Villette and Charlotte Brontë’s Brussels: talk on 14 October 2017

John Sutherland was scheduled to visit us for a talk about Brontë puzzles but unfortunately had to cancel due to illness. We hope to enjoy his talk at a later date.

Helen talking about Villette

Instead, Helen MacEwan entertained us with a talk, Villette as vignettes of 1840s Brussels, introducing us to the Brontës’ Brussels. It contained quotations from writings by Belgian and foreign observers of Brussels, including guide books and travel books by visitors to the city. Among other aspects, it looked at the musical performances and paintings on which Charlotte must have based the descriptions in the novel. The talk was interspersed with readings in which Paul and Ola entertained us with details of Brussels at that period, helping us to visualise the city in which Charlotte and Emily walked.

Paul and Ola resting in-between performances

The talk gave a preview of Helen’s next book, Through Belgian Eyes: Charlotte Brontë’s Troubled Brussels Legacy, to be published next month. Here is the book description.

‘Charlotte Brontë’s years in Belgium (1842-43) had a huge influence both on her life and her work. It was in Brussels that she not only honed her writing skills but fell in love and lived through the experiences that inspired two of her four novels: her first, The Professor, and her last and in many ways most interesting, Villette. Her feelings about Belgium are known - her love for her tutor Heger, her uncomplimentary remarks about Belgians, the powerful effect on her imagination of living abroad. But what about Belgian views of Charlotte Brontë? How have Belgian commentators responded to her portrayal of their capital city and their society? Through Belgian Eyes explores a wide range of responses from across the Channel.

In the process, it examines what The Professor and Villette tell Belgian readers about their capital in the 1840s and provides the Brussels background to the novels. B russels has inspired few outstanding works of literature, and the makes Villette, considered by many to be Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece, of particular interest as a portrait of the Belgian capital a decade after the country gained independence in 1830, and just before the city was transformed out of all recognition from the ’villette’ (small town) that Charlotte knew. Her view of Brussels is contrasted with those of other foreign visitors and of the Belgians themselves.’

It sounds like an interesting read. A highly enjoyable Saturday morning that helped to fill in our picture of the Brontës’ Brussels.

The Translations of Villette and The Professor – New Acquisitions Part 2 – 400 Comes Up

While doing more research for the China article, the last of the translations series published recently, I found several more previously unknown editions. China brought the total score to 396 editions that have been reported here.

Earlier, recently, a new 2016 Italian edition was found with both novels, and indeed the other Brontë novels too, Tutti I Romanzi. It was published by Newton & Compton (1920 pp.). It has the translation of Marcella Hanau of Villette, and a new translation of The Professor by Angela Ricci. It’s only the second book which has both novels in translation (counting as two translated editions).

Cover of the 2016 Italian Villette,
The Professor and the other
Brontë novels

And an Italian The Professor was discovered that was published on 1 February of this year, also by Newton & Compton (192 pp.). It is a second edition for the Angela Ricci translation. From a chronological point of view this is the 399th translated edition. (It appears that nr. 398 is the Swedish The Professor of October 2016.)

The Villette and The Professor Translations – New Acquisitions

In the last few months more translated editions of Villette and The Professor have been published. And recently two more Villettes were announced to be published in a few months time. These new acquisitions will be presented here, as well as an update on the statistical figures, showing what a successful year 2016 has been. It is for instance the best ever year for The Professor, with 12 editions so far.

A few months ago, at about the time the Brazil article was published, a second Brazilian 2016 Villette was published by Marin Claret from São Paulo. It was translated by Solange Pinheiro (856 pp.). She has also translated Wuthering Heights.

Cover of the second 2016 Brazilian
Villette

Back cover of the second 2016
Brazilian Villette

The Translations, a Statistical Analysis - Part Two, the Lists

All the Brontë novels
It’s an exciting race for the top scorer competition of the amount of languages. Wuthering Heights has taken the lead, with 51 languages. Jane Eyre has 49. But there must be more. As a comparison Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland can be given. It has 174 languages. Jane Eyre especially, who is almost as iconic as Alice, should be able to come considerably closer. It is interesting to note that Jane Eyre took a 11-1 lead in the 19th century, against Wuthering Heights.

Villette is a very good third, with 31 languages.  On fourth place come The Professor  and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, with 28. Shirley has 27. Agnes Grey is last, with 25. There will be more for them too.
One would think that the amount of translated editions of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley and Agnes Grey come close to the amount of The Professor (150). I would guess that there are at least about 2500 translated editions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, each. Of both braille versions have also been found, but, especially because they are in English braille, these cannot be regarded as translations.

Update 29 December 2016. The latest scores are: Wuthering Heights 61, Jane Eyre 59, Villette 31, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 30, Shirley 29, The Professor 28 and Agnes Grey 26.

In tables 8a-e you can see all the languages that have been found. The first two tables have the year in which the first translations of Villette and The Professor in a certain language was published.

The Translations, a Statistical Analysis - Part one

Having found nearly all translations we can get a good picture of how Villette and The Professor in time spread around the world. About half of the translated Villette and The Professor editions were published in the last 30 years. Some of these years have been very productive, although there have been remarkably good years earlier too. These best years, and decades, will be revealed below. Among other aspects there is also a review of the total amount of languages for all of the Brontë novels.

Winning years
We’ll begin with giving the winning years. For both Villette and The Professor it was 2013, with 9 and 11 translated editions respectively. For Villette the years 1932 (thanks to one French translation) and 2011 come second with 7, while 1975 and 2008 come next with 6. In the The Professor competition 2016 is on second place with 10 translated editions, while 2005, 2009, 2014, and 2015 come joint third with 8. When the figures for both books are combined 2013 comes out as the clear winner, with 20. The years 2014, 2015 and 2016 are on third place with 13, followed by 2005 with 12. In tables 1, 2 and 3 more good years are shown for the novels in these competitions.

Update, 6 January 2017: The year 2016 has taken the lead in the The Professor competition, it is now on 12 editions. The year has also moved to sole second place for the two novels combined, with 16 editions. 


Click to enlarge

Decades
The years show a clear trend. It started quite slowly, but the amount of translated editions first really started to grow in the 1940s. It has been a quite regular growth since then, as this graph shows, as well as the accumulated total of translations of both novels. At present it is 218 for Villette and 170 for The Professor.

By 1920 The Professor had taken a 18-9 lead, but from then on till the end of the century Villette won every decade: 1920s, 4-0; 1930s, 13-2; 1940s, 16-12; 1950s, 15-7; 1960s, 15-3; 1970s, 29-10; 1980s, 16-5 and 1990s, 26-17 (Note: the year of publishing of 12 French Villettes is not known, 7 are from between 1933 and 1948, 5 between 1950 and 1978, these have been divided here over these 5 decades in this count. Three unknown editions of The Professor have been given to the 1940s, the 2000s and 2010s). In this century The Professor won the first decade, 43-35, and is in the lead in this present decade, 53-37. It is remarkable that this present decade is already the best scoring one, with more than 4 years to go.

In table 4 the full figures for the decades are given, and they're also shown in the second graph.

The 1970s
In the 1970s the score of translated editions more than doubled in comparison to the previous decade. It was the great leap forward for Villette. It is an interesting phenomenon that the novel owes much here to Eastern European, then communist countries. Out of 27 editions, 19 were published there, divided over 7 countries. Serbia was a clear winner with 7 Villettes. Croatia came second with 4. Germany is third with 3, with two from East Germany.

The following decades
The communists continued to show more interest in the 1980s. They had a majority in languages and editions. But Germany was the winning country, West-Germany, with 4. Remarkably, two years had no translation of Villette or The Professor at all, 1981 and 1988. The only other year to do that since 1943 was 1954.

Although communism fell in eastern Europe in 1989 the countries continued to dominate the statistics, with Villette majorities in the amount of languages (9 out of 15) and editions (16 out of 26) in the 1990s. It was helped by a Chinese edition, still a communist country. Russian was the individual winner, with 5 editions. German is second with 4. Russia scores a resounding victory in the 2000s, with 15 Villettes! The Netherlands come second with 3. The decade has 11 languages, and 34 editions. The 2010s have already got 17 languages for Villette, and 37 editions as well. Russian has taken a lead. It’s on 6 (editions). Italian is on 5 and Brazilian-Portuguese have 4.

Table 5 gives the winning decades for both novels together, tables 6 and 7 give the Villette and The Professor results.

Villette: Countries and translators
The Dutch language scores a resounding victory in the competition of the most different translations of Villette. It includes one translation that is probably Flemish. It has 7. Germany and France have 5, Italy has 4.

French is the winner in the race of languages with most editions, with 39, followed by Russian with 30. Germany has 20, Dutch has 12 and Hungarian is fifth with 11. Russia appears to have the best running single translation. It got to 27 editions!

Henriette Loreau is easily the winner in the longest running category. Her French translation of The Professor was first published in 1858, and last in 2016. That's a near-perfect score of 158 years! Tyyni Haapanen-Tallgren is on second place with a splendid 96 years with her Finnish Villette (1921-2017). Róża Centnerszwerowa comes third with 74 years, with her Polish Villette  (1939-2013). The first man is on fourth place. Gaston Baccara is on 68 years with his French Villette  (1945-2013). It will be very interesting of course to see what the score will look like in 40 years time.

Women easily win the translator competitions, as could be expected. They have most translations and editions. One translation was done by two men, the Arab Villette. Its cover drawing, joint nr. 1 in the cover top 6, was made by a woman, Safwa Farid, I recently learnt.

Eric Ruijssenaars
(with thanks to René van Oers for the tables and graphs, and for earlier efforts to make documents publishable on the blog.)

Villette and The Professor on the Balkan – Part Two

In this article the translations of Villette and The Professor that were published in the countries of the former Yugoslavia will be described, except for those from Slovenia (and Macedonia), which were dealt with in the previous article. In these countries – Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Montenegro – it is essentially Serbo-Croatian that is being spoken, which, incidentally, I forgot to mention in the  list of languages that have a Villette translation. Because Serbian and Croatian can now be regarded as two languages – both have their own translations - it means that the amount of languages for that novel is raised to 31.

Montenegro
The first Villette in (Cyrillic) Serbo-Croatian was published in 1956 in Montenegro, in the town of Cetinje. It was published in two volumes, of 303 and 291 pages, translated by Tadija Gavrilović, and published in three versions, with red, blue and violet covers.

Cover of the 1956 Montenegrin Villette

Cover of the 1956 Montenegrin Villette

Cover of the 1956 Montenegrin Villette

Villette and The Professor in the Nordic countries

Denmark
After the 1853-4 Danish Villette there has only been one more translation of Villette. It was published in 1976 by Hernov, in cooperation with the Nyt Dansk Litteraturselskab (552 pp.), and translated by Luise Pihl, who also did The Professor, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, as well as several Jane Austen books. In 1994 it was released as an audiobook, on cassette tapes. Earlier, in 1986, a Danish Villette was also published as an audiobook on cassette tapes, but it’s not entirely clear if this is the Pihl translation too. It’s very likely though.

Cover of the 1976 Danish Villette

The Professor

Charlotte’s posthumously published first novel was quickly translated in Danish. Laereren. En Fortaelling was published in the same year, 1857 (Kopenhagen; 360 pp.). The name of the translator is not given. The title page gives Fr. Waldike as the publisher. It published books until at least 1868.
On the title page it also says ‘Expeditionen af Husbibliotheket’, Expedition of house library, in translation. Two more books are known with this text, both from 1857 too (translations from Thackeray and Hawthorne).

Villette and The Professor in Hungary

Villette

Ilona Róna (1904-199?) translated many books, for instance of Jane Austen, Wiliam Makepeace Thackeray and Gore Vidal, and also from other languages. Villette was her only Brontë translation. It is the only Hungarian translation of the novel. It first appeared in 1967, twice, published by Európa from Budapest (566 pp.).

Cover of the first 1967 Hungarian
Villette

Cover of the second 1967 Hungarian
Villette

The third and four editions, published in 1969 and 1973 (by the same publisher; 586 and 537 pp. respectively) had the same cover as the second edition. In 1974 it was again published, in two volumes (319 and 334 pp.), together with Charlotte’s Henry Hastings, by the same publisher, as well as in two other 1974 editions with both stories, firstly by Európa  and Alföldi Ny from Debrecen. and secondly by Európa, Alföldi Ny and Madách Kiadó from Bratislava (Slovakia).

France as Other: Charlotte Bronte’s Divided Response to Francophone Culture

Throughout Charlotte Bronte’s life and works, France and the French language and culture occupied a prominent place in her mental landscape.  It is, however, a conflicted place.  On the one hand, she almost revered the French language, seeing it not only as an employment asset and hence a route out of provincial stagnation, but also as a sign of personal cultivation.  On the other hand, France was home to at least three social phenomena which are demonised in her work: the Catholic Church, a lax attitude to sexuality, and a pettifogging system of domestic surveillance.  Charlotte’s image of France was thus constructed as ‘other’ to English culture in two opposite senses: as the object of desire and as the locus of fear and loathing.  A refinement of this effect is that the desirable qualities tend to be associated with men, while the disgust and hatred are centred on women.

This statement is a generalisation, but it is drawn from well-known aspects of Charlotte’s life and works.  It was almost certainly Charlotte who devised the plan to go to Brussels with Emily to perfect their French and German and it was her energy and determination that carried it through.  After her stay in Brussels, Charlotte is particularly pleased to receive books in French from her friend William Smith Williams, and for a while tells him that she learns by heart a passage in French every day.  In Jane Eyre, Charlotte represents Jane as feeling quiet satisfaction in her ability to reply to her French pupil, Adèle, in her own language; it is a sign that she is in touch with ‘culture’ in its larger sense. The Yorke family in Shirley (based on the family of Charlotte’s friend Mary Taylor) are admired for their easy familiarity with French culture, which stands as a sign of larger travels, and speculative, interesting minds ready to debate politics and philosophy.  In Villette, it is M Paul Emanuel who represents the widening of horizons, the stretching of the mind, which Lucy prizes above comfort and security.

Finding Brontë in Brussels: reflections on literary tourism

In March 2014 I visited Brussels to carry out some preliminary research for a project on Charlotte Brontë and Brussels. The work came out of my book research on mobility in the Victorian novel, in which I look at Charlotte Brontë’s writing on travel to Europe in Villette and The Professor. This was coupled with a developing project on literary tourism, and I became interested in how and why “Brontë’s Brussels” as a tourist site has received so little critical attention from scholars, overshadowed as it is by the more famous Brontë location, the Parsonage at Haworth.

My Brussels trip formed the basis for extending and developing these ideas; I wanted to get a sense of how the locations informed the descriptive settings of Villette and The Professor and above all to learn more about how literary tourists, past and present, have forged their relationships to the city’s spaces through these texts.

Just as any self-respecting nineteenth-century tourist would head to Brussels armed with their Baedeker or Murray’s handbook to tour the sites, I set off armed with copies of Eric Ruijssenaars’s Charlotte Brontë’s Promised Land: The Pensionnat Heger and other Brontë places in Brussels and Helen MacEwan’s Down the Belliard Steps: Discovering the Brontë’s in Brussels, both invaluable guides for touring Brontë’s Brussels locations (1). (I also later took one of the walking tours run by the Brussels Brontë group, a highly enjoyable and very informative experience).

The Belliard Steps
(photo Charlotte Mathieson)

Villette in the US, or the story of the first American visitor to the Pensionnat in 1858

William Makepeace Thackeray was in the United States, for a lecturing tour, when Villette was published. He wrote about the novel in several letters, and, according to Winifred Gérin in her Charlotte biography, “the rage the book was enjoying among lady-readers over there.” A look in The Letters and private papers of William Makepeace Thackeray (volume 3, London, 1946) reveals however that there are only two references to the popularity of Villette in America. On 11 March 1853 he writes a letter in Charleston, to Lucy Baxter in New York City (pp. 232-3): “So you are all reading Villette to one another – a pretty amusement to be sure – I wish I was a hearing of you and a smoakin of a cigar the while. “ That remark was followed by his opinion of the novel. On 5 April he wrote from New York City to a Mrs. Mayne in London (p. 253): “Here the reign of novels is for a brief season, indeed, and “My novel” [by Edward Bulwer-Lytton] and “Villette,” have long since had the better of Mr. Esmond and his periwigged companions.”

It is certain that Villette was much more popular in America than it was in England. Smith, Elder & Co seem to have published just two editions of the novel in the 1850s. The second one was published in 1855. Harper & Brothers, from New York, published six editions in the 1850s. Apart from the two previously mentioned books of 1853 they also had an edition in 1855, 1856, 1857 and 1859. There is also an 1857 edition of Derby & Jackson from New York & Cincinnati.

'Villette' rocks Brussels, or was there really a scandal in the city?

It has been suggested, or rumoured, that there was a sort of scandal in Brussels following the publication of Villette. The big question is of course whether this can be true, and what it would have been like. In this article I hope to get somewhat closer to answering this question. In the previous articles I wrote about the editions that would have brought the novel to Brussels. We can assess the likelihood of a scandal with the help of some of this new information. It can allow us to say more on when it might have happened, for example.

Marion Spielmann, in an article in The Times of 17 August 1933, ‘After the Brontës – Life in the Pensionnat Heger,’ stated that “the Hegers were socially prominent in Brussels, and when the French translation of “Villette” appeared there was at least the raw material of a scandal in its love-story and its recognizable portraits of professor and governess.” Albert Colin, whom we also saw in the revenge article, wrote that, nevertheless, “the calumnies of the writer had no effect on the prosperity of the house, which was guaranteed from every attack by the excellence of its instruction and its clearly established lofty moral tone.”

When?
It is tempting to link the publication of the 1855 La maîtresse d’Anglais to the Hegers, and Brussels in general, learning about Villette, as Spielmann does. However, I would say it is likely that they had their first Villette visitors before the Revue Britannique started publishing La maîtresse in March 1855. Right from the beginning it was clear that the novel was situated in Brussels, as is shown by the review of it in The Athenaeum of 12 Feb 1853: “‘Villette’ is a narrative of the heart-affairs of the English instructress and the Belgian professor of literature in a school in Brussels.” On the same day it said in The Spectator that “Villette is Brussels, and Currer Bell might have called her new novel ‘Passages from the Life of a Teacher in a Girls’ School at Brussels, written by herself.’” Charlotte really made it very easy too to find out that the pensionnat was the Pensionnat Heger.

Nastavnitsa, ili pansion v Brussele and other early Villette translations

Soon after Villette was published in January 1853, it was translated into other languages. German and Russian translations were the first, in the same year. A Danish version followed, in the winter of 1853-1854. A Dutch translation was published in 1856. But that was it, as far as is known, for a long time. I could find no early Villettes in other countries. This article gives a description of the early (non-French) translations.

Germany
Villette got to three editions in Germany in 1853. Along with the aforementioned English language Tauchnitz Villette (in two volumes) there were two translations. Tauchnitz registered the novel in Germany in December 1852. On 24 February 1853, the Allgemeine Bibliographie Deutschland had a notice about the publication of the Tauchnitz Villette. That’s about one month after the Smith, Elder & Co Villette in England was published.

The Berlin Villette
In 1853 Dunker und Humblot from Berlin published a copyrighted German translation of Villette (in three volumes).  “Mit erworbenem Űbersetzungsrecht für Deutschland,” it says on the title page, ‘with acquired translation rights for Germany.’ The translation was done by Johann August Diezmann, who also did other translations of English works, like Thackeray’s Esmond, and French works, for instance of George Sand. He wrote several books about Goethe as well, among a number of other works.
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has digitized this work, so here you can read Volume 1, Volume 2  and  Volume 3.

Title page of the Berlin Villette

The Stuttgart Villette
The southwestern German state of Württemberg, in which Stuttgart is situated, was not part of the Zollverein, the group of German states that had accepted the Anglo-German copyright treaty. The Berlin Villette could not therefore claim copyright for all of Germany, which it did. The Stuttgart translation (in two volumes), doesn’t mention anything about copyright, and must be regarded as a pirate (although it’s not an illegal version).
This translation was published by Franckh from Stuttgart. The translator was Christoph Friedrich Grieb, who also did a translation of Thackeray’s Esmond, as well as his Vanity fair. Grieb also wrote A dictionary of the English and German languages, among a lot of other works. For several years he did live in America, before going back to Germany, and settling at Stuttgart. There he also wrote an anti-slavery novel, Sklavenleben in Amerika.

La maîtresse d’Anglais, ou Le pensionnat de Bruxelles

In my second book, The Pensionnat revisited, I wrote there were two Brussels editions of a French translation of Villette. I wrote half a page about them, and the copyright question and other translations. This series of articles is of course a much improved version of that story. What I wrote was not entirely right. It was unfinished research. There were, we know now, four ‘Brussels Villettes’ in 1855. Apart from three book versions, La maîtresse d’Anglais, ou Le Pensionnat de Bruxelles was also published in serialized form, in the Revue Britannique. We’ll begin by describing the four editions.

The Revue Britannique Villette

The Revue Britannique was a monthly journal, which was published from 1825 to 1901. It was not just a Belgian journal.  It appears that there were two different editions of it on the Continent in 1855. One has Paris, Rotterdam and Madrid as places of publishing, the other one has Brussels and Livorno.

Title page of the Revue Britannique
of the first bound volume of 1855,
for the first half of the year.

It started to publish La maîtresse d’Anglais in its March edition of 1855, just before Charlotte died and after the Anglo-Belgian copyright treaty. The journal never mentions the author (nor does it mention her death). The ninth and last episode was published in November. It’s easy to see that the opening chapters of the novel were cut short. By the end of the first installment Lucy Snowe had already well and truly arrived in Brussels. If the Hegers hadn’t heard about Villette yet, they would now.

The first page of the Revue Britannique Villette

At that time the Revue Britannique was “sous la direction de Amédée Pichot,” a historian and translator. It seems likely that he did the translation of Villette. Pichot (1795-1877) translated a lot of works from English authors, including Dickens and Thackeray. He was a Frenchman, which will mean that the origin of La maîtresse lies in France.

The page numbers of the installments are: in Part 1 of 1855, March, pp. 345-364, April, pp. 477-492, May, pp. 590-614, June, pp. 714-735; in Part 2 of 1855, July, pp. 81-99, August, pp. 222-239, September, pp. 296-310, October, pp. 419-442 and November, pp. 544-553. The July to November editions of La maitresse can be seen via Google books.

The Rue Villa-Hermosa Villette

Perhaps the most interesting edition is the book, three separate volumes in fact, published by Kiessling & Schnee, of Brussels and Leipzig. Its address in Brussels was Rue Villa-Hermosa 1 (now the Ancien magasin Old England, on the corner with the Montagne de la Cour), in the Isabella Quarter, only a few hundred meters away from the Pensionnat Heger. A copy of this edition is in the possession of the Heger family. It has been directly linked to them finding out about Villette, but this can’t be true. The Revue Britannique Villette at least came first.

Title page of the Rue Villa-Hermosa Villette
(from Princeton University Livrary)

In her ‘M. Heger’s grand-daughter visits Haworth’ (Brontë Society Transactions, 1953, vol. 12, nr. 3), Phyliis Bentley said that “Mme. Beckers showed us some interesting Brontëana; … and a rare pirated edition of “Villette,” very freely translated into French and dated Brussels, 1855 – only two years after its publication, when Charlotte was still alive.” Gérin’s description of this edition in her Charlotte biography shows that it is the Rue Villa-Hermosa Villette. Bentley’s statement that Charlotte was still alive is wrong.

First text page of the Rue Villa-Hermosa Villette
(Princeton University Library)

The Journal de l’imprimerie et de la librairie en Belgique has recorded the publication of the three volumes in 1855. The first part was mentioned in the July edition, which will probably mean that it was published in June, or May perhaps. As one would expect this was done at about the same time as the third installment of La maîtresse in Revue Britannique in May 1855, or shortly after. The second volume was mentioned in the October/November edition, while the third volume was announced in the December Journal. The Journal also has the Revue Britannique contents for each month, but not the other two editions of La maîtresse. It did give the name of Currer Bell as the author of the first installment, which as we saw the Revue itself didn’t.
Princeton University Library informed me that they had “looked at this [Rue Villa-Hermosa Villette,] and the back page cover or the end paper is a blank sheet of cream paper. There is no advertisement.”*

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has a digital version of the first volume online. In Germany Mainz University Library also has a copy of this La maîtresse. The one other known copy is kept at the National Library of Poland.

The Paris Villette

The Library of the University of Amsterdam has in its collection an edition of La maîtresse d’Anglais which was published by Borrani et Droz from Paris. This name was not printed though on the cover page. A little sticker was put on it. Like the other edition this Villette was also printed by A. Labroue et Compagnie, from Rue de la Fourche 36 in Brussels. All the books make the same strange mistake of giving the author’s name as ‘Curer Bell (Charlotte Bronti).’ The Paris Villette’s three volumes have 216, 206 and 219 pages respectively, and so no doubt will the other editions.

Title page of the Paris Villette

These La maîtresses have quite identical advertisements  on the back cover, for itself, for the Revue Britannique, and also for instance of a work by “Tackeray,” in the ‘Bibliothèque internationale’ series. Both the first and second volume mention two volumes of itself, while the third gives “3 vols.” This suggests that the first and second volume were published together, presumably in September.  Volume two can’t have been published before August at least, the month of the sixth of nine installments in the Revue Britannique.

Back cover pages of the Paris Villette

The Rue de la Fourche Villette

The Ghent University Library has in its collection a Brussels Villette which only has the printer’s name. They only have the second and third volume. Apart from the little Borrani et Droz sticker it’s similar to the Paris Villette. The band of decoration was widened, leaving no space for a sticker beneath it. Volume 2 can be seen here, and volume 3 here. It has also got the Bibliothèque internationale inscription on the cover page. The back cover pages have apparently not survived, so we don’t know if it had the advertisement of the Paris Villette. That is likely though.

Cover page of the second volume of the
Rue de la Fourche Villette
(Ghent University Library/Google books)

Comparison

The text of these four editions is exactly the same. It is just one translation, published in four versions. The print setting of the three books is identical, and it’s even the same as that of the Revue Britannique Villette. Only the cover and title pages vary. There are five known surviving copies of the Rue Villa-Hermosa Villette, and only one of each of the other two book editions. An unspecified copy is being held in a Rio de Janeiro library, and it is possible there will be a few more copies in other libraries and in private collections. There is no sign of a La maîtresse ever having come up for auction. They were cheap copies, of rather poor quality. Some remaining volumes have been bound, surely in a bid to restore a book that was falling apart. Not all front and back cover pages have survived. It was probably cheapest to have it printed in Brussels. That will have been the major reason, rather than the Brussels connection of the novel.

Translation?

Phyllis Bentley, as we saw above, called La maitresse a “very freely translated” work. Perhaps it’s mostly though an abridged version of Villette. We would estimate that almost half of the text has vanished. Whole paragraphs of the original are sometimes condensed into a few lines, but the remaining part is reasonably well translated. The Revue Britannique speaks about its nine installments as ‘extraits.’It could perhaps be called an ‘imitation,’ or an adaptation, for which there was no copyright protection. The copyright treaties were “not intended to prohibit fair imitations,” but were meant to prevent piratical translations. In case of disagreements a court judge would have to decide on whether a work was an imitation or a translation.

It is remarkable that it took until March 1855 before the first part of (an abridged edition of) a French Villette was published. Apparently no French publisher was really interested, and no translator stood up earlier. It took until well into the 20th century before another French translation was published.

Before writing about the supposed scandal Villette caused in Brussels, against the background of the findings presented here and in the earlier articles, I will first write about the other early translations of Villette, in countries like Germany and Russia. Both had 1853 translations. In the latter country there were two editions of a translation of La maîtresse d’Anglais.

Eric Ruijssenaars

*With thanks to Gabriel Swift and Brianna Cregle of Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

Je me vengerai, or did Charlotte really say that to Madame Heger?

Claire Harman, in her biography of Charlotte Brontë which was published in 2015, says that “Madame Heger accompanied Charlotte to the packet boat at Ostend, on what must have been a dreadfully uncomfortable journey for both of them. There was a story that as they parted finally, Charlotte turned to her erstwhile employer and said, ‘Je me vengerai’ – I will have my revenge! Such words are very unlikely to have been uttered. But the feelings were certainly there.”
This story obviously goes together with Villette as being Charlotte’s revenge. It’s a great story, but can it be possibly true? Here we present  what is known, for the reader to judge.

To be clear, there are two separate stories, firstly “the two women traveling together to Ostend” story, and secondly,  the “declaration of revenge” story. Harman is the first biographer of Charlotte to combine the two stories. But it appears that Jolien Janzing has the somewhat dubious honour of being the very first in her novel Charlotte Brontë’s secret love, first published in Dutch in 2013 as De meester. The revenge theory goes back to the 19th century, while the origin of the Charlotte and Madame Heger traveling together to Ostend story dates from 1951. These sources do not combine the two stories.

Traveling together?
The idea that Madame Heger and Charlotte traveled together to Ostend, after her final farewell to Brussels, comes from Mme. Beckers, née Simone Heger.  She was a daughter of Madame Heger’s son, Paul. It is found in the Brontë Society Transactions of 1951 (volume 12, nr. 1), in an article called ‘The Hegers. A Brontë luncheon in Brussels for Dr. Phyllis Bentley.’ It says that “Mme. Beckers mentioned that when Charlotte left the Pensionnat Heger finally, Mme. Heger accompanied her to the boat at Ostend.” Mme. Beckers gave more Heger family information, but sadly, much of it is untrue.
Why would Madame Heger accompany her all the way? It has been said she wanted to make sure Charlotte really did leave, but she could be certain that Charlotte wouldn’t go hanging around in Brussels. The journey would be very painful for both, and probably cost her a night in an Ostend hotel.
We don’t believe this story is true. Madame though may well have escorted her to the coach, or the train, in Brussels. As you see from the quote it doesn’t say which means of transport would have been used. It doesn’t hinder a Charlotte biographer like Rebecca Fraser from stating that they traveled in a “diligence.” It could have been a train too, in which Charlotte at least made her journey to Ostend. We don’t know.

Revenge
It is interesting of course that Harman and all biographers since Margot Peters in 1975 accept this traveling story as a truth, while Harman says she doesn’t believe the theory that Charlotte uttered words of revenge. The others, like Peters, Rebecca Fraser and Lyndall Gordon don’t mention it. And yet, this is at least a more likely story. If true, the only original source can be Madame Heger of course, through one of her daughters probably. It wasn’t Charlotte.

The oldest reference dates from 1896. The article was written by A. Colin and was an obituary of Monsieur Heger. It was translated and published in The Sketch, from which comes this quote:  “The thought of [going back to Haworth] caused her keen distress. She warned Madame Heger that she would take her revenge, and this threat was soon carried out.” Unfortunately Colin, an editor of the journal l’Etoile Belge, is an unreliable witness. A lot of things in his article are untrue, but that doesn’t mean this was untrue.

The second source is Marion Spielmann’s The inner history of the Brontë-Heger letters (1919). He writes that Madame Heger “became convinced of the justice of her view when Charlotte Brontë was leaving Brussels and let loose the burning valedictory words (as I am assured)-“Je me vengerai!””
Brian Bracken has demonstrated how unreliable Spielmann is in his article (Marion Spielmann’s Brontë-Heger Letters History: Fact or Fiction?, in Brontë Studies 38/1 Jan 2013). One very much wonders by whom he ‘was assured.’ We would think Louise Heger is the best candidate.
So there are two independent sources for the revenge story. Together they make up a good point. It’s easy to dismiss one, but both is less easy.

Vindictive
It is at any rate no wonder that Ellis Chadwick (in 1914, in In the footsteps of the Brontës), spoke of “the vindictive nature of Villette.” And Rebecca Harding-Davis (in 1906) stated that “Villette, in which Charlotte Brontë laid bare her heart to the public, and took deliberate revenge on the wife of the man whom she loved, was undoubtedly a work of genius. But surely the exposure and the revenge were ignoble and paltry” (in my The Pensionnat revisited (PR),  p. 58). Charlotte’s portrayal of Madame Beck in the novel can easily be seen in the light of revenge. She knew that before too long the book would get known in Brussels, and that Madame Heger would be deeply hurt by it.

I asked my friend Sue Lonoff, the Brontë Brussels scholar who published a critical edition of Charlotte and Emily’s Belgian essays, whether she thinks it could be true. Here’s her answer:
“Did Charlotte actually utter these words? I wasn't there so cannot say. Would she have been capable of uttering those words, in her desperate departure from Belgium? Absolutely. Could she have carried a grudge against Madame Heger forever? Yes, well within her character. 
Charlotte Brontë was a physically unattractive woman in an era when beauty mattered hugely. Zoë Parent-Heger had so much that Charlotte lacked: social poise, sagesse, a rewarding career and marriage -- and, of course, Heger. Charlotte saw herself as a morally righteous person, but when she came to Belgium and despite all her reading, she was encased in her own narrowly Protestant culture. Madame Heger gradually became, for her, the fount of the frustration she could scarcely admit, and the lasting target of her outrage. So yes, "Je me vengerai," whether or not she said it out loud.”

Four plausible options
We will most probably never find anything more on whether Charlotte said these words, so we must base our opinion on what has been presented here. The possibilities therefore are four-fold; firstly that it’s not true, secondly that Charlotte indeed said these words, and thirdly that she only thought them. A fourth option is that she only had revenge in mind later on, when writing her Brussels novels.

The no revenge theory
I also asked Helen MacEwan, the BBG president and author of The Brontës in Brussels. She thinks it’s not true: “It sounds to me like an apocryphal story handed down through the generations of the Heger family, something invented after the publication of Villette. Whatever Charlotte felt at the time she took leave, I can’t imagine her actually uttering such crude words to Mme Heger. I think there would have been outward chilliness but also politeness. Furthermore, I’m not convinced that ‘revenge’ was in her mind at the time of leave-taking, or indeed at any time.”

Charlotte herself seems to support this theory, obviously. In a letter to Ellen Nussey (who received it on 22 November 1852) she wrote that Villette, “I think, will not be considered pretentious – nor is it of a character to excite hostility”  (Smith, vol 3, p. 85). It implies apparently that she deliberately made Madame Beck unlike Madame Heger. And it’s true of course that Madame Heger was much nicer than the novel figure. Frederika Macdonald indeed, in 1894, wrote about “the true Madame Heger, whom I find it impossible to believe the author of Villette ever meant it to be supposed could have sat for the portrait of Madame Beck” (in my Charlotte Brontë’s Promised land (PL), p. 73). She acknowledges though that there was “actual antipathy” in Charlotte’s feelings towards Madame Heger (p. 74).

Still, it would also seem then that Charlotte just didn’t think about any hostility the novel would stir in Belgium. She insults the whole country. It’s not easy to believe Charlotte was entirely honest to Ellen. But it may be seen as an argument that she didn’t have revenge in mind. Hostility is something else anyway.

The anonymous author of the 1890 article in The World argued that “Charlotte Brontë’s fund of descriptive subjects was necessarily small, and the temptation to make capital out of the Rue d’Isabelle was too strong to be resisted. After taking the first step the rest was easy. The pensionnat, like everything else, had its weak sides, and the more Charlotte Brontë wrote, the more she forgot her ‘undying obligaton’ to her ‘dear friends’ the Hegers. It ended by putting them and all their surroundings into a literary pillory, which will last far longer than the Burgundian dog-kennels or the fame of the crossbowmen“ (PL, p. 68).

The thought theory
Brian Bracken, who has been helping me very much with these articles, is inclined to believe that she would have at least thought the words. Claire Harman as we saw also thinks Charlotte thought the words.
“Bearing in mind,” Brian writes, “that she already had negative feelings about Zoé Heger, it's well possible she felt, then, that she would get revenge on her sometime - in the future… [and] given that Villette's Mme Beck is a pretty nasty woman, and that in many ways she appears to be based on Zoé - then it would seem that Charlotte Brontë is getting some sort of revenge on Zoé through writing Villette.”

It would be too crude to say the words indeed, in this theory. That’s what the first two options have in common.

The saying the words theory
I support the idea that Charlotte really said the words. I think Sue Lonoff is right in believing that she either thought or said the words. We have two independent sources for her saying the words, which makes it a credible story. Therefore I can’t really believe in the thought theory.
Charlotte on that day felt very depressed. She knew she would never see Monsieur Heger again. In such (I’d say divorce-like) circumstances people can quite easily say crude things. And she hated Madame. Apart from this, women can be that crude to one another when there’s some sort of rivalry. Charlotte’s pen was her weapon. She first tried it by Zoraïde Reuter in The Professor, but that attempt failed, as it didn’t get published. Both she and Madame Beck are “scathing portraits” of Madame Heger, as Clement Shorter (who otherwise staunchly defended Charlotte in everything) put it, in the second chapter of this series.
One can find many variations in Brontë literature on these words on the scale of scathing and vindictive. Charlotte will at least have had revenge in her mind when she wrote Villette. She must have been very aware of, as Monsieur put it, “the pain their contents would cause in Brussels.” He is said to have called it “bien vilain de Charlotte” (PL, p. 88). “Mais, c’est le meilleur vin qui fait le vinaigre le plus acide,” he added. By all accounts it is clear that he did refer to how Madame Heger was depicted, as Madame Beck. That was what hurt the family, and Madame herself most. “He remembers her with affection, Madame Beck with wrath,” one observer wrote (Thomas Westwood, PR 47)
And we all have to admire her revenge, Villette, Charlotte’s masterpiece. Sadly Madame Heger had to be sacrificed for it.

The fourth option
It is also possible that Charlotte only felt thoughts of revenge when writing Villette, and not earlier. She may after all well have had no such an idea in mind almost ten years earlier. This theory is quite closely related to the first option, in that it does not believe that Charlotte thought such things, let alone uttered them, when the two women parted. Her feelings of vengeance may only have developed when she began to see the hopelessness of her correspondence with Monsieur Heger. She will have blamed Madame for not receiving a letter anymore, from him. And presumably quite rightly so. Zoë Heger will have discouraged her husband from writing. When it really became clear that he would never write anymore Charlotte started writing The Professor. In this novel the Isabella Quarter is not disguised at all. The portrait of Madame Heger as Zoraïde Reuter can be seen as vindictive, and surely her later creation too, Madame Beck.

This last theory is also related to the second and third option of course. Both too accept the idea that Villette was a novel of revenge. The main question probably is whether or not to accept it was. The next choice is if she had such an idea when the two women parted, and then whether or not she may have said those words, or only thought them.

What do you, the reader, think? We are very interested in that.
You can cast your vote below.

These articles also go to show how difficult it is to find real concrete evidence for things claimed by past Brontë historians, and that quite often what they claim is found to be untrue, on closer inspection.

In the next article we will have a look at the Brussels Villettes that are thought to have brought Charlotte’s (supposed) revenge to Madame Heger,

Eric Ruijssenaars

Opinion poll

What do you think? Vote for one of the four alternatives below by leaving a comment at the end of this blog post. If you wish, you can also contact Eric at ericruijssenaars@hotmail.com

0 no revenge

0 revenge thoughts at parting

0 revenge words at parting

0 revenge thoughts later

Preventing a French Villette, or did Charlotte really try?

There’s nothing to suggest Charlotte Brontë did indeed implore Smith, Elder & Co to prevent a French translation, as Gérin said. Many letters she wrote to them have survived, and there’s nothing in them, or in any other letter she wrote, to suggest she did, or even that she was bothered by the question of the novel becoming known in Brussels. This doesn’t of course prove Charlotte didn’t try what she could. At some point she might have told George Smith personally about the Brussels origin, and might have asked him.

In a letter to a John Forster, of 3 May 1853 (in M. Smith ed.- The letters of Charlotte Brontë,vol. 3, p. 160) Mrs. Gaskell wrote that “Mr Smith has got her 100 £ for a ‘French’ translation of Villette (500 £ for the copyright)…) but Tauchnitz, or his agent Williams, have never applied to her about Leipsic [sic] re-publication.” Mrs Gaskell here implies of course that Charlotte gave permission for a French translation.

Mrs. Gaskell was however quite  wrong on this, as Charlotte herself proves. On 18 April 1854 she wrote to George Smith (Smith, Letters, vol. 3, p. 245) that:
“I have Bank-Receipts for the following sums in my possession, viz.  …
£480. Recd for the copyright of “Villette” invested Decr 1852 …
£82-10s. Recd for Foreign Copyright of “Villette”; invested April 1853.”
It doesn’t show that she indeed gave permission for a French translation, as Mrs. Gaskell suggests, and it keeps open the possibility that she used the copyright treaty between France and Britain to prevent a France translation, for a year.

Secrets and spies at Brussels Bronte talk on Villette

Two women watching each other formed one of many memorable scenes of a talk given to the Brussels Bronte Group last month. Only one woman knows she’s being watched, while the other quietly and tidily sifts through private belongings. The two women are Madame Beck, searching through the possessions of the enigmatic teacher Lucy Snowe, the other is Lucy herself, following the headmistress’s moves through not-quite closed eyelids. The talk was “Shoes of Silence and a Face of Stone: Surveillance and Secrets in Charlotte Bronte's 'Villette'.

Students and members of the Brussels group met to hear award-wining historian and biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett give the talk at the Université Saint-Louis. Group committee members Myriam, Lisbeth, Sharon and Marina brought local cakes and tarts for listeners to buy, along with the regular free tea, coffee, juice and biscuits. The audience was set to watch and learn on a sunny Saturday morning in October.

It was the watching, the surveillance, in Bronte’s final novel that Lucy Hughes-Hallett examined and discussed with the room. She showed how Madame Beck’s school is full of spies, of unobserved observers. These include Monsieur Paul at his window in the neighbouring boys’ school, as well as the many instances of characters appearing or hiding shadows, behind trees, or through unexpected doors and shutters. Above all there is stony faced Madame Beck, running her “school of spies”on “shoes of silence.”

But what is observed, as well as by who and how, was just as important to the talk by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of introductions to the Everyman editions of Jane Eyre and Villette. Lucy Snowe is full of secrets, wilfully choosing to withhold information from the reader, Hughes-Hallett explained. These secrets most obviously include the end of the novel, as well as the reason why Lucy leaves home at the start. Even when, late in the book, Ginevra asks directly “Who are you, Miss Snowe?”, Lucy’s reply is the unclear and unsettling “Who am I indeed? Perhaps a personage in disguise.”

Lucy Hughes-Halett

Lucy’s name, from the Latin for “light”, is also revealing in the context of what is shown and what held secret, said Hughes-Hallett, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Biography Award. Other secrets and hidings central to Villette and discussed at the Brussels talk include the beloved letters covered with an almost ludicrous number of wrappings, and then buried.

Errors made in the perception of others were also covered in the talk. These include the failure to recognise Polly when she grows up as Paulina, and the true identity of Dr John – another secret Lucy chooses to keep from the reader for much of the book.

Fortunately for us, Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s presentation was more revealing than Lucy Snowe’s narrative. Members of the Brussels Bronte Group ended the hour far wiser than Madame Beck, after her 15 minutes considering the “sleeping” protagonist of Villette.

Emily Waterfield