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Secret of Charlotte Brontë

<h3>CHAPTER II</h3> <h4>MY FIRST INTRODUCTION TO CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S PROFESSOR</h4> [1] <blockquote>'Madame,—quelquefois, donner, c'est semer'—Speech made to my Mother by M. Heger. </blockquote> In 1859 this memorable thing happened:—I was introduced by my mother to M. Heger as his future pupil. I was fourteen years of age: but I remember everything in connection with this event as though it had happened yesterday. We were staying at Ostend, where my mother had taken my brother and myself for a long summer holiday, because she believed we had been previously overworked at our former schools, from which she had removed us. She was convinced that we both of us stood in need of sea-air, exercise and healthy recreation, before we could take up our studies again, after the strain we had undergone. Upon this point my brother and I were entirely of one mind with our mother. But after a holiday of three months, we had also begun to feel, with her, that this state of things could not go on for ever, and that—as she expressed it—'something had to be done with us.' What was done with us was the result of circumstances that I cannot but regard as fortunate, in my own case at any rate. They brought into my life, at a very impressionable age, influences and memories that have always been, and that are still, after more than half a century, extraordinarily serviceable and sweet to me. The first of these fortunate circumstances was the renewal (due to an accidental meeting at Ostend) of my mother's friendship with a relative whom she had lost sight of for a great many years; who had married a Dutch lady and settled in Holland. The eldest daughter of these re-discovered cousins was an exceptionally charming girl of nineteen; and upon enquiry my mother found out that she had been educated at a school in Brussels, situated in the Rue d'Isabelle, and kept by a certain Madame Heger. How it came to pass that, only four years after the publication of Villette, and two years after Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, it did not occur to my mother to identify this particular Brussels school with the one where the Director was the fiery and perilously attractive 'Professor Paul Emanuel' and where the Directress was painted as the crafty and treacherous 'Madame Beck,' I really cannot say; but, so it was. There can be no doubt that it was solely because the account rendered by her delightful young kinswoman of the school where she had spent three years was thoroughly satisfactory to my mother, and because the unaffected and accomplished girl herself was an excellent proof of the happy results of the education she had received, that my mother made up her mind that the best thing that could be 'done with me,' was to send me to Madame Heger's school. She had entered into correspondence with this lady, and the plan had developed into a further arrangement, that my brother was to be placed with a French tutor recommended by Madame Heger, and who was the Professor of History at her establishment. All these conditions were very nearly settled, when M. Heger came to visit my mother at Ostend; to talk matters over and to make final arrangements. Of course from the point of view of my own humble interest I recognised that the visit of this Brussels Professor was an event of great importance. I was fully conscious of this, because my cousin had told me a great deal about M. Heger, explaining that he was the ruling spirit in the Pensionnat; that he was rather a terrible personage; and that if he took a dislike to one,—well, he could be very disagreeable. I had received so much advice upon this particular subject from my cousin that I had talked the matter over very seriously with my brother afterwards, and asked him what he thought I ought to do in order to avoid the misfortune of offending M. Heger. My brother's advice was sound:—'Don't let the man see you are afraid of him,' he said, 'and then, whatever you do, don't show off.' Keeping these counsels in mind, after M. Heger's arrival, I sat upon the extreme edge of the rickety sofa that filled the darkest corner in the little salle-à-manger of our Ostend apartments over the Patissier's shop in the Rue de la Chapelle—I remember the very name of the Patissier; it was Dubois—watching and listening eagerly to the conversation of the Professor with my mother, who, strange to say, did not seem to be in the least afraid of him; nor to recognise that he was in any way different to ordinary mortals! And I must say, looking back to that September afternoon to-day, and realising our attitude of mind, my mother's and mine, towards this interesting personage to us, but interesting solely in his character of my future teacher, there does seem to me something amazing—so amazing as to be almost amusing—in our total unconsciousness of his already well-established real, or rather ideal claims as a personage immortalised in English literature, by an illustrious writer who, four years before my birth, had been his pupil; and whose romantic love for him, whilst it had broken her heart, had served as the inspiration of her genius; so that her literary masterpiece was precisely a book where the very school I was going to inhabit was painted, with extraordinary veracity, in so far as outward and local points of resemblance were concerned. As for my own ignorance of all these circumstances there is nothing strange in that. Fifty-four years ago a schoolgirl of my age was not very likely to have read Villette. But what one may pause to inquire is whether if by any accident the book had come into my hands, and thus revealed to me my true position, should I have gone down on my bended knees to my mother, or to express the case more exactly, should I have flung my arms round her dear neck, and prayed, 'Don't send me to this school; I am afraid of Professor Paul Emanuel; I loathe Madame Beck; I shall never make friends with these horrid Lesbassecouriennes?' Well, really, I don't think I should have done anything of the sort! At fourteen one adores an adventure. It seems to me probable that the excitement of going to the same school, and learning my lessons in the same class-rooms, and treading the paths of the same garden, and being instructed by the same teachers as a writer of genius, who had left these scenes haunted by romance, would have made me hold under all apprehensions of the Lesbassecouriennes as school-fellows, of the perfidious Directress with her stealthy methods of espionage, of the explosive, nerve-wrecking Professor, always breaking in upon one like a clap of thunder. Yes; but though held under, the apprehension would have troubled my inner soul a good deal all the same; and this would have been a pity. Because, in so far as the real Directress and real Belgian schoolgirls whom I was going to know in the Rue d'Isabelle went, these apprehensions would have been superfluous and misleading. But now if there were no danger of my finding in the real Pensionnat any spiritual counterparts of either the fictitious Madame Beck, or of the perverted Lesbassecouriennes pupils, was it equally certain that, if I had read Villette, I should not have recognised and been justified in recognising in Monsieur Heger the original model and living image of that immortal figure in English fiction, 'the magnificent-minded, grand-hearted, dear, faulty little man'—Professor Paul Emanuel? We shall perhaps be able to decide this question better at the end of these reminiscences than here. But what must be realised is, that the very fact that lends some general interest to my mother's first impressions and my own about M. Heger is chiefly this: that it expresses observations made from a purely personal standpoint; out of sight of any literary views about 'Paul Emanuel,' or historical judgments upon his relations with Charlotte Brontë. The perfectly simple purpose we had in view was to see clearly what sort of a Professor M. Heger was going to prove, and whether I was going to do well as his pupil, and get on satisfactorily, amongst these foreign surroundings. My mother formed a most favourable opinion of our visitor, and decided that I was fortunate in obtaining such a Professor. What had especially impressed her was a sentence delivered by M. Heger, with a masterly little gesture, that, as she herself said, entirely won her over to his opinions upon a question where elaborate arguments might have left her unconvinced. And I may observe here, that this belonged to M. Heger's methods, not so much of arguing, as of dispensing with arguments. His mind was made up upon most subjects, and as he had got into the habit of regarding the world as his class-room, and his fellow-creatures as pupils, he did not argue; he told people what they ought to think about things. And in order to make this method of settling questions not only convincing, but stimulating, to his most intelligent pupils, he held in reserve a store of these really luminous phrases, that he would use as little Lanterns, flashing them, now in this direction, now in that, but always with a special and appropriate direction given to the illuminative phrase, so that it lit up the point of view upon which he desired to fix attention. The particular sentence that conquered my mother's admiration and acquiescence in M. Heger's point of view was the one I have made the heading of this chapter. Here was how he contrived to introduce it. After discussing the plan of my studies, and the arrangements for my being taken to the English church by my brother every Sunday, and allowed to take walks with him upon half-holidays (to all of which of course I listened with passionate attention), they passed on to discuss the terms asked by the tutor whom the Hegers had recommended. My mother had been told by her Dutch cousin that they were exorbitant terms; and, as a matter of fact, I believe they were exactly twice the amount charged by the Hegers themselves: 'I am not a rich woman,' my mother had said, apologetically, 'and I have put aside a fixed sum for my children's education; I doubt if I can give this.' ... Then did the Professor see, and seize, his opportunity: 'Madame,' he said, with a gesture, 'quelquefois, donner, c'est semer.' My mother, dazzled with this prophetic utterance, remained speechless and vanquished. In the evening of the same day I heard her quote to the Dutch cousin, who did not approve of her consent to these charges, 'what that clever man, Professor Heger) said so well,' as though it had been unanswerable. In the course of the next two years I often heard the same luminous phrase used, with equal appropriateness, to light up other propositions. (I have heard M. Heger use it in a sense where it became a different formula for expressing a fundamental doctrine of Rousseau, thus, 'Instruire, ce n'est pas donner, c'est semer,' but I never heard the words without going back to the first impression, and to the vision it called up. I would see again the little salle-à-manger in the Rue de la Chapelle at Ostend, I would watch the masterly gesture of the Professor's hand when he delivered his triumphant sentence, that is not an argument, but is worth more; I would see the look of admiration and sudden conviction come into my dear mother's face; I would feel myself sitting upon the little rickety sofa in the dark corner, and I would shudder with the foreknowledge of what was coming, for, woebetide me that I should have to tell it, this first interview did not leave with me the same impression of confidence in M. Heger as my future teacher and guardian that it did with my mother; it left with me, on the contrary, the miserable conviction that the very worst thing that could have happened had happened; that M. Heger had taken a vehement dislike to me, and consequently that all hope of happiness for me in the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle was over and done with. And the worst of it was, that it was all my own fault; or rather, to be just, it was my misfortune. For I had had a really very bad time of it, sitting on that rickety little sofa. My mother, who had only too flattering an opinion of me in every way, had meant to say the kindest things about me to M. Heger, and I knew this perfectly. But unfortunately, although she spoke French with the greatest fluency and self-confidence (because as she was a very charming woman, and as Frenchmen are always polite in their criticism of the French of charming English women, she had been very often complimented upon her command of the language),—unfortunately, I say, her French was really English, literally translated; and every one who has experience of what false meanings can be conveyed by this sort of French will realise what I had suffered, because, though I only spoke French badly at this time, I understood the language better than my mother. And this is how I had heard myself described to my future Professor. My mother had wished to say that I was more fond of study and of reading than was good for the health of a girl of my age; but what she actually said was that I was fond of reading things that were not healthy or suitable (convenable) for a young girl. Again, she had meant to say that as I had worked too hard, she had let me run wild a little; and that consequently I might find it difficult to get into working habits again; but that as I had a capital head of my own, and plenty of courage, I should, no doubt, soon get into good ways again. But instead of all these flattering things (that might have been rather irritating too, only a Professor of experience knows how to forgive a parent's partiality), I had heard this fond mother of mine say that her daughter had recently contracted the habits of a little savage; and that it would require courageous discipline, as she was very headstrong, to bring her into the right way again. It will be understood that to sit and listen to all this about oneself was anguish. But, carefully watching M. Heger's face, I had a notion that he had found out there was some mistake. Still I was depressed and bewildered; and in dread of what I was going to say, when the time came, as I knew it must, when he would say something to me, and I should have a chance of answering for myself. And the misfortune was, that when the critical moment came, I wasn't expecting it; because, here, at least, what the author of Villette says of Professor Paul Emanuel was true of M. Heger—everything he did was sudden; and he always contrived to take one by surprise. It was immediately after he had won his triumph over my mother, and in the moment when I myself was under the spell of admiration for his talent, that he turned upon me, in a sort of flash, smiling down upon me (very red and startled to find him so near), and nodding his head with an irritating look of amusement as his penetrating eyes searched my doleful face. 'Aa-ah,' he said, in a half-playful, but as it sounded to me, more mocking, than kindly tone, 'Aa-ah' (another nod of the head), 'so this is the little Savage I have to discipline and vanquish, is it? And she is headstrong (têtue). Tell me, Mees, am I to be too indulgent? or too severe? (Dois-je être trop indulgent? ou trop sévère?') Now, if only I had made the natural reply, the one obviously expected from me—the one any girl in my position would have made, and which I myself should have made if I hadn't been addressed as 'a little savage,' and if I hadn't been smarting under the sense that he must have the worst possible opinion of me, and that I ought to vindicate my honour in some way,—if only, in short, I had remembered my brother's wholesome advice, 'Don't show off,' that is to say, if only I had said, amiably and nicely, with a timid little smile, 'Trop indulgent, s'il vous plait, Monsieur,' THEN all would have been well with me; M. Heger would have continued to smile; we should have exchanged amiable glances and parted the best of friends.... But of what use are these speculations? What I did reply to his question of whether he was to be too indulgent or too severe was—'Ni l'un ni l'autre, Monsieur; soyez juste, celà suffit' ... and I listened to the broadness of my own British accent, whilst I said it, in despairing wonder! M. Heger's smiles vanished; there came what I took to be a 'look of undying hatred' into his face—it was not perhaps so bad as all that, but ... well, I certainly hadn't conquered his favour. He said something disagreeable about Les Anglaises being over wise, too philosophical for him, which my mother thought was a compliment to my cleverness. But I knew what I had done, and that it could never be undone, henceforth ... Well, but the case really was not quite so desperate perhaps? <div class="footnote">[1] This chapter is reproduced from the Cornhill by the kind permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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