A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors

by Theodore F. Wolfe

We were detained at the door long enough to remember Lucy standing there, trembling and anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too were "let in by a bonne in a smart cap," apparently a fit successor to the Rosine of other days, and entered the corridor. This was paved with blocks of black and white marble and had painted walls. It extended through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden. We were ushered into the little salon at the left of the passage, the one often mentioned in "Villette,"Characters of Villette and here we made known our wish to see the garden and class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the neat portress. We tried diplomacy (also lucre) without avail: it was the grandes vacances, M. Héger was engaged, we could not be gratified,—unless, indeed, we were patrons of the school. At this juncture a portly, ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most courteous of speech and manner appeared, and, addressing us in faultless English, introduced herself as Mdlle. Héger, co-directress of the school, and "wholly at our service." In response to our apologies for the intrusion and explanations of the desire which had prompted it, we received complaisant assurances of welcome; yet the manner of our entertainer indicated that she did not share in our admiration and enthusiasm for Charlotte Brontë and her books. In the subsequent conversation it appeared that Mademoiselle and her family hold decided opinions upon the subject,—something more than mere lack of admiration. She was familiar with the novels, and thought that, while they exhibit a talent certainly not above mediocrity, they reflect the injustice, the untruthfulness, and the ingratitude of their creator. We were obliged to confess to ourselves that the family have reason for this view, when we reflected that in the books Miss Brontë has assailed their religion and disparaged the school and the characters of the teachers and pupils, has depicted Madame HégerThe Hégers in the odious duad of Madame Beck and Mdlle. Reuter, has represented M. Héger as the scheming and deceitful Pelet and the preposterous Paul, Lucy Snowe's lover; that this lover was the husband of Madame Héger, and father of the family of children to whom Lucy was at first bonne d'enfants, and that possibly the daughter she has described as the thieving, vicious Désirée—"that tadpole Désirée Beck"—was this very lady now so politely entertaining us. To all this add the significant fact that "Villette" is an autobiographical novel, which "records the most vivid passages in Miss Brontë's own sad heart's history," not a few of the incidents being transcripts "from the darkest chapter of her own life," and the light which the consideration of this fact throws upon her relations with members of the family will help us to apprehend the stand-point from which the Hégers judge Miss Brontë and her work, and to excuse a natural resentment against one who has presented them in a decidedly bad light. How bad we realized when, during the ensuing chat, we called to mind just what she had written of them. As Madame Beck, Madame Héger had been represented as lying, deceitful, and shameless, as "watching and spying everywhere, peeping through every key-hole, listening behind every door," as duplicating Lucy's keys and secretly searching her bureau, as meanly abstracting her letters and reading them to others, as immodestly laying herself out to entrap the man to whom she had given her love unsought. It was some accession to the existing animosity between herself and Madame Héger which precipitated Miss Brontë's departure from the pensionnat. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual dislike to Charlotte's free expression of her aversion to the Catholic Church, of which Madame Héger was a devotee, and hence "wounded in her most cherished opinions;" but a later writer plainly intimates that Miss Brontë hated the woman who sat for Madame Beck because marriage had given to her the man whom Miss Brontë loved, and that "Madame Beck had need to be a detective in her own house." The death of Madame Héger had rendered the family, who held her only as a sacred memory, more keenly sensitive than ever to anything which would seem by implication to disparage her.

For himself, it would appear that M. Héger had less cause for resentment; for, although in "Villette" his double is pictured as "a waspish little despot," as detestably ugly, in his anger closely resembling "a black and sallow tiger," as having an "overmastering love of authority and public display," as playing the spy and reading purloined letters, and in the Brontë epistles Charlotte declares he is choleric and irritable, compels her to make her French translations without a dictionary or grammar, and then has "his eyes almost plucked out of his head" by the occasional English word she is obliged to introduce, etc., yet all this is partially atoned for by the warm praise she subsequently accords him for his goodness to her and his disinterested friendship, by the poignant regret she expresses at parting with him,—perhaps wholly expiated by the high compliment she pays him of making her heroine fall in love with him, or the higher compliment it is suspected she paid him of falling in love with him herself. One who reads the strange history of passion in "Villette," in conjunction with her letters, "will know more of the truth of her stay in Brussels than if a dozen biographers had undertaken to tell the whole tale." Still, M. Héger can hardly be pleased by having members of his school set forth as stupid, animal, and inferior, "their principles rotten to the core, steeped in systematic sensuality," by having his religion styled "besotted papistry, a piece of childish humbug," and the like. Something of the displeasure of the family was revealed in the course of our conversation with Mdlle. Héger, but the specific causes were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollectionRecollections of the Brontës of the Brontës; her knowledge of them was derived from her parents and the teachers,—presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's letters. One teacher whom we saw in the school had been a classmate of Charlotte's here. The Brontës had not been popular with the school. Their "heretical" religion had something to do with this; but their manifest avoidance of the other pupils during hours of recreation, Mademoiselle thought, had been a more potent cause,—Emily, in particular, not speaking with her school-mates or teachers, except when obliged to do so. The other pupils thought them of outlandish accent and manners, and ridiculously old to be at school at all,—being twenty-four and twenty-six, and seeming even older. Their sombre and ugly costumes were fruitful causes of mirth to the gay young Belgian misses. The Brontës were not brilliant students, and none of their companions had ever suspected that they were geniuses. Of the two, Emily was considered to be the more talented, but she was obstinate and opinionated. Some of the pupils had been inclined to resist having Charlotte placed over them as teacher, and may have been mutinous. After her return from Haworth she taught English to M. Héger and his brother-in-law. M. Héger gave the sisters private lessons in French without charge, and for some time preserved their compositions, which Mrs. Gaskell copied. Mrs. Gaskell visited the pensionnat in quest of material for her biography of Charlotte, and received all the aid M. Héger could afford: the information thus obtained was, we were told, fairly used. Miss Brontë's letters from Brussels, so freely quoted in Mrs. Gaskell's "Life," were addressed to Ellen Nussy, a familiar friend of Charlotte's, whose signature we saw in the register at Haworth as witness to Miss Brontë's marriage. The Hégers had no suspicion that she had been so unhappy with them as these letters indicate, and she had assigned a totally different reason for her sudden return to England. She had been introduced to Madame Héger by Mrs. Jenkins, wife of the then chaplain of the British Embassy at the Court of Belgium; she had frequently visited that lady and other friends in Brussels,—among them Mary and Martha Taylor and the family of a Dr. —— (not "Dr. John"),—and therefore her life here need not have been so lonely and desolate as it was made to appear.

The Garden

The Hégers usually have a few English pupils in the school, but have never had an American. American tourists have before called to look at the garden, but the family are not pleased by the notoriety with which Miss Brontë has invested it. However, Mdlle. Héger kindly offered to conduct us over any portion of the establishment we might care to see, and led the way along the corridor to the narrow, high-walled garden. We found it smaller than in the time when Miss Brontë loitered here in weariness and solitude. Mdlle. Héger explained that, while the width remained the same, the erection of class-rooms for the day-pupils had diminished the length by some yards. Tall houses surrounded and shut it in on either side, making it close and sombre, and the noises of the great city all about it penetrated only as a far-away murmur. There was a plat of verdant turf in the centre, bordered by scant flowers and gravelled walks, along which shrubs of evergreen were irregularly disposed. A few seats were here and there within the shade, where, as in Miss Brontë's time, the externats ate the lunch brought with them to the school; and overlooking it all stood the great pear-trees, whose gnarled and deformed trunks were relics of the time of the convent. Beyond these and along the gray wall which bounded the farther side of the enclosure was the sheltered walk which was Miss Brontë's favorite retreat, the "allée défendue" of her novels. It was screened by shrubs and perfumed by flowers, and, being secure from the intrusion of pupils, we could well believe that Charlotte and her heroine found here restful seclusion. The coolness and quiet and, more than all, the throng of vivid associations which filled the place tempted us to linger. The garden was not a spacious nor even a pretty one, and yet it seemed to us singularly pleasing and familiar, as if we were revisiting it after an absence. Seated upon a rustic bench close at hand, possibly the very one which Lucy had "reclaimed from fungi and mould," how the memories came surging up in our minds! How often in the summer twilight poor Charlotte had lingered here in solitude after the day's burdens and trials with "stupid and impertinent" pupils! How often, with weary feet and a dreary heart, she had paced this secluded walk and thought, with longing, of the dear ones in far-away Haworth parsonage! In this sheltered corner her other self, Lucy, sat and listened to the distant chimes and thought forbidden thoughts and cherished impossible hopes. Here she met and talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath this "Methuselah of a pear-tree," the one nearest the end of the alley, lies the imprisoned dust of the poor nun who was buried alive ages ago for some sin against her vow, and whose perambulating ghost so disquieted poor Lucy. At the root of this same tree one miserable night Lucy buried her precious letters, and meant also to bury a grief and her great affection for Dr. John. Here she leant her brow against Methuselah's knotty trunk and uttered to herself those brave words of renunciation, "Good-night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful, but you are not mine. Good-night, and God bless you!" Here she held pleasant converse with M. Paul, and with him, spellbound, saw the ghost of the nun descend from the leafy shadows overhead and, sweeping close past their wondering faces, disappear behind yonder screen of shrubbery into the darkness of the summer night. By that tall tree next the class-rooms the ghost was wont to ascend to meet its material sweetheart, Fanshawe, in the great garret beneath yonder sky-light,—the garret where Lucy retired to read Dr. John's letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her to learn her part in the vaudeville for Madame Beck's fête-day. In this nook where we sat "The Professor" had walked and talked with and almost made love to Mdlle. Reuter, and from yonder window overlooking the alley had seen that perfidious fair one in dalliance with Pelet beneath these pear-trees. From that window M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked in the allée défendue, dogged by Madame Beck; from the same window were thrown the love-letters which fell at Lucy's feet sitting here. Leaves from the overhanging boughs were plucked for us as souvenirs of the place; then, reverently traversing once more the narrow alley so often traced in weariness by Charlotte Brontë, we turned away.School From the garden we entered the long and spacious class-room of the first and second divisions. A movable partition divided it across the middle when the classes were in session; the floor was of bare boards cleanly scoured. There were long ranges of desks and benches upon either side, and a lane through the middle led up to a raised platform at the end of the room, where the instructor's chair and desk were placed.

How quickly our fancy peopled the place! On these front seats sat the gay and indocile Belgian girls. There, "in the last row, in the quietest corner, sat Emily and Charlotte side by side, insensible to anything about them;" and at the same desk, "in the farthest seat of the farthest row," sat Mdlle. Henri during Crimsworth's English lessons. Here Lucy's desk was rummaged by PaulM. Paul and the tell-tale odor of cigars left behind. Here, after school-hours, Miss Brontë taught Héger English, he taught her French, and Paul taught Lucy arithmetic and (incidentally) love. This was the scene of their tête-à-têtes, of his efforts to persuade her into his religious faith, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when she literally thrust herself between him and his love. From this platform Crimsworth and Lucy and Charlotte Brontë herself had given instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted and overcome. Here Paul and Héger gave lectures upon literature, and Paul delivered his spiteful tirade against the English on the morning of his fête-day. Upon this desk were heaped his bouquets that morning; from its smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fractured his spectacles; and here, seated in Paul's chair, at Paul's desk, we saw and were presented to Paul Emanuel himself,—M. Héger.

School Scenes

It was something more than curiosity which made us alert to note the appearance and manner of this man, who has been so nearly associated with Miss Brontë in an intercourse which colored her subsequent life and determined her life-work, who has been made the hero of her novels and has been deemed the hero of her own heart's romance; and yet we were curious to know what manner of man it was who has been so much as suspected of being honored with the love and preference of the dainty Charlotte Brontë. During a short conversation with him we had opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious" man must, at the time Miss Brontë knew him, have more closely resembled Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed, after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the most part, aptly applied to him. He was of middle size, of rather spare habit of body; his face was fair and the features pleasing and regular, the cheeks were thin and the mouth flexible, the eyes—somewhat sunken—were mild blue and of singularly pleasant expression. We found him aged and somewhat infirm; his finely-shaped head was fringed with white hair, and partial baldness contributed reverence to his presence and tended to enhance the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In repose his countenance showed a hint of melancholy: as Miss Brontë said, his "physiognomy was fine et spirituelle;" one would hardly imagine it could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice was low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely French," his manner suave and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat. He accosted us in the language Miss Brontë taught him forty years ago, and his accent and diction honored her instruction. He was talking with some patrons, and, as his daughter had hinted that he was averse to speaking of Miss Brontë, we soon took leave of him and were shown other parts of the school. The other class-rooms, used for less advanced pupils, were smaller. In one of them Miss Brontë had ruled as monitress after her return from Haworth. The large dormitory of the pensionnat was above the long class-room, and in the time of the Brontës most of the boarders—about twenty in number—slept here. Their cots were arranged along either side, and the position of those occupied by the Brontës was pointed out to us at the extreme end of the room. It was here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypochondria, so graphically portrayed in "Villette," and found the discarded costume of the spectral nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Brontë passed those nights of wakeful misery which Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long, narrow room in front of the class-rooms was shown us as the réfectoire, where the Brontës, with the other boarders, took their meals, presided over by M. and Madame Héger, and where, during the evenings, the lessons for the ensuing days were prepared. Here were held the evening prayers which Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into the garden. This, too, was the scene of Paul's readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of his spasms of petulance, which readers of "Villette" will remember. From the réfectoire we passed again into the corridor, where we made our adieus to our affable conductress. She explained that, whereas this establishment had been both a pensionnat and an externat, having about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders when Miss Brontë was here, it was after the death of Madame Héger used as a day-school only,—the pensionnat being in another street.

The genuine local color Miss Brontë gives in "Villette" enabled us to be sure that we had found the sombre old church where Lucy, arrested in passing by the sound of the bells, knelt upon the stone pavement, passing thence into the confessional of Père Silas. Certain it is that this old church lies upon the route she would take in the walk from the school to the Protestant cemetery, which she had set out to do that afternoon, and the narrow streets which lie beyond the church correspond to those in which she was lost.The Confessional Certain, too, it is said to be that this incident is taken from her own experience. Reid says, "During one of the long holidays, when her mind was restless and disturbed, she found sympathy, if not peace, in the counsels of a priest in the confessional, who soothed her troubled spirit without attempting to enmesh it in the folds of Romanism."

The Cemetery

Our way to the Protestant cemetery—a spot sadly familiar to Miss Brontë, and the usual termination of her walks—lay past the site of the Porte de Louvain and out to the hills beyond the old city limits. From our path we saw more than one tree-shrouded farm-house which might have been the place of Paul's breakfast with his school, and at least one quaint mansion, with green-tufted and terraced lawns, which might have served Miss Brontë as the model for La Terrasse, the suburban home of the Brettons and the temporary abode of the Taylor sisters whom she visited here. From the cemetery we beheld vistas of farther lines of hills, of intervening valleys, of farms and villas, and of the great city lying below. Miss Brontë has well described this place: "Here, on pages of stone and of brass, are written names, dates, last tributes of pomp or love, in English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone crosses all about, and great thickets of roses and yews; "cypresses that stand straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there are "dim garlands of everlasting flowers." Here "The Professor" found his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a new-made grave under the overhanging trees. And here we found the shrine of poor Charlotte Brontë's many pilgrimages hither,—the burial-place of her friend and school-mate, the Jessy Yorke of "Shirley;" the spot where, under "green sod and a gray marble head-stone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps below."