The Secret of Charlotte Bront?

42

al impassioned Letters to M. Heger, written within the first two years of Charlotte's return to England, Letters that not only place the authoress of Jane Eyre and Villette (as a devotee, and an exponent of Romantic love) on a 'higher pedestal than ever,' b

t existed between Lucy Snowe and her 'Master.' Paul Emanuel was unmarried, and in love with Lucy, although Mada

ionships (of trustful friendship on the one hand and sympathetic interest on the other) that had existed between Charlotte and the Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle when, a year earlier (in January 1843), Charlotte had returned to Bruxelles alone, in response to Madame's as well as Monsieur's invitation, to perfect her own French, and to receive a small salary as En

der their sitting-room my sitting-room, and to go there whenever I was not engaged in the schoolroom. This, however, I cannot do. In the daytime it is a public room, where music-masters and mistresses are constantly passing in and out; and in the evening I will no

ive, which epithets, I assure you, are richly deserved. Also I find she is the regular spy of Madame Heger, to whom she reports everything. Also she invents, which I should not have thought. I am [not] richly off for companionship in these parts. Of late days, M. and Madame Heger rarely speak to me; and I really don't pretend to care a fig for anybody else in the establishment. You are not to suppose by that expression that I am under the influence of warm affection for Madame Heger. I am convinced she does not like me: why, I can't tell. (O Charlotte!) Nor do I think she herself has any definite reason for this aversion.(!) But for one thing, she cannot understand why I do not make intimate friends of Mesdames Blanche, Sophie and

it, has taken an aversion to her. And when M. Heger says, 'Don't you think, "Mees Charlotte," who is lonely without her sister Emily, should be taken more notice of?' Madame Heger replies coldly: 'If "Mees" is lonely, it is her own fault. Why does she not make friends with her compeers, Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Sophie and Haussé? They are of her rank; they follow the same profession; no, this young Englishwoman is full of the pride and narrowness of her race! She is without bienveillance: she esteems herself better tha

in his efforts to encourage the studies, and brighten by gifts of books, and talks about them, the solitude of the English teacher? It is not very difficult to discover the cause of the change, if only critics with p

ow-governesses, this sentiment becomes transformed (insensibly and fatally, without her knowledge or will) into a passionate personal devotion-in other words, into a sentiment that does transgress very seriously indeed the limits of the sort of feeling that Madame Heger, in her double character of directress of a highly esteemed Pensionnat de Demoiselles, and of the wife of Monsieur Heger-esteems 'convenient,' in the case of an under-mistress in her establishment. It was not a question of ordinary jealousy at all. Madame Heger, a much more attractive woman than Charlotte Bront? in so far as her personal appearance was concerned, was absolutely convinced of the affection and fidelity of her husband, and of the entirely and exclusively professorial interest he took in assisting this clever and zealous and meritorious daughter of an evangelical Pastor, to qualify herself for a schoolmistress in her own country. It was entirely a question of the 'inconvenience'-the unbecoming character of this unfortunate infatuation, that renders it entirely intolerable; something that must be got rid of at once; but as quietly as possible, without exciting remark, and with as much consideration for this imprudent, unhappy 'Mees Charlotte' as possible. The whole affair is a misfortune, of course, 'un malheur': but what one has to do, now it has arrived, is to guard against even greater 'malheurs' for

, what she ought to do? Let her do this, let her take the opportunity offered her of relieving Madame Heger of the painful necessity of touching upon distressing subjects, and the secret they share shall never be made known to any one, not even to M. Heger himself, who is entirely unconscious of it. An explanation could easily be found by 'Mees' for the necessity of her return to England:-her aged father's infirmities, the establishment of the school that she is now qualified to manage, etc.-and all this matter will arrange itself quietly. To bring Charlotte to dismiss herself was Madame Heger's purpose: but in view of the slowness and reluctance of this obstinate Englishwoman to recognise what was 'becoming,' and expected from her, the immediate object became to guard against any self-betrayal by Charlotte of her state of feeling to other members of the establishment, and especially to M. Heger, whom Madame knew to be entirely innocent of any warm feeling resembling romantic sentiment for the homely

and the torments they inflicted upon her during the long seven months she lived through this incessant conflict with Madame Heger, under cover of an outer show of politeness on both sides, were precisely the same torments of cheated expectancy, suspense, thwarted hope, disappointments, that she has painted in Villette, and the Professor, as inflicte

entative indications of the state of his affections that have awakened and justified the passionate but timid and self-despising Lucy Snowe. Nothing then can be more plain than the position here-Paul Emanuel and Lucy Snowe are being divided, and trouble is being created, by a horrid, jealous, mischievous Madame Beck, who wants Paul Emanuel to marry her, although she knows he loves

oman, with her 'inconvenient' passion, always on the verge of exhibiting her sentiments in a way that may inform M. Heger-who is the best of men; most honourable, but still a man-who may or may not see how serious this is: who may tell one, 'Let me talk reason to her,' which is the last course to take! It is true, Madame will have said to herself, 'I might take matters into my hands; and since she has no sense of 'convenience' herself, I might say: 'Mees, I exact this of you: immediately you make up your trunks, and return to Yorkshire; you start to-morrow.' Yes, but what happens then? There are observations,-indignation is excited. M.

t necessary in a Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles of high repute? If any one will suggest a plan that would have been more considerate to Charlotte than the one she took, I should very much like to hear what plan? Even then, in the light of what I know of Madame Heger's incapability of a deliberate d

ime Charlotte-outwardly compliant with all the demands made upon her, that keep her writing letters at Madame's dictation (in the hours when Monsieur is giving his lessons in class), that send her upon messages to the other end of Bruxelles (upon holidays when Monsieur's habit is to trim the vine above the Berceau in the garden)-all this time, Charlotte's bitter protest spoke out in the gaze she fastened on the Directress: 'Merciless woman that you are! you who have everything; who are his wife, the mother of his children, whom he loves; who will enjoy his conversation and his society, and the

of C.B.

ife,