CHAPTER XII.

EUGÈNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S BRUSSELS LIFE.

I.

MDLLE. LAGRANGE AND HER MANUSCRIPT "CATHERINE BELL THE ORPHAN."

When Mrs. Gaskell published her Brontë biography it was discovered that while she had been enabled by aid of the mass of commonplace Brontë correspondence to present an interesting picture of the domestic conditions at the Haworth parsonage, she had yet been unable to throw any light upon that episode in Charlotte Brontë's life which, it had been suspected, was responsible for the extraordinary love passages in the Brontë works and Miss Brontë's insistence in choosing the hero of each of her books from the same model.

It is therefore most miraculous and sensational that after having found Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_ was the key to _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_, I should further come to discover, what the world had thought would never be found: external evidence throwing light upon Miss Brontë's real relations with the Hégers at Brussels, to whose _pensionnat_ she went in the 'forties. This discovery was the subject of my article "The Lifting of the Brontë Veil" Mr. W. L. Courtney commissioned me to write in the _Fortnightly Review_. Therein I showed Eugène Sue had presented the whole history of M. Héger's passion for Charlotte Brontë, and Madame Héger's jealousy, in a work entitled _Miss Mary ou l'Institutrice_, published in 1850-51--seven years before the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life_, and before the publication of either _The Professor_ or _Villette_; and we saw that M. Héger knew all Miss Brontë's literary secrets in 1850.

Skilfully enough Eugène Sue in this story--the first version of which was issued serially in September 1850, from _The Weekly Times_ Office, London, whence were published many of M. Sue's serials;[56] the second, an abridged and altered version for French readers, published in Paris in March 1851--gave two phases of Charlotte Brontë, something after the method we see Miss Brontë herself employed in _Jane Eyre_, wherein she gave two phases of Tabitha Aykroyd, one in the beginning as Bessie, another later on as Hannah of the Rivers family.[57]

Indeed it will be found that in this work Eugène Sue also imitated Charlotte Brontë's Method I., interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life.

The two phases of Miss Brontë in this romance are Miss Mary Lawson, an Irish governess at the de Morville establishment; and Mademoiselle Lagrange, a former governess at the same house. The Mademoiselle Lagrange is, however, always referred to in the abstract, and serves to illustrate, it appears, Miss Brontë before her first departure from and return to Brussels, as well as after, for she was twice at the Hégers. And it may be observed that Charlotte Brontë was called "Mademoiselle Charlotte" at the Héger _pension_ when she was governess there in 1843. Certainly the choice of Lagrange for Miss Brontë was pertinent: _la grange_ is French for "the barn," and may have been suggested by the Eyre of _Jane Eyre_, which to a French ear would recall _aire_--a barn floor. Mdlle. Lagrange who had left the de Morville (_Anglicè_, Morton. As we have seen, Morton of _Jane Eyre_ was Haworth to Charlotte Brontë) establishment on account of the jealousy of Madame de Morville, whom I identify as Madame Héger, is a plain-featured literary aspirant, and she writes a manuscript entitled not exactly Currer Bell, but "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

This manuscript has been sent by the author for an opinion of its merits to M. de Morville, who reads it aloud to his family. It is a parody, as it were, of _Jane Eyre_, with an imitation of Charlotte Brontë's methods of introducing private biographical facts. For instance, in presenting the Lowood school incidents it calls the school "the Kendall Institute," named after "a Mr. Kendall, its founder." Evidently the writer had heard, as only few indeed had at this early day, that the Lowood school of _Jane Eyre_ was afterwards removed to Casterton in the Union of Kendal, or had heard that in a wise it was connected with a place of that name.

Other extraordinary facts with which he shows acquaintance are, that Charlotte Brontë had a sister Elizabeth at this school; that Helen Burns was her sister; that there was a West Indian girl at the school; that Charlotte Brontë was born on or about the 21st of April; that she might be called Kitty (Currer) Bell at home, but she must be called Catherine (Catherine Earnshaw); that Miss Brontë was the governess-daughter of an Irishman; that the original of John Reed was her brother and was no hero, and had shown strange signs of insanity during the last year or two, as it is now known he had at the time; that a female relative had provided Miss Brontë the money for the _pensionnat_; that skin disorders as well as the typhus fever were prevalent at the Clergy Daughters' School (it is in a private letter that Miss Brontë referred to scrofula at this school); that the original of Mr. Rochester was a foreigner and a resident abroad, an ex-soldier, and married to a lady who was not pretty, albeit "la vivacité, l'agrément de sa physionomie expressive, suppléaient à la beauté qui lui manquait"; that Charlotte Brontë had had in her possession since her childhood an old copy in English of _The Imitation of Christ_; that Miss Brontë was called a _bas bleu_ at the _pensionnat_; that to form an opinion of her character by Madame Héger's estimate of her disposition would be completely erroneous; that M. Héger was accustomed to read _feuilletons_ aloud; that religious differences existed between her and others at the establishment where Charlotte Brontë was; that Catherine's (Catherine Earnshaw's) rival was Isabella (Heathcliffe's wife--Madame Héger of the Rue d'Isabelle); that Miss Brontë travelled alone to Brussels and was accosted by _deux jeunes gens_--compare the opening chapters of _Miss Mary_ with Lucy Snowe's arrival at Villette, evidently in some wise founded on fact, as to these two young men. See also _The Professor_, Chapter VII.

But to return to "Mdlle. Lagrange's Manuscript," the pseudo _Jane Eyre_, which of course at once identifies its author, Mdlle. Lagrange, as Charlotte Brontë, I find therein the whole Lowood school incidents--the typhus fever, the hair-cutting incident, the death of the consumptive Helen Burns, etc., amplified with biographical additions. For instance, take the hair-cutting incident of _Jane Eyre_ as represented in "Lagrange's Manuscript"--

The master called out:--

"Elizabeth----"

... Meanwhile all the Elizabeths in the school must have felt the claws of the tiger in their necks, for who could tell which of them it was?...

"Superintendent of the Kendall Institute! you are aware, madam, one of the rules of this establishment enjoins you to cut short the hair of every new girl.... And yet what do I see? Six girls with long hair...."

The last of these had not been a week at the institution. She was a girl of fourteen, very dark, ... with a fine tinge of the Creole in her face. How well I thought did Isabella Hutchinson, with her dark, West Indian head, look by the side of the fair Yorkshire girl, Sophia Leigh, whose pale, straw-coloured locks, looked paler still by the side of that dark heap of hair, blacker than a raven's wing...[!]

We have seen in the chapter on "The Rivers or Brontë Family in _Jane Eyre_" that Charlotte Brontë portrayed in the character Julia Severn, who is first mentioned in connection with the hair-cutting incident, her sister Elizabeth, and it is most significant that M. Sue made play upon the name Elizabeth in the connection. In regard to the mention of a West Indian girl at the Lowood school and her being coupled with a fair-haired Yorkshire girl, it is important to note that no reference is made in _Jane Eyre_ to a West Indian girl at this school. It is indeed astonishing how much M. Sue knew of Charlotte Brontë's private life. Here we find him telling the world in 1850 of a West Indian girl being with Charlotte Brontë at the Clergy Daughters' School, and not till seven years later did Mrs. Gaskell learn of the Rev. Patrick Brontë--Charlotte Brontë was then dead--that a girl from the West Indies had been Charlotte's friend at this school. Her name, he thought, was Mellany Hane, so far as he could remember to pronounce it. Mysteriously enough, the words "West Indies" or "West Indian" in this connection have been deleted from the later editions of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. See the Second Edition.

"Lagrange's Manuscript" is of considerable length and interest, and can be drawn upon in future editions of _The Key to the Brontë Works_. Frequently it follows in parallel to _Jane Eyre_, but as parody interspersed with biographical details which must have been intended chiefly for Charlotte Brontë herself, as scarcely any one else could at that day have understood the pertinence of the references.[58] Take a Helen Burns incident whereby M. Sue shows he is aware she was a Brontë sister, older than Charlotte--Maria Brontë who died of consumption:--

But the inexorable hand ... was upon Agnes Jones [Helen Burns]. Day by day I saw her pretty cheeks growing thinner and thinner, her eyes sinking still more deeply into her head, her little mouth becoming more blue and ashy, her long, thin fingers more transparent. Her voice, at all times so meek and low, dwindled away to that thin and tiny sound to which we listen as to something absent--already gone--something that comes from above or below us--that is not living amongst us--not breathing as we breathe--a retreating echo, rather than a living voice--a sigh, and not a sound.... It was not much I had learned from Agnes [Helen] since I had been at the institution; but never till then had I known her spirit so genial, her heart so lovingly persuasive; the beneficent lessons of those days, burning like candles within me, have since guided me well through life: _she spoke to me like a prophet, and I listened to her like a believer_. Oh, I could have lived for ever in that chamber, and Agnes [Helen] might have been to me the world! How often, as our cheeks lay against each other have I wished that I, too, had been ill, so that I also might have died, as she was dying, in my innocence!... One evening, ... just at that pleasant hour of twilight when two of God's wonders--night and day--cross each other like ships on the sea, Agnes [Helen] said:--'Life has its holiness as well as death, Catherine [Jane]; and you may live in the world as purely and justly as those who die in the cradle.'

"The world is full of temptation?"

"So it is, but there lies the merit, my dear; wrestle with temptation and do what is right, ... you must not allow my death to afflict you much, since I rejoice at it.... If you think of me, think of me living, not dead. Think of your playfellow in the garden; think of your elder sister who lived with you for six years."

Maria Brontë, Charlotte's eldest sister, and the original of Helen Burns, died when Charlotte was eight or nine. It is sensational indeed, that M. Sue thus identified Helen Burns seven years before the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. The death of this character in "Lagrange's Manuscript" is in perfect agreement with that of Helen Burns. I will place the two side by side:--

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