Part 5 (1/2)
Window-gazing of all things! Mrs Oliphant could not have fixed upon a habit more absurdly at variance with Charlotte's character
For she was pure, utterly and marvellously pure from sentimentalism, which was (and she knew it) the worst vice of the Victorian age Mr
Leslie Stephen said that, ”Miss Bronte's sense of huh when it played with sentimentalists But as for love, for passion, she sees it with a tragic lucidity that is almost a premonition And her attitude was by nonecessity her virtue There was no necessity She had at least four suitors (quite a fair allowance for a little lady in a lonely parish), and she refused them all Twice in her life, in her tempestuous youth, and at a crisis of her affairs, she chose ”dependence upon coarse employers” before matrimony She was shrewd, lucid, fastidious, and saw the lahly presentable Mr Henry Nussey she replied thus: ”It has always beenwhoine what description of woman would suit you for a wife The character should not be too inal, her temper should be mild, her piety undoubted, and her personal attractions sufficient to please your eyes and gratify your just pride As for me you do not know me” She was only three-and-twenty when she wrote that, with the prospect of Stonegappe before her For she had not, and could not have for hi to die for hiht of adoration that I will regard my husband” Later, in her worst loneliness she refused that ardent Mr Taylor, who courted her by the novel ularity through the post He represented to soer life of intellectual interest But he offended her fastidiousness She was sorry for the little man with his little newspaper, and that was all She refused several ti apprenticeshi+p to love, and Charlotte yielded to his distress rather than to her own passion She describes her engaged state as ”very calm, very expectant What I taste of happiness is of the soberest order I trust to love rateful for his tender love for me Providence offers me this destiny Doubtless then it is the best for me”
These are not the words, nor is this the behaviour of Mrs Oliphant's Charlotte Bronte, the forlorn and desperate victim of the obsession of matrimony
I do not say that Charlotte Bronte had not what is called a ”teenius would not have been what it ithout it; she herself would have been incoenius who had her temperament in more complete subjection to her character; and it is her character that you have to reckon with at every turn
The little legends and the little theories have gone far enough And had they gone no farther they would not have mattered enius to its ownthat irritated, the enig Talent in a woman you can understand, there's a formula for it--_tout talent de femme est un bonheur manque_ So when a woman's talent baffles you, your course is plain, _cherchez l'houed that if you could put your finger on the man you would have the key to the enius was, after all, only a superior kind of talent; but soun to ask thean to look for the man They were certain by this time that there was one
The search was difficult; for Charlotte had concealed hier, the little Professor of the Pensionnat de Deested a love-affair in Brussels to account for Charlotte's depression, which was unfavourable to his theory of the happy life Mr
Leyland seized upon the idea, for it nourished his theory that Branas an innocent lamb who had never caused his sisters a moment's misery
They _made_ misery for theus Mackay in _The Brontes, Fact and Fiction_, gives us this fiction for a fact He is pleased hat he calls the ”pathetic significance”
of his ”discovery” There _was_ soer, for there wasn't anybody else Mr Mackay draws back the veil with a gesture and reveals--the love-affair He is very nice about it, just as nice as ever he can be ”We see her,” he says, ”sore wounded in her affections, but unconquerable in her will The discoverydoes not degrade the noble figure we knoell The n absolute at whatever cost--acquires a greater force e realize how she herself cah the furnace of temptation with marks of torture on her, but with no stain on her soul”
This is all very well, but the question is: _Did_ Charlotte coic passion? It may have been so For all we know she one froossip, and apart fros the question) we have no evidence to prove it What we have points all the other way
Gossip apart, believers in the tragic passion have nourished their theory chiefly on that celebrated passage in a letter of Charlotte's to Ellen Nussey: ”I returned to Brussels after Aunt's death, prompted by what then seemed an irresistible impulse I was punished for my selfish folly by a withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of reat disclosure By ”irresistible ience in an illegitier's society Peace of mind bears but one interpretation
Mr Clement Shorter, to his infinite credit, will have none of this He e should be left to bear the simple construction that Miss Nussey and Mr Nicholls put upon it But I would go farther I ae bear that construction, but that it will not bear the weight of any other
In eighteen-forty-two Charlotte's aunt died, and Charlotte became the head of her father's household She left her father's house in a time of trouble, prompted by ”an irresistible impulse” towards e should now call self-development Charlotte, more than two years later, in a moment of retrospective morbidity, called it ”selfish folly” In that dark e it was sin in any woman to leave her home if her home required her And with her aunt dead, and her brother Branwell drowning his grief for his relative in drink, and her father going blind and beginning in his misery to drink a little too, Charlotte felt that her home did require her Equally she felt that either E, and since it couldn't possibly be Emily it must be she The problem would have been quite sio_ Therefore her tender conscience vacillated When you reenius, the largest, and at the same time the most delicate part of her, and that her love for her own people was a sacred passion, her words are sufficiently charged with , superfluous You can prove anything by detaching words froe has been torn is an answer to Ellen Nussey's suggestions of work for Charlotte Charlotte says ”any project which infers the necessity ofhome is impracticable to me If I could leave ho away, and I ae it is at moments--but I see no way out of the mist”; and so on for another line or two, and then: ”These ideas sting me keenly sometimes; but whenever I consultat hoer desire for release”
And then, the passage quoted _ad nauseaer
A ”total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of mind” This letter is dated October 1846--more than two years since her return frohteen-forty-four In those two years her father was threatened with total blindness, and her brother Branwell achieved his destiny The passage refers unmistakably to events at Haworth It is further illue froh the same crisis--torn between duty to herself and duty to her people She asks Charlotte's advice and Charlotte gives judgreatest sacrifice of self-interest” The sacrifice, observe, not of happiness, not of passion, but of self-interest, the development of self It was self-development, and not passion, not happiness, that she went to Brussels for
And Charlotte's letters from Brussels--frohteen-forty-three--sufficiently reveal the nature of the trouble there Charlotte was alone in the Pensionnat without Emily
Emily was alone at Haworth The few friends she had in Brussels left soon after her arrival She was alone in Brussels, and her homesickness was terrible You can trace the ht to consider ood fortune I hope I am thankful” (clearly she isn't thankful in the least!), ”and if I could always keep upfor companionshi+p or friendshi+p, or whatever they call it, I should do very well” In the salish lessons to M Heger and his brother-in-law, M Chapelle ”If you could see and hear the efforts I lishh to all eternity” Charlotte is at first aer and his brother-in-law
In May the noises made by Monsieur fail to amuse Still, she is ”indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement” that she had, and in spite of her indebtedness, she records a ”total want of conant, silent life, for whichI ought to be very thankful” (but she is not) May I point out that though you itinant”, and certainly not ”easeful”
At the end of May she finds out that Madaer does not like her, and Monsieur is ”wondrously influenced” by Madaht of his countenance”, but Charlotte apparently does not care In August the _vacancies_ are at hand, and everybody but Charlotte is going home She is consequently ”in low spirits; earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moht at h She will stay soer ”till I have acquired German” And at the end: ”Everybody is abundantly civil, but ho over er's absence Later, she tells Emily how she went into the cathedral and made ”a real confession _to see what it was like_” Charlotte's confession has been used to bolster up the theory of the ”temptation” Unfortunately for the theory it happened in Septeer and teer trusts Madaer At the saave notice, and M Heger flew into a passion and coainst, not her conscience, but her will In the same letter and the same connection she says, ”I have h--which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day perhaps, or rather one evening--if ever we should find ourselves by the fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling our hair--I may communicate to you”
Charlotte is noare of a situation; she is interested in it, intellectually, not ees of homesickness cut me to the heart, now and then” On holidays ”the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs down one's spirits like lead Madaood and kind as I have described her” (_ie_ for all her goodness and kindness), ”never comes near me on these occasions””She is not colder to me than she is to the other teachers, but they are less dependent on her than I a clearer Charlotte is interested ”I fancy I begin to perceive the reason of this h, and at other times nearly cry When I am sure of it I will tell you”
There can be no doubt that before she left Brussels Charlotte was sure; but there is no record of her ever having told