Understanding this, we know that there is no 'Problem' of Charlotte Brontë: but that her personality and her genius and her life and her books were all those of a Romantic. But although there is no psychological Problem, a difficulty that concerns the historical criticism of Charlotte's life and her books does remain. And this difficulty has to be faced and conquered, not by speculations nor arguments, but by methods of enquiry.
When we study Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece Villette in comparison with what we now know about the romance in her own life, we recognise two facts: the first is that, in this work especially, she has painted with such power the emotions she has undergone that her words become feelings that lift and ennoble the reader's sensibility: and thus serve him—in the way that it belongs to Romantics to serve mankind.
But the second fact we discover is that,—again, in this book particularly,—historical personages and real events are used as the materials for an imaginary story, in a way that has produced critical confusion: and what is graver still—has caused false and injurious opinions to be formed about historical people. And the difficulty we have to face is, not what amount of blame belongs to Charlotte for misrepresenting historical facts, nor even need we ask ourselves what reason she had for thus misrepresenting them. Because the reason becomes plain when we take the trouble to realise that the motive the writer of this work of genius had in view was one that concerned her own personal liberation from haunting memories, rather than any motive concerning the impressions she might produce.
There can be no doubt that Charlotte's motive in Villette, judged as a method of personal salvation, was not only a permissible, but a noble one. It is the one that Pater attributed to Michael Angelo: 'the effort of a strong nature to attune itself to tranquillise vehement emotions by withdrawing them into the region of ideal sentiments':—'an effort to throw off the clutch of cruel and humiliating facts by translating them into the imaginative realm, where the artist, the author, the dreamer even, has things as he wills, because the hold of outward things' (such a stern and merciless one in the case of Charlotte Brontë!) 'is thrown off at pleasure.'
But, judged as a literary and historical method, was Charlotte Brontë's manner of treating the real Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle a justifiable or fair one? Can she be held without fault in this; that in Paul Emanuel and in Madame Beck she painted Monsieur and Madame Heger in a way that rendered them visible to every one who knew them; and then placed them in fictitious circumstances that altered the character of their actions and feelings, in such a way as to misrepresent their true behaviour? It seems to me that we must admit that the authoress of the Professor and of Villette adopted an unjust literary and historical method in so far as these real people are concerned: and that in the case of Madame Heger especially, passion and prejudice betrayed her: and rendered her guilty of a fault that must be recognised as a very grave one. But when this fault has been recognised and admitted, it seems to me a conscientious critic's duty does not compel him to scold this woman of genius for having the passions of her kind. A great Romantic is not an angel: and in this case the main facts about Charlotte are not her shortcomings as a celestial being, but her transcendent merits as an interpreter of the human heart. For my own part, I confess that after reading Charlotte's Love-letters, I am in no mood to look for faults in her, nor even to lend much attention to some faults that, without looking for them, one is bound to recognise. For what a thankless and unseemly, as well as what an unprofitable, sort of criticism is that represented in ancient days by the youngest amongst Job's Friends, who had such a delightfully expressive name, Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram! Elihu's criticism of Job (the man of genius, plunged into dire misfortune, not by any fault or folly of his own, but by the will of the Higher Powers, who desired to prove his virtue and to call forth his genius), is exactly the same method of criticising men and women of genius in the same case as Job, practised by Elihu's intellectual descendents, Buzites of the kindred of Ram, in all countries and in every age, down to England in the twentieth century. The fundamental doctrine of this critical method was, and is, that 'great men are not always wise,' and that it is the vocation of smaller men to teach them wisdom, without 'respecting their persons or giving them flattering titles' (truly, as a matter of fact, by calling them names—knaves, hypocrites, sentimental cads, blackguards, etc.). In other words, the rule with these Buzites is that the main purpose of criticising great people is to find fault with them; to surprise them in their 'unwise' moments, to concentrate attention upon the faults they may, or may not, have committed in these moments; and to build upon these occasional real, or imaginary, faults, psychological and pathological theories about the madness, wickedness, or folly of people capable of them. And to conclude that there is 'very much to reprobate and a great deal to laugh at' in these men and women of genius—and that the fact that they had genius, and that as witnesses to the 'instinct of immortality in mortal creatures' they have served and honoured mankind, and also have bequeathed to us treasures of ideal beauty, is a mere accident, and may be left unnoticed.
But let not my portion ever be with these fault-finders, who 'darken counsel by words without knowledge,' as the original Elihu was told, 'out of the Whirlwind,' by the Supreme Critic; 'in whose stead' the son of Barachel had arrogated to himself the right to scold and scoff at Job; and to tell him that his misfortunes were all the result of his bad character and of his uncontrolled emotions. I refuse, then, to recognise as a question of vital importance Charlotte's forgetfulness of historical exactitude in Villette; and I do not myself understand how any one (except a Buzite) who has read these Letters given to us by Dr. Paul Heger, and especially the last one, that received no answer, can help feeling that the suffering the writer of the Letters must have undergone, in the unbroken silent solitude that followed her unanswered appeal, must have made the hold upon her memory of 'outward things' so hard to bear, that to break that hold, to live in the realm of imagination free from it, having things as she would, justified almost any method of self-liberation.
Still the fact of the critical confusion of the personages in the novel with the historical Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle does create difficulties in the way of forming right opinions. And to remove them, we have to follow the plan already recommended,—to make sure of our facts, before calling in the aid of psychological arguments. And in this case, to see the position clearly, we must disentangle from the imaginary story in Villette the real personages and events woven into the fabric of a parable where, as I have said, they appear amongst fictitious circumstances and produce consequently false impressions. In other words, we have to recover a clear knowledge of the true Monsieur Heger before we can determine where 'Paul Emanuel' resembles, and where he differs from, the Professor, whom Charlotte loved: but who never showed any particle of love for Charlotte, such as Paul Emanuel bestowed on Lucy Snowe. And then we have to re-establish in her true place, as Monsieur Heger's wife and the mother of his five children, the true Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle—who must be contrasted, rather than compared, with the crafty, jealous and pitiless Madame Beck of the novel, selfishly and cruelly interfering with the true course of an entirely legitimate and romantic attachment between her English teacher and her cousin, the Professor of literature. And the relative positions of these two Directresses clearly seen, we have to ask ourselves, Whether the real Madame Heger is proved to have had the base and detestable character of the hateful Madame Beck? and whether she really was, in any voluntary or even involuntary, way, the direct cause of poor Charlotte's anguish, suspense and final heart-break? And whether, given the positions and the different views of life and sense of duty of the different people whose destinies become entangled in this tragical romance, we can find fault with any person concerned in these events,—unless, indeed, we follow Greek methods, and drag in the Eumenides? Or, else, suppose it a parallel case with Job's: and decide that it was the will of the Higher Powers to prove Charlotte's virtue and to call forth her genius? But in so far as mere mortals are concerned, we have to see whether anything else could have happened, and whether poor Charlotte was not bound to break her heart?
So that the purpose of the Second Part of this study of the 'Secret of Charlotte Brontë' really lies outside of the 'Secret' itself, and becomes an effort to know 'as in themselves they really were,' and independently of their relationships with Charlotte, the Professor whom she loved (probably much more than he deserved), and the Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle—whom she certainly hated, without any reasonable cause for this hatred, although this hatred had a natural cause—that if only we will use psychology for the purpose of penetrating facts, and not for playing with such fictions as that it was 'no serious grief to Charlotte that Monsieur Heger was married' we may easily discover. After all, one must not ask for entire 'reasonableness' from Romantics, who see personages and events through the medium of one great Passion. And one must not demand from them absolute impartiality, when judging the impediment that divides them from the object of this passion.
We are not judges then in this case, but enquirers into the facts of the personality and true characters of the Director and Directress of the Bruxelles school and of their environment, as the influences that so largely created the Romantic atmosphere where Charlotte's genius lived and moved and had its being. And, by the special circumstances of my own life, I am able to assist in a way that is not (so I am tempted to believe) possible to any other living critic. The difficulty that stands in the way of most modern investigators is that long ago the historical people with their environment 'have become ghostly.' Long ago, for most readers of Villette, the once famous Pensionnat de Jeunes Filles in the Rue d'Isabelle, with its memory-haunted class-rooms, with its high-walled garden in the heart of a city whose voices reached one, as from a world far away, and 'down whose peaceful alleys it was pleasant to stray and hear the bells of St Jean Baptiste peal out with their sweet, soft, exalted sound,' have vanished out of life. Yes—but out of my life they have not vanished! For me—the historical Monsieur and Madame Heger exist quite independently of all associations with the imaginary personages Paul Emanuel and Madame Beck. For me—the old school, the class-rooms, the walled garden, with its ancient pear-trees that still 'faithfully renewed their perfumed snow in spring and honey-sweet pendants in autumn,' remain—as they were planted vivid images and visions in my memory half a century ago, when, as a schoolgirl, I knew nothing about Charlotte Brontë nor Villette: but when I sat, twenty years after Charlotte, in the class-rooms where she had waited for M. Heger, on the eve of her departure from Bruxelles, myself an attentive pupil of her Professor, and a witness, half terrified, and half exasperated, of his varying moods. And when, too, I saw, rather than heard, Madame Heger, moving noiselessly, where M. Heger's movements were always attended with shock and excitement; only to me, Madame Heger appeared always a friendly rather than an adverse presence—an abiding influence of serenity that reassured one, after sudden recurrent gusts of nerve-disturbing storms.
And I would point out that the value of my testimony about the personal impressions I derived, quite independently of any knowledge of Charlotte Brontë's residence in what was for me my school, and of her enthusiasm for my Professor, or her dislike of my schoolmistress, is enhanced both by the resemblances and by the differences of our several points of view. Thus—like Charlotte—I was an English pupil and a Protestant in this Belgian and Catholic school. Like her—my vocation was to be that of a woman of letters. And although, when she was brought under M. Heger's influence, she was a woman of genius, already well acquainted with good literature, and not without experience as a writer, whereas I was only an unformed girl, with very little reading and no culture: and merely by force of an inborn desire to follow a certain purpose in life that filled me with happiness, even in anticipation, justified in supposing that I had a literary vocation at all, and although no doubt I have not turned my advantages to account as Charlotte did, yet I myself owe to M. Heger, not only admirable rules for criticism and practice, that have always claimed and still claim my absolute belief, but also I owe to him, as she did, a full enjoyment of beautiful thoughts, beautifully expressed, and of treasures of the mind and of the imagination, that, lying outside of the recognised paths of English study, I might never have found, nor even have recognised as treasures, had I not been cured of insularity of taste by M. Heger.