resentment; for, although in "Villette" his double is pictured as "a
waspish little despot," as detestably ugly, in his anger closely
resembling "a black and sallow tiger," as having an "overmastering love
of authority and public display," as playing the spy and reading
purloined letters, and in the Bronte epistles Charlotte declares he is
choleric and irritable, compels her to make her French translations
without a dictionary or grammar, and then has "his eyes almost plucked
out of his head" by the occasional English word she is obliged to
introduce, etc., yet all this is partially atoned for by the warm praise
she subsequently accords him for his goodness to her and his
disinterested friendship, by the poignant regret she expresses at
parting with him,--perhaps wholly expiated by the high compliment she
pays him of making her heroine fall in love with him, or the higher
compliment it is suspected she paid him of falling in love with him
herself. One who reads the strange history of passion in "Villette," in
conjunction with her letters, "will know more of the truth of her stay
in Brussels than if a dozen biographers had undertaken to tell the whole
tale." Still, M. Heger can hardly be pleased by having members of his
school set forth as stupid, animal, and inferior, "their principles
rotten to the core, steeped in systematic sensuality," by having his
religion styled "besotted papistry, a piece of childish humbug," and the
like. Something of the displeasure of the family was revealed in the
course of our conversation with Mdlle. Heger, but the specific causes
were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollection
of the Brontes; her knowledge of them was derived from her parents and
the teachers,--presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's
letters. One teacher whom we saw in the school had been a classmate of
Charlotte's here. The Brontes had not been popular with the school.
Their "heretical" religion had something to do with this; but their
manifest avoidance of the other pupils during hours of recreation,
Mademoiselle thought, had been a more potent cause,--Emily, in
particular, not speaking with her school-mates or teachers, except when
obliged to do so. The other pupils thought them of outlandish accent and
manners, and ridiculously old to be at school at all,--being twenty-four
and twenty-six, and seeming even older. Their sombre and ugly costumes
were fruitful causes of mirth to the gay young Belgian misses. The
Brontes were not brilliant students, and none of their companions had
ever suspected that they were geniuses. Of the two, Emily was considered
to be the more talented, but she was obstinate and opinionated. Some of
the pupils had been inclined to resist having Charlotte placed over them
as teacher, and may have been mutinous. After her return from Haworth
she taught English to M. Heger and his brother-in-law. M. Heger gave the
sisters private lessons in French without charge, and for some time
preserved their compositions, which Mrs. Gaskell copied. Mrs. Gaskell
visited the _pensionnat_ in quest of material for her biography of
Charlotte, and received all the aid M. Heger could afford: the
information thus obtained was, we were told, fairly used. Miss Bronte's
letters from Brussels, so freely quoted in Mrs. Gaskell's "Life," were
addressed to Ellen Nussy, a familiar friend of Charlotte's, whose
signature we saw in the register at Haworth as witness to Miss Bronte's
marriage. The Hegers had no suspicion that she had been so unhappy with
them as these letters indicate, and she had assigned a totally different
reason for her sudden return to England. She had been introduced to
Madame Heger by Mrs. Jenkins, wife of the then chaplain of the British
Embassy at the Court of Belgium; she had frequently visited that lady
and other friends in Brussels,--among them Mary and Martha Taylor and
the family of a Dr. ---- (_not_ "Dr. John"),--and therefore her life here
need not have been so lonely and desolate as it was made to appear.
[Sidenote: The Garden]
[Sidenote: School]
The Hegers usually have a few English pupils in the school, but have
never had an American. American tourists have before called to look at
the garden, but the family are not pleased by the notoriety with which
Miss Bronte has invested it. However, Mdlle. Heger kindly offered to
conduct us over any portion of the establishment we might care to see,
and led the way along the corridor to the narrow, high-walled garden. We
found it smaller than in the time when Miss Bronte loitered here in
weariness and solitude. Mdlle. Heger explained that, while the width
remained the same, the erection of class-rooms for the day-pupils had
diminished the length by some yards. Tall houses surrounded and shut it
in on either side, making it close and sombre, and the noises of the
great city all about it penetrated only as a far-away murmur. There was
a plat of verdant turf in the centre, bordered by scant flowers and
gravelled walks, along which shrubs of evergreen were irregularly
disposed. A few seats were here and there within the shade, where, as in
Miss Bronte's time, the _externats_ ate the lunch brought with them to
the school; and overlooking it all stood the great pear-trees, whose
gnarled and deformed trunks were relics of the time of the convent.
Beyond these and along the gray wall which bounded the farther side of
the enclosure was the sheltered walk which was Miss Bronte's favorite
retreat, the "_allee defendue_" of her novels. It was screened by shrubs
and perfumed by flowers, and, being secure from the intrusion of pupils,
we could well believe that Charlotte and her heroine found here restful
seclusion. The coolness and quiet and, more than all, the throng of
vivid associations which filled the place tempted us to linger. The
garden was not a spacious nor even a pretty one, and yet it seemed to us
singularly pleasing and familiar, as if we were revisiting it after an
absence. Seated upon a rustic bench close at hand, possibly the very one
which Lucy had "reclaimed from fungi and mould," how the memories came
surging up in our minds! How often in the summer twilight poor
Charlotte had lingered here in solitude after the day's burdens and
trials with "stupid and impertinent" pupils! How often, with weary feet
and a dreary heart, she had paced this secluded walk and thought, with
longing, of the dear ones in far-away Haworth parsonage! In this
sheltered corner her other self, Lucy, sat and listened to the distant
chimes and thought forbidden thoughts and cherished impossible hopes.
Here she met and talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath this "Methuselah of
a pear-tree," the one nearest the end of the alley, lies the imprisoned
dust of the poor nun who was buried alive ages ago for some sin against
her vow, and whose perambulating ghost so disquieted poor Lucy. At the
root of this same tree one miserable night Lucy buried her precious
letters, and meant also to bury a grief and her great affection for Dr.
John. Here she leant her brow against Methuselah's knotty trunk and
uttered to herself those brave words of renunciation, "Good-night, Dr.
John; you are good, you are beautiful, _but you are not mine_.
Good-night, and God bless you!" Here she held pleasant converse with M.
Paul, and with him, spellbound, saw the ghost of the nun descend from
the leafy shadows overhead and, sweeping close past their wondering
faces, disappear behind yonder screen of shrubbery into the darkness of
the summer night. By that tall tree next the class-rooms the ghost was
wont to ascend to meet its material sweetheart, Fanshawe, in the great
garret beneath yonder sky-light,--the garret where Lucy retired to read
Dr. John's letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her to learn her part in
the vaudeville for Madame Beck's _fete_-day. In this nook where we sat
"The Professor" had walked and talked with and almost made love to
Mdlle. Reuter, and from yonder window overlooking the alley had seen
that perfidious fair one in dalliance with Pelet beneath these
pear-trees. From that window M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked
in the _allee defendue_, dogged by Madame Beck; from the same window
were thrown the love-letters which fell at Lucy's feet sitting here.
Leaves from the overhanging boughs were plucked for us as souvenirs of
the place; then, reverently traversing once more the narrow alley so
often traced in weariness by Charlotte Bronte, we turned away. From the
garden we entered the long and spacious class-room of the first and
second divisions. A movable partition divided it across the middle when
the classes were in session; the floor was of bare boards cleanly
scoured. There were long ranges of desks and benches upon either side,
and a lane through the middle led up to a raised platform at the end of
the room, where the instructor's chair and desk were placed.
[Sidenote: M. Paul]
How quickly our fancy peopled the place! On these front seats sat the
gay and indocile Belgian girls. There, "in the last row, in the quietest
corner, sat Emily and Charlotte side by side, insensible to anything
about them;" and at the same desk, "in the farthest seat of the farthest
row," sat Mdlle. Henri during Crimsworth's English lessons. Here Lucy's
desk was rummaged by Paul and the tell-tale odor of cigars left behind.
Here, after school-hours, Miss Bronte taught Heger English, he taught
her French, and Paul taught Lucy arithmetic and (incidentally) love.
This was the scene of their _tete-a-tetes_, of his efforts to persuade
her into his religious faith, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and
baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when
she literally thrust herself between him and his love. From this
platform Crimsworth and Lucy and Charlotte Bronte herself had given
instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted
and overcome. Here Paul and Heger gave lectures upon literature, and
Paul delivered his spiteful tirade against the English on the morning of
his _fete_-day. Upon this desk were heaped his bouquets that morning;
from its smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fractured his
spectacles; and here, seated in Paul's chair, at Paul's desk, we saw and
were presented to Paul Emanuel himself,--M. Heger.
[Sidenote: School Scenes]
It was something more than curiosity which made us alert to note the
appearance and manner of this man, who has been so nearly associated
with Miss Bronte in an intercourse which colored her subsequent life and
determined her life-work, who has been made the hero of her novels and
has been deemed the hero of her own heart's romance; and yet we _were_
curious to know what manner of man it was who has been so much as
suspected of being honored with the love and preference of the dainty
Charlotte Bronte. During a short conversation with him we had
opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious"
man must, at the time Miss Bronte knew him, have more closely resembled
Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed,
after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the
most part, aptly applied to him. He was of middle size, of rather spare
habit of body; his face was fair and the features pleasing and regular,
the cheeks were thin and the mouth flexible, the eyes--somewhat
sunken--were mild blue and of singularly pleasant expression. We found
him aged and somewhat infirm; his finely-shaped head was fringed with
white hair, and partial baldness contributed reverence to his presence
and tended to enhance the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In
repose his countenance showed a hint of melancholy: as Miss Bronte said,
his "physiognomy was _fine et spirituelle_;" one would hardly imagine it
could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice
was low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely
French," his manner _suave_ and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat.
He accosted us in the language Miss Bronte taught him forty years ago,
and his accent and diction honored her instruction. He was talking with
some patrons, and, as his daughter had hinted that he was averse to
speaking of Miss Bronte, we soon took leave of him and were shown other
parts of the school. The other class-rooms, used for less advanced
pupils, were smaller. In one of them Miss Bronte had ruled as monitress
after her return from Haworth. The large dormitory of the _pensionnat_
was above the long class-room, and in the time of the Brontes most of
the boarders--about twenty in number--slept here. Their cots were
arranged along either side, and the position of those occupied by the
Brontes was pointed out to us at the extreme end of the room. It was
here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypochondria, so graphically
portrayed in "Villette," and found the discarded costume of the spectral
nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Bronte passed those nights of
wakeful misery which Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long, narrow room in
front of the class-rooms was shown us as the _refectoire_, where the
Brontes, with the other boarders, took their meals, presided over by M.
and Madame Heger, and where, during the evenings, the lessons for the
ensuing days were prepared. Here were held the evening prayers which
Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into the garden. This, too, was the
scene of Paul's readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of his
spasms of petulance, which readers of "Villette" will remember. From the
_refectoire_ we passed again into the corridor, where we made our adieus
to our affable conductress. She explained that, whereas this
establishment had been both a _pensionnat_ and an _externat_, having
about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders when Miss Bronte was here,
it was after the death of Madame Heger used as a day-school only,--the
_pensionnat_ being in another street.
[Sidenote: The Confessional]
The genuine local color Miss Bronte gives in "Villette" enabled us to be
sure that we had found the sombre old church where Lucy, arrested in
passing by the sound of the bells, knelt upon the stone pavement,
passing thence into the confessional of Pere Silas. Certain it is that
this old church lies upon the route she would take in the walk from the
school to the Protestant cemetery, which she had set out to do that
afternoon, and the narrow streets which lie beyond the church correspond
to those in which she was lost. Certain, too, it is said to be that this
incident is taken from her own experience. Reid says, "During one of the
long holidays, when her mind was restless and disturbed, she found
sympathy, if not peace, in the counsels of a priest in the confessional,
who soothed her troubled spirit without attempting to enmesh it in the
folds of Romanism."
[Sidenote: The Cemetery]
Our way to the Protestant cemetery--a spot sadly familiar to Miss
Bronte, and the usual termination of her walks--lay past the site of the
Porte de Louvain and out to the hills beyond the old city limits. From
our path we saw more than one tree-shrouded farm-house which might have
been the place of Paul's breakfast with his school, and at least one
quaint mansion, with green-tufted and terraced lawns, which might have
served Miss Bronte as the model for La Terrasse, the suburban home of
the Brettons and the temporary abode of the Taylor sisters whom she
visited here. From the cemetery we beheld vistas of farther lines of
hills, of intervening valleys, of farms and villas, and of the great
city lying below. Miss Bronte has well described this place: "Here, on
pages of stone and of brass, are written names, dates, last tributes of
pomp or love, in English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone
crosses all about, and great thickets of roses and yews; "cypresses that
stand straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there
are "dim garlands of everlasting flowers." Here "The Professor" found
his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a new-made grave under the
overhanging trees. And here we found the shrine of poor Charlotte
Bronte's many pilgrimages hither,--the burial-place of her friend and
school-mate, the Jessy Yorke of "Shirley;" the spot where, under "green
sod and a gray marble head-stone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps
below."
LEMAN'S SHRINES
_Beloved of Litterateurs--Gibbon--D'Aubigne--Rousseau--Byron--Shelley--
Dickens, etc.--Scenes of Childe Harold--Nouvelle Heloise--Prisoner of
Chillon--Land of Byron._
[Sidenote: Haunts of Litterateurs]
A pilgrimage in the track of Childe Harold brings us from the shores of
Albion, by Belgium's capital and deadly Waterloo, along the castled
Rhine and over mountain-pass to "Italia, home and grave of empires," and
to the sublimer scenery of "Manfred," "Chillon," and the third canto of
the pilgrim-poet's masterpiece; to his "silver-sheeted Staubbach" and
"arrowy Rhone," "soaring Jungfrau" and "bleak Mont Blanc." We linger
with especial pleasure on the shores of "placid Leman," in an enchanting
region which teems with literary shrines and is pervaded with memories
and associations--often so thrilling and vivid that they seem like
veritable and sensible presences--of the brilliant number who have
here had their haunts. Here Calvin wrought his Commentaries; here
Voltaire polished his darts; here Rousseau laid the scenes of his
impassioned tale; here Dickens, Byron, and Shelley loitered and wrote;
here Gibbon and de Stael, Schlegel and Constant, and many another
scarcely less famous, lived and wrought the treasures of their knowledge
and fancy into the literature of the world. A lingering voyage round
the lake, like that of Byron and Shelley, is a delight to be remembered
through a lifetime, and affords opportunity to visit the spots
consecrated by genius upon these shores. At Geneva we find the inn where
Byron lodged and first met the author of "Queen Mab," the house in which
Rousseau was born, the place where d'Aubigne wrote his history, the
sometime home of John Calvin. Near by, in a house presented by the
Genevese after his release from the long imprisonment suffered on their
account, dwelt Bonnivard, Byron's immortal "Prisoner of Chillon," and
here he suffered from his procession of wives and finally died. Just
beyond the site of the fortifications, on the east side of the city, is
an eminence whose slopes are tastefully laid out with walks that wind,
amid sward and shrub, to the observatory which crowns the summit and
marks the site of Bonnivard's Priory of St. Victor, lost to him by his
devotion to Genevan independence. Not far away is the public library,
founded by his bequest of his modest collection of books and MSS. which
we see here carefully preserved. Here also is an old portrait of the
prisoner, which represents him as a reckless and jolly "good fellow"
rather than a saintly hero, and accords better with his character as
described by late writers than with the common conception of him.
[Sidenote: Byron at Villa Diodati]
Byron loved this Leman lake, and it is said his discontented sprite
still walks its margins; certain it is he remains its poetic genius; his
melody seems to wake in every breeze that stirs its surface. The Villa
Diodati, a plain, quadrangular, three-storied mansion of moderate
dimensions, standing on the shore a few miles from Geneva, was the
handsome "Giaour's" first home after his separation from Lady Byron and
his exile from England. It had been the residence of the Genevan
Professor Diodati and the sojourn of his friend the poet Milton.
Pleasant vineyards surround the place and slope away to the water, but
there is little in the spot or its near environment to commend it to the
fancy of a poet. Byron's study here was a sombre room at the back from
which neither the lake nor the snowy peaks were visible, and here he
wrote, besides many minor poems, "Manfred," "Prometheus," "Darkness,"
"Dream," and the third canto of "Childe Harold." Here also he wrote
"Marriage of Belphegor," a tale setting forth his version of his own
infelicitous marriage; but hearing that his wife was seriously ill, he
burned it in his study fire. From here, by instigation of de Stael, he
sent to Lady Byron ineffectual overtures for a reconciliation. His
companion at the villa was an eccentric Italian physician, Polidori, who
was uncle to the poet Rossetti, and who here quarrelled with Byron's
guests and wrote "The Vampire," a weird production afterward attributed
to Byron. Lovers of Byron owe much to his sojourn on Leman; he found in
the inspiring landscapes here, especially in the environment of
mountains, a power that profoundly stirred what his wife called "the
angel in him." His letters recognize an afflatus breathed upon him by
the "majesty around and above," and the quality of the poems here
produced shows his yielding and response to that benign influence; many
a gem of poetic thought was here begotten of lake and mount and
cataract, which otherwise had never been. The insincere stanzas of some
of his later poems would scarcely have been written on Leman. As we muse
in the spots he frequented--wandering on the entrancing margins or
floating on the crystal waters--and look thence upon the snow-crowned
peaks, resplendent in the sunshine or roseate in the after-glow, we
aspire to not only partake of his rapture in this sublime beauty, but to
appreciate the deeper feelings to which it moved him.
[Sidenote: Shelley]
A villa near Byron's, and reached by a path through his grounds,--Maison
Chapuis, of Mont Allegra,--was occupied that summer by the "impassioned
Ariel of English verse," with Mary Shelley and her brunette relative
Jane Clermont (the Claire of Shelley's journal), who after bore to
Byron a daughter called Alba by the Shelleys, but later named by Byron
Allegra, for the place where he had known the mother. At Mont Allegra
"Bridge of Arve," "Intellectual Beauty," and Mrs. Shelley's weird
"Frankenstein" were penned. Here Byron was a daily visitant, and the
Shelleys were the usual companions of his excursions upon the lake of
beauty, in a picturesque lateen-rigged boat which was the property of
the poets and the counterpart of which we see moored by the Diodati
shore, looking like a bit of the Levant transported to this tramontane
water. The "white phantom" observed by telescopists on the opposite
shore to sometimes embark with Byron, and which he gravely told Madame
de Stael was his dog, was doubtless the frail Claire. The admonitions of
de Stael anent his mode of life provoked Byron to take sure revenge by
being attentive to her husband, which the overshadowing wife always
resented as an affront upon herself. It is said the poet's observation
of this pair prompted the couplet of "Don Juan:"
"But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?"
[Sidenote: Voltaire--Gibbon--Dickens]
Passing for the present the shrines of Ferney and Coppet, we find in
picturesque Lausanne the quaint house in which Voltaire lived several
winters, and not far away the place where Secretan died a few months
ago. Gibbon's dwelling has been demolished, but we find the place of his
summer-house where the great history was completed, and of his famous
rose-tree where Byron gathered roses long ago. Madame de Genlis narrates
this incident of the great "Decliner and Faller" at Lausanne: he was
enamoured of the comely Madame Crousaz, and, finding her alone, he knelt
at her feet and besought her love. He received an unfavorable reply, but
remained in his humble posture until the lady, after repeatedly
requesting him to arise, discovered that his weight made it impossible,
and summoned a servant to assist him to regain his feet. His obesity
seems to have been a standing jest among his acquaintances: a sufferer
from indigestion, due to lack of exercise, was advised by a witty friend
to "walk twice around Gibbon before breakfast." Several decades later
another illustrious English man of letters sojourned in Lausanne. A
pretty cottage-villa, with embowered walls and flower-shaded porticos
which look from a mild eminence across the crescentic lake, was, in
1846, the dwelling of Dickens, who here wrote one of the matchless
Christmas stories and a part of "Dombey and Son." From the magnificent
slope of Lausanne the whole lake region is visible, with the dark Juras
rising to the western horizon, the Alps of Savoy, and "the monarch of
mountains with a diadem of snow" upholding the sky away in the south. At
the foot of this slope is the port-town of Ouchy, a resort of Byron's in
his sailing excursions; at the plain little Anchor inn near the _quai_
(Byron called it a "wretched inn") he lodged, and here, being detained
two days (June 26 and 27, 1816) by a storm which overtook him on his
return from Chillon and Clarens, he wrote the touching "Prisoner of
Chillon." In a parsonage not far from Lausanne was reared sweet Suzanne
Curchod, erst _fiancee_ of Gibbon, and later the mother of de Stael.
[Sidenote: Rousseau]