The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 1Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
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The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 1
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
"This is a large school, in which there are about forty externes, or day
pupils, and twelve pensionnaires, or boarders. Madame Heger, the head,
is a lady of precisely the same cast of mind, degree of cultivation, and
quality of intellect as Miss ---. I think the severe points are a little
softened, because she has not been disappointed, and consequently soured.
In a word, she is a married instead of a maiden lady. There are three
teachers in the school--Mademoiselle Blanche, Mademoiselle Sophie, and
Mademoiselle Marie. The two first have no particular character. One is
an old maid, and the other will be one. Mademoiselle Marie is talented
and original, but of repulsive and arbitrary manners, which have made the
whole school, except myself and Emily, her bitter enemies. No less than
seven masters attend, to teach the different branches of
education--French, Drawing, Music, Singing, Writing, Arithmetic, and
German. All in the house are Catholics except ourselves, one other girl,
and the gouvernante of Madame's children, an Englishwoman, in rank
something between a lady's maid and a nursery governess. The difference
in country and religion makes a broad line of demarcation between us and
all the rest. We are completely isolated in the midst of numbers. Yet I
think I am never unhappy; my present life is so delightful, so congenial
to my own nature, compared to that of a governess. My time, constantly
occupied, passes too rapidly. Hitherto both Emily and I have had good
health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one
individual of whom I have not yet spoken--M. Heger, the husband of
Madame. He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very
choleric and irritable in temperament. He is very angry with me just at
present, because I have written a translation which he chose to
stigmatize as '_peu correct_.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the word
on the margin of my book, and asked, in brief stern phrase, how it
happened that my compositions were always better than my translations?
adding that the thing seemed to him inexplicable. The fact is, some
weeks ago, in a high-flown humour, he forbade me to use either dictionary
or grammar in translating the most difficult English compositions into
French. This makes the task rather arduous, and compels me every now and
then to introduce an English word, which nearly plucks the eyes out of
his head when he sees it. Emily and he don't draw well together at all.
Emily works like a horse, and she has had great difficulties to contend
with--far greater than I have had. Indeed, those who come to a French
school for instruction ought previously to have acquired a considerable
knowledge of the French language, otherwise they will lose a great deal
of time, for the course of instruction is adapted to natives and not to
foreigners; and in these large establishments they will not change their
ordinary course for one or two strangers. The few private lessons that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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