IN THE RUE D'ISABELLE.
The Rue d'Isabelle had a character of its own. It lies below your feet
as you stand in the Rue Royale, near the statue of General Beliard. Four
flights of steps lead down to the street, half garden, half old houses,
with at one end a large square mansion, owning the garden that runs
behind it and to the right of it. The house is old; a Latin inscription
shows it to have been given to the great Guild of Cross-bowmen by Queen
Isabelle in the early years of the 17th century. The garden is older;
long before the Guild of the Cross-bowmen of the Great Oath, in
deference to the wish of Queen Isabelle, permitted the street to be made
through it, the garden had been their exercising place. There Isabelle
herself, a member of their order, had shot down the bird. But the garden
had a yet more ancient past; when apple-trees, pear-trees and alleys of
Bruges cherries, when plots of marjoram and mint, of thyme and
sweet-basil, filled the orchard and herbary of the Hospital of the Poor.
And the garden itself, before trees or flowers were planted, had
resounded with the yelp of the Duke's hounds, when, in the thirteenth
century, it had been the Fosse-aux-chiens. This historic garden, this
mansion, built by a queen for a great order, belonged in 1842 to
Monsieur and Madame Heger, and was a famous Pensionnat de Demoiselles.
There the Vicar of Haworth brought his two daughters one February day,
spent one night in Brussels and went straight back to his old house on
the moors, so modern in comparison with the mansion in Rue d'Isabelle.
A change, indeed, for Emily and Charlotte. Even now, Brussels (the
headquarters of Catholicism far more than modern Rome) has a taste
for pageantry that recalls mediaeval days. The streets decked with
boughs and strewn with flowers, through which pass slowly the
processions of the Church, white-clad children, boys like angels
scattering roses, standard-bearers with emblazoned banners. Surpliced
choristers singing Latin praises, acolytes in scarlet swinging censers,
reliquaries and images, before which the people fall down in prayer;
all this to-day is no uncommon sight in Brussels, and must have been
yet more frequent in 1842.
The flower-market out of doors, with clove-pinks, tall Mary-lilies and
delicate _roses d'amour_, filling the quaint mediaeval square before the
beautiful old facade of the Hotel de Ville. Ste.-Gudule with its spires
and arches; the Montagne de la Cour (almost as steep as Haworth street),
its windows ablaze at night with jewels; the little, lovely park, its
great elms just coming into leaf, its statues just bursting from their
winter sheaths of straw; the galleries of ancient pictures, their walls
a sober glory of colours, blues, deep as a summer night, rich reds,
brown golds, most vivid greens.
All this should have made an impression on the two home-keeping girls
from Yorkshire; and Charlotte, indeed, perceived something of its beauty
and strangeness. But Emily, from a bitter sense of exile, from a natural
narrowness of spirit, rebelled against it all as an insult to the memory
of her home--she longed, hopelessly, uselessly, for Haworth. The two
Brontes were very different to the Belgian school-girls in Madame
Heger's Pensionnat. They were, for one thing, ridiculously old to be at
school--twenty-four and twenty-six--and they seemed to feel their
position; their speech was strained and odd; all the "sceptical, wicked,
immoral French novels, over forty of them, the best substitute for
French conversation to be met with," which the girls had toiled through
with so much singleness of spirit, had not cured the broadness of their
accent nor the artificial idioms of their Yorkshire French. Monsieur
Heger, indeed, considered that they knew no French at all. Their
manners, even among English people, were stiff and prim; the hearty,
vulgar, genial expansion of their Belgian schoolfellows must have made
them seem as lifeless as marionettes. Their dress--Haworth had permitted
itself to wonder at the uncouthness of those amazing leg-of-mutton
sleeves (Emily's pet whim in and out of fashion), at the ill-cut
lankness of those skirts, clumsy enough on round little Charlotte, but a
very caricature of mediaevalism on Emily's tall, thin, slender figure.
They knew they were not in their element and kept close together, rarely
speaking. Yet Monsieur Heger, patiently watching, felt the presence of a
strange power under those uncouth exteriors.
An odd little man of much penetration, this French schoolmaster. "_Homme
de zele et de conscience, il possede a un haut degre l'eloquence du bon
sens et du coeur._" Fierce and despotic in the exaction of obedience,
yet tender of heart, magnanimous and tyrannical, absurdly vain and
absolutely unselfish. His wife's school was a kingdom to him; he brought
to it an energy, a zeal, a faculty of administration worthy to rule a
kingdom. It was with the delight of a botanist discovering a rare plant
in his garden, of a politician detecting a future statesman in his
nursery, that he perceived the unusual faculty which lifted his two
English pupils above their schoolfellows. He watched them silently for
some weeks. When he had made quite sure, he came forwards and, so to
speak, claimed them for his own.
Charlotte at once accepted the yoke. All that he set her to do she
toiled to accomplish; she followed out his trains of thought; she
adopted the style he recommended; she gave him in return for all his
pains the most unflagging obedience, the affectionate comprehension of a
large intelligence. She writes to Ellen of her delight in learning and
serving: "It is very natural to me to submit, very unnatural to
command."
Not so with Emily. The qualities which her sister understood and
accepted, irritated her unspeakably. The masterfulness in little things,
the irritability, the watchfulness of the fiery little professor of
rhetoric were utterly distasteful to her. She contradicted his theories
to his face; she did her lessons well, but as she chose to do them. She
was as indomitable, fierce, unappeasable, as Charlotte was ready and
submissive. And yet it was Emily who had the larger share of Monsieur
Heger's admiration. Egotistic and exacting he thought her, who never
yielded to his petulant, harmless egoism, who never gave way to his
benevolent tyranny; but he gave her credit for logical powers, for a
capacity for argument unusual in a man, and rare, indeed, in a woman.
She, not Charlotte, was the genius in his eyes, although he complained
that her stubborn will rendered her deaf to all reason, when her own
determination, or her own sense of right, was concerned. He fancied she
might be a great historian, so he told Mrs. Gaskell. "Her faculty of
imagination was such, her views of scenes and characters would have
been so vivid and so powerfully expressed, and supported by such a show
of argument that it would have dominated over the reader, whatever might
have been his previous opinions or his cooler perception of the truth.
She should have been a man: a great navigator!" cried the little, dark,
enthusiastic rhetorician. "Her powerful reason would have deduced new
spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong
imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or
difficulty; never have given way but with life!"
Yet they were never friends; though Monsieur Heger could speak so well
of Emily at a time, be it remembered, when it was Charlotte's praises
that were sought, when Emily's genius was set down as a lunatic's
hobgoblin of nightmare potency. He and she were alike too imperious, too
independent, too stubborn. A couple of swords, neither of which could
serve to sheathe the other.
That time in Brussels was wasted upon Emily. The trivial characters
which Charlotte made immortal merely annoyed her. The new impressions
which gave another scope to Charlotte's vision were nothing to her. All
that was grand, remarkable, passionate, under the surface of that
conventional Pensionnat de Demoiselles, was invisible to Emily.
Notwithstanding her genius she was very hard and narrow.
Poor girl, she was sick for home. It was all nothing to her, less than a
dream, this place she lived in. Charlotte's engrossment in her new life,
her eagerness to please her master, was a contemptible weakness to this
embittered heart. She would laugh when she found her elder sister trying
to arrange her homely gowns in the French taste, and stalk silently
through the large schoolrooms with a fierce satisfaction in her own
ugly sleeves, in the Haworth cut of her skirts. She seldom spoke a word
to any one; only sometimes she would argue with Monsieur Heger, perhaps
secretly glad to have the chance of shocking Charlotte. If they went out
to tea, she would sit still on her chair, answering "Yes" and "No;"
inert, miserable, with a heart full of tears. When her work was done she
would walk in the Cross-bowmen's ancient garden, under the trees,
leaning on her shorter sister's arm, pale, silent--a tall, stooping
figure. Often she said nothing at all. Charlotte, also, was very
profitably speechless; under her eyes 'Villette' was taking shape. But
Emily did not think of Brussels. She was dreaming of Haworth.
One poem that she wrote at this time may appropriately be quoted here.
It was, Charlotte tells us, "composed at twilight, in the schoolroom,
when the leisure of the evening play-hour brought back, in full tide,
the thoughts of home:"
"A little while, a little while,
The weary task is put away,
And I can sing and I can smile
Alike, while I have holiday.
"Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart--
What thought, what scene invites thee now?
What spot, or near or far apart,
Has rest for thee, my weary brow?
"There is a spot mid barren hills,
Where winter howls and driving rain;
But, if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.
"The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight's dome,
But what on earth is half so dear--
So longed for--as the hearth of home?
"The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dark moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-tree gaunt, the walks o'ergrown,
I love them; how I love them all!
"And, as I mused, the naked room,
The alien fire-light died away;
And from the midst of cheerless gloom
I passed to bright, unclouded day.
"A little and a lone green lane,
That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreary, dim, blue chain
Of mountains circling every side:
"A heaven so dear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And--deepening still the dream-like charm--
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
"_That_ was the scene, I knew it well;
I knew the turfy pathway's sweep,
That, winding o'er each billowy swell,
Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep.
"Could I have lingered but an hour,
It well had paid a week of toil;
But truth has banished fancy's power,
Restraint and heavy task recoil.
"Even as I stood with raptured eye,
Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear,
My hour of rest had fleeted by,
And back came labour, bondage, care."
Charlotte meanwhile writes in good, even in high spirits to her friend:
"I think I am never unhappy, my present life is so delightful, so
congenial, 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--Monsieur Heger, the husband
of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric--a man of power as to mind, but
very choleric and irritable as to temperament--a little, black, ugly
being, with a face that varies in expression; sometimes he borrows the
lineaments of an insane tom cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena,
occasionally--but very seldom--he discards these perilous attractions
and assumes an air not a hundred times removed from what you would call
mild and gentleman-like. He is very angry with me just at present,
because I have written a translation which he chose to stigmatise as
'peu correct.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the words 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 reader will already have recognised in the black, ugly, choleric
little professor of rhetoric, the one absolutely natural hero of a
woman's novel, the beloved and whimsical figure of the immortal Monsieur
Paul Emanuel.
"He and Emily," adds Charlotte, "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."
Emily did indeed work hard. She was there to work, and not till she had
learned a certain amount would her conscience permit her to return to
Haworth. It was for dear liberty that she worked. She began German, a
favourite study in after years, and of some purpose, since the style of
Hofmann left its impression on the author of 'Wuthering Heights.' She
worked hard at music; and in half a year the stumbling schoolgirl became
a brilliant and proficient musician. Her playing is said to have been
singularly accurate, vivid, and full of fire. French, too, both in
grammar and in literature, was a constant study.
Monsieur Heger recognised the fact that in dealing with the Brontes he
had not to make the customary allowances for a schoolgirl's undeveloped
inexperience. These were women of mature and remarkable intelligence.
The method he adopted in teaching them was rather that of a University
professor than such as usually is used in a pensionnat. He would choose
some masterpiece of French style, some passage of eloquence or
portraiture, read it to them with a brief lecture on its distinctive
qualities, pointing out what was exaggerated, what apt, what false, what
subtle in the author's conception or his mode of expressing it. They
were then dismissed to make a similar composition, without the aid of
grammar or dictionary, availing themselves as far as possible of the
_nuances_ of style and the peculiarities of method of the writer chosen
as the model of the hour. In this way the girls became intimately
acquainted with the literary _technique_ of the best French masters. To
Charlotte the lessons were of incalculable value, perfecting in her that
clear and accurate style which makes her best work never wearisome,
never old-fashioned. But the very thought of imitating any one,
especially of imitating any French writer, was repulsive to Emily,
"rustic all through, moorish, wild and knotty as a root of heath."[7]
When Monsieur Heger had explained his plan to them, "Emily spoke first;
and said that she saw no good to be derived from it; and that by
adopting it they would lose all originality of thought and expression.
She would have entered into an argument on the subject, but for this
Monsieur Heger had no time. Charlotte then spoke; she also doubted the
success of the plan; but she would follow out Monsieur Heger's advice,
because she was bound to obey him while she was his pupil."[8] Charlotte
soon found a keen enjoyment in this species of literary composition, yet
Emily's _devoir_ was the best. They are, alas, no longer to be seen, no
longer in the keeping of so courteous and proud a guardian as Mrs.
Gaskell had to deal with; but she and Monsieur Heger both have expressed
their opinions that in genius, imagination, power and force of language,
Emily was the superior of the two sisters.
So great was the personality of this energetic, silent, brooding,
ill-dressed young Englishwoman, that all who knew her recognised in her
the genius they were slow to perceive in her more sociable and vehement
sister. Madame Heger, the worldly, cold-mannered, _surveillante_ of
Villette, avowed the singular force of a nature most antipathetic to her
own. Yet Emily had no companions; the only person of whom we hear, in
even the most negative terms of friendliness, is one of the teachers, a
certain Mademoiselle Marie, "talented and original, but of repulsive and
arbitrary manners, which have made the whole school, except Emily and
myself, her bitter enemies." No less arbitrary and repulsive seemed poor
Emily herself, a sprig of purple heath at discord with those bright,
smooth geraniums and lobelias; Emily, of whom every surviving friend
extols the never-failing, quiet unselfishness, the genial spirit ready
to help, the timid but faithful affection. She was so completely _hors
de son assiette_ that even her virtues were misplaced.
There was always one thing she could do, one thing as natural as breath
to Emily--determined labour. In that merciful engrossment she could
forget her heart-sick weariness and the jarring strangeness of things;
every lesson conquered was another step taken on the long road home. And
the days allowed ample space for work, although it was supported upon a
somewhat slender diet.
Counting boarders and externes, Madame Heger's school numbered over a
hundred pupils. These were divided into three classes; the second, in
which the Brontes were, containing sixty students. In the last row, side
by side, absorbed and quiet, sat Emily and Charlotte. Soon after rising,
the pensionnaires were given their light Belgian breakfast of coffee and
rolls. Then from nine to twelve they studied. Three mistresses and seven
professors were engaged to take the different classes. At twelve a lunch
of bread and fruit; then a turn in the green alley, Charlotte and Emily
always walking together. From one till two fancy-work; from two till
four, lessons again. Then dinner: the one solid meal of the day. From
five till six the hour was free, Emily's musing-hour. From six till
seven the terrible _lecture pieuse_, hateful to the Brontes' Protestant
spirit. At eight a supper of rolls and water; then prayers, and to bed.
The room they slept in was a long school-dormitory. After all they could
not get the luxury, so much desired, of a separate room. But their two
beds were alone together at the further end, veiled in white curtains;
discreet and retired as themselves. Here, after the day's hard work,
they slept. In sleep, one is no longer an exile.
But often Emily did not sleep. The old well-known pain, wakefulness,
longing, was again beginning to relax her very heartstrings. "The same
suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her
upright heretic and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the
foreign and Romish system. Once more she seemed sinking, but this time
she rallied through the mere force of resolution: with inward remorse
and shame she looked back on her former failure, and resolved to
conquer, but the victory cost her dear. She was never happy till she
carried her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the
old parsonage house and desolate Yorkshire hills."[9]
But not yet, not yet, this happiness! The opportunity that had been so
hardly won must not be thrown away before the utmost had been made of
it. And she was not utterly alone. Charlotte was there. The success that
she had in her work must have helped a little to make her foreign home
tolerable to her. Soon she knew enough of music to give lessons to the
younger pupils. Then German, costing her and Charlotte an extra ten
francs the month, as also much severe study and struggle. Charlotte
writes in the summer: "Emily is making rapid progress in French, German,
music and drawing. Monsieur and Madame Heger begin to recognise the
valuable parts of her character under her singularities."
It was doubtful, even, whether they would come home in September. Madame
Heger made a proposal to her two English pupils for them to stay on,
without paying, but without salary, for half a year. She would dismiss
her English teacher, whose place Charlotte would take. Emily was to
teach music to the younger pupils. The proposal was kind and would be of
advantage to the sisters.
Charlotte declared herself inclined to accept it. "I have been happy in
Brussels," she averred. And Emily, though she, indeed, was not happy,
acknowledged the benefit to be derived from a longer term of study. Six
months, after all, was rather short to gain a thorough knowledge of
French, with Italian and German, when you add to these acquirements
music and drawing, which Emily worked at with a will. Besides, she could
not fail again, could not go back to Haworth leaving Charlotte behind;
neither could she spoil Charlotte's future by persuading her to reject
Madame Heger's terms. So both sisters agreed to stay in Brussels. They
were not utterly friendless there; two Miss Taylors, schoolfellows and
dear friends of Charlotte's, were at school at the Chateau de Kokleberg,
just outside the barriers. Readers of 'Shirley' know them as Rose and
Jessie Yorke. The Brontes met them often, nearly every week, at some
cousins of the Taylors, who lived in the town. But this diversion,
pleasant to Charlotte, was merely an added annoyance to Emily. She would
sit stiff and silent, unable to say a word, longing to be somewhere at
her ease. Mrs. Jenkins, too, had begun with asking them to spend their
Sundays with her; but Emily never said a word, and Charlotte, though
sometimes she got excited and spoke well and vehemently, never ventured
on an opinion till she had gradually wheeled round in her chair with her
back to the person she addressed. They were so shy, so rustic, Mrs.
Jenkins gave over inviting them, feeling that they did not like to
refuse, and found it no pleasure to come. Charlotte, indeed, still had
the Taylors, their cousins, and the family of a doctor living in the
town, whose daughter was a pupil and friend of hers. Charlotte, too, had
Madame Heger and her admired professor of rhetoric; but Emily had no
friend except her sister.
Nevertheless it was settled they should stay. The _grandes vacances_
began on the 15th of August, and, as the journey to Yorkshire cost so
much, and as they were anxious to work, the Bronte girls spent their
holidays in Rue d'Isabelle. Besides themselves only six or eight
boarders remained. All their friends were away holiday-making; but they
worked hard, preparing their lessons for the masters who, holidayless as
they, had stayed behind in white, dusty, blazing, airless Brussels, to
give lectures to the scanty class at Madame Heger's pensionnat.
So the dreary six weeks passed away. In October the term began again,
the pupils came back, new pupils were admitted, Monsieur Heger was more
gesticulatory, vehement, commanding than usual, and Madame, in her quiet
way, was no less occupied. Life and youth filled the empty rooms. The
Bronte girls, sad enough indeed, for their friend Martha Taylor had died
suddenly at the Chateau de Kokleberg, were, notwithstanding, able to
feel themselves in a more natural position for women of their age.
Charlotte, henceforth, by Monsieur Heger's orders, "Mademoiselle
Charlotte," was the new English teacher; Emily the assistant
music-mistress. But, in the middle of October, in the first flush of
their employment, came a sudden recall to Haworth. Miss Branwell was
very ill. Immediately the two girls, who owed so much to her, who, but
for her bounty, could never have been so far away in time of need,
decided to go home. They broke their determination to Monsieur and
Madame Heger, who, sufficiently generous to place the girls' duty before
their own convenience, upheld them in their course. They hastily packed
up their things, took places _via_ Antwerp to London, and prepared to
start. At the last moment, the trunks packed, in the early morning the
postman came. He brought another letter from Haworth. Their aunt was
dead.
So much the greater need that they should hasten home. Their father,
left without his companion of twenty years, to keep his house, to read
to him at night, to discuss with him on equal terms, their father would
be lonely and distressed. Henceforth one of his daughters must stay with
him. Anne was in an excellent situation; must they ask her to give it
up? And what now of the school, the school at Burlington? There was much
to take counsel over and consider; they must hurry home. So, knowing the
worst, their future hanging out of shape and loose before their eyes,
they set out on their dreary journey knowing not whether or when they
might return.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: C. Bronte.]
[Footnote 8: Mrs. Gaskell.]
[Footnote 9: C. Bronte. Memoir of her sisters.]