Charlotte with
streaming eyes; it was the literal true account of what Emily had done.
The same tawny bull-dog (with his "strangled whistle"), called "Tartar"
in "Shirley," was "Keeper" in Haworth parsonage; a gift to Emily. With
the gift came a warning. Keeper was faithful to the depths of his nature
as long as he was with friends; but he who struck him with a stick or
whip, roused the relentless nature of the brute, who flew at his throat
forthwith, and held him there till one or the other was at the point of
death. Now Keeper's household fault was this. He loved to steal
upstairs, and stretch his square, tawny limbs, on the comfortable beds,
covered over with delicate white counterpanes. But the cleanliness of
the parsonage arrangements was perfect; and this habit of Keeper's was so
objectionable, that Emily, in reply to Tabby's remonstrances, declared
that, if he was found again transgressing, she herself, in defiance of
warning and his well-known ferocity of nature, would beat him so severely
that he would never offend again. In the gathering dusk of an autumn
evening, Tabby came, half-triumphantly, half-tremblingly, but in great
wrath, to tell Emily that Keeper was lying on the best bed, in drowsy
voluptuousness. Charlotte saw Emily's whitening face, and set mouth, but
dared not speak to interfere; no one dared when Emily's eyes glowed in
that manner out of the paleness of her face, and when her lips were so
compressed into stone. She went upstairs, and Tabby and Charlotte stood
in the gloomy passage below, full of the dark shadows of coming night.
Down-stairs came Emily, dragging after her the unwilling Keeper, his hind
legs set in a heavy attitude of resistance, held by the "scuft of his
neck," but growling low and savagely all the time. The watchers would
fain have spoken, but durst not, for fear of taking off Emily's
attention, and causing her to avert her head for a moment from the
enraged brute. She let him go, planted in a dark corner at the bottom of
the stairs; no time was there to fetch stick or rod, for fear of the
strangling clutch at her throat--her bare clenched fist struck against
his red fierce eyes, before he had time to make his spring, and, in the
language of the turf, she "punished him" till his eyes were swelled up,
and the half-blind, stupified beast was led to his accustomed lair, to
have his swollen head fomented and cared for by the very Emily herself.
The generous dog owed her no grudge; he loved her dearly ever after; he
walked first among the mourners to her funeral; he slept moaning for
nights at the door of her empty room, and never, so to speak, rejoiced,
dog fashion, after her death. He, in his turn, was mourned over by the
surviving sister. Let us somehow hope, in half Red Indian creed, that he
follows Emily now; and, when he rests, sleeps on some soft white bed of
dreams, unpunished when he awakens to the life of the land of shadows.
Now we can understand the force of the words, "Our poor little cat is
dead. Emily is sorry."