But now if we consult honestly our own impressions, does this letter reveal that 'it is no cause of grief to Charlotte that M. Heger is married'? Is it true that there 'is nothing in it that any enthusiastic woman might not write to a married man with a family who had been her teacher'?
What the letter does reveal (thus it seems to me at least) is one supreme thing before all others: that the writer of it is past saving, by this time, from the destiny she prophesied for herself ten months ago in Bruxelles. 'My heart will break,' Charlotte said then: when fate (in the garb of Madame Heger) thrust herself between her and her beloved Professor.
And now, touching and eloquent as it all is, what escape is there from the conclusion that the writer of this letter must break her heart?
What else can happen? Let us recognise her plight. Here one has an entirely honourable, passionately tender, tenderly passionate, very serious woman, her mind dominated (as she says herself) by one tyrannical fixed idea; let us rather say by one tragical passion; and who sees her own life, and her claims upon the man she loves through the medium of this tragical passion: and who gives her life an impossible purpose; and who makes impossible claims. They are very small claims, she pleads. And so they are, very small in comparison with what she gives, her whole life's devotion poured out at the feet of her 'Master,' from whom she only asks in return that he will not forbid her worship; that, now and again, he will give her the joy of seeing his handwriting, and of knowing that he is well. But small as these claims are, they are unreasonable:—'to the last degree "inconvenient" and impossible,' as Madame would have said,—in the particular case of this 'Master'; a married man and an attached husband with five children, the Director of a Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles who has need to be especially circumspect; and who cannot discreetly, nor even honourably, allow a former under-mistress to address him passionate, romantic love-letters, even every six months. Nor can this loyal husband and self-respecting Catholic and Professor undertake to appear to sanction this indiscretion, by keeping her informed of his health and welfare at regular intervals. So that, building her heart's desires upon false hopes, that, from day to day, wear themselves out in disappointment, and looking for consolation to things necessarily withdrawn; and that she pursues in vain like 'fading visions,'—how is our poor Charlotte to find any escape from the heart-break that is the natural term of the path along which this Love, that has become her destiny, leads her? No way of escape is there for Charlotte: not in heaven above, nor on the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth. For no miracle can give her love a happy ending; say that even a thunderbolt fell from heaven to remove Madame Heger,—it would be extremely unjust—but admit that a murderous miracle be granted—even so, it would not alter the fact that M. Heger is not in love with Charlotte. And no earthly scheme either can bridge the separation—wider than the 160 leagues between Yorkshire and Brussels—that now severs Charlotte, breaking her heart in Yorkshire, from her Master in literature, carrying on, as stormily and triumphantly as when she assisted at them, his lessons in the class-rooms in the Rue d'Isabelle: those memory-haunted class-rooms she will never see again; because although we find her in these Letters speaking of projects of earning money that she may return to Bruxelles, if only to see her professor once again, one knows that there would be Madame to count with; and even Monsieur Heger's obstinate neglect to reply to these appealing Letters does not indicate any answering wish on his side to see his former pupil again. Nor yet does there exist in the waters under the earth any pool of magical power of healing sufficient to soothe these bitter regrets and reproaches; nor any well deep enough to drown rebellious desires and memories: for Charlotte has too splendid a soul to think of suicide; or to quench anguish by drugs. So that one knows that Charlotte's fate is sealed: and that we must follow her through these last steps to the end, with pity and admiration and love for her—but still not with injustice to others. Because no one outside of herself, not Madame Heger, nor Monsieur Heger, is responsible for what has happened, and what is going to happen; but only the Love that has Charlotte's soul in thrall, the Love that 'seeketh not its own,'—romantic, or if it be preferred, Platonic Love; who as the wise woman, Diotima, told Socrates, is 'not a god, but an immortal spirit, who spans the gulf between heaven and earth, carrying to the gods the prayers of men, and to the earth the commands of the gods.' Love, who is 'the child of plenty and of poverty, often, like his mother, without house or home to cover him' (and who consequently is not highly esteemed by respectable householders). Love, the 'instinct of immortality in a mortal creature,' leading him amongst mortal conditions to where Charlotte is being led to,—the grave of hope,—but not leaving hope there entombed, but raising it, not clogged with the pollution of mortality.
All this, that the wise Diotima related, is a true parable of Charlotte Brontë. And the proof that Diotima was a good psychologist, and had based her opinions upon the study of facts, is found in the assertion that Love, although an immortal spirit, is not a god. Because a god sees clearly, and does not make mistakes: whereas Love, as every one knows, is often blind, and never very clear-sighted; and is liable to make mistakes, and to be unjust even: and to attribute his own errors to other people. Thus Charlotte, under the dominion of Love, was unjust, and made mistakes: she attributed to Madame Heger disappointments and misadventures and pangs, that were not of Madame Heger's preparation at all, but were simply the imprudences of this 'Child of plenty and poverty,' who inherits from both parents and is so often extravagant and houseless, and consequently in bad odour with householders and the worshippers of 'convenience,' because 'he has no home to cover him.' Charlotte should not have attributed, for instance, malevolence or jealousy or the cruel pleasure of tantalising and torturing her in Bruxelles to Madame Heger, simply because, as the Directress of a Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles and wife of M. Heger, she did not want to take in Romantic Love as a boarder; nor to permit this 'Child of plenty and poverty' to disorganise the well-balanced domestic and conjugal relationships between herself and M. Heger. In all this Madame Heger was not persecuting Charlotte, but protecting her own rights. And if we examine the circumstances even in the narrative of the scene in the class-room between the Directress and her English teacher, and the scene of the farewell interview between the Professor and his pupil, where the Directress of the Pensionnat is put out of the room because she objects to this sentimental leave-taking, we shall find that recognising the true relationships between these three people, if Madame Heger behaved exactly as Madame Beck is said to have done, then there is not any fault whatever to be found with Madame Heger. Nay, one does not see how she could have been more considerate. Another false impression of Charlotte's—that Madame Heger intercepted her letters, and that M. Heger did not answer because he did not receive them—has no evidence to support it. Nor is this all; there is undeniable proof that the letter we have just considered (which M. Heger did not answer) was received by him: and that he was not very much affected by the passionate homage of his worshipper. 'On the edge of this letter he has made some commonplace notes in pencil;—one of them is the name and address of a shoemaker,' Mr. Spielmann tells us.
There is a natural feeling of indignation against this masculine insensibility to a woman's tragical passion, even though one recognises that honour stood in the way of any responsive sentiment. But one must not forget M. Heger's special vocation and his daily occupations and preoccupations. Here you have a Professor of literature in a Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles who spends, week by week, several days in correcting and improving 'compositions' and exercises in 'style' of numberless schoolgirls, full of the eloquent sentimentality that belongs to young writers between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Monsieur Heger had been Charlotte's master in literature, remember: and there is another fact to be realised also, one that upon the authority of my own knowledge of him, in the character of my own Professor, I am allowed to testify to: he was before all things a born teacher, and one who saw the world as his class-room, and his fellow-creatures in the light of pupils. Applying this knowledge of him to the criticism of what we know about his relations with Charlotte Brontë, we arrive at entirely different opinions to those formed by people who either see M. Heger through the medium of Charlotte's passion for him and as she painted him in Villette; or outside of any personal knowledge of him at all, as he appears to them judged in the light of the impression that he played with Charlotte's feelings: first of all encouraging by sentimental flattery her affection for him, and then, when he found that she had become inconveniently fond of him, behaving with cruel indifference. None of these decisions is based on a correct knowledge of M. Heger, nor of his true behaviour and character. The true M. Heger was not the Paul Emanuel who was the lover of Lucy Snowe, because he is very truthfully and admirably painted in the domineering but interesting, terror-striking but captivating, masterful and masterly Professor of literature, so full of talent, and fiery captivating ardour for beautiful thoughts nobly expressed. The real Professor was not tender-hearted; nor very tender in manner; nor even very pleasant and considerate; nor even kind, outside of his professorial character: and he had no sympathy whatever to spare for people who were not his pupils. And his sympathy for his pupils, as his pupils, led him to work upon their sympathies, as a way of inducing a frame of mind in them and an emotional state of feeling, rendering them susceptible to literary impressions, and putting them in key with himself, in this very fine enthusiasm of his, not only for enjoying literature himself, but for throwing open to others, and to young votaries especially, the worship of beautiful literature—as the record of the best that has been thought and said in the world.
But the very exclusive literary temperament of M. Heger left him rather cold-blooded than particularly warm-hearted, where his pupils' feelings interfered with their good style in writing; or good accent when speaking; or with their sense of the first importance of a warm appreciation of the beauties of literature. If one reversed directly the description of Charlotte Brontë herself, as a writer whose words became feelings, one might justly say of M. Heger that for him, feelings were chiefly good with reference to their effects upon words, and the creation of beautiful language—so that Charlotte's love-letters to him would be no more than the 'Devoirs de Style' of a former pupil sent him for criticism. The shoemaker's address may have been jotted down by accident, when he was running his eye down the page? If the further notes signified by Mr. Spielmann on this page, where poor Charlotte's heart's Secret lay exposed and quivering, had been 'Bon—mais un peu trop d'exaltation—la Ponctuation n'est pas soignée,' no one who knew M. Heger would blame him for voluntary unkindness. But upon this matter no more must be said at present: we have to return to Charlotte, and her Letters.
The second in the order in which I am studying them (that seems to me unmistakably indicated by the context) would have been written—if we take the year 1845 as the date—eight, instead of six, months after the one, dated November, that refers to a preceding letter in the May of the same year—when Charlotte would have accepted the obligation laid upon her not to write again for six months. This Letter, dated 24th July, indicates by the opening sentence, not that she is writing outside of the appointed time, but outside of her turn: that is to say, it shows that M. Heger had not answered her November Letter; that she had waited for his reply, but could not wait longer, and so wrote a second letter, before M. Heger's reply to the first. The custom shows us that poor Charlotte is uneasily conscious that her former one in November may have given offence. She apologises for it, as we shall see; and works hard to write with cheerfulness in a more temperate tone:—
Ah, Monsieur! I know I once wrote you a letter that was not a reasonable one, because my heart was choked with grief; but I will not do it again! I will try not to be selfish; although I cannot but feel your letters the greatest happiness I know. I will wait patiently to receive one, until it pleases you, and it is convenient to write one. At the same time, I may write you a little letter from time to time; you authorised me to do that.
The effort she is putting upon herself in this Letter is evident. She has become reasonable; she does not reproach him for not writing, but only asks him to remember how much she desires it. She tells him of her plans, as she was recommended to do, instead of dwelling on her feelings. She humours and flatters his vanity and taste by her acknowledgment of all she owes him; and of her unfailing gratitude and wish to dedicate a book to him—she even sends a message to Madame!—