The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (52 page)

¹
Samuel Richardson’s novel
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
(1740) was the story of a servant girl who eventually married her master.

²
When a clergyman retired, he was obliged to turn over his entire “living” to his successor, including both his income and the dwelling provided for his use during his incumbency.

³
Child; son or daughter (Scottish/ Northern English dialect).

⁴
Proverbs 31: 10–31.

⁵
Napkin.

⁶
Historical Studies.

⁷
Nearly two hundred known drawings, sketches, and paintings by Charlotte Brontë are extant, all charming in their own right. They reflect the inherent promise of the artist, and the painstaking attention to detail that she was later to exhibit in her writing.

⁸
Checkerboard.

⁹
Someone whose work is driving carts.

¹⁰
From Scottish Physiologist Alexander Walker’s trilogy on
Woman,
1840.

¹¹
A system of belief espoused by a group of Anglican Christians opposed to the dogmatic positions of the Church of England, allowing latitude in opinion and conduct.

¹²
Thick wooden clogs with metal straps, normally only worn outside; they slipped over a lady’s delicate shoes to protect them from poor weather.

¹³
I understand. You are
that
Charlotte.

¹⁴
Clothing.

¹⁵
“French and English” was a popular nineteenth-century tug-of-war game without a rope, in which two lines of children, holding each other around the waist, pulled in opposite directions.

¹⁶
This mystical “call and answer” theme between lovers appeared frequently in Charlotte’s juvenilia, and was famously employed in a crucial scene between Jane and Mr. Rochester in
Jane Eyre.

¹⁷
Charlotte gave many of Henry Nussey’s characteristics to the zealous, brooding minister St. John Rivers in
Jane Eyre,
including a most unromantic proposal.

¹⁸
The Eyres’ unique Apostles Cupboard, which Charlotte described in
Jane Eyre,
is now in the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

¹⁹
“Monsieur is French, isn’t that right?” “Yes, Mademoiselle. Do you speak French?”

²⁰
“You are a wizard with languages, mademoiselle.”

²¹
The long ballad is one of Emily’s most famous; it has a complex narrative structure, in which the speaker’s present situation frames an earlier dramatic event, a technique Emily was to hone later in
Wuthering Heights.
Its subject presages that work, as well, in that the beautiful prisoner has repeated visionary experiences, offering her a foretaste of death and the liberation of the afterlife: “a messenger of Hope comes every night to me/ And offers, for short life, eternal liberty.”

²²
Public stagecoach.

²³
School for Young Ladies.

²⁴
Baskets; satchels.

²⁵
Mr. Brontë, is it not?

²⁶
Duties, tasks, exercises.

²⁷
Female teachers, as opposed to “masters” (male teachers).

²⁸
Dining hall.

²⁹
Good evening. Sit down, please. Monsieur will be here in a moment.

³⁰
A
paletôt
(French;
pal
-toh) was a long jacket or loose-fitting overcoat. A
bonnet-grec
was a peasant’s cap.

³¹
My dear, the English students have arrived.

³²
So I see…. Eyeglasses.

³³
Monsieur, I am sorry, but you speak too quickly…We do not understand.

³⁴
Use facial cosmetics.

³⁵
An antiquated word, originally referring to a school of fish; meaning any large number of persons or things.

³⁶
Do not be lazy! Find the right word!

³⁷
“Forbidden alley.” From that solitary window, William Crimsworth spied into Mademoiselle Reuter’s garden in
The Professor,
and an admirer tossed down love letters to Ginevra Fanshawe in
Villette.

³⁸
The five-to-eight-week-long “grand vacation,” or summer holidays.

³⁹
Overcoat.

⁴⁰
The English master we hired in your absence was absolutely incompetent, and the young ladies will not stop asking about you. I hope you will stay for a very long time.

⁴¹
Supervisor.

⁴²
The false God of those ridiculous pagans, the English.

⁴³
A day, according to the Catholic faith, honoring a patron saint, and celebrated by M. Héger on March 11 because Constantin was his first name.

⁴⁴
Unknown to Charlotte, Monsieur Héger preserved these samples of her juvenilia (
The Spell, High Life in Verdopolis
, and
The Scrap Book
, written under the
nom de plume
of Lord Charles Florian Wellesley), and later had them bound in a volume entitled “Manuscrits de Miss Charlotte Brontë (Currer Bell).” They were found in a secondhand bookshop in Brussels after his death, by a university professor who sold them to the British Museum.

⁴⁵
You need a doctor, Mademoiselle. I’ll call one.

⁴⁶
My Father, I am a Protestant.

⁴⁷
A Protestant? In that case, why have you come to me?

⁴⁸
Anything.

⁴⁹
The week beginning on Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter.

⁵⁰
In fact, Mr. Robinson had
not
altered his will. He left his property in trust for his son, with his wife as trustee and executor; she received an income from the estate unless she married again—a standard provision at the time. Branwell’s name was not even mentioned in the will. Nothing prevented Lydia Robinson from reopening communication with him; nor did she enter a nunnery; rather, two years later, she married a rich man, Sir Edward Scott.

⁵¹
Nankeen was a buff-colored cotton. Holland was a linen fabric.

⁵²
A country expression for a kind of taint far worse than sourness, suggesting that it is caused by want of cleanliness about the milk pans, rather than by the heat of the weather.

⁵³
An inflammation of the hands and feet caused by exposure to cold and moisture.

⁵⁴
Tuberculosis.

⁵⁵
Emily refers to scenes from Charlotte’s short novelettes
Mina Laury
, 1838, and
Henry Hastings
, 1839.

⁵⁶
With further editions and foreign rights, Charlotte actually received payments in the region of five hundred pounds per novel. Even so, the money on offer was low compared to the sums earned by many other popular novelists of the time.

⁵⁷
A hot compress, usually containing various toxic substances which intentionally blistered the skin, hoping to draw the disease to the surface of the body.

⁵⁸
The curing of disease by the internal and external use of water.

⁵⁹
A wheeled and hooded chair, used especially by invalids.

⁶⁰
The four Brontë children adopted pseudonyms they used among themselves in connection with their play and their early fantasy writing. Inspired by the
Arabian Nights
and James Ridley’s
Tales of the Genii
, they imagined themselves as powerful “geniuses” (another word for genii.) Charlotte’s name was “Genius Tallii.”

⁶¹
In Greek myths, Rhadamanthus was a wise king, the son of Zeus and Europa, who ruled Crete before Minos, and gave the island an excellent code of laws.

⁶²
Eilzabeth Gaskell—who became one of the most admired and widely read novelists of her day—would later write a famous and groundbreaking biography of Charlotte Brontë.

⁶³
Phrenology was a psychological theory popular in the nineteenth century (and enthusiastically embraced by the Brontës), based on the belief that the shape and configurations of the skull revealed character and mental capacity.

⁶⁴
To withdraw or exile oneself from residence in one’s native country.

⁶⁵
Fearsome, terrifying.

⁶⁶
A cow shed.

⁶⁷
A gauzelike, silky dress fabric.

⁶⁸
Prestigious undergraduate awards given annually to select scholars of superior merit.

⁶⁹
Colossians 2:2, “That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love.”

¹
For use as a lining in leather traveling trunks.