5. Currer Bell was the pseudonym of
Charlotte Brontë. Her long novel
Shirley. A tale (1849) is the story of the Yorkshire mill owner Robert Moore, who is convinced that mechanization is necessary for his mill to be profitable, a conviction that makes him seem indifferent to the fate of his workers. Even though he loves Caroline Helstone, he makes an offer of marriage to the wealthy and charismatic Shirley Keeldar, who refuses him because she loves Louis, Robert’s brother. An attempt on Robert’s life opens his eyes to his selfish behaviour, and in the end he turns to Caroline. Shirley and Louis also confess their love for one another and both couples marry.
In the novel
Jane Eyre. An autobiography (1847) the eponymous heroine – an orphan who has become a governess – falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester. During the marriage ceremony, an uninvited guest shockingly reveals that Rochester is already married to a woman who is mentally ill. Jane flees, and eventually starts a new life elsewhere. Later on she is driven by a sense of foreboding to visit Rochester, and finds out that he was disfigured during an unsuccessful attempt to rescue his wife from their burning house. Jane and Rochester end up marrying after all.
It is in fact uncertain whether Van Gogh had even read
Jane Eyre at this point. For a long time it was customary to refer to Currer Bell as ‘the author of
Jane Eyre’ on the cover and title page of editions of
Shirley; cf. the words Van Gogh uses in l. 38. When he mentions
Jane Eyre again several months later, however, he does seem to have read the novel (
letter 187 of 19 November).
8.
Le père Goriot (1835) is part of the series
Scènes de la vie privée from the cycle of novels
La comédie humaine. The protagonist, Goriot, works himself up from poverty to a position of wealth. His money is squandered by his daughters, however, and his business takes a bad turn. He tries to marry off his daughters to men in higher circles, while others of his acquaintance scheme to climb higher up the social ladder.
9. The nickname is taken from
Balzac’s foreword to
La cousine Bette (1846), addressed to Don Michele Angelo Cajetani, Prince of Cajetani, in which Balzac says of himself: ‘I could have ... become a learned man with the power of three Schlegels; whereas I shall remain a mere doctor of social medicine, the veterinarian of incurable diseases’. (J’aurais pu ... devenir un homme docte de la force de trois Schlegel; tandis que je vais rester simple docteur en médecine sociale, le vétérinaire des maux incurables). See Balzac,
La comédie humaine vi.
La cousine Bette. Ed. Anne-Marie Meininger. Paris 1977, p. 53.