Hesperus Press, 2014, 280 p, including ii p Preface by A B Nicholls, iii p Notes and ii p Biographical Notes. First published 1857.

This was Brontë’s last published novel, indeed it was posthumous, but its writing predated her other novels. There are signs of that lack of experience here. Its early chapters are pretty standard fare, (at times reminiscent of those passages of Mrs Oliphant which lean to the humdrum,) not really anything to do with what comes after but not quite as tedious as the beginning to Shirley.  Later incidents, though, reflect events in Brontë’s last novel, Villette.

William Crimsworth is distanced from his wider family whom his late mother had offended by marrying into trade. He rejected their offer of a living as a parson and instead took a position in his haughty brother Edward’s business but only as a lowly clerk, a job he performed more than adequately. There he was noticed by one of Edward’s customers, Mr Hunsden, and through him obtained a post as a teacher at a boys’ school in Belgium. Through its proprietor, M Pelet’s, acquaintance with the directress of the neighbouring girls’ school, Mlle Zoraïde Reuter, he also began to teach there. Mlle Reuter affects to find him attractive but he is soon disabused of that notion by discovering her engagement to M Pelet.

A teacher of sewing to the girls, Mlle Frances Evans Henri, a Swiss national of English descent, is brought to attend his classes and he soon begins to find her, and her English intonations, interesting. Mlle Reuter is less than pleased and tries to obstruct any further developments by dismissing Frances but the final course of the book is now set.

The setting of the pensionnat in Brussels and its next-door establishment were to recur in Villette, and of course were inspired by Brontë’s own experiences teaching in the city. As in that book but much more prominently here, the author’s upbringing in an English parsonage lead to comparisons of the rightness of Anglicanism as opposed to Roman Catholicism, its supposed superiority in inculcating character and upright moral behaviour.

That the viewpoint character is a man sets The Professor apart from Brontë’s other books and that may be a flaw since William as a person seems a bit distant, not quite fully realised. Brontë was on surer ground with her female protagonists.

The Professor is by no means without merit but without her later books and the reputation of her family would, I doubt, still be read widely today.

Pedant’s corner:- the occasional Victorian spelling such as recompence (recompense) and ecstacy (ecstasy.) Otherwise; sprung (sprang,) encomiums (I prefer the Latin plural, encomia,) Moses’ (Moses’s,) Frances’ (x 2, Frances’s,) “‘cannot be considered as a concurrent’” (as concurrent?) “closing behind end around us” (behind and around,) Evans’ (Evans’s,) “having eaten …. and drank several bottles” (having eaten … and drunk several,) “I had not been brought up at Eton and boated and bathed and swam there” (and swum there,) “it would be vain to seek the Rue Notre Dame” (would be in vain,) “my bark hung on the topmost curl of a wave of fate,” (my barque,) “her hand shrunk away” (shrank,) “Rosalie the portress’ area” (the portress’s.)

Wordsworth Editions, 1999, 476 p, including 10 p Notes, plus ii p Contents, xiii p Introduction by Sally Minogue and iii p Bibliography. First Published 1857.

I think I have remarked before how difficult it is to read a nineteenth century novel with a historical eye, without any knowledge of the development of the form and of readerly expectations in the decades since. Villette might be a case in point. Wordy, discursive, thoroughly preoccupied with religion, it is also something of a tease in the way it sets up a potentially supernatural theme before deflating it in a cursory fashion.

It is the memoir of Lucy Snowe, who spent time every year of her childhood at the home of her godmother Mrs Bretton and her son Graham, where she met a girl called Paulina, whose mother had died and Mrs Bretton had taken the child in. In young adulthood, contact with the Brettons long lost, she finds herself alone and takes up a position as companion to Mrs Marchmont, on whose death with her fifteen pounds wages in her pocket she decides to set out for the continent. By a series of chances she ends up in a teacher in a pensionnat run by Madame Beck, in the Rue Fossette in the city of Villette, modelled on Brussels, but in a country referred to as Labassecour,

Madame Beck is at first distrustful, Lucy spies her ruffling through her belongings, but slowly allows her some latitude in behaviour. Most of Lucy’s pupils go unnamed but the profoundly unserious Ginevra Fanshawe has a plot function, diverting the eye of the pensionnat’s English physician, Dr John. The pensionnat is also said to be haunted by a nun, dressed in black with a white head covering. Another of its teachers is a M Paul Emanuel, an overbearing sort who, on finding Lucy one day in an Art Gallery surveying a somewhat revealing painting of Cleopatra, chides her for her attention to it. Lucy notes that he himself has no qualms about viewing it, nor does he object to the men in the room doing so. A quiet understated feminism is in evidence in the text here, but Lucy herself does not seem to perceive M Emmanuel is perhaps not someone to take up with.

Intrigue involving messages passed into the pensionnat’s grounds leads Lucy to encounter the nun twice, speechless on both occasions. The gothic implications of this are at odds with the decidedly realistic portrayal of other scenes. The resolution of the nun’s identity when it comes is as mundane as it is disappointing.

It may have been a Victorian novelistic practice but many times here a character known to Lucy is described at the start of a scene (or indeed through many chapters) before his or her identity is revealed to the reader. This tendency gets more irritating the more often it occurs. A case in point is that of Dr John, who is eventually disclosed as John Graham Bretton, the son of Lucy’s godmother. He in turn is a subject of Ginevra Fanshawe’s amatory machinations, played off by her against the Comte de Hamal.

A fairly large part of the narrative is taken up with Lucy’s holding firmly to Protestantism, many conversations with M Paul revolve around it as does her strange recourse to a Catholic confessional when she is particularly down one day and roaming Villette’s streets.

Villette is to modern eyes too long and too wordy. Dr Sally Minogue’s introduction says it is in fact two novels, the one we first encounter and the other when we reread it with knowledge of its content, but surely that could be said of all novels? She also cautions against interpreting it as entirely autobiographical and praises Brontë’s transformation of her personal love and pain into something more, but she refers to the author’s other novel which drew on the same experiences, The Professor, as being ‘leaden.’ (Oh dear. I’ve still to read that one.)

In the end though it illustrates the tendency towards gleaning romance of someone who has few choices open to her.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; Williams’ (Williams’s.) The usual Brontë spellings such as apostacy for apostasy, irid for iris (of the eye,) doat for dote (though I note doted) up-stairs; also strung, rung, swum for sprang, rang, swam etc. Otherwise; bannister (banister – used later,) whiskey (whisky,) “a stuff apron” (stiff?) “old acquaintance were all about me” (was all about me,) retractation (the sense is of retraction,) the indication of note 157 appears three lines above what it refers to, that of note 162 twelve lines above its referent, camelias (camellias.)