The Key to the Bronte Works Part 12

I will give in parallel columns the arrival of Charlotte Bronte at the Clergy Daughters' Inst.i.tute as it is described in "Mademoiselle Lagrange's Ma.n.u.script," and in _Jane Eyre_ the original:--

_Jane Eyre._ "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

By the Mademoiselle Lagrange, By Currer Bell. of Eugene Sue's _Miss Mary ou L'Inst.i.tutrice_.

The first days at the The first days at the Inst.i.tution. Inst.i.tution.

The coach door was open and ... We got to Kendall House.... I a servant was standing at it: I had been sitting near my trunk saw her ... by the light of the on the outside of the coach, and lamps. my legs were numb with cold. I was quite unable to move, so the "Is there a little girl called coachman lifted me down along Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I with my box. The door was open answered "Yes," and was lifted when the coach stopped; a out, my trunk was handed down. servant was standing there with a lamp. "Are you Catherine Bell we expects down here to-day?"

she asked me.

"My name is Kitty Bell, if you please," replied I.

The servant led me ... into a The girl returned no answer, but room, with a fire, where she having ushered me into a left me alone.... I stood and s.p.a.cious room with a fire in it, warmed my numbed fingers over she left me there by myself; ...

the blaze; ... there was no there was no candle. I stood ...

candle. warming my numb hands and limbs.

I heard the door open ... and I The door opened, and an saw a face ... I never can individual entered, ... a tall forget. My heart told me lady with dark hair, dark eyes, directly it was Miss Ashton and a pale and large forehead [Eshton]. Dear, n.o.ble girl! her [Miss Temple. Her real name was face was rather large, but Miss Evans], her countenance was accurately oval--just as you see grave, her bearing erect. them in the fine sacred pictures of Murillo--those pictures of grand female beauty.

She considered me attentively Everything in that face was for a minute or two. great, open, frank, truthlike, ... and yet there was a grave ... "Are you tired?" she asked, ... melancholy overspreading placing her hand on my shoulder. that regal countenance.... It was singular to see a woman ... "A little, ma'am." acting as the manager of a benevolent inst.i.tution and living apart from the world who might have shone in any court in Europe and ... perhaps had no equal on any throne ... [!] She advanced towards me stately, but kindly, touched my cheek with her finger, and then seeing me smile, she smiled in return, and, after scanning my features a moment, she lifted me up and kissed me.

"I love you, madam," I said.

Then she set me down ... and, putting her hand upon my head, she asked me:--

"Your name is Catherine Bell, is it not?"... [Here follows the "Shakespeare's Day" reference I have already given.]

I have not ... alluded to the I had been at the Kendall visits of Mr. Brocklehurst [Rev. Inst.i.tute about three weeks Mr. Carus Wilson]; his absence without seeing Mr. King [Mr.

was a relief to me.... One Brocklehurst] the master or afternoon (I had ... been three registrar.... One morning when I weeks at Lowood) ... I woke up I heard the bells in the recognized almost instinctively dormitories ringing louder than that gaunt outline, ... it was ever....

Mr. Brocklehurst.

I knew without being told this After some lines we have the strange man was Mr. King.

hair-cutting incident I have quoted already from "Lagrange's "Catherine Bell!" called out Ma.n.u.script." This incident comes Miss Ashton.

after and not before Catherine (Jane) has been commanded to stand before the cla.s.s.

On hearing my name I left my place in the rank, and advanced....

"So! this is Catherine Bell, is it?" cried Mr. King. "I have heard her kind friends at home speak of Catherine Bell, and ... "Fetch that stool," said Mr. they tell me she is a naughty, Brocklehurst.... "Place the vicious, headstrong child--very child upon it." ungrateful to those for whose generosity she ought to have so And I was placed there. much respect and grat.i.tude! Is this true, Catherine Bell?"

"Miss Temple, ... children, it becomes my duty to warn you that "No, sir; not a word of it."

this girl ... is a little castaway, ... this girl is--a "What, child!... Are you a liar!... Let her stand ... on little liar as well as an that stool." ingrate? Stand here!"

What my sensations were no The pa.s.sions and feelings of a language can describe.... I child are only known to mastered the rising hysteria ... children. Grown-up people seem and took a firm stand on the to have forgotten them.[60] I stool. stood there with cheeks burning with shame, indignation, and anger.... My pride had been savagely a.s.sailed. I did not want pity. I wanted ... a refutation of the cruel charge; I was not a liar; and those who taxed me with ingrat.i.tude had no grat.i.tude to claim from me.

Great G.o.d! what emotions there were raging in my breast! and how my little heart did swell!

Often Mdlle. Lagrange's "Kitty Bell the Orphan" is mysterious in its allusions. As when Catherine Bell says she does not like a French lady teacher. The seed-cake incident of Chapter VIII. of _Jane Eyre_, which is given at length in "Lagrange's Ma.n.u.script," is herewith worked in again:--

"I don't like Madame Dubois...."

"Why so? she is a very good sort of a woman."

"That may be, but she takes snuff...."

"What is that to you or me, Catherine Bell? Surely it is no business of ours?"

"Sometimes it is, though.... I gave her a slice of my seed-cake yesterday, and she returned me half of it."

"That showed a good disposition in poor Madame Dubois; did it not?"

"Yes; but when I was going to eat it myself I was seized with a fit of sneezing, which I shall not forget in a hurry, I promise you!"

"You took snuff then, Catherine Bell, for the first time in your life?"

"ALL IN--ALL IN--FOR SCHOOL!" shouted the teachers and examples that moment.

The following is an extract dealing with the fever scenes of _Jane Eyre_:--

Fever and consumption had fixed their abode under the large roof of Kendall Inst.i.tution, death was stealing along with its soft, wolf-like tread, to feed upon these poor children. The first symptoms I remember that startled me were certain cold s.h.i.+verings and sudden fits of perspiration without warmth, which seized upon the younger children. Then sickness and nausea, followed immediately by vomiting. [M. Sue had been a surgeon.] ... Oh, how cruel, how bitter it was to us when we saw the first little coffin borne out of the school!... And now we began to hear, for the first time, the dismal word _typhus_ uttered here and there in whispers through the school.... When we went to the church on Sundays, and saw the many little mounds of fresh black earth lying over our innocent playmates of yesterday, our heads sank upon our bosoms and we wept most sorrowfully.

Faithful to its model, "Lagrange's Ma.n.u.script" brings Isabella the Creole as the rival of Catherine Bell, and thus of the Creole's husband Catherine writes:--

Unwittingly, and quite unknown to myself, I became the object of his admiration--nay, of his marked preference; but I rejected indignantly the homage of an affection which he had sworn to another, and which it was his sacred duty to preserve undefiled.... In the hope of overcoming my persistency in refusing his so often proffered and as often rejected love, he urged on by every imaginable means the final decision, which in the eyes of man were to permit a second marriage, guilty in the sight of G.o.d.

With the natural instinct of divination peculiar to female jealousy, his wife had guessed who was the deity at whose altar the captain was burning his incense.... Nor did she consider whether I encouraged or rebuked him. She suspected, she spied, she believed, and unscrupulously involved me in the hateful vengeance she swore to take both on her husband and myself.

For a portrait of Mdlle. Lagrange who, as the author of this version of _Jane Eyre_, is of course meant for Charlotte Bronte, we turn to the _feuilleton_ itself:--

Meanwhile we have lost sight of our blue-stocking friend, Mdlle.

Lagrange ['Madame herself deemed me a regular _bas bleu_,' says Lucy Snowe of Madame Beck (Madame Heger) in _Villette_] ... her character ... remains to be described. Now, to form any opinion of it by Madame de Morville's [Madame Heger's] appreciation of that girl's disposition, would be completely erroneous. Lagrange was not devoid of intellectual faculties; she possessed an imaginative mind, rather too fond of romance, and too little of practical truths; but, above all, cunning and ambition formed the main basis of her character: she had risen from nothing, and _would_ become something. Imbued as she was with the ideas prevalent among the lower rank [Had Charlotte Bronte related her father's history to the Hegers? She had 'views' on money. M. Sue, however, never seems to have forgotten the rank of his own G.o.d-parents], she deemed it her right and duty to concentrate all the power of her faculties towards the end she sighed for--wealth and a name. Thus it was she displayed all the resources of her subtle nature to make every circ.u.mstance serve to the gratifying of her ambition. What, then, was to be her means of success? Marriage?--yes, that perpetual dream of maidens, and a dream which too often ends in an everlasting nightmare. But the task was not easy, for, it has been said, beauty had been forgotten by Dame Nature among the few gifts she had granted her.[61] What the appearance failed in, the mind should, at any cost, supply [!]. This had become her ruling desire. Thence the ma.n.u.script ['Catherine Bell, The Orphan'] we have already read had been the first ponderous lucubration of her fortune-seeking imagination: she had been praised for this first attempt by her friends, and also by one two distinguished critics.[62] This was already a point gained, and an encouragement to her literary propensities.

Thus far the Mdlle. Lagrange phase of Currer Bell according to Eugene Sue, and before the publication of _The Professor_, _Villette_, and Mrs.

Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_. The next chapter shall deal with Eugene Sue's relation of her as "Miss Mary," the leading character of this extraordinary _feuilleton_, whereby it will be proved finally that in her works Charlotte Bronte has written from her own life-story.

CHAPTER XIII.

EUGeNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTe'S BRUSSELS LIFE.

II.

ACCUSATIONS AND PROTESTATIONS!

I have said Eugene Sue, in _Miss Mary ou l'Inst.i.tutrice_, gave two phases of Charlotte Bronte. With the one as Mdlle. Lagrange I dealt in the preceding chapter, and now I write concerning that wherein Miss Bronte is openly represented as the Irish governess at the de Morville establishment.[63] Easy it is to recognize this character is a phase of Charlotte Bronte, but as her pupil Alphonsine puts it plainly in describing her, she is "Mdlle. Lagrange, avec la beaute de plus"--Charlotte Bronte, with beauty and virtues exaggerated. The following incident I find only in the _feuilleton_ (not the extant volume), the which circ.u.mstances support as history concerning the days of Miss Bronte's dejection at the Brussels _pensionnat_. It should be read in the light of the lines in Chapter XIX. of _The Professor_, where she, as Frances Evans Henri, tells Crimsworth, obviously M. Heger, that he remarked her _devoirs_ dwelt a great deal on fort.i.tude in bearing grief. In the evening Alphonsine, M. de Morville's daughter, who says many things we know must have issued from M. Heger's lips--(this is in palpable imitation of Charlotte Bronte's Method I., interchange of the s.e.xes of characters portrayed from life. For further use of this method see also the close of Chapter XII. and elsewhere in _The Professor_, and my writing on _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_)--pays a visit to the chamber of the Irish governess:--

"Were you not reading?... I see a book on your work-table. May I look?... _The Imitation of Christ!_" exclaimed Alphonsine, after having read the t.i.tle-page. "Oh! this is a beautiful book, is it not?"

"Truly beautiful!" answered Mary; "the cover is old, the pages worn out in many places. You must not wonder at it: from the age I began to read, I don't think I ever pa.s.sed three nights without reading at least one chapter of this admirable work."

_The Imitation of Christ_ in English was a book Charlotte Bronte was setting much store upon when she was but nine years of age.[64] Her copy was then an old one. Evidently she took the book with her to Brussels and read it at the _pensionnat_. It would seem M. Heger, whom she instructed in English, requested to hear the work in this English translation:--

"Pray what chapter were you reading?" continues Alphonsine. "I should so much like to hear you read it to me: I have occasionally read a page of _The Imitation_, but always in French; now, if you would be so good as to read slowly and p.r.o.nounce very distinctly, I think I could understand this pious work in your language."