1917] on The Brontes: A Hundred Years After 151 



packed her heart for her readers. Now after such, sometimes 

 harrowing, candom*, it is strange to learn that she was surrounded 

 with mystery. Mrs. Gaskell was naturally reticent about many 

 matters, with the fine taste of an artist and the instinct of a woman. 

 But after her came all sorts of writings. True, most of them were 

 only gleanings in the field she had harvested. From these, however, 

 we hear of the Brussels mystery, and even more recently we have 

 had a book which is called the " Secret of Charlotte Bronte." The 

 now famous Love Letters which were presented to the British 

 Museum by Dr. Paul Heger, the son of the Dr. Heger of Charlotte's 

 days, and which were published in the Times at the end of July 1918, 

 were by some thought to clear up doubt and to settle questions as to 

 the life of our novelist which had existed before that date. But 

 even now we find there are some learned quarrels over the poor life 

 that passed away sixty years ago, some asserting that Charlotte 

 Bronte was in love Avith M. Heger, some that there never was 

 anything more upon her part than admiration for a genius ; and, 

 curiously, each of these disputants asserts that his theory is estab- 

 lished by the letters she wrote to M. Heger in 18-44 and l'S45. 



Xow, the fact is there never was any mystery, and there never 

 was any secret, and those who took the trouljle to read Mrs. Gaskell's 

 "Life," Wemyss Reid's "Monograph," and, more important than all, 

 what Charlotte Bronte has herself told us, have not had, could not 

 have had, any doul)t about the plain but haggard story of the 

 wonderful little woman. There is nothing that is even unique about 

 her life. 



She is not the first woman, and won't be the last, let us hope, who 

 has fallen in love with a man. Not the only woman who has made 

 an ideal out of a quite common-place man, and worships not the 

 real man but her own ideal. That was what happened in Charlotte 

 Bronte's case. Dr. Heger was not the god she thought him. He 

 was quite an ordinary little man with a bad temper, a wife and five 

 children, and considerable ability as a teacher. ' But he was her ideal, 

 and she breathed into it not only the breath of life but the breath 

 of love, and she "preferred him," her ideal, "before all humanity." 



It is quite certain that her love was not asked, was not wanted ; 

 indeed, it bored the little Belgian professor when she wrote her 

 passionate hungry letters to him. Of the four which we now possess 

 three of them had been torn up, and in the margin of one of them 

 there was a note giving the address of a Brussel's boot-maker — and 

 yet that letter was a bit of Charlotte Bronte's heart ! But, further, 

 even Charlotte's hatred of Madame Heger is not only natural Imt 

 inevitable. There is no mystery about it. Madame Heger seems to 

 have been a good-looking woman — which Charlotte, with her brow 

 protruding full of thought, was not — the mother of five children, 

 against whom justice cannot find one word to say even after the 

 indictment in the " Professor " and " Yillette." Indeed, all recent 



