Villette
curiously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. By some means or
other she had acquired, and now held in possession, a wardrobe of
rather suspicious splendour—gowns of stiff and costly silk, fitting her
indifferently, and apparently made for other proportions than those
they now adorned; caps with real lace borders, and—the chief item in
the inventory, the spell by which she struck a certain awe through the
household, quelling the otherwise scornfully disposed teachers and
servants, and, so long as her broad shoulders _wore_ the folds of that
majestic drapery, even influencing Madame herself—_a real Indian
shawl_—“un véritable cachemire,” as Madame Beck said, with unmixed
reverence and amaze. I feel quite sure that without this “cachemire”
she would not have kept her footing in the pensionnat for two days: by
virtue of it, and it only, she maintained the same a month.
But when Mrs. Sweeny knew that I was come to fill her shoes, then it
was that she declared herself—then did she rise on Madame Beck in her
full power—then come down on me with her concentrated weight. Madame
bore this revelation and visitation so well, so stoically, that I for
very shame could not support it otherwise than with composure. For one
little moment Madame Beck absented herself from the room; ten minutes
after, an agent of the police stood in the midst of us. Mrs. Sweeny and
her effects were removed. Madame’s brow had not been ruffled during the
scene—her lips had not dropped one sharply-accented word.
This brisk little affair of the dismissal was all settled before
breakfast: order to march given, policeman called, mutineer expelled;
“chambre d’enfans” fumigated and cleansed, windows thrown open, and
every trace of the accomplished Mrs. Sweeny—even to the fine essence
and spiritual fragrance which gave token so subtle and so fatal of the
head and front of her offending—was annihilated from the Rue Fossette:
all this, I say, was done between the moment of Madame Beck’s issuing
like Aurora from her chamber, and that in which she coolly sat down to
pour out her first cup of coffee.
About noon, I was summoned to dress Madame. (It appeared my place was
to be a hybrid between gouvernante and lady’s-maid.) Till noon, she
haunted the house in her wrapping-gown, shawl, and soundless slippers.
How would the lady-chief of an English school approve this custom?
The dressing of her hair puzzled me; she had plenty of it: auburn,
unmixed with grey: though she was forty years old. Seeing my
embarrassment, she said, “You have not been a femme-de-chambre in your
own country?” And taking the brush from my hand, and setting me aside,
not ungently or disrespectfully, she arranged it herself. In performing
other offices of the toilet, she half-directed, half-aided me, without
the least display of temper or impatience. N.B.—That was the first and
last time I was required to dress her. Henceforth, on Rosine, the
portress, devolved that duty.
When attired, Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short
and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way; that is, with
the grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh
and sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk
dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she
looked well, though a little bourgeoise; as bourgeoise, indeed, she
was. I know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person; and yet her
face offered contrast, too: its features were by no means such as are
usually seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness
and repose: their outline was stern: her forehead was high but narrow;
it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her
peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the
heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could
be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with
all their tenderness and temerity, I felt somehow that Madame would be
the right sort of Minos in petticoats.
In the long run, I found she was something else in petticoats too. Her
name was Modeste Maria Beck, née Kint: it ought to have been Ignacia.
She was a charitable woman, and did a great deal of good. There never
was a mistress whose rule was milder. I was told that she never once
remonstrated with the intolerable Mrs. Sweeny, despite her tipsiness,
disorder, and general neglect; yet Mrs. Sweeny had to go the moment her
departure became convenient. I was told, too, that neither masters nor
teachers were found fault with in that establishment; yet both masters
and teachers were often changed: they vanished and others filled their
places, none could well explain how.
The establishment was both a pensionnat and an externat: the externes
or day-pupils exceeded one hundred in number; the boarders were about a
score. Madame must have possessed high administrative powers: she ruled
all these, together with four teachers, eight masters, six servants,
and three children, managing at the same time to perfection the pupils’
parents and friends; and that without apparent effort; without bustle,
fatigue, fever, or any symptom of undue excitement: occupied she
always was—busy, rarely. It is true that Madame had her own system for
managing and regulating this mass of machinery; and a very pretty
system it was: the reader has seen a specimen of it, in that small
affair of turning my pocket inside out, and reading my private
memoranda. “Surveillance,” “espionage,”—these were her watchwords.
Still, Madame knew what honesty was, and liked it—that is, when it did
not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest.
She had a respect for “Angleterre;” and as to “les Anglaises,” she
would have the women of no other country about her own children, if she
could help it.
Often in the evening, after she had been plotting and counter-plotting,
spying and receiving the reports of spies all day, she would come up to
my room—a trace of real weariness on her brow—and she would sit down
and listen while the children said their little prayers to me in
English: the Lord’s Prayer, and the hymn beginning “Gentle Jesus,”
these little Catholics were permitted to repeat at my knee; and, when I
had put them to bed, she would talk to me (I soon gained enough French
to be able to understand, and even answer her) about England and
Englishwomen, and the reasons for what she was pleased to term their
superior intelligence, and more real and reliable probity. Very good
sense she often showed; very sound opinions she often broached: she
seemed to know that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in blind
ignorance, and under a surveillance that left them no moment and no
corner for retirement, was not the best way to make them grow up honest
and modest women; but she averred that ruinous consequences would ensue
if any other method were tried with continental children: they were so
accustomed to restraint, that relaxation, however guarded, would be
misunderstood and fatally presumed on. She was sick, she would declare,
of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after
discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move
away on her “souliers de silence,” and glide ghost-like through the
house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every keyhole,
listening behind every door.
After all, Madame’s system was not bad—let me do her justice. Nothing
could be better than all her arrangements for the physical well-being
of her scholars. No minds were overtasked: the lessons were well
distributed and made incomparably easy to the learner; there was a
liberty of amusement, and a provision for exercise which kept the girls
healthy; the food was abundant and good: neither pale nor puny faces
were anywhere to be seen in the Rue Fossette. She never grudged a
holiday; she allowed plenty of time for sleeping, dressing, washing,
eating; her method in all these matters was easy, liberal, salutary,
and rational: many an austere English school-mistress would do vastly
well to imitate her—and I believe many would be glad to do so, if
exacting English parents would let them.
As Madame Beck ruled by espionage, she of course had her staff of
spies: she perfectly knew the quality of the tools she used, and while
she would not scruple to handle the dirtiest for a dirty
occasion—flinging this sort from her like refuse rind, after the orange
has been duly squeezed—I have known her fastidious in seeking pure
metal for clean uses; and when once a bloodless and rustless instrument
was found, she was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and
cotton-wool. Yet, woe be to that man or woman who relied on her one
inch beyond the point where it was her interest to be trustworthy:
interest was the master-key of Madame’s nature—the mainspring of her
motives—the alpha and omega of her life. I have seen her _feelings_
appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the
appellants. None ever gained her ear through that channel, or swayed
her purpose by that means. On the contrary, to attempt to touch her
heart was the surest way to rouse her antipathy, and to make of her a
secret foe. It proved to her that she had no heart to be touched: it
reminded her where she was impotent and dead. Never was the distinction
between charity and mercy better exemplified than in her. While devoid
of sympathy, she had a sufficiency of rational benevolence: she would
give in the readiest manner to people she had never seen—rather,
however, to classes than to individuals. “Pour les pauvres,” she opened
her purse freely—against _the poor man_, as a rule, she kept it closed.
In philanthropic schemes for the benefit of society at large she took a
cheerful part; no private sorrow touched her: no force or mass of
suffering concentrated in one heart had power to pierce hers. Not the
agony in Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary, could have wrung from
her eyes one tear.
I say again, Madame was a very great and a very capable woman. That
school offered her for her powers too limited a sphere; she ought to
have swayed a nation: she should have been the leader of a turbulent
legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated
her nerves, exhausted her patience, or over-reached her astuteness. In
her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first
minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless; secret,
crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and
insensate—withal perfectly decorous—what more could be desired?
The sensible reader will not suppose that I gained all the knowledge
here condensed for his benefit in one month, or in one half-year. No!
what I saw at first was the thriving outside of a large and flourishing
educational establishment. Here was a great house, full of healthy,
lively girls, all well-dressed and many of them handsome, gaining
knowledge by a marvellously easy method, without painful exertion or
useless waste of spirits; not, perhaps, making very rapid progress in
anything; taking it easy, but still always employed, and never
oppressed. Here was a corps of teachers and masters, more stringently
tasked, as all the real head-labour was to be done by them, in order to
save the pupils, yet having their duties so arranged that they relieved
each other in quick succession whenever the work was severe: here, in
short, was a foreign school; of which the life, movement, and variety
made it a complete and most charming contrast to many English
institutions of the same kind.
Behind the house was a large garden, and, in summer, the pupils almost
lived out of doors amongst the rose-bushes and the fruit-trees. Under