I received an a-mail with the question:
Where can I find the texts of Charlotte's letters to Heger?
I started searching and collected these items
"Day or night I find neither rest nor peace. If I sleep I have tortured dreams in which I see you always severe, always gloomy and annoyed with me. I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to every kind of reproach - all that I know - is that I cannot - that I will not resign myself to losing the friendship of my master completely - I would rather undergo the greatest physical sufferings. If my master withdraws his friendship entirely from me I will be completely without hope ... I cling on to preserving that little interest - I cling on to it as I cling on to life." Charlotte Bronte
Four of the most poignant love letters in English literature have returned to the Yorkshire village where their misguided writer posted them 160 years ago. After a century in storage at the British Library, the heartfelt notes from Charlotte Bronte have gone on display at the parsonage in Haworth, where she agonised over their phrasing during periods of depression in 1844.
Charlotte's portrayal of the temperamental M. Heger as she first saw him in 1842 again describes a striking man:
"He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament; a little black being, with a face that varies in expression. Sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena; occasionally, but very seldom, he discards these perilous attractions and assumes an air nor above 100 degrees removed form mild and gentlemanlike…”
"He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament; a little black being, with a face that varies in expression. Sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena; occasionally, but very seldom, he discards these perilous attractions and assumes an air nor above 100 degrees removed form mild and gentlemanlike…”
Brontë began writing to Heger after her return to Haworth and there is evidence to suggest that there were more letters than survive today. Brontë began writing to Heger after her return and there is evidence to suggest that there were more letters than survive today. In the letters that do remain, Kauffman notes a variety of characteristics that fit the ‘amorous epistolary discourse’ on which her study focuses. These include:
• ‘the denial of the reality of separation’;• ‘the desire for contact’;
• ‘despair at the master’s silence’;
• and ‘resigned desolation charlotte_bronts_letters/
""January 8, 1845
Monsieur, the poor have not need of much to sustain them --
they ask only for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table.
But if they are refused the crumbs they die of hunger.
Nor do I, either, need much affection from those I love.
I should not know what to do with a friendship entire and complete -
I am not used to it.
But you showed me of yore a little interest,
when I was your pupil in Brussels,
and I hold on to the maintenance of that little interest --
One of Louise Heger's letters at Ghent Museum of Fine Arts (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Documentatiecentrum voor Vlaamse Kunst)brusselsbronte.blogspot.com/ongoing-brussels-research
On this page she describes how one morning in 1913 she heard men selling the newspaper Le Petit Blue shouting about the ‘love affair’ of Monsieur Heger. She and her brother Paul had just given the letters Charlotte wrote to Monsieur to the British Museum, after which they were published in The Times.
Written in French, the letters later became historically valuable as Charlotte's fame grew, but Heger attempted to bin them a second time when his daughter showed them to him as he lay dying. They were bequeathed to the British Museum by Heger's son to help an accurate record of the writer's tormented youth.
Written in French, the letters later became historically valuable as Charlotte's fame grew, but Heger attempted to bin them a second time when his daughter showed them to him as he lay dying. They were bequeathed to the British Museum by Heger's son to help an accurate record of the writer's tormented youth.
Do you have a transcription or translation of Louise Heger's letter? I'd love to see it!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenYou know Charlotte showed her work to Southey, Wordsworth and M. Heger. They all admitted her talent , yet all told her literature was not for her. Besides her siblings,the first person who truly realized how powerful a writer Charlotte Bronte was , was Mme.Heger. She proved that when she saved these letters.
BeantwoordenVerwijderen