The Secret of Charlotte Bront?

d differently. 'One needs to be very generous before one can be really just' is Jean-Jacques Rousseau's way of stating the proposition. A

world) of the four tragical, but incomparably beautiful, Letters written by Charlotte Bront?

would have been no means of rectifying the arbitrary, false, and inadequate criticism of the personali

teral counterparts in the interesting Professor Paul Emanuel, and in the abominable Madame Beck-might well, in view of the unintelligent and ungenerous criticism of his parents by English readers, have refused

e appeared in 1853. In 1854 Charlotte, then in her fortieth year, married the Rev. A.B. Nicholls; and she died less than a year after this marriage. Mr. Nicholls survived her more than forty years. No doubt he would have been wounded in his sensibilities by the disclosure of his late wife's entirely honourable, but very romantic and passionate earlier attachment to somebody else. Intimate personal friends of Charlotte, also, would have been afflicted, not by her revelations, but by the commentaries upon them that a certain type of critic would have infallibly indulged in. Whilst these conditions lasted, the Heger family scrupulously refrained from publishing these documents. Twenty years ago, when I was collecting the materials for my article published in the Woman at Home, and when, in the light of my own recollection of M. and Madame Heger, as their forme

ul of the gifted author whose genius is the pride of England. We have hesitated long as to whether these documents, so private, so intimate, should be scanned by the public eye. We have been deterred from offering them sooner, by the thought that, perhaps, the publicity involved in the gift might be considered incompatible with the sensitive nature of the artist herself. But we offer them the more readily, as they lay open the true significance of what has h

s one would imagine from what passes current to-day. That is evident enough from the very circumstances of life, so different for her, and for them. There is nothing in these Letters that is not entirely honourable to their author, as to him to whom they are addressed. It is better to

y of the facts of her life and character, but from their own impressions and convictions, are not going to admit that the legends are overthrown, simply because it has been proved that they are founded upon mistakes. At the same time, no statement can be more true than t

t Villette represents an autobiographical study, or else who have founded their judgments of her personality and genius as a writer upon their conviction that it is a 'si

they had conquered their unique place in English literature. One cannot for a moment suppose that Mr. Clement Shorter wilfully refuses to see things as they really are, simply because it pleases him to see them differently? No! One realises perfectly that, as with Mrs. Gaskell fifty-seven years ago, so with this modern conscientious and generous critic to-day there exists an entirely noble, and, from a given point of view, justifiable reason, for refusing to handle or examine a matter with which (so it is alleged) historical and literary criticism has no concern-a purely personal, and intimate secret sorrow, in the life of an admirable woman of genius; the sanctuary of whose inner feelings it is by no means necessary to explore: and still less necessary to throw open to the vulgar curiosity and malevolent insinuations of a generation of critics, infected with hero-phobia, and the unwholesome delight of discov

so, whilst Madame de Sta?l's infatuation for Benjamin Constant neither adds to nor diminishes her claims, as the authoress of Corinne and de l'Allemagne, to the rank of a fine writer and a great critic, and while George Sand's tormenting and tormented love for the ill-fated, irresistible, unstable 'child of his century,' de Musset, is a poignant revelation of the passing weakness (through immense tenderness) of a splendidly

s in the Times, 30th July, immediately after the publication of these Letters, 'is one of the noblest

her statement of his opinions given by this well-known

ers that she merely desired comradeship with a great man. When Charlotte Bront? made her name famous with her best-known novel, she experienced much the same adulation from admirers of both sexes as she had already poured upon her teacher. She found that literary comradeship she desired in half a dozen male correspondents to whom she addressed letters in every way as interesting as those written by her to Professor Heger. There is nothing in those letters of hers, published now for the f

s is a capacity of human nature. And, again, these letters place Charlotte Bront? 'on a higher pedestal than ever,' because in them her vocation and gift of expressing her own emotions in a way that makes them 'vibrate' in us like living feelings is here carried to its height. So that these personal letters, more even than the pictured emotions of Lucy Snowe, stand out as a record of romantic love that (in so far as I know) has never before been rivalled. It is true we have the romantic love-letters of Abelard and Hélo?se, and the letters in the New Hélo?se of Saint-Preux to Julie, and of Julie to Saint-Preux, after their separation, as beautiful examples of love surviving hope of happiness; and Sainte-Beuve has quot

desired, in half a dozen male correspondents, to whom she addressed letters in every way as interesting as those written by her to M. Heger"'; and that 'there is nothing in these letters that any enthusiastic woman might not write to a ma

mradeship; and I suppose there are very few people in the least degree famous who have not been rightly harassed by the 'enthusiasm' of professing admirers who have nothing to do themselves, and who want busy men or women of letters to correspond with them. And if a desire of comradeship with M. Heger had really been the sentiment and motive of Charlotte's letters to him, after she left Bruxelles, then the fact that she continued to write to him although he did not answer her letters would prove that she was insisting upon being the 'comrade'

en the fact that women lose their youth first, M. Heger had precisely the age that would render him most sympathetic to a woman who was still young but who had left girlhood behind her. Again, M. Heger was not a 'Great Man,' in the sense of being either a celebrity, or an original genius with gifts or qualities of an order calculated to kindle intellectual hero-worship; and he was further a dictatorial and ingrained Professor, the very last person on earth to offer literary comradeship to a former pupil. The Director of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle, and the former Préfet des études at the Brussels Athénée (who had resigned this

ve months that followed Charlotte's farewell to the Director and the Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle, in January 1844. And to obtain this right impression, we have to see what had taken place, to alter the original entirely friendly terms between Madame Heger and the English under-mistress, who during the firs