_At school abroad_
Brussels [c. _May_ 1842].
I was twenty-six years old a week or two since; and at this ripe time
of life I am a school-girl, and, on the whole, very happy in that
capacity. It felt very strange at first to submit to authority instead
of exercising it--to obey orders instead of giving them; but I like
that state of things. I returned to it with the same avidity that a
cow, that has long been kept on dry hay, returns to fresh grass. Don't
laugh at my simile. It is natural to me to submit, and very unnatural
to command.
This is a large school, in which there are about forty externes, or
day-pupils, and twelve pensionnaires, or boarders. Madame Héger,
the head, is a lady of precisely the same cast of mind, degree of
cultivation, and quality of intellect as Miss ----. I think the severe
points are a little softened, because she has not been disappointed,
and consequently soured. In a word, she is a married instead of a
maiden lady. There are three teachers in the school--Mademoiselle
Blanche, Mademoiselle Sophie, and Mademoiselle Marie. The two first
have no particular character. One is an old maid, and the other will
be one. Mademoiselle Marie is talented and original, but of repulsive
and arbitrary manners, which have made the whole school, except myself
and Emily, her bitter enemies. No less than seven masters attend, to
teach the different branches of education--French, Drawing, Music,
Singing, Writing, Arithmetic, and German. All in the house are
Catholics except ourselves, one other girl, and the gouvernante
of Madame's children, an Englishwoman, in rank something between a
lady's-maid and a nursery governess. The difference in country and
religion makes a broad line of demarcation between us and all the
rest. We are completely isolated in the midst of numbers. Yet I think
I am never unhappy; my present life is so delightful, so congenial to
my own nature, compared to that of a governess. My time, constantly
occupied, passes too rapidly. Hitherto both Emily and I have had good
health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one
individual of whom I have not yet spoken--M. Héger, the husband of
Madame. He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but
very choleric and irritable in temperament. He is very angry with me
just at present, because I have written a translation which he chose
to stigmatize as '_peu correcte_'. He did not tell me so, but wrote
the word on the margin of my book, and asked, in brief stern phrase,
how it happened that my compositions were always better than my
translations? adding that the thing seemed to him inexplicable. The
fact is, some weeks ago, in a high-flown humour, he forbade me to use
either dictionary or grammar in translating the most difficult English
compositions into French. This makes the task rather arduous, and
compels me every now and then to introduce an English word, which
nearly plucks the eyes out of his head when he sees it. Emily and he
don't draw well together at all. Emily works like a horse, and she has
had great difficulties to contend with--far greater than I have
had. Indeed, those who come to a French school for instruction ought
previously to have acquired a considerable knowledge of the French
language, otherwise they will lose a great deal of time, for the
course of instruction is adapted to natives and not to foreigners;
and in these large establishments they will not change their ordinary
course for one or two strangers. The few private lessons that M. Héger
has vouchsafed to give us, are, I suppose, to be considered a great
favour; and I can perceive they have already excited much spite and
jealousy in the school.
You will abuse this letter for being short and dreary, and there are a
hundred things which I want to tell you, but I have not time. Brussels
is a beautiful city. The Belgians hate the English. Their external
morality is more rigid than ours. To lace the stays without a
handkerchief on the neck is considered a disgusting piece of
indelicacy.