Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
The genuine local color Miss Bronte gives in "Villette" enabled us to be
sure that we had found the sombre old church where Lucy, arrested in
passing by the sound of the bells, knelt upon the stone pavement,
passing thence into the confessional of Pere Silas. Certain it is that
this old church lies upon the route she would naturally take in the walk
from the Rue d'Isabelle to the Protestant cemetery, which she had set
out to do that dark afternoon, and the narrow streets of picturesque old
houses which lie beyond the church correspond to those in which she was
lost. Certain, too, it is said to be that this incident is taken
directly from Miss Bronte's own experience. A writer in "Macmillan"
says, "During one of the long holidays, when her mind was restless and
disturbed, she found sympathy, if not peace, in the counsels of a priest
in the confessional, who pitied and soothed her troubled spirit without
attempting to enmesh it in the folds of Romanism."
Our way to the Protestant cemetery, a spot sadly familiar to Miss
Bronte, and the usual termination of her walks, lay past the site of the
Porte de Louvain and out to the hills a mile or so beyond the old city
limits. From our path we saw more than one tree-surrounded farm-house
which might have been the place of M. Paul's breakfast with his school,
and at least one old-fashioned manor-house, with green-tufted and
terraced lawns, which might have served Miss Bronte as the model for "La
Terrasse," the suburban home of the Brettons, and probably the temporary
abode of the Taylor sisters whom she visited here. From the cemetery are
beautiful vistas of farther lines of hills, of intervening valleys, of
farms and villas, and of the great city lying below. Miss Bronte has
well described this place: "Here, on pages of stone, of marble, and of
brass, are written names, dates, last tributes of pomp or love, in
English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone crosses all about,
and great thickets of roses and yew-trees,--"cypresses that stand
straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there are
"dim garlands of everlasting flowers."
Here "The Professor" found his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a
new-made grave, under these overhanging trees. And here _we_ found the
shrine of poor Charlotte Bronte's many weary pilgrimages hither,--the
burial-place of her friend and schoolmate Martha Taylor, the Jessy Yorke
of "Shirley," the spot where, under "green sod and a gray marble
headstone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps below."
THEO. WOLFE.
COOKHAM DEAN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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