Villette

ONDON.

The next day was the first of March, and when I awoke, rose, and opened
my curtain, I saw the risen sun struggling through fog. Above my head,
above the house-tops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a
solemn, orbed mass, dark blue and dim—THE DOME. While I looked, my
inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose;
I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last
about to taste life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah’s
gourd.

“I did well to come,” I said, proceeding to dress with speed and care.
“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but
a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his
faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”

Being dressed, I went down; not travel-worn and exhausted, but tidy and
refreshed. When the waiter came in with my breakfast, I managed to
accost him sedately, yet cheerfully; we had ten minutes’ discourse, in
the course of which we became usefully known to each other.

He was a grey-haired, elderly man; and, it seemed, had lived in his
present place twenty years. Having ascertained this, I was sure he must
remember my two uncles, Charles and Wilmot, who, fifteen, years ago,
were frequent visitors here. I mentioned their names; he recalled them
perfectly, and with respect. Having intimated my connection, my
position in his eyes was henceforth clear, and on a right footing. He
said I was like my uncle Charles: I suppose he spoke truth, because
Mrs. Barrett was accustomed to say the same thing. A ready and obliging
courtesy now replaced his former uncomfortably doubtful manner;
henceforth I need no longer be at a loss for a civil answer to a
sensible question.

The street on which my little sitting-room window looked was narrow,
perfectly quiet, and not dirty: the few passengers were just such as
one sees in provincial towns: here was nothing formidable; I felt sure
I might venture out alone.

Having breakfasted, out I went. Elation and pleasure were in my heart:
to walk alone in London seemed of itself an adventure. Presently I
found myself in Paternoster Row—classic ground this. I entered a
bookseller’s shop, kept by one Jones: I bought a little book—a piece of
extravagance I could ill afford; but I thought I would one day give or
send it to Mrs. Barrett. Mr. Jones, a dried-in man of business, stood
behind his desk: he seemed one of the greatest, and I one of the
happiest of beings.

Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning. Finding myself
before St. Paul’s, I went in; I mounted to the dome: I saw thence
London, with its river, and its bridges, and its churches; I saw
antique Westminster, and the green Temple Gardens, with sun upon them,
and a glad, blue sky, of early spring above; and between them and it,
not too dense, a cloud of haze.

Descending, I went wandering whither chance might lead, in a still
ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment; and I got—I know not how—I got into
the heart of city life. I saw and felt London at last: I got into the
Strand; I went up Cornhill; I mixed with the life passing along; I
dared the perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone,
gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure. Since those days,
I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the
city far better. The city seems so much more in earnest: its business,
its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, and sounds. The
city is getting its living—the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At
the West End you may be amused, but in the city you are deeply excited.

Faint, at last, and hungry (it was years since I had felt such healthy
hunger), I returned, about two o’clock, to my dark, old, and quiet inn.
I dined on two dishes—a plain joint and vegetables; both seemed
excellent: how much better than the small, dainty messes Miss
Marchmont’s cook used to send up to my kind, dead mistress and me, and
to the discussion of which we could not bring half an appetite between
us! Delightfully tired, I lay down, on three chairs for an hour (the
room did not boast a sofa). I slept, then I woke and thought for two
hours.

My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now
such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and
daring—perhaps desperate—line of action. I had nothing to lose.
Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past, forbade return. If I
failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would
suffer? If I died far away from—home, I was going to say, but I had no
home—from England, then, who would weep?

I might suffer; I was inured to suffering: death itself had not, I
thought, those terrors for me which it has for the softly reared. I
had, ere this, looked on the thought of death with a quiet eye.
Prepared, then, for any consequences, I formed a project.

That same evening I obtained from my friend, the waiter, information
respecting, the sailing of vessels for a certain continental port,
Boue-Marine. No time, I found, was to be lost: that very night I must
take my berth. I might, indeed, have waited till the morning before
going on board, but would not run the risk of being too late.

“Better take your berth at once, ma’am,” counselled the waiter. I
agreed with him, and having discharged my bill, and acknowledged my
friend’s services at a rate which I now know was princely, and which in
his eyes must have seemed absurd—and indeed, while pocketing the cash,
he smiled a faint smile which intimated his opinion of the donor’s
savoir-faire—he proceeded to call a coach. To the driver he also
recommended me, giving at the same time an injunction about taking me,
I think, to the wharf, and not leaving me to the watermen; which that
functionary promised to observe, but failed in keeping his promise: on
the contrary, he offered me up as an oblation, served me as a dripping
roast, making me alight in the midst of a throng of watermen.

This was an uncomfortable crisis. It was a dark night. The coachman
instantly drove off as soon as he had got his fare: the watermen
commenced a struggle for me and my trunk. Their oaths I hear at this
moment: they shook my philosophy more than did the night, or the
isolation, or the strangeness of the scene. One laid hands on my trunk.
I looked on and waited quietly; but when another laid hands on me, I
spoke up, shook off his touch, stepped at once into a boat, desired
austerely that the trunk should be placed beside me—“Just there,”—which
was instantly done; for the owner of the boat I had chosen became now
an ally: I was rowed off.

Black was the river as a torrent of ink; lights glanced on it from the
piles of building round, ships rocked on its bosom. They rowed me up to
several vessels; I read by lantern-light their names painted in great
white letters on a dark ground. “The Ocean,” “The Phoenix,” “The
Consort,” “The Dolphin,” were passed in turns; but “The Vivid” was my
ship, and it seemed she lay further down.

Down the sable flood we glided, I thought of the Styx, and of Charon
rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange
scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds
dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions, whose
insane oaths still tortured my ear, I asked myself if I was wretched or
terrified. I was neither. Often in my life have I been far more so
under comparatively safe circumstances. “How is this?” said I.
“Methinks I am animated and alert, instead of being depressed and
apprehensive?” I could not tell how it was.

“THE VIVID” started out, white and glaring, from the black night at
last.—“Here you are!” said the waterman, and instantly demanded six
shillings.

“You ask too much,” I said. He drew off from the vessel and swore he
would not embark me till I paid it. A young man, the steward as I found
afterwards, was looking over the ship’s side; he grinned a smile in
anticipation of the coming contest; to disappoint him, I paid the
money. Three times that afternoon I had given crowns where I should
have given shillings; but I consoled myself with the reflection, “It is
the price of experience.”

“They’ve cheated you!” said the steward exultingly when I got on board.
I answered phlegmatically that “I knew it,” and went below.

A stout, handsome, and showy woman was in the ladies’ cabin. I asked to
be shown my berth; she looked hard at me, muttered something about its
being unusual for passengers to come on board at that hour, and seemed
disposed to be less than civil. What a face she had—so comely—so
insolent and so selfish!

“Now that I am on board, I shall certainly stay here,” was my answer.
“I will trouble you to show me my berth.”

She complied, but sullenly. I took off my bonnet, arranged my things,
and lay down. Some difficulties had been passed through; a sort of
victory was won: my homeless, anchorless, unsupported mind had again
leisure for a brief repose. Till the “Vivid” arrived in harbour, no
further action would be required of me; but then…. Oh! I could not look
forward. Harassed, exhausted, I lay in a half-trance.

The stewardess talked all night; not to me but to the young steward,
her son and her very picture. He passed in and out of the cabin
continually: they disputed, they quarrelled, they made it up again
twenty times in the course of the night. She professed to be writing a
letter home—she said to her father; she read passages of it aloud,
heeding me no more than a stock—perhaps she believed me asleep. Several
of these passages appeared to comprise family secrets, and bore special
reference to one “Charlotte,” a younger sister who, from the bearing of
the epistle, seemed to be on the brink of perpetrating a romantic and
imprudent match; loud was the protest of this elder lady against the
distasteful union. The dutiful son laughed his mother’s correspondence
to scorn. She defended it, and raved at him. They were a strange pair.
She might be thirty-nine or forty, and was buxom and blooming as a girl
of twenty. Hard, loud, vain and vulgar, her mind and body alike seemed
brazen and imperishable. I should think, from her childhood, she must
have lived in public stations; and in her youth might very likely have
been a barmaid.

Towards morning her discourse ran on a new theme: “the Watsons,” a
certain expected family-party of passengers, known to her, it appeared,
and by her much esteemed on account of the handsome profit realized in
their fees. She said, “It was as good as a little fortune to her
whenever this family crossed.”

At dawn all were astir, and by sunrise the passengers came on board.
Boisterous was the welcome given by the stewardess to the “Watsons,”
and great was the bustle made in their honour. They were four in
number, two males and two females. Besides them, there was but one
other passenger—a young lady, whom a gentlemanly, though
languid-looking man escorted. The two groups offered a marked contrast.
The Watsons were doubtless rich people, for they had the confidence of
conscious wealth in their bearing; the women—youthful both of them, and
one perfectly handsome, as far as physical beauty went—were dressed
richly, gaily, and absurdly out of character for the circumstances.
Their bonnets with bright flowers, their velvet cloaks and silk
dresses, seemed better suited for park or promenade than for a damp
packet deck. The men were of low stature, plain, fat, and vulgar; the
oldest, plainest, greasiest, broadest, I soon found was the husband—the
bridegroom I suppose, for she was very young—of the beautiful girl.
Deep was my amazement at this discovery; and deeper still when I
perceived that, instead of being desperately wretched in such a union,
she was gay even to giddiness. “Her laughter,” I reflected, “must be
the mere frenzy of despair.” And even while this thought was crossing
my mind, as I stood leaning quiet and solitary against the ship’s side,
she came tripping up to me, an utter stranger, with a camp-stool in her
hand, and smiling a smile of which the levity puzzled and startled me,
though it showed a perfect set of perfect teeth, she offered me the
accommodation of this piece of furniture. I declined it of course, with
all the courtesy I could put into my manner; she danced off heedless
and lightsome. She must have been good-natured; but what had made her
marry that individual, who was at least as much like an oil-barrel as a
man?

The other lady passenger, with the gentleman-companion, was quite a
girl, pretty and fair: her simple print dress, untrimmed straw-bonnet
and large shawl, gracefully worn, formed a costume plain to quakerism:
yet, for her, becoming enough. Before the gentleman quitted her, I
observed him throwing a glance of scrutiny over all the passengers, as
if to ascertain in what company his charge would be left. With a most
dissatisfied air did his eye turn from the ladies with the gay flowers;
he looked at me, and then he spoke to his daughter, niece, or whatever
she was: she also glanced in my direction, and slightly curled her
short, pretty lip. It might be myself, or it might be my homely
mourning habit, that elicited this mark of contempt; more likely, both.
A bell rang; her father (I afterwards knew that it was her father)
kissed her, and returned to land. The packet sailed.

Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to
travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of
English parents and guardians. As for the “jeunes Meess,” by some their
intrepidity is pronounced masculine and “inconvenant,” others regard
them as the passive victims of an educational and theological system
which wantonly dispenses with proper “surveillance.” Whether this
particular young lady was of the sort that can the most safely be left
unwatched, I do not know: or, rather did not then know; but it soon
appeared that the dignity of solitude was not to her taste. She paced
the deck once or twice backwards and forwards; she looked with a little
sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks and velvets, and the bears
which thereon danced attendance, and eventually she approached me and
spoke.

“Are you fond of a sea-voyage?” was her question.

I explained that my fondness for a sea-voyage had yet to undergo the
test of experience; I had never made one.

“Oh, how charming!” cried she. “I quite envy you the novelty: first
impressions, you know, are so pleasant. Now I have made so many, I
quite forget the first: I am quite blasée about the sea and all
that.”

I could not help smiling.

“Why do you laugh at me?” she inquired, with a frank testiness that
pleased me better than her other talk.

“Because you are so young to be blasée about anything.”

“I am seventeen” (a little piqued).

“You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travelling alone?”

“Bah! I care nothing about it. I have crossed the Channel ten times,
alone; but then I take care never to be long alone: I always make
friends.”

“You will scarcely make many friends this voyage, I think” (glancing at
the Watson-group, who were now laughing and making a great deal of
noise on deck).

“Not of those odious men and women,” said she: “such people should be
steerage passengers. Are you going to school?”

“No.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have not the least idea—beyond, at least, the port of Boue-Marine.”

She stared, then carelessly ran on:

“I am going to school. Oh, the number of foreign schools I have been at
in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing—nothing in
the world—I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully,—and
French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can’t read or write
them very well. Do you know they wanted me to translate a page of an
easy German book into English the other day, and I couldn’t do it. Papa
was so mortified: he says it looks as if M. de Bassompierre—my godpapa,
who pays all my school-bills—had thrown away all his money. And then,
in matters of information—in history, geography, arithmetic, and so on,
I am quite a baby; and I write English so badly—such spelling and
grammar, they tell me. Into the bargain I have quite forgotten my
religion; they call me a Protestant, you know, but really I am not sure
whether I am one or not: I don’t well know the difference between
Romanism and Protestantism. However, I don’t in the least care for
that. I was a Lutheran once at Bonn—dear Bonn!—charming Bonn!—where
there were so many handsome students. Every nice girl in our school had
an admirer; they knew our hours for walking out, and almost always
passed us on the promenade: ‘Schönes Mädchen,’ we used to hear them
say. I was excessively happy at Bonn!”

“And where are you now?” I inquired.

“Oh! at—chose,” said she.

Now, Miss Ginevra Fanshawe (such was this young person’s name) only
substituted this word “chose” in temporary oblivion of the real name.
It was a habit she had: “chose” came in at every turn in her
conversation—the convenient substitute for any missing word in any
language she might chance at the time to be speaking. French girls
often do the like; from them she had caught the custom. “Chose,”
however, I found in this instance, stood for Villette—the great capital
of the great kingdom of Labassecour.

“Do you like Villette?” I asked.

“Pretty well. The natives, you know, are intensely stupid and vulgar;
but there are some nice English families.”

“Are you in a school?”

“Yes.”

“A good one?”

“Oh, no! horrid: but I go out every Sunday, and care nothing about the
maîtresses or the professeurs, or the élèves, and send lessons
au diable (one daren’t say that in English, you know, but it sounds
quite right in French); and thus I get on charmingly…. You are laughing
at me again?”

“No—I am only smiling at my own thoughts.”

“What are they?” (Without waiting for an answer)—“Now, do tell me
where you are going.”

“Where Fate may lead me. My business is to earn a living where I can
find it.”

“To earn!” (in consternation) “are you poor, then?”

“As poor as Job.”

(After a pause) “Bah! how unpleasant! But I know what it is to be
poor: they are poor enough at home—papa and mamma, and all of them.
Papa is called Captain Fanshawe; he is an officer on half-pay, but
well-descended, and some of our connections are great enough; but my
uncle and godpapa De Bassompierre, who lives in France, is the only one
that helps us: he educates us girls. I have five sisters and three
brothers. By-and-by we are to marry—rather elderly gentlemen, I
suppose, with cash: papa and mamma manage that. My sister Augusta is
married now to a man much older-looking than papa. Augusta is very
beautiful—not in my style—but dark; her husband, Mr. Davies, had the
yellow fever in India, and he is still the colour of a guinea; but then
he is rich, and Augusta has her carriage and establishment, and we all
think she has done perfectly well. Now, this is better than ‘earning a
living,’ as you say. By the way, are you clever?”

“No—not at all.”

“You can play, sing, speak three or four languages?”

“By no means.”

“Still I think you are clever” (a pause and a yawn).

“Shall you be sea-sick?”

“Shall you?”

“Oh, immensely! as soon as ever we get in sight of the sea: I begin,
indeed, to feel it already. I shall go below; and won’t I order about
that fat odious stewardess! Heureusement je sais faire aller mon
monde.”

Down she went.

It was not long before the other passengers followed her: throughout
the afternoon I remained on deck alone. When I recall the tranquil, and
even happy mood in which I passed those hours, and remember, at the
same time, the position in which I was placed; its hazardous—some would
have said its hopeless—character; I feel that, as—

“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars—a cage,”

so peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so
long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long,
especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her
star.

I was not sick till long after we passed Margate, and deep was the
pleasure I drank in with the sea-breeze; divine the delight I drew from
the heaving Channel waves, from the sea-birds on their ridges, from the
white sails on their dark distance, from the quiet yet beclouded sky,
overhanging all. In my reverie, methought I saw the continent of
Europe, like a wide dream-land, far away. Sunshine lay on it, making
the long coast one line of gold; tiniest tracery of clustered town and
snow-gleaming tower, of woods deep massed, of heights serrated, of
smooth pasturage and veiny stream, embossed the metal-bright prospect.
For background, spread a sky, solemn and dark blue, and—grand with
imperial promise, soft with tints of enchantment—strode from north to
south a God-bent bow, an arch of hope.

Cancel the whole of that, if you please, reader—or rather let it stand,
and draw thence a moral—an alliterative, text-hand copy—

Day-dreams are delusions of the demon.

Becoming excessively sick, I faltered down into the cabin.

Miss Fanshawe’s berth chanced to be next mine; and, I am sorry to say,
she tormented me with an unsparing selfishness during the whole time of
our mutual distress. Nothing could exceed her impatience and
fretfulness. The Watsons, who were very sick too, and on whom the
stewardess attended with shameless partiality, were stoics compared
with her. Many a time since have I noticed, in persons of Ginevra
Fanshawe’s light, careless temperament, and fair, fragile style of
beauty, an entire incapacity to endure: they seem to sour in adversity,
like small beer in thunder. The man who takes such a woman for his
wife, ought to be prepared to guarantee her an existence all sunshine.
Indignant at last with her teasing peevishness, I curtly requested her
“to hold her tongue.” The rebuff did her good, and it was observable
that she liked me no worse for it.

As dark night drew on, the sea roughened: larger waves swayed strong
against the vessel’s side. It was strange to reflect that blackness and
water were round us, and to feel the ship ploughing straight on her
pathless way, despite noise, billow, and rising gale. Articles of
furniture began to fall about, and it became needful to lash them to
their places; the passengers grew sicker than ever; Miss Fanshawe
declared, with groans, that she must die.

“Not just yet, honey,” said the stewardess. “We’re just in port.”
Accordingly, in another quarter of an hour, a calm fell upon us all;
and about midnight the voyage ended.

I was sorry: yes, I was sorry. My resting-time was past; my
difficulties—my stringent difficulties—recommenced. When I went on
deck, the cold air and black scowl of the night seemed to rebuke me for
my presumption in being where I was: the lights of the foreign sea-port
town, glimmering round the foreign harbour, met me like unnumbered
threatening eyes. Friends came on board to welcome the Watsons; a whole
family of friends surrounded and bore away Miss Fanshawe; I—but I dared
not for one moment dwell on a comparison of positions.

Yet where should I go? I must go somewhere. Necessity dare not be nice.
As I gave the stewardess her fee—and she seemed surprised at receiving
a coin of more value than, from such a quarter, her coarse calculations
had probably reckoned on—I said, “Be kind enough to direct me to some
quiet, respectable inn, where I can go for the night.”

She not only gave me the required direction, but called a
commissionaire, and bid him take charge of me, and—not my trunk, for
that was gone to the custom-house.

I followed this man along a rudely-paved street, lit now by a fitful
gleam of moonlight; he brought me to the inn. I offered him sixpence,
which he refused to take; supposing it not enough, I changed it for a
shilling; but this also he declined, speaking rather sharply, in a
language to me unknown. A waiter, coming forward into the lamp-lit
inn-passage, reminded me, in broken English, that my money was foreign
money, not current here. I gave him a sovereign to change. This little
matter settled, I asked for a bedroom; supper I could not take: I was
still sea-sick and unnerved, and trembling all over. How deeply glad I
was when the door of a very small chamber at length closed on me and my
exhaustion. Again I might rest: though the cloud of doubt would be as
thick to-morrow as ever; the necessity for exertion more urgent, the
peril (of destitution) nearer, the conflict (for existence) more
severe.