Monsieur? J'ecrirais un livre et je le dedierais a mon maitre de
litterature, au seul maitre que j'aie jamais eu--a vous Monsieur! Je
vous ai dit souvent en francais combien je vous respecte, combien je
suis redevable a votre bonte a vos conseils. Je voudrais le dire une
fois en anglais ... le souvenir de vos bontes ne s'effacera jamais de ma
memoire, et tant que ce souvenir durera le respect que vous m'avez
inspire durera aussi._" For "_je vous respecte_" we are not entitled to
read "_je vous aime_". Charlotte was so made that kindness shown her
moved her to tears of gratitude. When Charlotte said "respect" she meant
it. Her feeling for M. Heger was purely what Mr. Matthew Arnold said
religion was, an affair of "morality touched with emotion". All her
utterances, where there is any feeling in them, no matter what, have a
poignancy, a vibration which is Brontesque and nothing more. And this
Brontesque quality is what the theorists have (like Madame Heger, and
possibly Monsieur) neither allowed for nor understood.

* * * * *

For this "fiery-hearted Vestal", this virgin, sharp-tongued and
sharper-eyed, this scorner of amorous curates, had a genius for
friendship. This genius, like her other genius, was narrow in its range
and opportunity, and for that all the more ardent and intense. It fed on
what came to its hand. It could even grow, like her other genius, with
astounding vitality out of strange and hostile soil. She seems to have
had many friends, obscure and great; the obscure, the Dixons, the
Wheelrights, the Taylors, the Nusseys, out of all proportion to the
great. But properly speaking she had only two friends, Mary Taylor and
Ellen Nussey, the enchanting, immortal "Nel".

There _is_ something at first sight strange and hostile about Mary
Taylor, the energetic, practical, determined, terribly robust person you
see so plainly trying, in the dawn of their acquaintance, to knock the
nonsense out of Charlotte. Mary Taylor had no appreciation of the
Brontesque. When Charlotte told Mary Taylor that at Cowan Bridge she
used to stand in the burn on a stone to watch the water flow by, Mary
Taylor told Charlotte that she should have gone fishing. When _Jane
Eyre_ appeared she wrote to Charlotte in a strain that is amusing to
posterity. There is a touch of condescension in her praise. She is
evidently surprised at anything so great coming out of Charlotte. "It
seemed to me incredible that yo