Suddenly there came a gleam of light through the key-hole, ... and

now I could hear a short, heavy tread upon the stairs--it was

coming up.... The gleam shot through the key-hole a third time,

with treble radiance. But what had I seen?... Was it a vision? was

it a ghost? It was a tall figure in white, like a winding sheet,

with a hideous face and balls of gleaming fire where the eyes

should be. The sight had stunned and levelled me almost like a

blow on the temple.... I cannot say how long I continued in this

swoon, but when I began to recover myself I was in my own bed.

She had received medical treatment, she learns as did Jane Eyre in the

similar incident. The "ghost," however, had been only George Burke--the

John Reed of _Jane Eyre_. Hence the choice of the name Burke by reason

of its connection with the Hare of the Burke and Hare association, the

writer by this choice showing his acquaintance with the fact that in

real life the Reeds and Jane Eyre were relations. After this incident

the story is for a while occupied with the petty happenings connected

with this orphan who "was not yet nine years old." An aunt of the Burkes

[? Aunt Branwell] comes to live with them, a "poor, quiet, elderly

spinster who paid a small stipend in order to preserve her independence

and keep up her dignity.... I must not attempt to describe her ... she

was fully six feet high." This is palpably antithetical: Miss Branwell

was not tall. And it is this aunt who provides the money for Catherine

Bell to go to school. Under the guise of presenting the Lowood school in

"Lagrange's Manuscript," M. Sue gives us often the Héger _pensionnat_.

Aunt Branwell provided Charlotte Brontë the money that enabled her to go

to the Hégers'.

I will give in parallel columns the arrival of Charlotte Brontë at the

Clergy Daughters' Institute as it is described in "Mademoiselle

Lagrange's Manuscript," and in _Jane Eyre_ the original:--

_Jane Eyre._ "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

By the Mademoiselle Lagrange,

By Currer Bell. of Eugène Sue's _Miss Mary ou

L'Institutrice_.

The first days at the The first days at the

Institution. Institution.

The coach door was open and ... We got to Kendall House.... I

a servant was standing at it: I had been sitting near my trunk

saw her ... by the light of the on the outside of the coach, and

lamps. my legs were numb with cold. I

was quite unable to move, so the

"Is there a little girl called coachman lifted me down along

Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I with my box. The door was open

answered "Yes," and was lifted when the coach stopped; a

out, my trunk was handed down. servant was standing there with

a lamp. "Are you Catherine Bell

we expects down here to-day?"

she asked me.

"My name is Kitty Bell, if you

please," replied I.

The servant led me ... into a The girl returned no answer, but

room, with a fire, where she having ushered me into a

left me alone.... I stood and spacious room with a fire in it,

warmed my numbed fingers over she left me there by myself; ...

the blaze; ... there was no there was no candle. I stood ...

candle. warming my numb hands and limbs.

I heard the door open ... and I

The door opened, and an saw a face ... I never can

individual entered, ... a tall forget. My heart told me

lady with dark hair, dark eyes, directly it was Miss Ashton

and a pale and large forehead [Eshton]. Dear, noble girl! her

[Miss Temple. Her real name was face was rather large, but

Miss Evans], her countenance was accurately oval--just as you see

grave, her bearing erect. them in the fine sacred pictures

of Murillo--those pictures of

grand female beauty.

She considered me attentively Everything in that face was

for a minute or two. great, open, frank, truthlike,

... and yet there was a grave

... "Are you tired?" she asked, ... melancholy overspreading

placing her hand on my shoulder. that regal countenance.... It

was singular to see a woman

... "A little, ma'am." acting as the manager of a

benevolent institution and

living apart from the world who

might have shone in any court in

Europe and ... perhaps had no

equal on any throne ... [!] She

advanced towards me stately, but

kindly, touched my cheek with

her finger, and then seeing me

smile, she smiled in return,

and, after scanning my features

a moment, she lifted me up and

kissed me.

"I love you, madam," I said.

Then she set me down ... and,

putting her hand upon my head,

she asked me:--

"Your name is Catherine Bell, is

it not?"... [Here follows the

"Shakespeare's Day" reference I

have already given.]

I have not ... alluded to the I had been at the Kendall

visits of Mr. Brocklehurst [Rev. Institute about three weeks

Mr. Carus Wilson]; his absence without seeing Mr. King [Mr.

was a relief to me.... One Brocklehurst] the master or

afternoon (I had ... been three registrar.... One morning when I

weeks at Lowood) ... I woke up I heard the bells in the

recognized almost instinctively dormitories ringing louder than

that gaunt outline, ... it was ever....

Mr. Brocklehurst.

I knew without being told this

After some lines we have the strange man was Mr. King.

hair-cutting incident I have

quoted already from "Lagrange's "Catherine Bell!" called out

Manuscript." This incident comes Miss Ashton.

after and not before Catherine

(Jane) has been commanded to

stand before the class.

On hearing my name I left my

place in the rank, and

advanced....

"So! this is Catherine Bell, is

it?" cried Mr. King. "I have

heard her kind friends at home

speak of Catherine Bell, and

... "Fetch that stool," said Mr. they tell me she is a naughty,

Brocklehurst.... "Place the vicious, headstrong child--very

child upon it." ungrateful to those for whose

generosity she ought to have so

And I was placed there. much respect and gratitude! Is

this true, Catherine Bell?"

"Miss Temple, ... children, it

becomes my duty to warn you that "No, sir; not a word of it."

this girl ... is a little

castaway, ... this girl is--a "What, child!... Are you a

liar!... Let her stand ... on little liar as well as an

that stool." ingrate? Stand here!"

What my sensations were no The passions and feelings of a

language can describe.... I child are only known to

mastered the rising hysteria ... children. Grown-up people seem

and took a firm stand on the to have forgotten them.[60] I

stool. stood there with cheeks burning

with shame, indignation, and

anger.... My pride had been

savagely assailed. I did not

want pity. I wanted ... a

refutation of the cruel charge;

I was not a liar; and those who

taxed me with ingratitude had no

gratitude to claim from me.

Great God! what emotions there

were raging in my breast! and

how my little heart did swell!

Often Mdlle. Lagrange's "Kitty Bell the Orphan" is mysterious in its

allusions. As when Catherine Bell says she does not like a French lady

teacher. The seed-cake incident of Chapter VIII. of _Jane Eyre_, which

is given at length in "Lagrange's Manuscript," is herewith worked in

again:--

"I don't like Madame Dubois...."

"Why so? she is a very good sort of a woman."

"That may be, but she takes snuff...."

"What is that to you or me, Catherine Bell? Surely it is no

business of ours?"

"Sometimes it is, though.... I gave her a slice of my seed-cake

yesterday, and she returned me half of it."

"That showed a good disposition in poor Madame Dubois; did it

not?"

"Yes; but when I was going to eat it myself I was seized with a

fit of sneezing, which I shall not forget in a hurry, I promise

you!"

"You took snuff then, Catherine Bell, for the first time in your

life?"

"ALL IN--ALL IN--FOR SCHOOL!" shouted the teachers and examples

that moment.

The following is an extract dealing with the fever scenes of _Jane

Eyre_:--

Fever and consumption had fixed their abode under the large roof

of Kendall Institution, death was stealing along with its soft,

wolf-like tread, to feed upon these poor children. The first

symptoms I remember that startled me were certain cold shiverings

and sudden fits of perspiration without warmth, which seized upon

the younger children. Then sickness and nausea, followed

immediately by vomiting. [M. Sue had been a surgeon.] ... Oh, how

cruel, how bitter it was to us when we saw the first little coffin

borne out of the school!... And now we began to hear, for the

first time, the dismal word _typhus_ uttered here and there in

whispers through the school.... When we went to the church on

Sundays, and saw the many little mounds of fresh black earth lying

over our innocent playmates of yesterday, our heads sank upon our

bosoms and we wept most sorrowfully.

Faithful to its model, "Lagrange's Manuscript" brings Isabella the

Creole as the rival of Catherine Bell, and thus of the Creole's husband

Catherine writes:--

Unwittingly, and quite unknown to myself, I became the object of

his admiration--nay, of his marked preference; but I rejected

indignantly the homage of an affection which he had sworn to

another, and which it was his sacred duty to preserve

undefiled.... In the hope of overcoming my persistency in refusing

his so often proffered and as often rejected love, he urged on by

every imaginable means the final decision, which in the eyes of

man were to permit a second marriage, guilty in the sight of God.

With the natural instinct of divination peculiar to female

jealousy, his wife had guessed who was the deity at whose altar

the captain was burning his incense.... Nor did she consider

whether I encouraged or rebuked him. She suspected, she spied, she

believed, and unscrupulously involved me in the hateful vengeance

she swore to take both on her husband and myself.

For a portrait of Mdlle. Lagrange who, as the author of this version of

_Jane Eyre_, is of course meant for Charlotte Brontë, we turn to the

_feuilleton_ itself:--

Meanwhile we have lost sight of our blue-stocking friend, Mdlle.

Lagrange ['Madame herself deemed me a regular _bas bleu_,' says

Lucy Snowe of Madame Beck (Madame Héger) in _Villette_] ... her

character ... remains to be described. Now, to form any opinion of

it by Madame de Morville's [Madame Héger's] appreciation of that

girl's disposition, would be completely erroneous. Lagrange was

not devoid of intellectual faculties; she possessed an imaginative

mind, rather too fond of romance, and too little of practical

truths; but, above all, cunning and ambition formed the main basis

of her character: she had risen from nothing, and _would_ become

something. Imbued as she was with the ideas prevalent among the

lower rank [Had Charlotte Brontë related her father's history to

the Hégers? She had 'views' on money. M. Sue, however, never seems

to have forgotten the rank of his own god-parents], she deemed it

her right and duty to concentrate all the power of her faculties

towards the end she sighed for--wealth and a name. Thus it was she

displayed all the resources of her subtle nature to make every

circumstance serve to the gratifying of her ambition. What, then,

was to be her means of success? Marriage?--yes, that perpetual

dream of maidens, and a dream which too often ends in an

everlasting nightmare. But the task was not easy, for, it has been

said, beauty had been forgotten by Dame Nature among the few gifts

she had granted her.[61] What the appearance failed in, the mind

should, at any cost, supply [!]. This had become her ruling

desire. Thence the manuscript ['Catherine Bell, The Orphan'] we

have already read had been the first ponderous lucubration of her

fortune-seeking imagination: she had been praised for this first

attempt by her friends, and also by one two distinguished

critics.[62] This was already a point gained, and an encouragement

to her literary propensities.

Thus far the Mdlle. Lagrange phase of Currer Bell according to Eugène

Sue, and before the publication of _The Professor_, _Villette_, and Mrs.

Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. The next chapter shall deal with

Eugène Sue's relation of her as "Miss Mary," the leading character of

this extraordinary _feuilleton_, whereby it will be proved finally that

in her works Charlotte Brontë has written from her own life-story.

CHAPTER XIII.

EUGÈNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S BRUSSELS LIFE.

II.

ACCUSATIONS AND PROTESTATIONS!

I have said Eugène Sue, in _Miss Mary ou l'Institutrice_, gave two

phases of Charlotte Brontë. With the one as Mdlle. Lagrange I dealt in

the preceding chapter, and now I write concerning that wherein Miss

Brontë is openly represented as the Irish governess at the de Morville

establishment.[63] Easy it is to recognize this character is a phase of

Charlotte Brontë, but as her pupil Alphonsine puts it plainly in

describing her, she is "Mdlle. Lagrange, avec la beauté de

plus"--Charlotte Brontë, with beauty and virtues exaggerated. The

following incident I find only in the _feuilleton_ (not the extant

volume), the which circumstances support as history concerning the days

of Miss Brontë's dejection at the Brussels _pensionnat_. It should be

read in the light of the lines in Chapter XIX. of _The Professor_, where

she, as Frances Evans Henri, tells Crimsworth, obviously M. Héger, that

he remarked her _devoirs_ dwelt a great deal on fortitude in bearing

grief. In the evening Alphonsine, M. de Morville's daughter, who says

many things we know must have issued from M. Héger's lips--(this is in

palpable imitation of Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the

sexes of characters portrayed from life. For further use of this method

see also the close of Chapter XII. and elsewhere in _The Professor_, and

my writing on _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_)--pays a visit to the

chamber of the Irish governess:--

"Were you not reading?... I see a book on your work-table. May I

look?... _The Imitation of Christ!_" exclaimed Alphonsine, after

having read the title-page. "Oh! this is a beautiful book, is it

not?"

"Truly beautiful!" answered Mary; "the cover is old, the pages

worn out in many places. You must not wonder at it: from the age I

began to read, I don't think I ever passed three nights without

reading at least one chapter of this admirable work."

_The Imitation of Christ_ in English was a book Charlotte Brontë was

setting much store upon when she was but nine years of age.[64] Her copy

was then an old one. Evidently she took the book with her to Brussels

and read it at the _pensionnat_. It would seem M. Héger, whom she

instructed in English, requested to hear the work in this English

translation:--

"Pray what chapter were you reading?" continues Alphonsine. "I

should so much like to hear you read it to me: I have occasionally

read a page of _The Imitation_, but always in French; now, if you

would be so good as to read slowly and pronounce very distinctly,

I think I could understand this pious work in your language."

She read:--

"THE NECESSITY OF HUMBLE SUBMISSION.

"Let your conscience be pure, and surely God will know how to

defend you.... Learn to suffer in silence, without repining, and

you will ... receive assistance from Him."

"What a truthful, becalming lesson!" observed Alphonsine; "you

will read to me every evening some passage of your _Imitation_,

will you not? English sounds so sweetly to my ear when spoken by

you. We will begin to-morrow evening, n'est ce pas?"

Surely this is M. Héger and his sympathetic, depressed English teacher.

There is in the opening chapter of _Miss Mary_ a long conversation

regarding the departed governess Lagrange, and Madame de Morville

(Madame Héger) avows she had been jealous of her, and that her harshness

towards the governess had resulted in her abruptly leaving on a false

plea of ill-health. Thus she says to M. de Morville:--

"I am speaking seriously to you of my foolish but most acute

sufferings ... tandis que tu restais seul ici avec tes livres. You

never suspected them;... I endeavoured to suppress them, to

suffer no part of what I felt to transpire; for I must confess

poor Lagrange was quite the lamb du bon Dieu, yet in spite of

myself I sometimes broke out into fits of petulance and absurd

irony, which wounded her. I saw it did by the sudden dejection of

that excellent young person. But even this was not all."

"Louise! is it you who speaks thus? You whose kind, benevolent

heart I have so often admired."

"Would you that I should avow something worse to you? What made me

tolerate that poor Lagrange is that she was as ugly as the seven

cardinal sins.... In fine, I cannot conceal from myself that the

result of all this was that Mdlle. Lagrange gave up her situation

on the plea of ill-health. ["Ah! she was not dismissed," said

Mdlle. Reuter (Madame Héger) in _The Professor_, Chapter XVIII.,

when the Professor asked whether Mdlle. Frances Henri[65] (Miss

Brontë) had left voluntarily. "... No need to have recourse to

such extreme measures, I assure you."] Enfin, it faut bien me

l'avouer, le résultat de tout ceci a été que Mademoiselle Lagrange

a demandé à quitter la maison, sous prétexte de santé; véritable

prétexte. For the rest I will do myself this justice, I would have

suffered even to the end rather than have sent back that excellent

girl."

The Hégers were surprised at Miss Brontë's sudden resolution to leave

them, but she is said to have had her father's failing eyesight as a

reason. "I suffered much before I left Brussels," wrote Charlotte, and

this was in mind, not body.

"I have long concealed the greater part of these resentful

sentiments from you," continues Madame de Morville,

"notwithstanding the implicit trust reposed in you. I wish I alone

had suffered by them. But no, poor Lagrange doubtless could not

endure the thousand vexations and spites ('taquineries

sournoises') to which she was subjected, and was thereby driven

from our house."

All this should be read as in connection with the departure of Miss

Mary, the other phase of Miss Brontë, towards the end of the book. "I

think, however long I live I shall not forget what the parting with M.

Héger cost me," said Charlotte Brontë.[66]

Here is M. Sue's version:--

M. de Morville started, then regarding the governess with stupor,

for he could not believe what he heard, he cried:--

"Quoi! Miss Mary, vous dites?"

"I say, monsieur, that I return to England, where I am recalled by

my family."

The real reason why Miss Brontë left is given in the Lagrange passages

to which I have alluded.

"Partir! but that is impossible! A departure so brusque, si peu

attendu!"

"Pray do not perceive, monsieur," says the Irish governess, "in

this unlooked for departure any want of regard for you; ... il a

fallu des raisons graves, very grave, to compel me to such a

resolution."

"Partir!" wailed M. de Morville. "What! that this should be the

last time that I should see you, that I should speak to you! But

this is not possible! They do not kill a man thus by a single

blow! For you well know that you kill me! You well know that I

love you! Oh! do not say you were unaware of my unhappy love," he

continues, "you know well enough what an irresistible charm has

drawn me towards you, what happiness I have had to tell you my

life, my secret thoughts, my wrongs even! A timid reserve followed

the first entrancement, but it was the struggle of respect, of

honour against a fatal passion. Ah! the traces of that struggle,

should they not have been too evident to your eyes! What! have

not you divined the cause of that sombre discouragement which made

me seek solitude where I isolated myself from all interests, from

all affection? And those nights without sleep passed in consuming

my tears, exaggerating more the consequences of that fatal

passion!... What! you have divined nothing, read nothing of mes

traits, in my eyes red with tears and sleeplessness? Mon Dieu! mon

Dieu! to have suffered so much ... suffered so much, and not to

have even the consolation of saying: She knows that I have

suffered."

The reader of _Miss Mary_ will perceive throughout this scene in the

extant and apparently re-written French volume that M. de Morville's

unhappy love was that of an honourable and a loyal-hearted man, while

the governess was also without reproach. (These extracts do not occur in

the _feuilleton_ as published in English.) As he asks:--

"Is it my fault if in the monotony of my existence est tout à coup

apparue a person whose talents, education, and character have been

appreciated by all and by me.... Have I attempted to pervert your

mind, to seduce your heart? No, no! I have suffered, suffered in

silence [see my reference to the _Imitation of Christ_], suffered

alone, suffered always. And my crime, what is it?... It is to make

to you the avowal of suffering on the day when you go to leave me

for ever a prey to incurable despair!"

Thus have we real insight into the state of affairs at Brussels when

Miss Brontë left. We see the divining, jealous Madame de

Morville--Madame Héger, of course--subjecting her to the "taquineries

sournoises"; we hear Madame saying of her: "Ce que me faisait tolérer

cette pauvre Mdlle. Lagrange, c'est qu'elle était laide comme les sept

péchés mortels," and sneering at the excuse she made to leave the

establishment, calling it a "véritable prétexte" when the real reason

was Madame's jealousy and its causes. Oh, the bitterness of it! And now

in this light read the carefully worded representation of Mrs Gaskell

that:--

Towards the end of 1843 various reasons conspired ... to make her

[Charlotte Brontë] feel that her presence was absolutely and

imperatively required at home, while she was ... no longer

regarded with the former kindliness of feeling by Madame Héger. In

consequence of this state of things working down with a sharp edge

into a sensitive mind, she suddenly announced to that lady her

immediate intention of returning to England.

Something of the foregoing I gave in my article "The Lifting of the

Brontë Veil" in _The Fortnightly Review_, and I have to thank the press

generally for their kind acknowledgment of my important discovery. _The

Spectator_, in consonance with others, says:--"Mr. Malham-Dembleby has

found a _feuilleton_ by Eugène Sue which is curious, as it certainly

indicates a knowledge of Charlotte Brontë and of Monsieur and Madame

Héger at Brussels."

In the extant French copy Eugène Sue has given a dramatic version of the

parting scene between "Miss Mary" and "Madame de Morville"--Charlotte

Brontë and Madame Héger. The latter had surprised her husband and the

Irish governess, _tête-à-tête_ in the lonely pavilion, late in the

evening. Monsieur protests:--

"Madame," he cries, "... I will not permit you, in my presence, to

dare to calumniate and outrage Mademoiselle Lawson."

Miss Mary asks him not to defend her, as she does not wish to be a

cause of irritating discussion between them.

"That is charming!" cried Madame de Morville, with a burst of

sardonic laughter--"Grâce au bon accord du ménage, mademoiselle

would desire to continue in perfect tranquillity the undignified

rôle she has played at my house!"

Her husband protests that she outrages one of the purest characters in

the world, but the governess interrupts by addressing the wife:--

"Madam, suspicions so odious, so senseless, are unable to wound an

honourable soul.... I reply nothing to these words, which you will

soon regret. The two years that I have been here [Charlotte Brontë

was two years with the Hégers] I have learned to know you, madam;

and if sometimes I have without complaint [see the Lagrange

passages] suffered from the vivacité de vos premiers mouvements, I

have also often been able to appreciate your goodness of heart."

"Enough, mademoiselle, enough! Believe you that you can dupe me by

your hypocrisies and base flatteries? Do you think you can impose

my silence by that pretended resignation?"

So the scene continues until Madame de Morville accuses the other of

wishing to take the affections of her husband. To this, the governess

retorts:--

"You accuse me, madam, of wishing to win the affections of M. de

Morville, and of desiring to dominate at your house? Here is my

reply."

And her reply is that she is returning to England.

"You go away!" cried Madame de Morville.... "No, no, that is a lie

or a trick!"... Madame ... fut complètement déroutée par

l'annonce du départ de Miss Mary.

The latter says she profoundly regrets if she had caused "malheurs," for

she had been the involuntary cause.

"Involuntary or not," cried Madame de Morville, "you are un

_porte-malheur_, and thus have been two years, since your arrival

here. I have said it to M. de Morville, who, par prévision without

doubt, took at once your part against me.... And on whom, then,

will that responsibility fall!... We were all happy and peaceful

before your advent here, and to-day, when you go you leave us dans

le chagrin."

To which Miss Mary retorts:--

"Ah! madame, le jour le plus malheureux de ma vie serait celui où

je quitterais votre famille avec la douloureuse conviction que mon

nom y serait maudit."

There were, we see, conflicting views in Brussels social and literary

circles, in the eighteen-forties, as to the degree of intimacy to which

Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger attained. It is when we perceive the

ambiguity of the relations existing between Miss Brontë and the

professor that we recognize the fidelity of Eugène Sue's portrayal of

Currer Bell's Brussels life. Even Charlotte Brontë herself, in

_Villette_, published after M. Sue's story, relates that M. Paul Emanuel

(M. Héger) said to her:--"I call myself your brother. I hardly know what

I am--brother--friend--I cannot tell. I know I think of you--I feel I

wish you well--but I must check myself; you are to be feared. My best

friends point out danger and whisper caution." In Mdlle. Lagrange and

Catherine Bell, Charlotte Brontë figures as represented by those who

said ill of her; as Miss Mary Lawson, the Irish governess, she has

"beauty, youth, and grace," which charms, Jane tells us, she possessed

in Rochester's eyes. Of her, in the phase of Catherine Bell, we have

many insinuations of a detractive character, the keynote to which is

found in the fortune-telling incident, wherein Catherine is foretold she

will be "married and not married"; while in Miss Mary Lawson we have a

portrayal of _un bon ange_[67] of whom Madame de Morville is jealous,

not without reason, though, to use Miss Mary's own words, she had been

"la cause involontaire."

We must, therefore, set it to the credit of Eugène Sue that he placed

two versions in the balance; and his evidence for ever sweeps away the

illogical and unfair contention of some writers on the Brontës, that

Charlotte Brontë may have cared for M. Héger, but that he, in his turn,

had been only "intellectually" interested in her. M. Sue shows the

attitude of M. Héger was ever unequivocal as regards Charlotte Brontë;

whether in her phase as "Lagrange," as "Catherine Bell," or as "Miss

Mary Lawson"--she was loved by him. We now see Morton of _Jane Eyre_ was

Haworth to Charlotte Brontë, and Thornfield, the home of Mr. Rochester,

the Pensionnat Héger. And the flight from temptation at Thornfield and

seeking refuge with the Rivers family were really representative of her

leaving Brussels and returning home to her father and sisters. Obviously

M. Sue wrote his _feuilleton_ to aid, maliciously or not, in breaking

the dangerous friendship between M. Héger and Miss Brontë. Charlotte

Brontë's works are testimony it was not only Madame Héger's harsh

jealousy that led her to leave Brussels. In Chapter XX. of _The

Professor_, published years after M. Sue's work, but written before it,

she gives us the reason for this determination. By her Method I.,

Interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life, Professor

Crimsworth, who is alternately Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger, in this

instance is Charlotte Brontë, while Mdlle. Reuter is M. Héger.

Crimsworth [Miss Brontë] says:--

I could not conceal ... that it would not do for me to remain....

Her [his] present demeanour towards me was deficient neither in

dignity nor propriety; but I knew her [his] former feeling was

unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but

Opportunity would be too strong for either of these--Temptation

would shiver their restraints. I was no pope, ... in short, if I

stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time, a

practical modern French novel would be in full process of

concoction.... From all this resulted the conclusion that I must

leave, ... and that instantly.... The Spirit of Evil ... sought to

lead me astray.[68] Rough and steep was the path indicated by

divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which

Temptation strewed flowers.

And thus at last do we understand why Charlotte Brontë asks herself as

Jane Eyre when at home with the Rivers family--with her father, her

sisters, and Tabby at Haworth:--

Which is better? To have surrendered to temptation; listened to

passion; made no painful effort--no struggle; but to have sunk

down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it

... to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress

... I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty,

youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to

possess these charms.... Whether is it better, I ask, to be a

slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive

bliss one hour--suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse

and shame the next--or to be a village schoolmistress [The Brontë

school project was under contemplation in 1844], free and honest,

in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes, I

feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and

crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed

me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance.

And her fervent gratitude is as sincere when in the same connection she

says in _Villette_ of her confessor--her Fénelon[69]:--"He was kind when

I needed kindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!" But we now see

Charlotte Brontë did not suffer alone. Eugène Sue has given us an

insight into the bitterness of M. de Morville's (M. Héger's) life, which

resulted from their unhappy love, and doubtless those words of

Heathcliffe to Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_ were uttered or written

by M. Héger in reproach to Charlotte Brontë:--

"_Why_ did you despise me? _Why_ did you betray your own heart,

Cathy?... You loved me--then what _right_ had you to leave me?...

Because misery and degradation and death, and nothing that God or

Satan could inflict would have parted us, _you_, of your own will

did it. I have not broken your heart--_you_ have broken it; and in

breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I

am strong."

Charlotte Brontë tells us in _Jane Eyre_ she loved to imagine she and

Mr. Rochester had met under happier conditions; and if the meeting of

the runaway lovers Charlotte Brontë repeats so faithfully in _Wuthering

Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ did not refer to a private meeting subsequent

to the beginning of 1844, between her and M. Héger, or to their meeting

again when she returned to Brussels the second time, then have we

evidence of the fact that she at one time perhaps believed _Wuthering

Heights_ would be never published. Assuredly nothing was sweeter to

Currer Bell's fancy than a dream of the happiness that might have been

hers, and well may she have written in the last sentences of

_Villette_:--

Leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the

delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture

of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the

fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding

life.

Charlotte Brontë and M. Constantin Gilles Romain Héger loved each other

as those who are worshippers of two high ideals, when one of these

ideals is love, the other honour. And this was tragedy. To the agonizing

nature of unrequitable affection endured for honour's sake do we owe

Charlotte Brontë's _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE RECOIL.

I.

The elements that conduce to reaction and recoil are sometimes fatal to

the best proposed and ablest evolved schemes of man. Priests and

counsellors may gravely devise; knight and maid may devoutly swear; the

pious neophyte and the exalted religionist may make solemn pledge, but

reaction often brings catastrophe. Thus the Christian Church is

rightfully a watchful Body, a militant Force, preaches the weakness of

man and cries "Ora continenter!" And herein lies the value of a

ponderous state procedure. Irritating in its slow gravity and

indifferent to the passionate appeals of emotionalism, such procedure

yet withstands the backward wave which comes as answer to courageous but

costly proposals.

The unsupported and undisciplined individual, like communities, cannot

always safely stand alone, and finally resolves into an automaton at the

service of unlicensed and unconsidered impulse when the day of reaction

comes. The anthropologist and the pathologist relate how exacting

straitness suddenly has broken down with a lamentable demonstration of

most morbid prurience; and relentless history has chronicled grievous

moral declensions in the lives of men and women whose careers in the

greater part were records of generous and unselfish devotion to a noble

cause or an honourable work. Until the day of reaction is safely fought

through the battle is not won.

Perhaps it was to prevent all possibility of a final and definite

reconciliation between M. Héger and Miss Brontë that M. Sue, aided by

his friends, ridiculed their attachment in his _feuilleton, Miss Mary_.

Not that Eugène Sue would do this necessarily for Virtue's sake, but the

position of moral reprehender gave him title to the rôle he had assumed.

M. Héger was sorely punished to lose Miss Brontë, as M. Sue has shown,

and as we have seen Charlotte Brontë herself tells us in a letter; and

the intensity of his affection for her is only further accentuated by

the light M. Sue throws upon the subject in a conversation which occurs

between Alphonsine and the jealous mother, concerning Mdlle. Lagrange in

the opening chapters of his _feuilleton_. As I have stated, evidence

compels us to perceive M. Sue often presented by imitation of Charlotte

Brontë's Method I., Interchange of the sexes for obfuscation's sake, M.

Héger in Alphonsine: Madame de Morville (Madame Héger) has just said

Mdlle. Lagrange (Miss Brontë) affected a little to speak of her humble

origin.

"Elle affecter," replies Alphonsine, "... c'est une erreur. Quand,

par hasard, elle parlait de sa famille, c'est que la conversation

venait là-dessus. D'ailleurs, écoute donc, Mademoiselle Lagrange

eût été fière qu'elle en avait le droit."

"Proud! what of? not of her face, poor girl."

"No, that is true."

Madame de Morville admits that Mdlle. Lagrange was endowed with

patience, learning, and fortitude; and says, "Tu le sais, nous avions

pour elle les plus grands égards."

"Without doubt ... and myself, I loved her like a sister."

To which Madame de Morville retorts:

"A ce point que, pendant les premiers jours qui ont suivi son

départ je t'ai vue souvent pleurer, et que depuis je te trouve

triste."

"Que veux-tu ... se quitter après plus de trois ans d'intimité,

cela vous laisse du chagrin."

"This sensibility does credit to your heart, but after all it

seems to me that you and I shall be able by our mutual tenderness

to console each other for the loss d'une étrangère."

"Une étrangère!" says Alphonsine, naïvely; "dis donc une amie, une

soeur.... Ainsi, toi ... tu es pour moi, n'est-ce pas, aussi

affectueuse que possible; pourtant tu m'imposes toujours; il y a

mille riens, mille folies, mille bêtises si tu veux, que je

n'oserais jamais te dire, et qui nous amusaient et nous faisaient

rire aux larmes avec cette pauvre Mademoiselle Lagrange; et puis

ces causeries sans fin pendant les récréations, nos jeux mêmes,

car elle était très enfant quand elle s'y mettait[70]; all this

made our temps de l'étude pass like a dream, and that of

recreation like a flash."

"Without doubt," replied Madame de Morville, with a forced smile;

... "and I, ... je ne jouissais de la société de ces demoiselles

que lors de notre promenade d'avant dîner, ou le soir jusqu'à

l'heure du thé."

The irreparableness of the loss at first to M. Héger is herein clearly

shown. But whether he would confess himself to Miss Brontë afterwards is

not certain. The tone of Charlotte Brontë's successive writings suggests

he did not, as do many points of evidence and the reference in

_Villette_, Chapter XIX., to that "He was a religious little man, in his

way: the self-denying and self-sacrificing part of the Catholic religion

commanded the homage of his soul."

Likely enough it is that M. Héger hailed, as do truly noble men, the day

of trial, and elevated by the very agony of great sacrifice the

personality which worshipped a conception of duty consonant with Divine

law. It seems, though, that then the battle was won; his day of reaction

was fought through. At the time of what M. Sue makes M. de Morville call

"ce premier entraînement" was the greatest danger, and abundant

testimony goes to prove he would have gone the length of indiscretion

but that Charlotte Brontë, herself innately honourable and influenced by

her Christian upbringing, checked the mad rush of impetuous passion.

Then the Church of M. Héger intervened. As Charlotte Brontë tells us in

_Villette_, Chapter XXXVI.: "We were under the surveillance of a

sleepless eye: Rome watched jealously her son through that mystic

lattice at which I had knelt once, and to which M. Emanuel drew nigh

month by month--the sliding panel of the confessional." She was much

gratified by M. Héger's fervent admiration, though she had perforce to

remember their circumstances. As M. Sue said of Lagrange so it had been

with Miss Brontë:--

The girl had never before known love, save by reading and hearing

of its magical influence. All the natural tenderness which lay in

her heart she had year after year suppressed.

The references in her poems to a recognition of growing coldness in a

lover--see "Frances," "Preference," etc., if we may read them in the

biographical sense Mr. Mackay suggests, show there had been a day when

she perceived external influences were dictating to M. Héger a line of

moral procedure. Obviously, while she herself had held temptation at

bay she was strong; but once she discovered an ally was lessening the

necessity of her defence her woman's nature awoke. She doubted the

sincerity of the past protestations of passion; she saw in every eye a

sinister spy; she found in the Roman Church nothing but a partisan of

Madame Héger (see Madame Beck and the Roman Church in _Villette_), and

M. Héger became to her a very impersonation of insincerity and

treachery. Of the secret tempest which had begun to rage within herself

she would disclose nothing to M. Héger; and she would know that once the

storm slept the end might be the worst. But Charlotte Brontë was not yet

in the season of the recoil, though alone, wretched, and rapidly losing

faith in God and man. As for M. Héger, he was supported by the knowledge

that the ideal of the good and pious is glorified by sacrifice. That

"Hell holds no fury like a woman scorned" is a platitude, for a woman

scorned in the meaning of the writer is a woman with a shattered life.

In her fullest and native sense she ceases to exist thereafter. However,

as in many cases Nature provides a remedy for her maimed, woman has

given her dissimulation. But to quote Charlotte Brontë's poem,

"Frances":--

"Who can for ever crush the heart,

Restrain its throbbing, curb its life?

Dissemble truth with ceaseless art,

With outward calm mask inward strife?"

It is a dangerous day when woman is her very self and thwarted. Then,

and only then, can she utter the distressing blasphemies Charlotte

Brontë places in the mouth of the speaker in her verses, "Apostasy":--

"Talk not of thy Last Sacrament,

Tell not thy beads for me;

Both rite and prayer are vainly spent,

As dews upon the sea.

Speak not one word of Heaven above

Rave not of Hell's alarms;

Give me but back my Walter's love,

Restore me to his arms!

"Then will the bliss of Heaven be won;

Then will Hell shrink away;

As I have seen night's terrors shun

The conquering steps of day.

'Tis my religion thus to love,

My creed thus fixed to be;

Not Death shall shake, nor Priestcraft break

My rock-like constancy!"

And places in the mouth of Catherine of _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter

IX., in the same connection:--

"If I were in heaven ... I should be extremely miserable.... I

dreamt once ... I was there, ... heaven did not seem to be my

home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and

the angels were so angry that they flung me out ... on the top of

Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.[71] ... I cannot

express it; but surely you ... have a notion that there is ... an

existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if

I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world

have been Heathcliffe's miseries ... my great thought in living is

himself. If all else perished, and _he_ remained, I should still

continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated,

the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a

part of it. [See my remarks on Charlotte Brontë's belief in the

elective affinities, page 96-7.] My love for Heathcliffe resembles

the eternal rocks beneath.... I _am_ Heathcliffe,--he's always,

always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am a

pleasure to myself--but as my own being--so don't talk of our

separation again."

It is of the barriers which divided the woman of the verses "Apostasy"

from her lover that the priest has reminded her. Thus she says:--

"... Did I need that thou shouldst tell

What mighty barriers rise

To part me from that dungeon-cell

Where my loved Walter lies?"

The whole history of Charlotte Brontë's Brussels life before us, the

fact that an insurmountable barrier--his marriage--separated her from M.

Héger, and the fact that she herself consulted[72] a Roman Catholic

priest whom I designate as her "Fénélon," advising, like the Mentor of

Télémaque,[73] the tempted one to "flee temptation," identify these

"barriers" as a covert reference to the circumstances unhappily existing

which made intimacy between Miss Brontë and M. Héger dangerous. To quote

my words in _The Fortnightly Review_:--"We see why Miss Brontë, herself

a Protestant, went to the confessional at Brussels.... We know this was

no freak, as also that it was impossible for Charlotte to mention the

subject to her sister without attributing it to a freak. More, we

perceive now the nature of her confession, and, the "Flee temptation!"

note of Fénélon's _Les Aventures de Télémaque_ fresh in our minds, we

see why she wrote of her father-confessor in _Villette_, Chapter XV.:--

There was something of Fénelon about that benign old priest; and

whatever ... I may think of his Church and creed, ... of himself I

must ever retain a grateful recollection. He was kind when I

needed kindness; he did me good. May heaven bless him!

I mention that by her composite method of presenting characters, which

Charlotte Brontë admitted to have employed, Dr. John Bretton, while

often in the beginning representing Mr. Smith the publisher, becomes

finally a representation of the Rev. Mr. Nicholls who married Miss

Brontë.[74] So in _Jane Eyre_, St. John Rivers while in the main

representing the Rev. Patrick Brontë, becomes associated temporarily

with that priest I have called Charlotte Brontë's Brussels Fénélon. She

tells us in _Villette_ that she broke off the seduction of visiting this

priest and says:--"The probabilities are that had I visited ... at

the ... day appointed, I might just now ... have been counting my beads

in the cell of a ... convent...." Miss Brontë admits he had had great

influence with her, and this fact and the testimony of her poem

"Apostasy" just quoted show this priest and his admonitions were in her

mind when she wrote the final scene between herself and St. John Rivers

in _Jane Eyre_ (Chapter XXXV.). Therein, as in that poem and in

_Wuthering Heights_, "Religion" and "Angels"[75] are set as being less

to her than the vicinage of her lover. Indeed the India and the

missionary life of _Jane Eyre_, and the marriage with St. John (see

Chapter XXXIV.), may be said to have been in Miss Brontë's mind that

life of religious consecration which in _Villette_ she owns to have been

the likely result of her further listening to the advice of the priest,

to whom she had given "the ... outline of my experience," as she terms

it.

Therefore it is interesting to observe that, as the woman in "Apostasy"

suddenly hears the voice of her lover calling and says:--

"He calls--I come--my pulse scarce beats,

My heart fails in my breast.

Again that voice--how far away,

How dreary sounds that tone!

And I, methinks, am gone astray

In trackless wastes and lone.

"I fain would rest a little while:

Where can I find a stay,

Till dawn upon the hills shall smile,

And show some trodden way?[76]

I come! I come! in haste she said,

'Twas Walter's voice I heard!"

Then up she sprang--but fell back, dead,

His name her latest word.

so in the scene in _Jane Eyre_: St. John ejaculates--

'My prayers are heard!' He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as

if he claimed me; he surrounded me with his arm, _almost_ as if he

loved me ["That priest had arms which could influence me; he was

naturally kind, with a sentimental French kindness, to whose

softness I knew myself not wholly impervious. Without respecting

some sorts of affection, there was hardly any sort having a fibre

of root in reality, which I could rely on my force wholly to

withstand."--Charlotte Brontë speaking of her Brussels Fénélon in

_Villette_, Chapter XV.], I say _almost_--I knew the

difference--for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him,

I now ... thought only of duty;... I sincerely, ... fervently

longed to do what was right.... 'Show me, show me the path!' I

entreated of Heaven.... My heart beat fast and thick.... I heard a

voice somewhere cry 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' nothing more.... I had

heard it--where or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was

... a known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax

Rochester.... 'I am coming!' I cried.... 'Wait for me! Oh, I will

come!' I broke from St. John, who would have detained me. It was

_my_ time to assume ascendency. _My_ powers were in play, and in

force. I told him to forbear question or remark.... I mounted to

my chamber ... fell on my knees, and prayed in my way--a different

way to St. John's, but effective in its own fashion.... I rose

from the thanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down ... eager but

for the daylight.

Mrs. Gaskell related that Charlotte Brontë in private conversation in

reference to this preternatural crying of a voice, replied with much

gravity and without further enlightenment that such an incident really

did occur in her experience. Whether it occurred in connection with her

Brussels Fénélon and immediately preceded a reconciliation between

herself and M. Héger I know not. As, however, Charlotte Brontë's

expression of gratitude to this priest and the whole fervent story of

thankfulness for the deliverance from dangerous temptation were written

subsequently to her return from Brussels, it is clear there was never a

reconciliation which cost either her or M. Héger honour. I do not urge

this as an advocate; I state it upon the strength of unmistakable

evidence.

Miss Brontë believed it better to leave Brussels and avoid the

possibilities of the peculiar situation--a situation always fraught with

temptation. Hence her sudden resolve to return to England.

Arrived at Haworth the full recoil came. She had won through a great

ordeal, and she knew that surrounded by his wife and family,[77]

comforted by piety and the knowledge of his happy issue from involution

in disastrous complications, M. Héger would resume tranquilly his

accustomed course of life. To Charlotte Brontë, who by the showing of

all evidence was initially responsible for a morally gratifying outcome

of their dangerous attachment, this was a galling picture. Knowing

nothing of the ecstatic delights of the pietist in the sacrificial sense

of M. Héger, who was a devoted member of the Society of St. Vincent de

Paul, and, as he is made to describe himself in _Villette_, "a sort of

lay Jesuit," she became just a woman living in the world of her primal

nature and conceiving but that she had lost. Miss Rigby--afterwards Lady

Eastlake--who wrote the remarkable article on _Jane Eyre_ in _The

Quarterly Review_ of 1849, perceived with a flash of real insight and

the instinct of womanhood that Currer Bell's pen had presented ungarbed,

vital relations of some man and woman identical in both _Wuthering

Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_. The circumstances were full difficult for the

reviewer; she was irritated and encompassed. _Wuthering Heights_, which

so soon had followed the appearance of _Jane Eyre_, she suddenly

recognized as the very storm-centre of this literary tornado of

passionate declamation; and she chastised that work in the name of _Jane

Eyre_, for she could not know all the cruel truth, and she feared to

popularize _Wuthering Heights_. Although Miss Rigby wrote:--"It is true

Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength," she added, "but it is

the strength of a mere heathenish mind which is a law unto itself." And

later, turning upon _Wuthering Heights_ she says with a final vehemency,

and most sensationally:--

There can be no interest attached to the writer of _Wuthering

Heights_--a novel succeeding _Jane Eyre_ ... and purporting [!] to

be written by Ellis Bell--unless it were for the sake of a more

individual reprobation. For though there is a decided family

likeness between the two [!], yet the aspect of the Jane and

Rochester animals in their native state as Catherine and

Heathcliffe [!], is abominably pagan.

Miss Rigby thus excused herself a further consideration of _Wuthering

Heights_. In the days of the gratification of discovering the one she

loved in return loved her,[78] this recognition stood between Charlotte

Brontë and "every thought of religion, as an eclipse between man and the

broad sun," so in another sense truly did the contemplation of M.

Héger's self-pacification intervene in the time of reaction. The

doubtings and agonizing emotions of her equivocal season in Brussels

were now precipitated. Her poems "Gilbert," "Frances," and "Preference"

are testimony to her vengeful and retaliative instinct; as are her

portrayals of M. Héger as M. Pelet of _The Professor_ and as Heathcliffe

of _Wuthering Heights_. But as I show in the next chapter, Charlotte

Brontë afterwards regretted her human weakness and her vituperations of

the day of the recoil. She began to set forth the story of her ordeal

more sanely and proportionately in _Jane Eyre_. As one who soberly

rewrites of fact, she recited therein much that she already had given

detachedly; and consistently she presented by aid of the frame-work of

"plot" from Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_ which already had given her

elemental suggestions for her _Wuthering Heights_, the history of her

life in _Jane Eyre_--a work that stands as testimony to Charlotte

Brontë's love of truth as to her heroic battling in the days of fiercest

temptation.

A constant yearning to fine a presentation from untruthfulness is the

God-given attribute of the artist, and this was responsible for much

that is called harsh in Charlotte Brontë's character as a writer: she

would not even spare her own physical and nervous imperfections in her

self-portrayals. Emily Brontë would have presented Branwell Brontë as

viewed through _couleur de rose_, yet Charlotte Brontë immortalized him

as Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed--as she saw him: weak, tyrannical, a

moral wreck. So she presented M. Héger. She knew his faults--and they

were many; but she loved him though she hated them. Her sense of truth

and justice, albeit she had lost the rancour of the time of the

reaction, determined her in _Jane Eyre_, it is obvious, to show the

occultation of her life's happiness by the incidents of her Brussels

life. She would show there had been a day when the barriers between

them would have been rashly ignored by him. Thus Rochester is made to

sing in _Jane Eyre_, Chap. XXIV.:--

"I dreamed it would be nameless bliss,

As I loved, loved to be;

And to this object did I press

As blind as eagerly.

But wide as pathless[79] was the space

That lay, our lives, between,

And dangerous as the foamy race

Of ocean-surges green.

And haunted as a robber-path

Through wilderness or wood;

For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,

Between our spirits stood.[80]

I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned;

I omens did defy:

Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,[81]

I passed impetuous by.

On sped my rainbow, fast as light;

I flew as in a dream;

For glorious rose upon my sight

That child of Shower and Gleam.

Still bright on clouds of suffering dim

Shines that soft, solemn joy;

Nor care I now, how dense and grim

Disasters gather nigh;

I care not in this moment sweet,

Though all I have rushed o'er

Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,

Proclaiming vengeance sore."

It is clear the impediment of M. Héger's marriage is suggested in these

verses. But undeniable evidence as to Charlotte Brontë's having escaped

by flight what she considered a most dangerous temptation, is the fact

that we find she was influenced to pen these lines, wherein M. Héger

(Rochester) is likened to a wild pursuer of a "shower and gleam" nymph

who sped before him "fast as light" and "glorious rose upon his sight,"

by Montagu's reference, in _Gleanings in Craven_, to the story of a

Craven nymph a satyr pursued yet lost by her being changed into a

spring. Says Frederic Montagu:--

"In the _Polyolbion_, published in 1612, is the following

passage:--

In all my spacious tract let them (so wise) survey

Thy Ribble's rising banks, their worst and let them say;

At Giggleswick, where I a fountain can you show,

That eight times in a day is said to ebb and flow!

Who sometime was a Nymph, and in the mountains high

Of Craven, whose blue heads, for caps put on the sky,

Among the Oreads there, and Sylvans, made abode

(It was ere human foot upon these hills had trod),

Of all the mountain kind, and since she was most fair;

It was a Satyr's chance to see her silver hair

Flow loosely at her back, as up a cliff she clame,

Her beauties noting well, her features and her frame,

And after her he goes; which when she did espy,

Before him like the wind, the nimble Nymph did fly:

They hurry down the rocks, o'er hill and dale they drive,

To take her he doth strain, t' outstrip him she doth strive,

Like one his kind that knew, and greatly feared....

And to the Topic Gods by praying to escape,

They turned her to a Spring, which as she then did pant,

When, wearied with her course, her breath grew wond'rous scant,

Even as the fearful Nymph, then thick and short did blow,

Now made by them a Spring, so doth she ebb and flow."

This is not all. We know now the truth regarding Charlotte Brontë's

Brussels life, and seeing she discovered a pertinence in the state of

the Craven Nymph to her own--for it is undeniable Rochester's song was

modelled upon the lines Montagu quotes--it is likely that what I term

the "river" suggestion and the Craven Elf suggestion which resulted in

Charlotte Brontë's portraying herself in the rôle of the stream-named

Craven elf, Janet Aire or Eyre, had to do with Montagu's mention of this

nymph of Craven who escaped a dangerous persecution by becoming a

spring. It seems, indeed, that if she did not at first utilize the

parallel of this narrative in verse with her own experience, she yet in

_Wuthering Heights_ was influenced by it, in the days which I call the

period of the recoil, to represent her hero Heathcliffe as a

ruin-creating, semi-human being. Whether the lines--

"It was a Satyr's chance to see her silver hair

Flow loosely at her back as up a cliff she clame,"

had in the connection to do with the "cliffe" in "that ghoul

Heathcliffe's" name a reference to Charlotte Brontë's Preface to

_Wuthering Heights_, and her words on the creation of Heathcliffe, in my

next chapter, may declare.

It is now impossible not to understand the origin of the Satyr and Nymph

passage and its implication in the chapter of _Jane Eyre_ containing

Rochester's song, when he says to Jane in the very same chapter:--

"You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence,

Venice, and Vienna: all the ground I've wandered over shall be

retrodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot

shall step also."

CHAPTER XV.

THE RECOIL.

II.

A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have

been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused; ... the same ridge,

black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have

represented as meetly my subsequent condition when ... reflection

had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my

hated and hating position. Something of vengeance I had tasted....

As aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its

after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I

had been poisoned.... I would fain exercise some better faculty

than that of fierce speaking--fain find nourishment for some less

fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.

These words, written by Charlotte Brontë in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter IV., in

relation to herself and "Mrs. Reed," give us an insight into her

extraordinary alternations of mood. To inquire deeply into her

determining initially to disavow the authorship of _Wuthering Heights_

requires a somewhat ruthless baring of the "fiendish" vindictiveness

against M. Héger between the dates of 1844-46, that was a characteristic

of the portrayals of him I have mentioned; but it also reveals her

active turn to a spirit of repentance for past vindictive feeling, the

which she acknowledges to have known.

It seems that it was in a spirit of reproach Charlotte Brontë wrote the

vengeful scene between Heathcliffe and Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_,

harsh in threat almost as her poem "Gilbert," wherein the man, satisfied

with the affections of his wife and children, has banished the

remembrance of her of whom he boasted--"She loved me more than life,"

and who is made to say, before her spirit in the form of a white-clad

spectre comes to him:--

"As I am busied now,

I could not turn from such pursuit

To weep a broken vow."

Thus in _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter XV., when Catherine is embraced by

Heathcliffe, she says bitterly:--

"I wish I could hold you till we were both dead! I shouldn't care

what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why

shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy

when I am in the earth? Will you say ... 'That's the grave of

Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose

her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are

dearer to me than she was; and at death, I shall not rejoice that

I am going to her; I shall be sorry that I must lose them!' Will

you say so, Heathcliffe?" Well might Catherine deem that heaven

would be a land of exile to her, unless with her mortal body she

cast away her mortal character also. [See my footnote in the

foregoing chapter, on Catherine's dream that the angels flung her

out of heaven.] Her present countenance had a wild

vindictiveness....

"Are you possessed with a devil," he pursued savagely, "to talk in

that manner to me when you are dying?"

And later, as though in answer to the apparent threat of the poem

"Gilbert," wherein, as I have said, the spectre of the woman who has

died broken-hearted through the neglect of her married lover haunts him

and drives him mad, Heathcliffe, in the words of that poem, "Wild as one

whom demons seize," cries:--

"Catherine Earnshaw ... you said I killed you--haunt me then! The

murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts

_have_ wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive

me mad!"

Charlotte Brontë's poems, "Frances,"[82] "Gilbert," and "Preference"

(wherein we have literature in allegory preferred to a lover), show

there had been to her a season of darkest misery when, to quote

_Villette_ concerning herself as Lucy Snowe, "all her life's hope was

torn by the roots out of her riven outraged heart." Whether this was the

time when, in the words of herself as Jane Eyre, "faith was blighted,

confidence destroyed": a time to her when Mr. Rochester (M. Héger) was

not to her "what she had thought him," the reader shall decide. But in

_Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_ she "would not ascribe vice to him; ... would

not say he had betrayed" her. She forgave him all: yet not in words, not

outwardly; only at [her] heart's core. See the phase of M. Pelet in the

_The Professor_.

Evidence shows it was in her dark season when Charlotte Brontë wrote

_Wuthering Heights_, and that she portrayed M. Héger therein with all

the vindictiveness of a woman with "a riven outraged heart," the wounds

in which yet rankled sorely. Thus may we understand her saying in her

famous preface to _Wuthering Heights_:--

Heathcliffe betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is _not_

his love for Catherine, which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a

passion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some

evil genius [see my reference to "Robin-a-Ree"; and to the Craven

Satyr, page 142]; a fire that might form the tormented centre--the

ever-suffering soul of a magnate of the infernal world: and by its

quenchless and ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decree

which dooms him to carry Hell with him ... we should say he was a

man's shape animated by demon life.... Whether it is right or

advisable to create a being like Heathcliffe I do not know; I

scarcely think it is.

Even in _Villette_ there were recurrences of the spasmodic spirit of

vindictiveness responsible for Charlotte Brontë's harsh portrayal of M.

Héger as Heathcliffe, though "at her heart's core she then forgave him."

In _Villette_, Chapter XX., she refers to M. Paul (M. Héger)

antithetically, and all the more significantly, in a comparison of him

with Dr. John Bretton, of whom she says:--

Who could help liking him? _He_ betrayed no weakness which

harassed all your feelings with considerations as to how its

faltering must be propped; from _him_ broke no irritability which

startled calm and quenched mirth; _his_ lips let fall no caustic

that burned to the bone; _his_ eye shot no morose shafts that went

cold, and rusty, and venomed through your heart.

_Wuthering Heights_, however, containing too humiliating a story of

Charlotte Brontë's heart-thrall, her misery and her wild vindictiveness,

and also for the reasons stated in the beginning of this chapter--her

saving remorse--she seems early to have determined to repudiate her

authorship of it; indeed, so largely is she now found to have used the

work in _Jane Eyre_, we might say she once had contemplated destroying

the manuscript. The subsequent arrangement made in the name of Ellis

Bell that the work by the same author should go to Mr. Newby, the

publisher of _Wuthering Heights_, gave finality to this tragedy of

authorship which, but for the discoveries in this, _The Key to the

Brontë Works_, would have remained for ever unrevealed, and a reproach

to literature--a thing of untruth thickly hidden.

Had Charlotte Brontë destroyed _Wuthering Heights_ before its

publication she would have saved this sensational disclosure. But she

hesitated to destroy the manuscript at once, and as an alternative to

identifying herself with its authorship, she sent forth her work under a

_nom de guerre_, part of which had been employed by her sister Emily. We

well know the difficulties that resulted; the judgment of scholars and

thinkers was impugned and their sane pronouncements were pilloried. To

cover Charlotte Brontë's regretful error were to connive against law and

literature. _Wuthering Heights_ being published, the work was the

world's property; it stood for public purposes, to submit to all

criticism and research, and it came neither in Charlotte Brontë's

province nor in that of any person to prevent its being subjected to the

final inquiry with which the cold light of truth exposes all things.

Doubtless Charlotte Brontë perceived this, and regretting the facileness

of her pen and the vituperativeness of her mood of that past and hateful

night, she set herself, in her subsequent works, to make clear she had

overdrawn the bitterness of the relations which one time had existed

between herself and M. Héger. Perhaps she could not expect her

retractions would be understood of all men, but it pleased her inmost

soul, and having a final sense of justice, and a softening of her heart

for her vehement passionateness, she continued in all her works

subsequent to her _Wuthering Heights_ to reconstruct this her early

version. Thus Charlotte Brontë as Caroline Helstone of _Shirley_ is

Catherine Earnshaw of _Wuthering Heights_, with the distinction I

mention. Moore is admitted, as I have said, to have been drawn from M.

Héger[83]:--

_Wuthering Heights._ _Shirley._

Chapter XII. Chapter XXIV.

Catherine's illness, and her Caroline's illness, and her

doubting the absent lover, doubting the absent lover,

Heath(cliffe). Mrs. Dean in Moor(e). Mrs Pryor in

attendance. attendance.

-------- --------

"And I dying!" exclaimed "Am I ill?" asked Caroline of

Catherine to Mrs. Dean. "I on Mrs. Pryor, and looked at

the brink of the grave! My God! herself in the glass; ... she

does he know how I'm altered?" felt ... her brain in strange

continued she, staring at her activity.... Now followed a hot,

reflection in a mirror.... How parched, restless night ... one

dreary to meet death surrounded terrible dream seized her like a

by their cold faces.... Edgar [? tiger ... a fever of mental

Mr. Brontë] standing solemnly by excitement, and a languor of

to see it over; then offering long conflict and habitual

prayers of thanks to God for sadness had fanned the flame ...

restoring peace to his house, and left a well-lit fire behind

and going back to his _books_. it....

Tossing about, she increased her

feverish bewilderment of "Oh!" exclaimed Caroline, "God

madness, ... then, raising grant me a little comfort before

herself, desired that ... [Mrs. I die!... But he [Moor(e)] will

Dean] would open the window. come when I am senseless, cold,

and stiff. What can my departed

And farther on, in delirium, as soul feel then? Can it see or

though her lover were present:-- know what happens to the clay?

Can spirits through any medium

"Heath(cliffe) ... they may bury communicate with living flesh?

me twelve feet deep, and throw Can the dead at all re-visit

the church down over me, and I those they leave? Can they come

won't rest till you are with in the elements? Will wind,

me!" ["Heath(cliffe), I only water, fire, lend me a path to

wish us never to be parted, and Moor(e)? Is it for nothing the

should a word of mine distress wind ... passes the casement

you hereafter, think I feel the sobbing?... Does nothing haunt

same distress underground," says it?"

Catherine, in a further chapter]

"I never will." She paused and When Catherine dies Heathcliffe

resumed ... [Heath(cliffe's)] says:--"Catherine ... you said I

considering--"He'd rather I'd killed you--haunt me then!" And

come to him! Find a way haunt him she does. In the words

then![84] not through that of Caroline Helstone of

kirkyard. You are slow! Be _Shirley_ she "revisits him she

content, you always followed has left." She "goes in the

me!" elements," "the wind lends her a

path[84] to her lover," and it

Mrs. Dean perceived it vain "to is not "for nothing the wind

argue against her insanity." passes the casement of

_Wuthering Heights_

sobbing"--she "haunts it" as the

wailing phantom that cries as a

child [Method II., altering the

age of character portrayed],

"Let me in--let me in!" outside

"the lattice." And Heathcliffe,

wrenching open "the lattice,"

sobs, "Come in!... Cathy, do

come.... Catherine at last!" The

spectre gives no sign of being;

but the snow and wind whirled

... through ... blowing out the

light.

Chapter XIII.

Mrs. Dean continues:-- Convalescent, Caroline

whispers:--

In those two months [Catherine]

encountered and conquered the "... I am better now.... I feel

worst shock of what was where I am: this is Mrs. Pryor

denominated as brain fever. The near me.... I was dreaming....

first time she left the chamber Does the churchyard look

... on her pillow [was] a peaceful?... Can you see many

handful of golden crocuses; her long weeds and nettles among the

eye, long stranger to any gleam graves, or do they look turfy or

of pleasure, caught them in flowery?"

waking.

"I see closed daisy-heads,

"These are the earliest flowers gleaming like pearls on some

at the Heights!... Is there not mounds," replied Mrs. Pryor.[85]

a south wind, and is not the

snow gone?"

It is in _Shirley_ that Charlotte Brontë gives, inadvertently

or purposely, the origin of the title of _Wuthering Heights_,

and we see therewith why she came afterwards to choose for her

autobiographical-self in _Villette_, the name of Lucy Snowe. We perceive

she had been singularly impressed by an old Scottish ballad, entitled,

"Puir Mary Lee," and it is important and interesting to note that Dr.

Joseph Wright's _English Dialect Dictionary_ refers readers to this very

same poem in connection with the origin of the northern word

"wuthering," in the form of the verb "whudder," or "wuther." And so, in

a letter to Mr. W. S. Williams, of November 6th, 1852, Miss Brontë wrote

of Lucy Snowe[86]:--

As to the name of the heroine, I can hardly express what subtlety

of thought made me decide upon giving her a cold name; but at

first I called her 'Lucy Snowe' (spelt with an 'e'), which 'Snowe'

I afterwards changed to 'Frost.' Subsequently I rather regretted

the change, and wished it 'Snowe' again. If not too late, I should

like the alteration to be made now throughout the MS. A _cold_

name she must have; partly, perhaps on the _lucus a non lucendo_

principle--partly on that of the 'fitness of things,' for she has

about her an external coldness.

Thus we understand Charlotte Brontë was anxious that her

autobiographical-self in _Villette_ should be called Snowe. While, in

mentioning the matter to her publishers, she endeavoured to show a

superficial and commonplace reason for her singular choice, the truth

underlies her words wherein she says she "can hardly express what

subtlety of thought" made her decide upon "a cold name."

The subtlety of thought that dictated the choice of the "cold name"

Snowe had, we shall see, a connection with the old Scottish ballad,

"Puir Mary Lee," which evidence shows was responsible at the dark season

to which I have referred for Charlotte Brontë's choice of the title of

_Wuthering Heights_--for her identifying her own bitterness with that of

"Puir Mary Lee."

It is in _Shirley_, Chapter VII., that Charlotte Brontë writes:--

Nature ... is an excellent friend, sealing the lips, interdicting

utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation; a dissimulation

often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to

sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a

convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because half-bitter.

[As Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Brontë writes in _Villette_ in perfect

sympathy with this: "If I feel, may I never express? I groaned

under her (Reason's) bitter sternness ... she could not rest

unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and

broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece

of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all

life to despond. Reason might be right."] Who has read the ballad

of 'Puir Mary Lee'?--that old Scotch ballad, written I know not in

what generation nor by what hand. Mary had been ill-used--probably

in being made to believe that truth which is falsehood; she is not

complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snow-storm, and you

hear her thoughts ... those of a deeply feeling, strongly

resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook

of home, to the white-shrouded and icy hills: crouched under the

'cauld drift,' she recalls every image of horror, ... she hates

these, but 'waur' she hates 'Robin-a-Ree!'

"Oh! ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn--

The warld was in love wi' me;

But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn,

And curse black Robin-a-Ree!

"Then whudder awa' thou bitter biting blast,

And sough through the scrunty tree,

And smoor me up in the snaw fu' fast

And ne'er let the sun me see!

"Oh, never melt awa' thou wreath o' snaw,

That's sae kind in graving me;

But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw

O' villains like Robin-a-Ree!"

Thus internal evidence proves that the name of _Wuthering Heights_ for

the abode of the "deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl,"

Catherine Earnshaw, was primarily chosen by Charlotte Brontë because of

its special appeal to her own mood at a given period, in relation to the

ballad of "Puir Mary Lee," and proves that the choice of the name of

Snowe for her "cold and altered" autobiographical self in _Villette_ was

dictated by its connection therewith.

In this light glance at Charlotte Brontë's poem "Mementos," and at the

following verses from her "Frances":--

"And when thy opening eyes shall see

Mementos, on the chamber wall,

Of one who has forgotten thee,

Shed not the tear of acrid gall.

* * * * *

"Vain as the passing gale, my crying;

Though lightning-struck,[87] I must live on;

I know, at heart, there is no dying

Of love and ruined hope alone.

* * * * *

"The very wildness of my sorrow

Tells me I yet have innate force;

My track of life has been too narrow,

Effort shall trace a broader course."

There is an apparent relationship of this last verse with the remarks in

Chapter XXV. of _The Professor_, on Hunsden's "Lucia," of whom he

says:--"I should ... have liked to marry her, and that I _have_ not done

so is a proof that I _could_ not." Lucia's (Miss Brontë's) "faculty" was

literature: the physiognomy was obviously an obfuscation. It is

significant that Charlotte Brontë again took "Lucia," for the Christian

name of Lucia or Lucy Snowe. See my references to Hunsden as a phase of

M. Héger.

Perceiving, therefore, that Charlotte Brontë had likened herself to the

heroine of "Puir Mary Lee," in so far as to be influenced by it to give

the title of _Wuthering Heights_ to one of her works, and to take the

name of Snowe later for her autobiographical self, we understand why she

wrote in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter XXVI.:--

Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman, ... was a

cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were

desolate. A Christmas frost [see my reference to the name of Lucy

Frost] had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled

over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing

roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud [see "the

snow-storm, the white-shrouded and frosty hills," the "cauld

drift," the "whuddering blast," etc., of "Puir Mary Lee" in

_Shirley_], lanes which last night blushed full of flowers to-day

were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, ... now spread

waste, wild, and white as pine forests in wintry Norway. My hopes

were all dead--struck with a subtle doom.... I looked at my love:

that feeling which was my master's--which he had created; it

shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle;

sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr.

Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh,

never more could it turn to him; for faith was

blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what

he had been.... I would not say he had betrayed me: but the

attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea [see

"Robin-a-Ree"], and from his presence I must go; _that_ I

perceived well.... That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth,

'the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire; I felt no

standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.'

The inclusion in _Shirley_ of the ballad of "Puir Mary Lee" and the

remarks anent it were apparently digressive, but they are followed by

the "subtle" disclaimer:--

But what has been said in the last page or two is not germane to

Caroline Helstone's feelings, or to the state of things between

her and Robert Moore. Robert had done her no wrong; he had told

her no lie; it was she that was to blame, if any one was; what

bitterness her mind distilled should and would be poured on her

own head.

Indeed, there is evidence of a reconciliation between M. Héger and

Charlotte Brontë, this being most marked in _Jane Eyre_ and _Shirley_.

In connection with the reasons responsible for Charlotte Brontë's choice

of the title of _Wuthering Heights_, it is interesting to note some

"subtlety of thought" dictated Charlotte's telling us in _Shirley_,

Chapter XXXIII., of Caroline and her lover that:--

The air was now dark with snow; an Iceland blast was driving it

wildly. This pair neither heard the long "wuthering" rush, nor saw

the white burden it drifted; each seemed conscious but of one

thing--the presence of the other.

After the close of 1850, Charlotte Brontë resolved into the mood which

was an earlier characteristic; and the choice of the name of Snowe for

herself and the extraordinary tenacity with which she held to the name,

having it re-inscribed in _Villette_ by the printers though she had

herself changed it, show she had returned somewhat to that state in

regard to her affection for M. Héger responsible for the passionateness

of her _Wuthering Heights_. And as following the completion of

_Villette_ she decided to marry a man she did not really love, I would

say her mood was honestly in sympathy with that in which she wrote

_Wuthering Heights_ through bitter, adverse circumstances and the

warping of destiny, and did not result from Sydney Dobell's advice to

her when, having read _Shirley_ and _Jane Eyre_, and despite her

disclaimer in a preface, thinking she was the author of _Wuthering

Heights_, he advised her to resume the frame of mind in which she had

penned her _Wuthering Heights_.[88]

Dobell's supposition that she wrote the book had no connection

whatsoever with my discovering Charlotte Brontë was the author of

_Wuthering Heights_; neither had the fact that Miss Rigby--Lady

Eastlake--in _The Quarterly Review_, spoke of _Wuthering Heights_ as

"purporting to be written by Ellis Bell" but having "a decided family

likeness to _Jane Eyre_," and with still more point, identified

"Catherine and Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_ as Jane and Rochester

of _Jane Eyre_ in their native state." For I early found I must credit

only the internal evidence of the Brontë works as my interpretative

guide. Having written "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" nothing could prevent my

discovery of that novel's kinship with _Wuthering Heights_; and so far

back as August 29, 1902, I penned in a private letter enclosed with the

proof sheets of my article to Mr. Harold Hodge, the editor of _The

Saturday Review_, a confession that I was finding a strong kinship

between the two novels. I owe to my persistent consciousness of this

close kinship the fact that I finally discovered the amazing secrets of

_Wuthering Heights_, and was enabled to state publicly in my

_Fortnightly Review_ article of March 1907, Charlotte Brontë and none

other wrote _Wuthering Heights_. It was then I turned with interest to

the remarks of Sydney Dobell, the author of _Balder_, and "a notable

figure in the history of English thought" as he has been named, whose

review of Charlotte Brontë's works had resulted in her being acclaimed a

leading author and a genius. It was in _The Palladium_ of September 1850

Sydney Dobell said:--

That any hand but that which shaped _Jane Eyre_ and _Shirley_ cut

out the rougher earlier statues [in _Wuthering Heights_] we should

require more than the evidence of our senses to believe; ... the

author of _Jane Eyre_ need fear nothing in acknowledging these ...

immature creations.[89]... When Currer Bell writes her next novel,

let her remember ... the frame of mind in which she sat down to

write her first [_Wuthering Heights_]. She will never sin so much

against consistent drawing as to draw another Heathcliffe.... In

_Jane Eyre_ we find ... only further evidence of the same

producing qualities to which _Wuthering Heights_ bears testimony.

Charlotte Brontë warmly thanked him and protested. With eager honesty he

again and again begged her to visit him and discuss the authorship of

_Wuthering Heights_. Could Sidney Dobell but have been told the secret

tragedy of Currer Bell's life and the bitterness of her cup, how he

would have shrunk from inflicting her with an intrusive personal

inquiry. And in all innocence he had asked her to revive the frame of

mind in which, to use the words in _Jane Eyre_, her heart had been

"weeping blood"!

_Wuthering Heights_ was wrought near the furnace of Charlotte Brontë's

fiery ordeal, and gives at its intensest that which glows through her

other works, finally to flash up and smoulder out in _Villette_. By

reason of its clear portrayal of woman when she is very woman _Wuthering

Heights_ towers above all common literary artistry, one of the finest

novels in the world, an abiding monument to the vital genius of

Charlotte Brontë. After her return from Brussels her life was a long

human conflict, with vain regrets, vindictive recriminations, and luring

memories opposing heroic commandings in the name of right and virtue.

All honour to her that she fought to win!

Had Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger been characterless individuals of the

common type who, knowing nothing of self-sacrifice and nobleness of

life, yield to the call of immediate and unlicensed impulse, we could

never have had these most vital representations, these most poignant

revelations of the Martyrdom of Virtue--the works of our immortal Currer

Bell. Her vehicle of confession--her dialect, was what men have termed

fiction. But her heart was satisfied that truth has its ultimate appeal;

and in the way of those sententious writers of old who garbed in an

attractive vesture veritable and momentous records which would be

preserved because they entertained, she gave the history of her life in

a series of dramas we call the Brontë novels. For sixty years these have

been read only as the creations of a brain that spun interesting

fiction! Now, by aid of _The Key to the Brontë Works_, it is revealed

they are more than this, and we discover the real greatness of Currer

Bell and the high rank of her genius. Like that which creates the

noblest and most enduring of the world's literature, the genius of

Charlotte Brontë truthfully preserves the past, while it will intimately

appeal to and have a salient lesson and an inspiring message for any one

so ever who shall read, be it here and now, or in the time to come.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BRONTË POEMS.

Charlotte Brontë loved her sisters Emily and Anne, but in her

introduction to the poetical selections from their literary remains she

says little concerning their verse, preferring to give of each sister a

kind of short biographical memoir. In dealing with Emily she dwelt

poetically upon the features of the Yorkshire moors, and thus extended

to Emily's verses that atmosphere and charm which she (Charlotte) had

fixed in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_; and in writing upon Anne

she complained her verse gave evidence of a too melancholy religious

feeling. The eldest surviving child in the Brontë family, after the

deaths of Maria and Elizabeth, it was Charlotte Brontë who would first

set the ideal of literary composition before the Brontë children. To her

initial impulse, therefore, owe we the literary compositions that came

from the pens of Emily, Anne, and Branwell. Evidence of this truth is

the fact that Emily, Anne, and Branwell, in their writing, never got

"right away," as the hunting phrase has it.

There are many definitions of genius: may I define it as a message?

Charlotte Brontë had a message. Emily had none. _Wuthering Heights_ and

all the other works of Charlotte Brontë, prose and verse, had a vital

message. Ellis Bell had no message. In a sort of idle, ruminative

contemplation Emily Brontë constructed verse unburdened with

purpose--verse that became involved at the moment it should have soared.

I believe we have the secret of what I may call Emily's "involved

moments" in Charlotte Brontë's description of her as Shirley Keeldar in

_Shirley_, Chapter XXII., wherein we are told Emily saw visions, as it

were, "faster than Thought can effect his combinations." We feel

something of the clouded chaos of her moment of writing in her more

impassioned or laboured verses; their illogic and incoherence fix it

distressfully. Charlotte, to resume her reference to Emily in _Shirley_

above quoted, further tells us that "so long as she is calm, indolence,

indulgence, humour, and tenderness possess" her eye; "incense her, ...

it instantly quickens to flame." And with her verse, so long as it was

unburdened, indolent, it ran smoothly and pleasantly along with the

simplicity of the _insouciant_; but confronted with magnitude the

imagination flamed, reason and logic were involved, and there was an end

of art. In her excited combativeness she hit out rashly. Thus in her

last verses, considered her masterpiece, she says the "thousand creeds"

which move men's hearts were "vain" to "waken doubt" in her creed, blind

to the fact that truth and worship finally converge to one point,

howsoever diverse their starting-places. The very unbeliever is a

witness to man's innate seeking for truth and right: he is a

non-believer in this or that because he conceives truth to be remote

from it. He seeks truth albeit he is a wide wanderer.

In "The Old Stoic" we have a "stoic" in Emily's rôle of bold challenger

of chimera. "Courage to endure" and "a chainless soul" are what this old

stoic would ask for! The poet was ignorant of or indifferent to the fact

that a true stoic, according to the rule of Epictetus, seeks to be not

other than he is, and is content wheresoever he be, whatsoever his lot.

The words of this poem are those of a bold neophyte, and they are

interesting chiefly because we see advanced in them the hypothesis of

punishment common to Emily's chimera-creating imagination. To repeat: so

long as her mood was calm her verse ran pleasantly and smoothly along.

But the saying tells us, "The good seaman is known in bad weather"; and

so with the poet. Life is not a placid lake: the lethal lightnings play,

and faith and happiness are threatened continually and on the whole

horizon.

Charlotte Brontë, with memory of her own life-storm which has left us

her _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_, and her other great prose works,

wrote her introduction to Emily's poems in the spirit of one who looked

upon her pieces as the reflections of an uneventful life in the inner

sense of vital soul-conflict.

Anne Brontë's gentle poems, like Emily's, will appeal particularly to

such readers as have sympathetic temperaments; they will not call to the

human heart like the clarion notes of Charlotte Brontë's poem "Passion,"

but mayhap their low whisperings may waken sadly pleasant memories.

With Currer Bell's poems I deal in various chapters, wherein we perceive

their relationship to _Wuthering Heights_ and her other books which

resulted from the harsh rigours of her tempest-bestormed night.

And shall we not say a word for Branwell Brontë? He too wrote verse.[90]

He was not a genius in the sense of my definition, but his verse is such

as might appear in a member of a family a generation or a degree of kin

removed from the genius of the house. Him we must remember

compassionately as one physically weak, an unhappy victim of

circumstances against which he had not the moral force to fight. Nor

shall we forget that the Rev. Patrick Brontë, the father, wrote and

published verse. His productions were printed in pamphlet form, and have

been collected and republished.[91] As literature they are unimportant,

but to the curious they may have a sort of interest.

APPENDIX.

MINOR IDENTIFICATIONS OF PERSONS AND PLACES IN THE BRONTË WORKS.

"WUTHERING HEIGHTS."

There is not satisfactory evidence to enable the identification of the

originals of Wuthering Heights the abode, and Thrushcross Grange.

Similar homesteads are found anywhere near the Yorkshire moors.

Architectural peculiarities and appointments are ever accretive

properties with the novelist of imagination and latitude. This

observation should be kept in mind also in regard to Charlotte Brontë's

other works. See my remarks on page 57.

"JANE EYRE."

The interior of Thornfield Hall, as I mention on page 35, has been

identified with that of "Norton Conyers," near Ripon; externally it has

been associated with "The Rydings," near Birstall. Ferndean Manor has

been identified with Wycollar Hall, near Colne. A Brontë biographer says

this place was set on fire by a mad woman,[92] but the story finds no

mention in _The Annals of Colne_, 1878, or in _Lancashire Legends_,

1873, though "Wyecoller Hall" is dealt with at length in each work.

"SHIRLEY."

Gomersall and Birstall, near Batley, Yorkshire, contribute to the

background of this story. "Field Head" has been identified with

Oakwell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion. Evidence shows that intimately the

Rectory in _Shirley_ was in the main Haworth Parsonage to Charlotte

Brontë. In _The Dictionary of National Biography_ Leslie Stephen

says:--"Brontë, ... a strong Churchman and a man of imperious and

passionate character, ... is partly represented by Mr. Helstone in

_Shirley_, though a [Rev.] Mr. Roberson ... supplied ... characteristic

traits." And Mr. Francis Leyland, who drew much of his information from

Nancy Garrs, a Brontë servant, says that the fourth chapter of

_Shirley_, wherein Charlotte speaks of the grossly untrue reports of

Mr. Helstone's dry-eyed mourning, etc., for his wife, is a defence

really of Mr. Brontë. Helstone was a composite character, as also was

Mrs. Pryor, to whom, without doubt, Miss Wooler contributed, though

Charlotte Brontë once had a grave difference with her. Miss Nussey, who

pathetically and wrongly believed herself Caroline Helstone, proclaimed

Miss Wooler, her schoolmistress, as the prototype of Mrs. Pryor.

Evidence declares, however, that in many regards this character was also

drawn from Tabitha Aykroyd. And we see that Charlotte Brontë, years

before, in her _Wuthering Heights_, had given an ecclesiastical

name--that of Dean--to her portrayal of the one woman who alone ever

took up the part of mother for her--Tabitha Aykroyd. Nevertheless Mrs.

Pryor was in the main a composite character, largely at the service of

"story" requirements. Sometimes she is Tabitha, sometimes Miss Wooler;

elsewhile she is neither. Mr. Macarthey is said to represent the Rev.

Arthur Bell Nicholls, who became Charlotte Brontë's husband.

The references in _Shirley_, Chapters XII. and XXVII., to Robin Hood's

connection with Nunnwood and to the ruins of a nunnery, identify Nunnely

in the circumstances, with Hartshead, near Brighouse and Dewsbury;

Nunnely Church with Hartshead Church (Mr. Brontë was once vicar here),

and the Priory with Kirklees Hall or Priory--Kirklees Park, as we may

see by turning to Dr. Whitaker's _Loidis and Elmete_, pages 306-9

(1816), wherein we find mention of Robin Hood and an old Cistercian

nunnery in connection with Kirklees, appropriately now the residence of

Sir George J. Armytage, Bart., one of the founders of the Harleian

Society. Whinbury has been identified with Dewsbury; but I do not know

that it has been remarked the name Dewsbury may have suggested to

Charlotte Brontë the dewberry, bramble, or blackberry, thus leading her

to adopt "whinberry" and, finally, Whinbury. The attack on Hollow's Mill

is said to have been founded on an attempt in 1812, when an assault was

made on the factory of Mr. Cartwright near Dewsbury.

"THE PROFESSOR" AND "VILLETTE."

_The Professor_, Charlotte Brontë offered to Messrs. Aylott & Jones in

April 1846, was not published till after her death. It is related to

_Villette_ in something of the way, though not so verbally and

intimately, that _Wuthering Heights_ is to _Jane Eyre_. The early

chapters deal vaguely with a West Riding of Yorkshire town, but the

scene quickly changes to Brussels. The Héger _pension_ is recognized as

the original of the schools in both novels, but in _Villette_ the place

Villette occasionally becomes London as Charlotte Brontë knew it on her

visits. Mr. George Smith, the Brontë publisher, and his mother, are

portrayed as the Brettons. Mr. Smith showed Charlotte Brontë the sights

of London: the theatres, picture galleries, churches, etc.; and we have

reflected in _Villette_ incidents associated with her seeing these

places.[93] The reader will find a phase of Currer Bell in Paulina--Miss

de Bassompierre, and a sympathetic phase of Mr. Brontë in her father,

for after the deaths of Emily, Anne, and Branwell, Charlotte and her

father were brought closer to each other. And like Mr. "Home" de

Bassompierre, he had "no more daughters and no son."[94] Towards the

close of _Villette_ we may find a phase of the Rev. Mr. Nicholls,

Charlotte Brontë's husband, in Dr. John Bretton, my previous remarks

upon whom observe. It was shortly after the completion of _Villette_ Mr.

Nicholls proposed successfully, but it would seem by the concluding

chapters Miss Brontë expected this. The picture of the disappointment of

the old father that his popular daughter would marry a plain character

in life suggests to us the disappointment of the Rev. Patrick Brontë in

regard to his daughter's marrying a curate. See Chapter XXXVII. Paulina,

of course, is the feminine of Paul; and the original of M. Paul of this

work we now well know. See footnote on page 120.

The chronological sequences in Charlotte Brontë's novels are seldom

carefully ordered: this should be remembered in reference to her record

of events in her own life.

"AGNES GREY" AND "THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL."

_Agnes Grey_ contains simple and natural portrayals of governess life in

the eighteen-forties; and the following _Wildfell Hall_, we may

conjecture, is built from evolved incidents founded on hearsay and

experience. Whether Miss Brontë had assisted Anne or not, it is certain

_Wildfell Hall_ has something in common with Currer Bell's novels. The

books connected with the name of Acton Bell, however, are not important

as literature in the higher sense of the word; and though a member of

Messrs. Smith & Elder remarked to Miss Brontë upon a similarity in the

leading male characters of _Wildfell Hall_ to Rochester, interest in it

is merely dependent upon its association with the greater Brontë works,

and the book does not call for sedulous inquiry.

THE HÉGER PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.

The Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London, purchased in July

1906, a hitherto unheard of portrait of Charlotte Brontë, painted in

water-colours in 1850, and stated to be by M. Héger. A reproduction of

the portrait was given in _The Cornhill Magazine_ for October 1906, Mr.

Reginald J. Smith, K.C., of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., the Brontë

publishers, having to do with its discovery.

In the early autumn of 1906, Mr. Lionel Cust, M.V.O., Surveyor of the

King's Pictures and Works of Art, then Director of the National Portrait

Gallery, was busily corresponding with me in regard to this portrait of

Charlotte Brontë, the authenticity of which became sensationally

attacked. At once I pointed out the importance and significance of the

portrait's being signed "Paul Héger," instead of "Constantin Héger"; and

other matters. In March 1907, I appended a footnote[95] to my article,

"The Lifting of the Brontë Veil," in _The Fortnightly Review_, and on

May 16th, 1907, the literary editor of _The Tribune_, Mr. E. G. Hawke,

having placed space at my disposal, I wrote as follows:--

CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

THE HÉGER PORTRAIT.

To the Editor of _The Tribune_.

SIR,--As the water-colour drawing by M. Héger is now a valuable

property of the nation, and gives a more intimately faithful and

characteristic likeness of Charlotte Brontë than the Richmond

portrait of "Currer Bell," now also hung in the National Portrait

Gallery, kindly permit me publicly to present some of the many

interesting facts connected with it. The portrait is signed "Paul

Héger, 1850" (the accent is correct), and it represents Miss Brontë

with curls, and reading _Shirley_, on one leaf of which is a heart

transfixed with an arrow. The dress that she wears is light green,

and on the back of the drawing is inscribed:

The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's death; that being

the first occasion on which Miss Brontë wore colours after

the death of her sister.

And below:

This drawing is by P. Hegér (accent thus), done from life in 1850.

The pose was suggested first by a sketch done by her brother

Branwell many years previous.

The Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery acquired the portrait

from a lady whose family obtained it nigh on forty years ago from

Mr. Thomas Baylis, a personal friend of Lord Lytton. Mr. Baylis

stated that he himself had acquired the portrait from the Héger

family at Brussels. The children of the Mme. Héger who refused to

see Mrs. Gaskell because of her dislike to Miss Brontë, aver that

M. Héger never drew or painted. The statement, however, is directly

opposed by indisputable evidence:

(1.) The portrait is authentic, and was drawn from life in 1850, and

the inscriptions that it bears it is proved could have been

inspired by none other than Charlotte Brontë herself or

M. Héger.

(2.) The statement of Mr. Thomas Baylis, a well-connected gentleman.

(3.) Eugène Sue, in his 1851 volume of _Miss Mary ou

l'Institutrice_, gives, with a clouding of mystery,

a lover--Gérard de Morville--drawing a portrait of Miss

Mary "d'après nature;" and M. Sue's _feuilleton_, as

I showed in _The Fortnightly Review_ for March, identifies

Miss Mary and the de Morvilles as phases of Charlotte

Brontë and the Hégers.[96]

(4.) Miss Brontë, in _Shirley_, herself presents M. Héger--Louis

Gérard Moore--as an artist, and refers to past drawing

episodes.[97]

The authenticity of the inscriptions is not involved in the

question as to whether Charlotte Brontë would use careless

spelling, for, if she had written them, couching them in the third

person, it is clear that she had not desired to be known as the

writer. Upon the other hand, it is discovered to be utterly

impossible for any one but Charlotte Brontë or M. Héger to have

inspired the inscriptions, whosoever wrote them.

SIGNIFICANT PIECES OF EVIDENCE.

I find that M. Héger was Paul to none but Charlotte Brontë in 1850,

and that before the publication, two years ago, of _Charlotte

Brontë and Her Sisters_, by Mr. Clement Shorter, who, for reasons

which he should explain, calls M. Constantin Gilles Romain Héger

"M. Paul Héger," [Throughout that writer's correspondence in _The

Times_, etc., and in _Charlotte Brontë and Her Sisters_: beneath

the portrait of M. Héger, facing page 198, and bearing the

inscription:--M. Paul Héger: The Hero of _Villette_ and _The

Professor_; and on page 161 of that work] no reference in print had

been made to M. Héger but as Constantin. The Hégers state that M.

Héger was not called Paul, and that Dr. Paul Héger, his son, was

the first member of the family named Paul.

A native of Haworth[98] who lived from 1830 till after the death

of Charlotte Brontë in 1855, "within twenty yards of the Haworth

Parsonage," her home, has pronounced the Héger portrait of Miss

Brontë to be a correct likeness and "just like her." He says that

it reminds him of her as he knew her and as she was in her younger

days, and he pointed out to me particularly that he had seen her

with her hair as in the Héger likeness, "scores of times before she

went away"--this giving the clue to the reference in the

inscription to a pose in a portrait by Branwell "many years

previous" to 1850; and I have seen a reproduction of a sketch by

Branwell wherein the Brontë sisters have curls. Moreover, I find

that Miss Brontë really liked curls and disliked the other styles,

though she conformed to the fashion.

I also find that the paper on which the Héger portrait of Miss

Brontë was drawn was that used in 1850 by the house where she was a

guest in London in the early June of 1850, at the very time to

within a day when, as there is indisputable evidence--despite

assertions that she "never under any circumstances during the later

period of her life wore a green dress"--Charlotte Brontë was

wearing a light green dress. That was "the first occasion on which

Miss Brontë wore colours," as the inscription tells us, and fact

substantiates, after she had concluded the remarkably long mourning

period for her sisters, which began with "the death of Emily" and

did not end till twelve months after the death of Anne, who died on

May 28th, 1849.

(Signed) J. MALHAM-DEMBLEBY.

Scarr Hill, Eccleshill, Bradford, May 16th, 1907.

The publication of this letter ended the controversy.[99] Since it was

published Mrs. Gaskell's daughters, who well knew Miss Brontë, have

declared themselves fully satisfied as to the authenticity of the Héger

portrait of Charlotte Brontë and the faithfulness of the likeness. The

testimony of Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, also supports this

portrait. See my further references to my correspondence with her

ladyship herewith. As regards the green dress, apart from the

indisputable external evidence I referred to in the printed letter, I

believe Charlotte Brontë speaks of it in _Villette_, though therein it

is for obfuscation's sake (necessary indeed, since _Villette_ was

published only a short time after her London visit) made "pink" and

"flounceless." In Chapter XXVIII. we find M. Paul saying--and it is

interesting thus to have connected with the green dress a character

whose prototype was M. Héger--that:

"Pink or scarlet, yellow or crimson, _pea-green_ or sky-blue, [the

dress] was all one."[100]

As I stated to Lady Ritchie in 1907, I believe that in Chapter XX. of

_Villette_ we undoubtedly have a real glimpse of incidents connected

with the wearing of the green dress; and it should be remembered that

Mrs. Bretton and Dr. John Graham Bretton in this chapter represent Mrs.

Smith, and her son Mr. George Smith, the publisher, whose guest

Charlotte Brontë was in 1850, when she first wore the green dress:--

One morning, Mrs. Bretton ... desired me to ... show her my

dresses; which I did, without a word.

"That will do," said she.... "You must have a new one."

... She returned presently with a dressmaker. She had me measured.

"I mean," said she, "to follow my own taste, and to have my own

way in this little matter."

Two days after came home--a pink [green] dress! "That is not for

me," I said hurriedly, feeling that I would ... as soon clothe

myself in the costume of a Chinese lady of rank.

... "You will wear it this ... evening."

I thought I should not; I thought no human force should avail to

put me into it.... I knew it not. It knew not me. I had not proved

it.

But wear it she did; and when Graham [Mr. George Smith] stood in the

doorway looking at her, she tells us her uneasy aspiration was:--

"I _do_ hope he will not think I have been decking myself out to

draw attention."

Clearly Charlotte Brontë wished posterity to learn how it came about she

was garbed in "light fabric and bright tint," because the green dress

was a page in her life's history. In a green dress she sat down to dine,

as Mr. Thackeray's daughter, Lady Ritchie has written me she well

remembers, when Charlotte Brontë dined at Thackeray's house on June 12,

1850--not the event of the distinguished party, when Carlyle, Miss

Perry, Mrs. Procter, and others were present, though Lady Ritchie had

once confounded the two in writing upon the subject[101]. Mr.

Thackeray's daughter was a young girl at the time to which she referred,

but she has made clear to me she saw Miss Brontë three times; that the

chief occasion was when Charlotte Brontë wore the light green dress.

This, to quote her ladyship's words to me, was "not Mrs. Brookfield's

party, when neither my sister and I nor our governess dined--though we

came down in the evening. The second occasion was just casually at my

father's lecture-room, when she did not speak to me, and the third,

finally, at the Brookfield evening party, which seems to have been such

a solemn affair[102]."

These facts fix the wearing of the light green dress by Miss Brontë as

June 12, 1850. Lady Ritchie tells me that "It was at an early family

dinner by daylight with Charlotte Brontë, my father, Mr. George Smith,

my sister and our governess, that I remember sitting next Miss Brontë at

dinner and gazing at her _sleeve_ and mittens. Her dress was of some

texture like one I had had myself, which I suppose impressed it upon me,

and it had a little moss or coral pattern in green on a white ground. I

only remember the sleeve, the straight look, and the smooth Victorian

bandeaux of hair. I am sure she was _differently_ dressed at the

Brookfield evening party."

On June 12, 1850, Charlotte Brontë wrote to her friend, Miss Nussey,

from the Smiths' in London, saying:--

Thackeray made a call.... If all be well, I am to dine at his

house this evening.[103]

And this was when Miss Brontë sat in a light green dress at the

Thackeray dinner-table.

The Richmond portrait of Charlotte Brontë being now also in the National

Portrait Gallery, I may remark that Mrs. Gaskell herself says of this

portrait:--"Those best acquainted with the original were least satisfied

with the resemblance.... Mr. Brontë thought ... it looked good and

lifelike." Charlotte Brontë herself said her father thought the portrait

looked older than she. In view of the new interest now attaching to

Tabitha Aykroyd and Charlotte, it is instructive to find the latter

telling us Tabitha "maintains that it is not like," and also, that

Tabitha thought it "too old looking." Then she apologized for the old

servant in a sentence that pathetically recalls Mrs. Dean and Bessie of

"Catherine's" and "Jane's" childhood--"Doubtless she confuses her

recollections of me as I was in childhood, with present

impressions."[104] We discover, therefore, that in the main there was

really dissatisfaction at the "old looking" presentation, and we see

Charlotte Brontë from the beginning must have wished she had had her

hair arrangement in that portrait as was common to her at home and in

her younger days. Hence do we get a further insight into the origin of

the different pose in the more characteristic and intimately faithful

Héger portrait of Charlotte Brontë.

INDEX.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL KEY INDEX.