Villette is Brussels, and the experiences of the heroine,
Lucy Snowe, in travelling thither and teaching there are based
on the journeys and the life of Charlotte Brontë when she was
a teacher in the Pensionnat Héger. The principal characters in
the story have been identified, more or less completely, with
people whom the writer knew. Paul Emanuel resembles M. Héger
in many ways, and Madame Beck is a severe portrait of Madame
Héger. Dr. John Graham Bretton is a reflection of George
Smith, Charlotte Brontë's friendly publisher; and Mrs. Bretton
is Mr. Smith's mother. Lucy Snowe is Jane Eyre, otherwise
Charlotte Brontë, placed amidst different surroundings; and
Ginevra Fanshawe was sketched from one of the pupils in
Héger's school. The materials used in "Villette" were taken,
in part, from an earlier work, "The Professor," which suffered
rejection nine times at the hands of publishers. Though there
was similarity of scene, and in some degree of subject, the
two books are in no way identical. "Villette" was published on
January 24, 1853, and achieved an immediate success. It was
felt to have more movement and force than "Shirley," and less
of the crudeness that accompanied the strength of "Jane Eyre."



_I.--Little Miss Caprice_


My godmother lived in a handsome house in the ancient town of Bretton--
the widow of Bretton--and there I, Lucy Snowe, visited her about twice a
year, and liked the visit well, for time flowed smoothly for me at her
side, like the gliding of a full river through a verdant plain.

During one of my visits I was told that the little daughter of a distant
relation of my godmother was coming to be my companion, and well do I
remember the rainy night when, outside the opened door, we saw the
servant Waren with a shawled bundle in his arms and a nurse-girl by his
side.

"Put me down, please," said a small voice. "Take off the shawl; give it
to Harriet, and she can put it away."

The child who gave these orders was a tiny, neat little figure, delicate
as wax, and like a mere doll, though she was six years of age.

Mrs. Bretton drew the little stranger to her when they had entered the
drawing-room, kissed her, and asked: "What is my little one's name?"

"Polly, papa calls her," was the reply.

"And will Polly be content to live with me?"

"Not always; but till papa comes home." Her eyes filled with tears, and,
drawing away from Mrs. Bretton, she added: "I can sit on a stool."

Her emotion at finding herself among strangers was, however, only
expressed by the tiniest occasional sniff, and presently the managing
little body remarked:

"Harriet, I must be put to bed. Ask if you sleep with me."

"No, missy," said the nurse; "you are to share this young lady's
room"--designating me.

"I wish you, ma'am, good-night," said the little creature to Mrs.
Bretton; but she passed me mute.

"Good-night, Polly," I said.

"No need to say good-night, since we sleep in the same chamber," was the
reply.

Paulina Home's father was obliged to travel to recruit his health, and
her mother being dead, Mrs. Bretton had offered to take temporary charge
of the child.

During the two months Paulina stayed with us, the one member of the
household who reconciled her to absence from her father was John Graham
Bretton, Mrs. Bretton's only child, a handsome, whimsical youth of
sixteen. He began by treating her with mock seriousness as a person of
consideration, and before long was more than the Grand Turk in her
estimation; indeed, when a letter came from her father on the Continent,
asking that his little girl might join him there, we wondered how she
would take the news. I found her in the drawing-room engaged with a
picture-book.

"Miss Snowe," said she, "this is a wonderful book. It was given me by
Graham. It tells of distant countries."

"Polly," I interrupted, "should you like to travel?"

"Not just yet," was the prudent answer; "but perhaps when I am grown a
woman I may travel with Graham."

"But would you like to travel now if your papa was with you?"

"What is the good of talking in that silly way?" said she. "What is papa
to you? I was just beginning to be happy."

Then I told her of the letter, and the tidings kept her serious the
whole day. When Graham came home in the evening, she whispered, as she
heard him in the hall: "Tell him by-and-by; tell him I am going."

But Graham, who was preoccupied about some school prize, had to be told
twice before the news took proper hold of his attention. "Polly going?"
he said. "What a pity! Dear little Mouse, I shall be sorry to lose her;
she must come to us again."

On going to bed, I found the child wide awake, and in what she called
"dreadful misery!"

"Paulina," I said, "you should not grieve that Graham does not care for
you so much as you care for him. It must be so."

Her questioning eyes asked why.

"Because he is a boy and you are a girl; he is sixteen and you are only
six; his nature is strong and gay, and yours is otherwise."

"But I love him so much. He should love me a little."

"He does. He is fond of you; you are his favourite."

"Am I Graham's favourite?"

"Yes, more than any little child I know."

The assurance soothed her, and she smiled in her anguish. As I warmed
the shivering, capricious little creature in my arms I wondered how she
would battle with life, and bear its shocks, repulses, and humiliations.


_II.--Madame Beck's School_


The next eight years of my life brought changes. My own household and
that of the Brettons suffered wreck. My friends went abroad and were
lost sight of, and I, after a period of companionship with a woman of
fortune, found myself, at her death, with fifteen pounds in my pocket
looking for a new place. Then it was that I saw mentally within reach
what I had never yet beheld with my bodily eyes--I saw London.

When I awoke there next morning, my spirit shook its always fettered
wings half loose. I had a feeling as if I were at last about to taste
life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah's gourd. I wandered
whither chance might lead in a still ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment.

That evening I formed a project of crossing to a continental port, and
finding a vessel was about to start, I joined her at once in the river.
When the packet sailed at sunrise, I found the only passenger on board
to whom I cared to speak--and who, indeed, insisted on speaking to
me--was a girl of seventeen on her way to school in the city of
Villette. Miss Ginevra Fanshawe carelessly ran on with a full account of
herself, her school at Madame Beck's, her poverty at home, her education
by her godfather, De Bassompièrre, who lived in France, her want of
accomplishments--except that she could talk, play, and dance--and the
need for her to marry a rather elderly gentleman with cash.

It was this irresponsible talk, no doubt, that led me, in the absence of
any other leading, to make Villette my destination. On my arrival there,
an English gentleman, young, distinguished, and handsome, observing my
inability to make myself understood at the bureau where the diligence
stopped, inquired kindly if I had any friends in the city, and on my
replying that I had not, gave me the address of such an inn as I wanted,
and personally directed me part of the way. Even then, however, I failed
in the gloom to find the inn, and was becoming quite exhausted, when
over the door of a house, loftier by a storey than those around it, I
saw a brass plate with the inscription, "Pensionnat de Demoiselles,"
and, beneath, the name, "Madame Beck." Providence said: "Stop here; this
is your inn." I rang the door-bell.

"May I see Madame Beck?" I inquired of the servant who opened the door.
As I spoke in English I was admitted without a moment's hesitation.

I sat, turning hot and cold, in a glittering salon for a quarter of an
hour, and then a voice said: "You ayre Engliss?"

The question came from a motherly, dumpy little woman in a large shawl,
a wrapping gown, a clean, trim nightcap, and shod with the shoes of
silence.

As I told my story, through a mistress who had been summoned to
translate the speech of Albion, I thought the tale won madame's ear,
though never a gleam of sympathy crossed her countenance. A man's step
was heard in the vestibule, hastily proceeding to the outer door.

"Who goes out now?" demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.

"M. Paul Emanuel," replied the teacher.

"The very man! Call him."

He entered: a small, dark, and square man, in spectacles.

"_Mon cousin_," began madame, "read that countenance."

The little man fixed on me his spectacles, a gathering of the brows
seeming to say that a veil would be no veil to him.

"Do you need her services?" he asked.

"I could do with them," said Madame Beck.

"Engage her." And with a _ban soir_ this sudden arbiter of my destiny
vanished.

Madame Beck possessed high administrative powers. She ruled a hundred
and twenty pupils, four teachers, eight masters, six servants and three
children, and managed the pupils' parents and friends to perfection,
without apparent effort. "Surveillance," "espionage"--these were the
watchwords of her system. She knew what honesty was, and liked it--when
it did not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and
interest. Wise, firm, faithless, secret, crafty, passionless, watchful
and inscrutable--withal perfectly decorous--what more could be desired?

Not a soul in all Madame Beck's house, from the scullion to the
directress herself, but was above being ashamed of a lie; they thought
nothing of it.

Here Miss Ginevra Fanshawe was a thriving pupil. She had a considerable
range of acquaintances outside the school, for Mrs. Cholmondeley, her
chaperon, a gay, fashionable lady, took her to evening parties at the
houses of her acquaintances. Soon I discovered by hints that ardent
admiration, perhaps genuine love, was at the command of this pretty and
charming, but by no means refined, girl. She called her suitor
"Isidore," and bragged about the vehemence of his attachment. I asked
her if she loved him in return.

"He is handsome; he loves me to distraction; and so I am amused," was
the reply.

"But if he loves you, and it comes to nothing in the end, he will be
miserable."

"Of course he will break his heart. I should be disappointed if he
didn't."

"Do try to get a clear idea of the state of your own mind," I said, "for
to me it really seems as chaotic as a rag-bag."

"It is something in this fashion. He thinks far more of me than I find
it convenient to be, while I am more at ease with you, you old cross-
patch, you who know me to be coquettish and ignorant and fickle."

"You love M. Isidore far more than you think or will avow."

"No. I danced with a young officer the other night whom I love a
thousand times more than he. Colonel Alfred de Hamal suits me far
better. _Vive les joies et les plaisirs_!"

It was as English teacher that I was engaged at Madame Beck's school,
but the annual fête brought me into prominence in another capacity. The
programme included a dramatic performance, with pupils and teachers for
actors, and this was given under the superintendence of M. Paul Emanuel.
I was dressed a couple of hours before anyone else, and reading in my
classroom, the door was flung open, and in came M. Paul with a burst of
execrable jargon: "Mees, play you must; I am planted here."

"What can I do for you?" I inquired.

"Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the prude.
Let us thrust to the wall all reluctance."

What did the little man mean?

"Listen!" he said. "The case shall be stated, and you shall answer me
'Yes' or 'No.' Louise Vanderkelkov has fallen ill--at least, so her
ridiculous mother asserts. She is charged with a rôle; without that rôle
the play stopped. Englishwomen are either the best or the worst of their
sex. I apply to an Englishwoman to save me. What is her answer--'Yes,'
or 'No'?"

Seeing in his vexed, fiery and searching eye an appeal behind its
menace, my lips dropped the word "Oui."

His rigid countenance relaxed with a quiver of content; then he went on:

"Here is the book. Here is your rôle. You must withdraw." He conveyed me
to the attic, locked me in, and took away the key.

What I felt that successful night, and what I did, I no more expected to
feel and do than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. A keen
relish for dramatic expression revealed itself as part of my nature. But
the strength of longing must be put by; and I put it by, and fastened it
in with the lock of a resolution which neither time nor temptation has
since picked.

It was at this school fête that I discovered the identity of Miss
Fanshawe's M. Isidore. She whispered to me, after the play: "Isidore and
Alfred de Hamal are both here!" The latter I found was a straight-nosed,
correct-featured little dandy, nicely dressed, curled, booted, and
gloved; and Isidore was the manly English Dr. John, who attended the
pupils of the school, and was none other than the gentleman whose
directions to an hotel I had failed to follow on the night of my arrival
in Villette. And the puppet, the manikin--a mere lackey for Dr. John,
his valet, his foot-boy, was the favoured admirer of Ginevra Fanshawe!


_III.--Old Friends are Best_


During the long vacation I stayed at the school, and, in the absence of
companionship and the sedative of work, suffered such agonising
depression as led to physical illness, until one evening, after
wandering aimlessly in the city, I fell fainting as I tried to reach the
porch of a great church. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself
in a room that smiled "Auld lang syne" out of every nook.

Where was I? The furniture was that with which I had been so intimate in
the drawing-room of my godmother's house at Bretton. Nay, there, on the
linen of my bed, were my godmothers initials "L.L.B."; and there was the
portrait that used to hang over the mantelpiece in the breakfast-room in
the old house at Bretton. I audibly pronounced the name--"Graham!"

"Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at my bedside. "Do you want Graham?"

She was little changed; something sterner, something more robust, but it
was my godmother, Mrs. Bretton.

"How was I found, madam?"

"My son shall tell you by and by," said she. "I am told you are an
English teacher in a foreign school here."

Before evening I was downstairs, and seated in a corner, when Graham
arrived home, and entered with the question: "How is your patient,
mamma?"

At Mrs. Bretton's invitation, I came forward to speak for myself where
he stood at the hearth, a figure justifying his mother's pride.

"Much better," I said calmly; "much better, I thank you Dr. John."

For this tall young man, this host of mine, was Dr. John, and I had been
aware of his identity for some time.

Ere we had sat ten minutes, I caught the eye of Mrs. Bretton fixed
steadily on me, and at last she asked, "Tell me, Graham, of whom does
this young lady remind you."

"Dr. John has had so much to do and think of," said I, seeing how it
must end, "that it never occurred to me as possible that he should
recognise Lucy Snowe."

"Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!" cried Mrs. Bretton, as she
stepped across the hearth and kissed me. And I wondered if Mrs. Bretton
knew at whose feet her idolised son had laid his homage.


_IV.--A Cure for First Love_


The Brettons, who had regained some of their fortune, lived in a château
outside Villette, a course further warranted by Dr. John's professional
success. In the months, that followed I heard much of Ginevra. He
thought her so fair, so good, so innocent, and yet, though love is
blind, I saw sometimes a subtle ray sped sideways from his eye that half
led me to think his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe's naïveté was
in part assumed.

One morning my godmother decreed that we should go with Graham to a
concert that night, at which the most advanced pupils of the
conservatoire were to perform. There, in the suite of the British
embassy, was Ginevra Fanshawe, seated by the daughter of an English
peer. I noticed that she looked quite steadily at Dr. John, and then
raised a glass to examine his mother, and a minute or two afterwards
laughingly whispered to her neighbour.

"Miss Fanshawe is here," I whispered. "Have you noticed her?"

"Oh yes," was the reply; "and I happen to know her companion, who is a
proud girl, but not in the least insolent; and I doubt whether Ginevra
will have gained ground in her estimation by making a butt of her
neighbours."

"What neighbours?"

"Myself and my mother. As for me, it is very natural; but my mother! I
never saw her ridiculed before. Through me she could not in ten years
have done what in a moment she has done through my mother."

Never before had I seen so much fire and so little sunshine in Dr.
John's blue eyes.

"My mother shall not be ridiculed with my consent, or without my scorn,"
he added. "Mother," said he to her later, "You are better to me than ten
wives." And when we were out in the keen night air, he said to himself:
"Thank you, Miss Fanshawe. I am glad you laughed at my mother. That
sneer did me a world of good."


_V.--Reunion Completed_


One evening in December Dr. Bretton called to take me to the theatre in
place of his mother, who had been prevented by an arrival. In the course
of the performance a cry of "Fire!" rang out, and a panic ensued. Graham
remained quite cool until he saw a young girl struck from her
protector's arms and hurled under the feet of the crowd. Then he rushed
forward, thrust back the throng with the assistance of the gentleman--a
powerful man, though grey-haired--and bore the girl into the fresh
night, I following him closely.

"She is very light," he said; "like a child."

"I am not a child! I am a person of seventeen!" responded his burden,
demurely.

Her father's carriage drove up, and Graham, having introduced himself as
an English doctor, we drove to the hotel where father and daughter were
staying in handsome apartments. The injuries were not dangerous, and the
father, after earnestly expressing his obligations to Graham, asked him
to call the next day.

When next I visited the Bretton's château I found an intruder in the
room I had occupied during my illness.

"Miss de Bassompièrre, I pronounced, recognising the rescued lady, whose
name I had heard on the night of the accident.

"No," was the reply. "Not Miss de Bassompièrre to you." Then, as I
seemed at fault, she added: "You have forgotten, then, that I have sat
on your knee, been lifted in your arms, even shared your pillow. I am
Paulina Mary Home de Bassompièrre."

I often visited Mary de Bassompièrre with pleasure. That young lady had
different moods for different people. With her father she was even now a
child. With me she was serious and womanly. With Mrs. Bretton she was
docile and reliant. With Graham she was shy--very shy. At moments she
tried to be cold, and, on occasion, she endeavoured to shun him. Even
her father noticed this demeanour in her, and asked her what her old
friend had done.

"Nothing," she replied; "but we are grown strange to each other."

I became apprised of the return of M. de Bassompièrre and Paulina, after
a few weeks' absence in Paris, by seeing them riding before me in a
quiet boulevard with Dr. Bretton. How animated was Graham's face! How
true, yet how retiring the joy it expressed! They parted. He passed me
at speed, hardly feeling the earth he skimmed, and seeing nothing on
either hand.

It was after this that she made me her confession of love, and of fear
lest her father should be grieved.

"I wish papa knew! I do wish papa knew!" began now to be her anxious
murmur; but it was M. de Bassompièrre who first broached the subject of
his daughter's affections, and it was to me that he introduced it. She
came into the room while we talked and Graham followed.

"Take her, John Bretton," he said, "and may God deal with you as you
deal with her!"


_VI.--A Professor's Love-Story_


The pupils from the schools of the city were assembled for the yearly
prize distribution--a ceremony followed by an oration from one of the
professors. I think I was glad when M. Paul appeared behind the crimson
desk, fierce and frank, dark and candid, testy and fearless, for then I
knew that neither formalism nor flattery would be the doom of the
audience.

On Monsieur's birthday it was the habit of the scholars to present him
with flowers, and I had worked a beaded watch-chain, and enclosed it in
a sparkling shell-box, with his initials graved on the lid. He entered
that day in a mood that made him as good as a sunbeam, and each pupil
presented her bouquet, till he was hidden at his desk behind a pile of
flowers. I waited. Then he demanded thrice, in tragic tones: "Is that
all?" The effect was ludicrous, and the time for my presentation had
passed. Thereupon he fell, with furious abuse, upon the English, and
particularly English women. But I presented the chain to him later, and
that day closed for us both with a wordless content, so full was he of
friendliness.

The professor's care for me took curious forms. He haunted my desk with
unseen gift-bringing--the newest books, the correction of exercises, the
concealment of bonbons, of which he was fond.

One day he asked me whether, if I were his sister, I should always be
content to stay with a brother such as he. I said I believed I should.
He continued: "If I were to go beyond seas for two or three years,
should you welcome me on my return?"

"Monsieur, how could I live in the interval?" was my reply.

The explanation of that question soon came. He had, it seemed, to sail
to Basseterre, in Guadeloupe, to attend to a friend's business
interests. For what I felt there was no help, and how could I help
feeling?

Of late he had spent hours with me, with temper soothed, with eye
content, with manner home-like and mild. The mutual understanding was
settling and fixing. And when the time came for him to say good-bye, we
rambled forth into the city. He talked of his voyage. What did I propose
to do in his absence? He did not like leaving me at Madame Beck's--I
should be so desolate.

We were now returning from our walk, when, passing a small but pleasant
and neat abode in a clean _faubourg_, he took a key from his pocket,
opened, and entered. "_Voici!_" he cried, and put a prospectus in my
hand. "Externat de demoiselles. Numéro 7, Faubourg Clotilde. Directrice,
Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe."

"Now," said he, "you shall live here and have a school. You shall employ
yourself while I am away; you shall think of me; you shall mind your
health and happiness for my sake, and when I come back----"

I touched his hand with my lips. Royal to me had been its bounty.

And now three years are past. M. Emanuel's return is fixed. He is to be
with me ere the mists of November come. My school flourishes; my house
is ready.

But the skies hang full and dark--a wrack sails from the west. Peace,
peace, Banshee--"keening" at every window. The storm did not cease till
the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks. Peace, be still! Oh, a thousand
weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice;
but when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

Here pause. Enough is said. Trouble no kind heart. Leave sunny
imaginations hope. Let them picture union and a happy life.

*       *       *       *       *




EMILY BRONTË


Wuthering Heights

"That chainless soul," Emily Jane Brontë, was born at
Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on August 30, 1818, and died at
Haworth on December 19, 1848. She will always have a place in
English literature by reason of her one weird, powerful,
strained novel, "Wuthering Heights," and a few poems. Emily
Brontë, like her sister Charlotte, was educated at Cowan
School and at Brussels. For a time she became a governess, but
it seemed impossible for her to live away from the fascination
of the Yorkshire moors, and she went home to keep house at the
Haworth Parsonage, while her sisters taught. Two months after
the publication of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte, that is, in
December, 1847, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily, and "Agnes
Grey," by Anne, the third sister in this remarkable trio, were
issued in one volume. The critics, who did not discover these
books were by women, suggested persistently that "Wuthering
Heights" must be an immature work by Currer Bell (Charlotte).
A year after the publication of her novel Emily died, unaware
of her success in achieving a lasting, if restricted, fame.
She was extraordinarily reserved, sensitive, and wayward, and
lived in an imagined world of her own, morbidly influenced, no
doubt, by the vagaries of her worthless brother Branwell. That
she had true genius, allied with fine strength of intellect
and character, is the unanimous verdict of competent
criticism, while it grieves over unfulfilled possibilities.


_I.--A Surly Brood_


"Mr. Heathcliff?"

A nod was the answer.

"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, sir."

"Walk in." But the invitation, uttered with closed teeth, expressed the
sentiment "Go to the deuce!" And it was not till my horse's breast
fairly pushed the barrier that he put out his hand to unchain it. I felt
interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself
as he preceded me up the causeway, calling, "Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's
horse; and bring up some wine."

Joseph was an old man, very old, though hale and sinewy. "The Lord help
us!" he soliloquised in an undertone as he relieved me of my horse.

Wuthering Heights, Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, is a farmhouse on an
exposed and stormy edge, its name being significant of atmospheric
tumult. Its owner is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and
manners a gentleman, with erect and handsome figure, but morose
demeanour. One step from the outside brought us into the family
living-room, the recesses of which were haunted by a huge liver-coloured
bitch pointer, with a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs. As the
bitch sneaked wolfishly to the back of my legs I attempted to caress
her, an action that provoked a long, guttural growl.

"You'd better let the dog alone," growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, as
he checked her with a punch of his foot. "She's not accustomed to be
spoiled."

As Joseph was mumbling indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and
gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me
_vis-à-vis_ with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends
that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a
poker and called aloud for assistance.

"What the devil is the matter?" asked Heathcliff, as he returned.

"What the devil, indeed!" I muttered. "You might as well leave a
stranger with a brood of tigers!"

"They won't meddle with persons who touch nothing," he remarked. "The
dogs are right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine."

Before I went home I determined to volunteer another visit to my sulky
landlord, though evidently he wished for no repetition of my intrusion.

*       *       *       *       *

Yesterday I again visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to
Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a
black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked
for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar-
faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and
shouted to me.

"What are ye for? T' maister's down i' t' fowld. There's nobbut t'
missis. I'll hae no hend wi't," muttered the head, vanishing.

Then a young man, without coat and shouldering a pitchfork, hailed me to
follow him, and showed me into the apartment where I had been formerly
received with a gruff "Sit down; he'll be in soon."

In the room sat the "missis," motionless and mute. She was slender,
scarcely past girlhood, with the most exquisite little face I have ever
had the pleasure of beholding; and her eyes, had they been agreeable in
expression, would have been irresistible. But the only sentiment they
evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation. As for the
young man who had brought me in, he slung on his person a shabby jacket,
and, erecting himself before the fire, gazed down on me from the corner
of his eyes as if there was some mortal feud unavenged between us. The
entrance of Heathcliff relieved me from an uncomfortable state.

I found in the course of the tea which followed that the lady was the
widow of Heathcliff's son, and that the rustic youth who sat down to the