When Gaskell traveled to Brussels in May 1856 “to have a look at” the Hegers, as part of her research for the biography, Madame Heger refused to meet with her upon finding that she was Brontë’s friend, but Constantin Heger shared with Gaskell, on the condition of confidentiality, a series of obsessive letters Brontë had sent him after she left the school (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 271a). Although Gaskell was aware of the entire correspondence and may have read it, it was Heger who made the extracts from Brontë’s letters that appear in the Life, giving a sense of their intensity, but notably excising Brontë’s alternately masochistic and angry demands for attention that his silence provoked.
Even before Heger shared his cache of letters with Gaskell, she had her suspicions that he was the model for Paul Emanuel, the love interest in Villette (1853). Brontë’s attachment to Heger has generally been discussed in the language of romantic infatuation (a notable exception is Lyndall Gordon’s treatment in Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life), but her passion is perhaps best understood as a product of the intellectual and imaginative connection she forged with her teacher, who represented a world of letters that Brontë felt exiled from on her return to Haworth. “ ‘I feel as if we were all buried here,’ ” she complained to Nussey after her return, “ ‘I long to travel; to work; to live a life of action’ ” (p. 218).
Gaskell’s treatment of Brontë’s connection to Heger, while evasive on some level, does confront the relationship in aspects important to a critical assessment of Brontë’s development as a writer. Gaskell understood that curiosity seekers would read the Life as a key to the novels. As one reviewer put it, “It was natural to wonder whence came this astonishing knowledge of the workings of fiery passion. Did she write from memory—or was she taught by the inspiration of a creative mind?” This reviewer came away with the erroneous impression that “Miss Brontë had, so far as is known to her biographer, never felt anything like love when she wrote Jane Eyre” (Easson, p. 377).
In creating this impression, Gaskell may break her contract with the reader to present the details of the life of the woman, but she provides a professional analysis of the influence Heger had on Brontë’s work. It is for this reason that Gaskell spends so much time discussing Heger’s pedagogical technique. Nor does Gaskell shrink completely from exposing the emotional content of that bond, as she includes the melancholy letter in which Brontë confesses to Nussey: “I think, however long I live, I shall not forget what the parting with M. Héger cost me” (p. 209).
The full force of Brontë’s impassioned letters to Heger is muted, but Gaskell preserves Brontë’s great desire, to write a novel and dedicate it to her teacher:“I would write a book and dedicate it to my literature master, to the only master I have ever had—to you, Monsieur! I have told you often in French how much I respect you, how indebted I am to your kindness and your instruction. I would like to say it one time in English. But that cannot be; there’s no use thinking about it. A literary career is closed to me” (p. 219; my translation).
Brontë’s despair registers as anxiety about her ability to make her voice heard as a published author. Heger heard that voice and knew its power, reflecting its worth back to Brontë in his comments on her devoirs (composition exercises). Brontë’s increasing desperation at his silence after she leaves Brussels stemmed perhaps not from desire for his affection, but from a need for his encouragement to write.
Another relationship that receives evasive treatment in the Life is Brontë’s friendship with her publisher, George Smith, which had an exuberant quality unlike any other in Brontë’s adult life. Brontë’s letters to Smith dance with a boisterous, good-humored sarcasm not fully displayed in the Life, as Smith withheld the most playful of them from Gaskell, claiming they were too “purely personal” to be “generally interesting” (The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, letter 271a).
In Villette Lucy Snowe describes the penchant that Dr. John, who was inspired by Smith, has for making life exciting: “Of every door which shut in an object worth seeing... he seemed to possess the ‘Open! Sesame.’ ” Similarly, Smith brought to life some of Brontë’s fantasies. He arranged a visit to the Ladies’ Gallery of the House of Commons. He took her to the chapel at St. James’s Palace to see her childhood idol, the Duke of Wellington, at Sunday worship. He initiated a trip to Scotland to visit the home of her favorite novelist, Sir Walter Scott. He introduced Brontë to William Makepeace Thackeray, the contemporary author she most admired. As a lasting memory, Smith presented Brontë with portraits of her heroes, Wellington and Thackeray, and to complete the fantasy, he commissioned one of Brontë, by George Richmond, a leading portraitist of the day, thus enshrining her among her worthies.
Gaskell discovered evidence in the Brontë-Nussey correspondence, which she suppresses in the Life, of a romantic attachment between Brontë and her publisher. Nussey, who did not approve of Brontë’s traveling to Scotland with the unmarried Smith and his sister, an event that Gaskell neatly sidesteps in the Life, asked her to qualify their relationship. Brontë breezily reassures Ellen: “My six or eight years of seniority to say nothing of lack of all pretension to beauty &c. are a perfect safeguard—I should not in the least fear to go with him to China” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, June 20, 1850; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 2, p. 419).
Six months later, however, Brontë adopts a slightly darker tone when she concedes that were “there no vast barrier of age, fortune, &c. there is perhaps enough personal regard to make things possible which now are impossible. If men and women married because they like each others’ temper, look, conversation, nature and so on ... the chance you allude to might be admitted as a chance—but other reasons regulate matrimony—reasons of convenience, of connection, of money.” Brontë is also now reluctant to travel with Smith, who had proposed a trip to Germany. “That hint about the Rhine disturbs me,” Brontë tells Nussey, “I am not made of stone—and what is excitement to him—is fever to me” (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, January 20, 1851; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 2, p. 557).
Commentators make much of the chillingly terse note of congratulation Brontë sent Smith when she received news of his forthcoming marriage: “In great happiness as in great grief, words of sympathy should be few. Accept my mead of congratulation” (Charlotte Brontë to George Smith, December 10, 1853; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 3, p. 213). Brontë’s displeasure with Smith may have been compounded by what she perceived to be a professional, not a personal slight. Significantly, she cools her relationship with William Smith Williams, the firm’s literary adviser, at this time as well. “Do not trouble yourself to select or send any more books. These courtesies must cease one day,” she writes, “and I would rather give them up than wear them out” (Charlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams, December 6, 1853; in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 3, p. 212). She had expected no less than £700 pounds for Villette, and Smith offered only £500, the same sum he had paid for Jane Eyre and Shirley, respectively. To place this in context, Smith paid Gaskell £1,000 for the Life. It was on the basis of Jane Eyre’s success that Smith’s reputation grew and that the firm attracted other high-profile clients, Thackeray among them. A growing sense of professional dissatisfaction may have prompted Brontë to withdraw from amicable relations with the men of Smith, Elder and Company. Brontë’s retreat also coincides with her decision to marry, suggesting perhaps that she saw a new vocation becoming evident.