University of Virginia Library

Charlotte Brontë Manuscripts: Two Sketches and Her Holograph Preface to The Professor
by
Janet Butler

I

Over the years, Charlotte Brontë's Professor has attracted relatively little critical attention—which may be why no one appears to have noticed the two short passages (totalling little more than a hundred words) pencilled in her hand on the separate manuscript of its "Preface" at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

The manuscript of The Professor is bound with a copy of the "Preface," the latter, however, not in Charlotte's handwriting but that of her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls; this "Preface" was printed with the novel when it was first published in 1857, two years after Charlotte's death. Along with Nicholls'

clarifying note (dated 22 September 1856), the "Preface" has accompanied subsequent reprintings of The Professor. Yet the Pierpont Morgan also holds Charlotte's own pencilled draft for this "Preface," complete with her deletions and revisions, thus making it of interest in its own right (see Appendix). The card catalogue description of it reads: "The Professor, preface; original autograph manuscript, written in pencil. 1½ p. 8." It is more than likely that Charlotte wrote out this "Preface" in January of 1851, sure in her own mind that her publishers would, following her successes with Jane Eyre (1847) and Shirley (1849), reconsider and agree to publish The Professor, written five years earlier. They did not, and the manuscript—as well as "Preface"—was put away "in a cupboard" until Nicholls should bring it to light again a year or so after his wife's death (SHB 3: 206-207).

The manuscript of the "Preface" is one sheet of paper folded once on itself so as to make two leaves; each of the four pages is (length by width) approximately 18.1 X 11.5 cm (or 7½ X 4½ in.).[1] The "Preface" begins on the recto of the first leaf and concludes a little more than halfway down the verso—hence the catalogue description of "1½ p."

But, on the recto of the second leaf, taking up slightly more than five lines, is pencilled the following in Charlotte's hand:

There is no more, not even a final period or quotation mark.

It is necessary to turn the manuscript upside down in order to read the fourth page, which now appears as a first page. The surface is covered with arithmetic; evidently Charlotte had been trying to figure out the number of pages which one of her handwritten manuscripts would produce in print, for the vocabulary of "letters per line," "lines per page," and "letters per page" covers the entire area. Near the top of the page, however, and crossed out with a large "X" and further overscored with some of the arithmetic are the following six lines, again in pencil and barely decipherable:

The crossed-out word in the third line is illegible. The eighth word in the penultimate line is difficult to make out: "document" seems the most likely reading.[2]

II

What are these two new passages at the Pierpont Morgan?

Brontë scholars will recognize the second one as a re-working of The Professor. If, therefore, we are to hazard a guess as to a possible date, we must quickly review the circumstances of its composition and probable revision.

In February of 1842, Charlotte and Emily went to study French at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels; this was to prepare them to become (along with Anne) headmistresses of their own proposed school at Haworth. On 1 January 1844, at age twenty-seven, Charlotte left Brussels for the last time. There followed two years of personal, private suffering.[3] During her twenty months at the Pensionnat she had unwittingly—and probably until the very end, unknowingly—fallen in love with her "dear Master," the very dynamic but also very married Constantin Heger. Then in April of 1846, on behalf of all the sisters, Charlotte wrote Aylott and Jones about their possible interest in "three distinct and unconnected tales" (SHB 2:87). These were to be Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's Agnes Grey, and Charlotte's The Professor, a short novel set in Brussels. Tellingly, Charlotte originally titled it The Master.[4] By the time The Professor reached the firm of Smith, Elder in July of 1847, it had been rejected five times since the summer of 1846 (SHB 2:152-153). William Smith Williams, reader for Smith, Elder, also rejected the hapless manuscript, but his two-page letter was so courteous and specific that Charlotte wrote back that she (or, rather, Currer Bell) would like to send him a three-volume manuscript then nearing completion.[5] Three weeks later she sent him Jane Eyre which was quickly accepted and published on October 16th.

But the Brussels experience was recent enough and dominant enough in her life that she still needed to see it in print, albeit fictionally disguised.

Jane Eyre was not enough. Just two months after that novel's publication, she wrote William Smith Williams a letter dated 14 December 1847 in which she took up a question he had evidently put to her regarding a second novel, perhaps to be serialized; Currer Bell wrote that a three-volume novel would feel more natural than a serialization, and then went on: "Respecting the plan of such a work, I have pondered it, but as yet with very unsatisfactory results. Three commencements have I essayed, but all three displease me. A few days since I looked over "The Professor." . . . My wish is to recast "The Professor," add as well as I can what is deficient, retrench some parts, develop others, and make of it a three-volume work—no easy task, I know, yet I trust not an impracticable one" (SHB 2:161-162). She went on to ask his judgment of this proposal "before I take any step to execute the plan I have sketched," and concluded by asking, "and what confidence have you that I can make it [The Professor] better than it is?" Unfortunately, Williams' response to this posed problem is not extant, and Charlotte's next surviving letter to him (28 January 1848) does not refer to any specific manuscript; indeed, for the first few months of 1848 there is really nothing in her correspondence to indicate if the work she has in hand is still The Professor or if it has turned a corner and become Shirley.

Yet in her 1983 study, The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë, Christine Alexander suggests that a recasting of The Professor was taking place sometime during the fall and perhaps winter of 1847-48. She points to an untitled manuscript known sometimes as John Henry and sometimes as The Moores;[6] the narrative breaks off after the opening of chapter three, but its focus on the two Crimsworth brothers (whose names are now changed to Moore) points to a revision of the early chapters of The Professor. Of equal interest is Alexander's reference to "an earlier preface to The Professor, about which little is known" (Alexander, 223). This manuscript (Bonnell Collection, Haworth) breaks off after one and a half pages. It consists of Currer Bell's critique of the narrator, William Crimsworth, as well as "the same summary of the early lives of the two brothers, Edward and William, that we find in The Professor, in John Henry, and in the juvenilia" (Alexander 224).

"Three commencements have I essayed . . ." Alexander suggests that John Henry (or The Moores) is one of these three "commencements," and that perhaps the little known and as yet unpublished earlier "Preface" (in the Bonnell Collection) is still another (222, 223). We might now speculate that the "professeur de pensionnat" fragment in the Pierpont Morgan is a portion of the third of the three "commencements" made late in 1847.

On the other hand, we must not overlook the likelihood that Charlotte was tinkering with The Professor as late as January of 1851 as she raised the question of its publication once again with Smith, Elder and optimistically prepared the (Pierpont Morgan) "Preface" against its presumed acceptance. Indeed, she remarked in the "Preface" that "to have reached him [the reader] in the form of a printed book, this brief narrative must have gone through

some struggles—which indeed it has"; this suggests that in January of 1851 she must at least have outlined to her publishers how she might develop the narrative if only they would agree to publish it. But whether the date is 1847 or 1851, the fragment's reference to "Mlle Pauline" would indicate that Charlotte had actually been thinking along the lines of the more developed "three-volume work" proposed in her December 1847 letter to William Smith Williams: the Paulina Mary Home of Villette apparently has an antecedent in the French-named "Pauline" in the fragment under discussion, and "Mlle Pauline" might have been intended to remedy the "want of varied interest" for which Williams had criticized The Professor (Gaskell, 317).

The first of the two fragments at the Pierpont Morgan—"C'est possible'"—is at once more elusive and more suggestive. Elusive, in that we do not know the principals involved and therefore cannot even hazard a date. But the fragment is also suggestive in its directness: it has the force of a waking dream, and unlike the "professeur de pensionnat" fragment, it is written without difficulty or correction of any kind. Moreover, it captures attention by means of its alliterative patterning and unusual lexical choices.[7]

But, for Brontë scholars, this passage has more importance than its possible relationship to The Professor. True, since it is on the same sheet of paper not only with the "Preface" but also with the evident developing of The Professor's protagonist, the "professeur de pensionnat," it may in some way be related to that early novel. On the other hand, one might argue an even stronger relationship to what that same Brussels material would eventually become: Villette.

In support of this conjecture, we should note that the first language of the man in this passage is French, not English. Moreover, his habits of cigarsmoking and self-dramatization disqualify him as little William Crimsworth and his "demure Quaker countenance" (SHB 3:207). Finally, the sexual tension in the passage is reminiscent of scenes between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, between Lucy Snowe and M. Paul. However, the question which "Mademoiselle" puts to the man, "And can I marry or not?" is not consonant with the conditions of being a governess in someone else's home; nineteenth-century governesses simply did not work and marry simultaneously. It is, however, just the question which a young, would-be headmistress might put to her mentor. Charlotte's experience in England had been with headmistresses who did not marry, but in Brussels she saw Mme. Heger functioning daily as both headmistress and married woman. The fragment, then, might be the first groping toward the character of M. Paul in Villette, specifically towards the kind of baiting he indulges in with Lucy Snowe in the chapters titled "A Burial" and "The Watchguard." Tonally, there are similarities between this tiny fragment and the finished novel.

The two fragments reproduced here are not mentioned in the card catalogue at the Pierpont Morgan. Herbert Cahoon, Curator of Autograph MSS,

informed me that the "Preface" was purchased by Pierpont Morgan himself from the London firm of Pearson, booksellers, in February of 1909. It does not seem that anyone has examined the autograph "Preface"—or either of these two fragments—in the intervening years.[8]

Appendix
(MA 32, Pierpont Morgan Library)
Preface

This little book was written before either "Jane Eyre" or "Shirley" | and yet *no indugence can be solicited for it [ab. del. 'the plea of a first attempt'] on the plea of a first at-|tempt. A first attempt it certainly was not as the pen | which wrote it had been *previously worn down a good deal ['previously worn down **a good deal [intrl.] ['exercising' del.] ab. del. 'down' ab. del. 'worn and hackneyed'] in a ['secret' del.] prac-|tice of some years. I had not indeed published anything before I | commenced the Professor" — but in many *a crude [ab. del. 'an'] effort destroyed al-|most as soon as composed. I had *got over [ab. del. 'exhau' ab. del. 'man'] ['any' del.] *any such [ab. del. 'an early'] taste | *as I might once [ab. del. 'for the redundant'] have had for *the [intrl.] ornamented and redundant compo-|sition — and had come to prefer what was plain *and homely' [ab. del. simple and | direct'] | At the same time I had adopted a set of principles on the | subject of incident etc. such as would be generally approved in | theory, but the results of which when carried out in practice | often procure for an author more surprise than pleasure. | ['The strictest resolutions to eschew what was [unreal' del.] ['improbable' del.] | startling were mine | The most religious determination' del.] I said | to myself that my hero should work his way through life | as I had seen real living men work theirs — that he should | never get a shilling he had not earned — that no sudden turns | should lift him in a moment to wealth and high station — that | ['to' del.] whatever *small [ab. del. 'ease'] competency he might gain should be won by the | sweat of his brow — that before he could find so much as an | arbour to sit down in he should master at least half the ascent | of the hill of Difficulty — that he should not even marry a beauti-|ful wife, nor a *lady of rank [ab. del. 'great nor a rich'] lady [undel. in error] — as Adam's son he | should *share [ab. del. 'have'] Adam's doom — & drain throughout life and a mixed | and moderate cup of enjoyment. |

In the sequel, however, I found most Publishers in general [end of recto page] | scarcely approved this system, but would have liked something | more imaginative and poetical — something more consonant with | a highly wrought fancy, with a native taste for pathos — | with sentiments more tender — elevated — unworldly — indeed until | an author has tried to dispose of a M. S. of this kind he | can never know what stores of romance and sensibility lie | hidden in breasts he would not have suspected of casketing such | treasures. Men in business are *usually [ab. del. 'often'] thought to prefer the real | — on trial this idea will be often found fallacious: a pas-|sionate preference for the wild wonderful and thrilling — the | strange, startling and harrowing agitates *divers [intrl.] souls that show a calm | and sober surface. | Such being ['ent' del.] the case — the reader will comprehend that to have | reached him in the form of a printed book — this brief narrative | must have gone through some ['difficulties' del.] struggles — which | indeed it has — and after all — its worst struggle and strongest | ordeal is yet to come — but it takes comfort — subdues fear — leans | on the staff of a moderate expectation — and mutters under its | breath — while lifting its eye to that of the Public, |

"He that is low need fear no fall." |

Works Cited

• Alexander, Christine. The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
• Brammer, M. M. "The Manuscript of The Professor," The Review of English Studies, ns, 11 (May 1960): 157-170.
• Brontë, Charlotte. The Professor. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857; rpt. New York: Dutton, 1969.
• ____. Shirley. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1849, rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
• Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857; rpt. New York: Penguin Books, 1975.
• Wise, Thomas James, and John Alexander Symington, eds. The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence (The Shakespeare Head Bronte), 4 vols. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1932.
• Wroot, Herbert E. "Sources of Charlotte Brontës Novels: Persons and Places," Brontë Society Transcriptions 8, no. 4 (1935), Supplementary Part.

Notes