Emily Brontë
leaning on her shorter sister's arm, pale, silent--a tall, stooping
figure. Often she said nothing at all. Charlotte, also, was very
profitably speechless; under her eyes 'Villette' was taking shape. But
Emily did not think of Brussels. She was dreaming of Haworth.
One poem that she wrote at this time may appropriately be quoted here.
It was, Charlotte tells us, "composed at twilight, in the schoolroom,
when the leisure of the evening play-hour brought back, in full tide,
the thoughts of home:"
"A little while, a little while,
The weary task is put away,
And I can sing and I can smile
Alike, while I have holiday.
"Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart--
What thought, what scene invites thee now?
What spot, or near or far apart,
Has rest for thee, my weary brow?
"There is a spot mid barren hills,
Where winter howls and driving rain;
But, if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.
"The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight's dome,
But what on earth is half so dear--
So longed for--as the hearth of home?
"The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dark moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-tree gaunt, the walks o'ergrown,
I love them; how I love them all!
"And, as I mused, the naked room,
The alien fire-light died away;
And from the midst of cheerless gloom
I passed to bright, unclouded day.
"A little and a lone green lane,
That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreary, dim, blue chain
Of mountains circling every side:
"A heaven so dear, an earth so calm,
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;
And--deepening still the dream-like charm--
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
"_That_ was the scene, I knew it well;
I knew the turfy pathway's sweep,
That, winding o'er each billowy swell,
Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep.
"Could I have lingered but an hour,
It well had paid a week of toil;
But truth has banished fancy's power,
Restraint and heavy task recoil.
"Even as I stood with raptured eye,
Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear,
My hour of rest had fleeted by,
And back came labour, bondage, care."
Charlotte meanwhile writes in good, even in high spirits to her friend:
"I think I am never unhappy, my present life is so delightful, so
congenial, compared to that of a governess. My time, constantly
occupied, passes too rapidly. Hitherto both Emily and I have had good
health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one
individual of whom I have not yet spoken--Monsieur Heger, the husband
of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric--a man of power as to mind, but
very choleric and irritable as to temperament--a little, black, ugly
being, with a face that varies in expression; sometimes he borrows the
lineaments of an insane tom cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena,
occasionally--but very seldom--he discards these perilous attractions
and assumes an air not a hundred times removed from what you would call
mild and gentleman-like. He is very angry with me just at present,
because I have written a translation which he chose to stigmatise as
'peu correct.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the words on the margin
of my book, and asked, in brief, stern phrase, how it happened that my
compositions were always better than my translations? adding that the
thing seemed to him inexplicable."
The reader will already have recognised in the black, ugly, choleric
little professor of rhetoric, the one absolutely natural hero of a
woman's novel, the beloved and whimsical figure of the immortal Monsieur
Paul Emanuel.
"He and Emily," adds Charlotte, "don't draw well together at all. Emily
works like a horse, and she has had great difficulties to contend with,
far greater than I have had."
Emily did indeed work hard. She was there to work, and not till she had
learned a certain amount would her conscience permit her to return to
Haworth. It was for dear liberty that she worked. She began German, a
favourite study in after years, and of some purpose, since the style of
Hofmann left its impression on the author of 'Wuthering Heights.' She
worked hard at music; and in half a year the stumbling schoolgirl became
a brilliant and proficient musician. Her playing is said to have been
singularly accurate, vivid, and full of fire. French, too, both in
grammar and in literature, was a constant study.
Monsieur Heger recognised the fact that in dealing with the Brontes he
had not to make the customary allowances for a schoolgirl's undeveloped
inexperience. These were women of mature and remarkable intelligence.
The method he adopted in teaching them was rather that of a University
professor than such as usually is used in a pensionnat. He would choose
some masterpiece of French style, some passage of eloquence or
portraiture, read it to them with a brief lecture on its distinctive
qualities, pointing out what was exaggerated, what apt, what false, what
subtle in the author's conception or his mode of expressing it. They
were then dismissed to make a similar composition, without the aid of
grammar or dictionary, availing themselves as far as possible of the
_nuances_ of style and the peculiarities of method of the writer chosen
as the model of the hour. In this way the girls became intimately
acquainted with the literary _technique_ of the best French masters. To
Charlotte the lessons were of incalculable value, perfecting in her that
clear and accurate style which makes her best work never wearisome,
never old-fashioned. But the very thought of imitating any one,
especially of imitating any French writer, was repulsive to Emily,
"rustic all through, moorish, wild and knotty as a root of heath."[7]
When Monsieur Heger had explained his plan to them, "Emily spoke first;
and said that she saw no good to be derived from it; and that by
adopting it they would lose all originality of thought and expression.
She would have entered into an argument on the subject, but for this
Monsieur Heger had no time. Charlotte then spoke; she also doubted the
success of the plan; but she would follow out Monsieur Heger's advice,
because she was bound to obey him while she was his pupil."[8] Charlotte
soon found a keen enjoyment in this species of literary composition, yet
Emily's _devoir_ was the best. They are, alas, no longer to be seen, no
longer in the keeping of so courteous and proud a guardian as Mrs.
Gaskell had to deal with; but she and Monsieur Heger both have expressed
their opinions that in genius, imagination, power and force of language,
Emily was the superior of the two sisters.
So great was the personality of this energetic, silent, brooding,
ill-dressed young Englishwoman, that all who knew her recognised in her
the genius they were slow to perceive in her more sociable and vehement
sister. Madame Heger, the worldly, cold-mannered, _surveillante_ of
Villette, avowed the singular force of a nature most antipathetic to her
own. Yet Emily had no companions; the only person of whom we hear, in
even the most negative terms of friendliness, is one of the teachers, a
certain Mademoiselle Marie, "talented and original, but of repulsive and
arbitrary manners, which have made the whole school, except Emily and
myself, her bitter enemies." No less arbitrary and repulsive seemed poor
Emily herself, a sprig of purple heath at discord with those bright,
smooth geraniums and lobelias; Emily, of whom every surviving friend
extols the never-failing, quiet unselfishness, the genial spirit ready
to help, the timid but faithful affection. She was so completely _hors
de son assiette_ that even her virtues were misplaced.
There was always one thing she could do, one thing as natural as breath
to Emily--determined labour. In that merciful engrossment she could
forget her heart-sick weariness and the jarring strangeness of things;
every lesson conquered was another step taken on the long road home. And
the days allowed ample space for work, although it was supported upon a
somewhat slender diet.
Counting boarders and externes, Madame Heger's school numbered over a
hundred pupils. These were divided into three classes; the second, in
which the Brontes were, containing sixty students. In the last row, side
by side, absorbed and quiet, sat Emily and Charlotte. Soon after rising,
the pensionnaires were given their light Belgian breakfast of coffee and
rolls. Then from nine to twelve they studied. Three mistresses and seven
professors were engaged to take the different classes. At twelve a lunch
of bread and fruit; then a turn in the green alley, Charlotte and Emily
always walking together. From one till two fancy-work; from two till
four, lessons again. Then dinner: the one solid meal of the day. From
five till six the hour was free, Emily's musing-hour. From six till
seven the terrible _lecture pieuse_, hateful to the Brontes' Protestant
spirit. At eight a supper of rolls and water; then prayers, and to bed.
The room they slept in was a long school-dormitory. After all they could
not get the luxury, so much desired, of a separate room. But their two
beds were alone together at the further end, veiled in white curtains;
discreet and retired as themselves. Here, after the day's hard work,
they slept. In sleep, one is no longer an exile.
But often Emily did not sleep. The old well-known pain, wakefulness,
longing, was again beginning to relax her very heartstrings. "The same
suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her
upright heretic and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the
foreign and Romish system. Once more she seemed sinking, but this time
she rallied through the mere force of resolution: with inward remorse
and shame she looked back on her former failure, and resolved to
conquer, but the victory cost her dear. She was never happy till she
carried her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the
old parsonage house and desolate Yorkshire hills."[9]
But not yet, not yet, this happiness! The opportunity that had been so
hardly won must not be thrown away before the utmost had been made of
it. And she was not utterly alone. Charlotte was there. The success that
she had in her work must have helped a little to make her foreign home
tolerable to her. Soon she knew enough of music to give lessons to the
younger pupils. Then German, costing her and Charlotte an extra ten
francs the month, as also much severe study and struggle. Charlotte
writes in the summer: "Emily is making rapid progress in French, German,
music and drawing. Monsieur and Madame Heger begin to recognise the
valuable parts of her character under her singularities."
It was doubtful, even, whether they would come home in September. Madame
Heger made a proposal to her two English pupils for them to stay on,
without paying, but without salary, for half a year. She would dismiss
her English teacher, whose place Charlotte would take. Emily was to
teach music to the younger pupils. The proposal was kind and would be of
advantage to the sisters.
Charlotte declared herself inclined to accept it. "I have been happy in
Brussels," she averred. And Emily, though she, indeed, was not happy,
acknowledged the benefit to be derived from a longer term of study. Six
months, after all, was rather short to gain a thorough knowledge of
French, with Italian and German, when you add to these acquirements
music and drawing, which Emily worked at with a will. Besides, she could
not fail again, could not go back to Haworth leaving Charlotte behind;
neither could she spoil Charlotte's future by persuading her to reject