Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven
years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to
take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the
pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of
readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be
much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and shook hands with
me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to
breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she
replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and
she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she
suddenly commenced chattering fluently.
“Ah!” cried she, in French, “you speak my language as well as Mr.
Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.
She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all
English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great
ship with a chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick, and
so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester lay down on a
sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little
beds in another place. I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.
And Mademoiselle—what is your name?”
“Eyre—Jane Eyre.”
“Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning,
before it was quite daylight, at a great city—a huge city, with very
dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came
from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the
land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us
to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an
hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every
day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there
were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in
it, that I fed with crumbs.”
“Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?” asked Mrs. Fairfax.
I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent
tongue of Madame Pierrot.
“I wish,” continued the good lady, “you would ask her a question or two
about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?”
“Adèle,” I inquired, “with whom did you live when you were in that
pretty clean town you spoke of?”
“I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama
used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many
gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them,
or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I let you
hear me sing now?”
She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen
of her accomplishments. Descending from her chair, she came and placed
herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her,
shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she
commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of a
forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls
pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest
jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night
at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanour, how little
his desertion has affected her.
The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose
the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and
jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that
point was: at least I thought so.
Adèle sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the _naïveté_ of
her age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, “Now,
Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.”
Assuming an attitude, she began, “La Ligue des Rats: fable de La
Fontaine.” She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to
punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness
of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had
been carefully trained.
“Was it your mama who taught you that piece?” I asked.
“Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: ‘Qu’avez vous donc? lui
dit un de ces rats; parlez!’ She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me
to raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance for you?”
“No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you
say, with whom did you live then?”
“With Madame Frédéric and her husband: she took care of me, but she is
nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a
house as mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I would
like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr.
Rochester before I knew Madame Frédéric, and he was always kind to me
and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not kept his
word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again
himself, and I never see him.”
After breakfast, Adèle and I withdrew to the library, which room, it
appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom.
Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one
bookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the
way of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature,
poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c. I suppose he had
considered that these were all the governess would require for her
private perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply for the present;
compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean
at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment
and information. In this room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite
new and of superior tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of
globes.
I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she
had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be
injudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to
her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning
had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then
proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little
sketches for her use.
As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Fairfax
called to me: “Your morning school-hours are over now, I suppose,” said
she. She was in a room the folding-doors of which stood open: I went in
when she addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple
chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast
window rich in stained glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs.
Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple spar, which stood on a
sideboard.
“What a beautiful room!” I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I had
never before seen any half so imposing.
“Yes; this is the dining-room. I have just opened the window, to let in
a little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in apartments
that are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.”
She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like
it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by two
broad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a
fairy place, so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet
it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both
spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of
flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and
vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and
ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of
sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large
mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.
“In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!” said I. “No dust,
no canvas coverings: except that the air feels chilly, one would think
they were inhabited daily.”
“Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester’s visits here are rare, they are
always sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to
find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his
arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.”
“Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?”
“Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman’s tastes and habits, and
he expects to have things managed in conformity to them.”
“Do you like him? Is he generally liked?”
“Oh, yes; the family have always been respected here. Almost all the
land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the
Rochesters time out of mind.”
“Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is
he liked for himself?”
“_I_ have no cause to do otherwise than like him; and I believe he is
considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants: but he has never
lived much amongst them.”
“But has he no peculiarities? What, in short, is his character?”
“Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I suppose. He is rather peculiar,
perhaps: he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great deal of the
world, I should think. I dare say he is clever, but I never had much
conversation with him.”
“In what way is he peculiar?”
“I don’t know—it is not easy to describe—nothing striking, but you feel
it when he speaks to you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in
jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary; you don’t
thoroughly understand him, in short—at least, I don’t: but it is of no
consequence, he is a very good master.”
This was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and
mine. There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a
character, or observing and describing salient points, either in
persons or things: the good lady evidently belonged to this class; my
queries puzzled, but did not draw her out. Mr. Rochester was Mr.
Rochester in her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more:
she inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my wish
to gain a more definite notion of his identity.
When we left the dining-room, she proposed to show me over the rest of
the house; and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I
went; for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers
I thought especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though
dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The
furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to
time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light
entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years
old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of
palm branches and cherubs’ heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of
venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated,
on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced
embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been
coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield
Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory. I liked the
hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by
no means coveted a night’s repose on one of those wide and heavy beds:
shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought
old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of
strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all
which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of
moonlight.
“Do the servants sleep in these rooms?” I asked.
“No; they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back; no one ever
sleeps here: one would almost say that, if there were a ghost at
Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.”