Villette
the vast and vine-draped berceau, Madame would take her seat on summer
afternoons, and send for the classes, in turns, to sit round her and
sew and read. Meantime, masters came and went, delivering short and
lively lectures, rather than lessons, and the pupils made notes of
their instructions, or did _not_ make them—just as inclination
prompted; secure that, in case of neglect, they could copy the notes of
their companions. Besides the regular monthly _jours de sortie_, the
Catholic fête-days brought a succession of holidays all the year round;
and sometimes on a bright summer morning, or soft summer evening; the
boarders were taken out for a long walk into the country, regaled with
_gaufres_ and _vin blanc_, or new milk and _pain bis_, or _pistolets au
beurre_ (rolls) and coffee. All this seemed very pleasant, and Madame
appeared goodness itself; and the teachers not so bad but they might be
worse; and the pupils, perhaps, a little noisy and rough, but types of
health and glee.
Thus did the view appear, seen through the enchantment of distance; but
there came a time when distance was to melt for me—when I was to be
called down from my watch-tower of the nursery, whence I had hitherto
made my observations, and was to be compelled into closer intercourse
with this little world of the Rue Fossette.
I was one day sitting up-stairs, as usual, hearing the children their
English lessons, and at the same time turning a silk dress for Madame,
when she came sauntering into the room with that absorbed air and brow
of hard thought she sometimes wore, and which made her look so little
genial. Dropping into a seat opposite mine, she remained some minutes
silent. Désirée, the eldest girl, was reading to me some little essay
of Mrs. Barbauld’s, and I was making her translate currently from
English to French as she proceeded, by way of ascertaining that she
comprehended what she read: Madame listened.
Presently, without preface or prelude, she said, almost in the tone of
one making an accusation, “Meess, in England you were a governess?”
“No, Madame,” said I smiling, “you are mistaken.”
“Is this your first essay at teaching—this attempt with my children?”
I assured her it was. Again she became silent; but looking up, as I
took a pin from the cushion, I found myself an object of study: she
held me under her eye; she seemed turning me round in her
thoughts—measuring my fitness for a purpose, weighing my value in a
plan. Madame had, ere this, scrutinized all I had, and I believe she
esteemed herself cognizant of much that I was; but from that day, for
the space of about a fortnight, she tried me by new tests. She listened
at the nursery door when I was shut in with the children; she followed
me at a cautious distance when I walked out with them, stealing within
ear-shot whenever the trees of park or boulevard afforded a sufficient
screen: a strict preliminary process having thus been observed, she
made a move forward.
One morning, coming on me abruptly, and with the semblance of hurry,
she said she found herself placed in a little dilemma. Mr. Wilson, the
English master, had failed to come at his hour, she feared he was ill;
the pupils were waiting in classe; there was no one to give a lesson;
should I, for once, object to giving a short dictation exercise, just
that the pupils might not have it to say they had missed their English
lesson?
“In classe, Madame?” I asked.
“Yes, in classe: in the second division.”
“Where there are sixty pupils,” said I; for I knew the number, and with
my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail
into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a
pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have
let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical
ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants the
hornbook, turning silk dresses and making children’s frocks. Not that
true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had
neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to
me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from
intimate trial: the negation of severe suffering was the nearest
approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two
lives—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the
former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys
of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily
bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.
“Come,” said Madame, as I stooped more busily than ever over the
cutting-out of a child’s pinafore, “leave that work.”
“But Fifine wants it, Madame.”
“Fifine must want it, then, for I want _you_.”
And as Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me—as she
had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his
shortcomings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition—as,
too, _she_ did not lack resolution and practical activity, whether _I_
lacked them or not—she, without more ado, made me relinquish thimble
and needle; my hand was taken into hers, and I was conducted
down-stairs. When we reached the carré, a large square hall between the
dwelling-house and the pensionnat, she paused, dropped my hand, faced,
and scrutinized me. I was flushed, and tremulous from head to foot:
tell it not in Gath, I believe I was crying. In fact, the difficulties
before me were far from being wholly imaginary; some of them were real
enough; and not the least substantial lay in my want of mastery over
the medium through which I should be obliged to teach. I had, indeed,
studied French closely since my arrival in Villette; learning its
practice by day, and its theory in every leisure moment at night, to as
late an hour as the rule of the house would allow candle-light; but I
was far from yet being able to trust my powers of correct oral
expression.
“Dîtes donc,” said Madame sternly, “vous sentez vous réellement trop
faible?”
I might have said “Yes,” and gone back to nursery obscurity, and there,
perhaps, mouldered for the rest of my life; but looking up at Madame, I
saw in her countenance a something that made me think twice ere I
decided. At that instant she did not wear a woman’s aspect, but rather
a man’s. Power of a particular kind strongly limned itself in all her
traits, and that power was not my kind of power: neither sympathy, nor
congeniality, nor submission, were the emotions it awakened. I
stood—not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed. It seemed as if a
challenge of strength between opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly
felt all the dishonour of my diffidence—all the pusillanimity of my
slackness to aspire.
“Will you,” she said, “go backward or forward?” indicating with her
hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-house,
and then the great double portals of the classes or schoolrooms.
“En avant,” I said.
“But,” pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and continuing the hard look,
from very antipathy to which I drew strength and determination, “can
you face the classes, or are you over-excited?”
She sneered slightly in saying this: nervous excitability was not much
to Madame’s taste.
“I am no more excited than this stone,” I said, tapping the flag with
my toe: “or than you,” I added, returning her look.
“Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous, English girls
you are going to encounter. Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes,
franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles.”
I said: “I know; and I know, too, that though I have studied French
hard since I came here, yet I still speak it with far too much
hesitation—too little accuracy to be able to command their respect I
shall make blunders that will lay me open to the scorn of the most
ignorant. Still I mean to give the lesson.”
“They always throw over timid teachers,” said she.
“I know that too, Madame; I have heard how they rebelled against and
persecuted Miss Turner”—a poor friendless English teacher, whom Madame
had employed, and lightly discarded; and to whose piteous history I was
no stranger.
“C’est vrai,” said she, coolly. “Miss Turner had no more command over
them than a servant from the kitchen would have had. She was weak and
wavering; she had neither tact nor intelligence, decision nor dignity.
Miss Turner would not do for these girls at all.”
I made no reply, but advanced to the closed schoolroom door.
“You will not expect aid from me, or from any one,” said Madame. “That
would at once set you down as incompetent for your office.”
I opened the door, let her pass with courtesy, and followed her. There
were three schoolrooms, all large. That dedicated to the second
division, where I was to figure, was considerably the largest, and
accommodated an assemblage more numerous, more turbulent, and
infinitely more unmanageable than the other two. In after days, when I
knew the ground better, I used to think sometimes (if such a comparison
may be permitted), that the quiet, polished, tame first division was to
the robust, riotous, demonstrative second division, what the English
House of Lords is to the House of Commons.
The first glance informed me that many of the pupils were more than
girls—quite young women; I knew that some of them were of noble family
(as nobility goes in Labassecour), and I was well convinced that not
one amongst them was ignorant of my position in Madame’s household. As
I mounted the estràde (a low platform, raised a step above the
flooring), where stood the teacher’s chair and desk, I beheld opposite
to me a row of eyes and brows that threatened stormy weather—eyes full
of an insolent light, and brows hard and unblushing as marble. The
continental “female” is quite a different being to the insular “female”
of the same age and class: I never saw such eyes and brows in England.
Madame Beck introduced me in one cool phrase, sailed from the room, and
left me alone in my glory.
I shall never forget that first lesson, nor all the under-current of
life and character it opened up to me. Then first did I begin rightly
to see the wide difference that lies between the novelist’s and poet’s
ideal “jeune fille” and the said “jeune fille” as she really is.
It seems that three titled belles in the first row had sat down
predetermined that a _bonne d’enfants_ should not give them lessons in
English. They knew they had succeeded in expelling obnoxious teachers
before now; they knew that Madame would at any time throw overboard a
professeur or maitresse who became unpopular with the school—that she
never assisted a weak official to retain his place—that if he had not
strength to fight, or tact to win his way, down he went: looking at
“Miss Snowe,” they promised themselves an easy victory.
Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angélique opened the campaign by
a series of titterings and whisperings; these soon swelled into murmurs
and short laughs, which the remoter benches caught up and echoed more
loudly. This growing revolt of sixty against one, soon became
oppressive enough; my command of French being so limited, and exercised
under such cruel constraint.
Could I but have spoken in my own tongue, I felt as if I might have
gained a hearing; for, in the first place, though I knew I looked a
poor creature, and in many respects actually was so, yet nature had
given me a voice that could make itself heard, if lifted in excitement
or deepened by emotion. In the second place, while I had no flow, only
a hesitating trickle of language, in ordinary circumstances, yet—under
stimulus such as was now rife through the mutinous mass—I could, in
English, have rolled out readily phrases stigmatizing their proceedings
as such proceedings deserved to be stigmatized; and then with some