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Page 8
From the statue we descended, by a quadruple series of wide stone
stairs, into a narrow street, old-fashioned and clean, quiet and
secluded in the very heart of the great city,--the Rue d'Isabelle,--and
just opposite the foot of the steps we came to the wide door of a
spacious, quadrangular, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of foliage
showing over a high wall at one side. A bright plate embellishes the
door and bears the inscription,
PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES
H�GER-PARENT.
A Latin inscription in the wall of the house shows it to have been given
to the Guild of Royal Archers by the Infanta Isabelle early in the
seventeenth century. Long before that the garden had been the orchard
and herbary of a convent and the Hospital for the Poor.
We were detained at the door long enough to remember Lucy standing
there, trembling and anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too were
"let in by a _bonne_ in a smart cap,"--apparently a fit successor to the
Rosine of forty years ago,--and entered the corridor. This is paved with
blocks of black and white marble and has painted walls. It extends
through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an
open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden.
We were ushered into the little _salon_ at the left of the passage,--the
one often mentioned in "Villette,"--and here we made known our wish to
see the garden and class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the
neat _portresse_. We tried diplomacy (also lucre) with her, without
avail: it was the _grandes vacances_, the ladies were out, M. H�ger was
engaged, we could not be gratified,--unless, indeed, we were patrons of
the school. At this juncture a portly, ruddy-faced lady of middle age
and most courteous of speech and manner appeared, and, addressing us in
faultless English, introduced herself as Mademoiselle H�ger,
co-directress of the _pensionnat_, and "wholly at our service." In
response to our apologies for the intrusion and explanations of the
desire which had prompted it, we received complaisant assurances of
welcome; yet the manner of our kind entertainer indicated that she did
not appreciate, much less share in, our admiration and enthusiasm for
Charlotte Bront� and her books. In the subsequent conversation it
appeared that Mademoiselle and her family hold decided opinions upon the
subject,--something more than mere lack of admiration. She was familiar
with the novels, and thought that, while they exhibit a talent certainly
not above mediocrity, they reflect the injustice, the untruthfulness,
and the ingratitude of their creator. We were obliged to confess to
ourselves that the family have apparent reason for this view, when we
reflected that in the books Miss Bront� has assailed their religion and
disparaged the school and the character of the teachers and pupils, has
depicted Madame H�ger in the odious duad of Madame Beck and Mademoiselle
Reuter, has represented M. H�ger as the scheming and deceitful M. Pelet
and the preposterous M. Paul, Lucy Snowe's lover, that this lover was
the husband of Madame H�ger, and father of the family of children to
whom Lucy was at first _bonne d'enfants_, and that possibly the daughter
she has described as the thieving, vicious D�sir�e--"that tadpole,
D�sir�e Beck"--was this very lady now so politely entertaining us. To
all this add the significant fact that "Villette" is an autobiographical
novel, which "records the most vivid passages in Miss Bront�'s own sad
heart's history," not a few of the incidents being "literal transcripts"
from the darkest chapter of her own life, and the light which the
consideration of this fact throws upon her relations with members of the
family will help us to apprehend the stand-point from which the H�gers
judge Miss Bront� and her work, and to excuse, if not to justify, a
natural resentment against one who has presented them in a decidedly bad
light.
_How_ bad we began to realize when, during the ensuing chat, we called
to mind just what she had written of them. As Madame Beck, Madame H�ger
had been represented as lying, deceitful, and shameless, as heartless
and unscrupulous, as "watching and spying everywhere, peeping through
every keyhole, listening behind every door," as duplicating Lucy's keys
and secretly searching her bureau, as meanly abstracting her letters and
reading them to others, as immodestly laying herself out to entrap the
man to whom she had given her love unsought. In letters to her friend
Ellen, Miss Bront� complains that "Madame H�ger never came near her" in
her loneliness and illness.
It was, obviously, some accession to the existing animosity between
herself and Madame H�ger which precipitated Miss Bront�'s final
departure from the _pensionnat_. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual
dislike to Charlotte's free expression of her aversion to the Catholic
Church, of which Madame H�ger was a devotee, and hence "wounded in her
most cherished opinions;" but a later writer, in the "Westminster
Review," plainly intimates that Miss Bront� hated the woman who sat for
Madame Beck because marriage had given to _her_ the man whom Miss Bront�
loved, and that "Madame Beck had need to be a detective in her own
house." The recent death of Madame H�ger has rendered the family, who
hold her now only as a sacred memory, more keenly sensitive than ever to
anything which would seem by implication to disparage her.
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