Before there had
been any publishers or a George Smith, Brontë had known a Frenchman named
Constantin Heger. Part of the plot of Villette involves the lead
character, Lucy Snowe, falling in love with two men: Graham Bretton and Paul
Emanuel. In reality, George Smith and her former French professor from the
Pensionnat Heger were both sober intellectuals with sensitive natures and good
hearts, and whose minds recognized and appreciated talent. Monsieur Heger was
the first man who had taken an interest in Brontë’s mind. He was married, but
Charlotte still felt a strong attraction to this passionate mentor who was
unlike any man she had ever met before. His forceful personality and sharp mind
would have stimulated her young woman’s fervent imagination, and generated
thoughts of a more intimate quality that in the end proved more harmful to her
than to him.
After
she left Brussels in 1844, he wrote a few letters to her, but soon stopped
corresponding. She continued to write in the hopes that they could retain their
connection until she could one day visit Brussels and see him. They never did
meet again, but Charlotte always hoped they would; consequently, she kept up
her French study and her letters. She spoke and wrote fluent French and naively
yearned for his continued friendship through those letters, but he was a busy
man; she no longer was part of life at the rue d’Isabelle; and he and his wife
felt that further contact would be inappropriate.
The Brussels school for young
women had herb gardens and orchards which would provide Charlotte with a quiet
retreat from the other students. In chapter twenty-two of Villette, Lucy
Snowe finds solitude in the “garden thicket” where rumours of a ghost still
linger, but she dispenses with these thoughts: “Independently of romantic
rubbish, however, that old garden had its charms.” During summer nights, Lucy
likes “to keep tryste with the rising moon, or taste one kiss of the evening
breeze, or fancy rather than feel the freshness of dew descending.” Among the
“doddered orchard giants,” “verdant” ground, and gravelled white walks was a
bower, “above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a smaller, more
sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran all along a high and gray
wall, and gathered their tendrils in a knot of beauty, and hung their clusters
in loving profusion about the favoured spot where jasmine and ivy met, and
married them.”
Brontë’s propensity for
dropping clues into her writing may be at work in this paragraph. Certain words
stand out and, when placed together, suggest a secret meeting place for two
lovers. The words “romantic,” “charms,” “tryste,” “kiss,” “verdant,” “white,”
“sequestered,” “bower,” “nestled,” “gathered,” “knot,” “loving profusion,” “the
favoured spot,” and “married” could allude to two lovers meeting in their
special area of the garden where their union constitutes a kind of marriage.
The word “romance” begins the image.
A person with charm can excite love or
have an indefinable power of delighting. A tryst can be a lovers’ appointed
time for their meeting, and in this case is spelled with an ‘e’ on the end,
which sounds and looks like the French word for sad—triste. The echo of
the word triste in “tryste” suggests that Brontë’s memory of this
special spot comes attached with a certain melancholy.
“Verdant” can mean
covered in plants, but it can also refer to someone who is unsophisticated,
unripe in knowledge or judgment, and the colour white immediately following
“verdant” can suggest purity, so the two words together could allude to an
inexperienced person secretly meeting her charming lover.
If the image is
continued, they meet “sequestered,” apart from everyone, in a “bower,” or small
room, where they “kiss” and nestle, and settle comfortably while “gathered”
together in their lovers’ “knot of beauty.”
They stay entwined in a “loving profusion,” which could suggest the
exuberant abundance of loving expression through words or affection. They nestle
together in their “favoured spot,” where the flower and the vine experience a
marriage or union in this bower thicket.
Was this a place where she and Heger
had met secretly? Had they engaged in a
love affair or was this simply more “romantic rubbish”?
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