Emily Brontë
forgotten and its beauty disregarded. Therefore let us make an end of
theory and turn to the book on which our heroine's fame is stationed,
fronting eternity. It may be that in unravelling its story and noticing
the manner in which its facts of character and circumstance impressed
her mind, we may, for a moment, be admitted to a more thorough and
clearer insight into its working than we could earn by the completest
study of external evidence, the most earnest and sympathising
criticism.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 26: 'Memoir.' Charlotte Bronte.]
[Footnote 27: 'Emily Bronte.' T. Wemyss Reid.]
CHAPTER XV.
'WUTHERING HEIGHTS:' THE STORY.
On the summit of Haworth Hill, beyond the street, stands a grey stone
house, which is shown as the original of 'Wuthering Heights.' A few
scant and wind-baffled ash-trees grow in front, the moors rise at the
back stretching away for miles. It is a house of some pretensions, once
the parsonage of Grimshaw, that powerful Wesleyan preacher who, whip in
hand, used to visit the "Black Bull" on Sunday morning and lash the
merrymakers into chapel to listen to his sermon. Somewhat fallen from
its former pretensions, it is a farmhouse now, with much such an
oak-lined and stone-floored house-place as is described in 'Wuthering
Heights.' Over the door there is, moreover, a piece of carving: H. E.
1659, a close enough resemblance to "Hareton Earnshaw, 1500"--but the
"wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys" are nowhere
to be found. Neither do we notice "the excessive slant of a few stunted
firs at the end of the house and a range of gaunt thorns all stretching
their limbs one way as if craving alms of the sun," and, to my thinking,
this fine old farm of Sowdens is far too near the mills of Haworth to
represent the God-forsaken, lonely house of Emily's fancy. Having seen
the place, as in duty bound, one returns more than ever impressed by the
fact that while every individual and every site in Charlotte's novels
can be clearly identified, Emily's imagination and her power of drawing
conclusions are alone responsible for the character of her creations.
This is not saying that she had no data to go upon. Had she not seen
Sowdens, and many more such houses, she would never have invented
'Wuthering Heights;' the story and passion of Branwell set on her fancy
to imagine the somewhat similar story and passion of Heathcliff. But in
the process of her work, the nature of her creations completely
overmastered the facts and memories which had induced her to begin.
These were but the handful of dust which she took to make her man; and
the qualities and defects of her masterpiece are both largely accounted
for when we remember that her creation of character was quite unmodified
by any attempt at portraiture.
Therefore in 'Wuthering Heights' it is with a story, a fancy picture,
that we have to deal; in drawing and proportion not unnatural, but
certainly not painted after nature. To quote her sister's beautiful
comments--
"'Wuthering Heights' was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out
of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a solitary
moor; gazing thereon he saw how from the crag might be elicited a head,
savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one element of
grandeur--power. He wrought with a rude chisel, and from no model but
the vision of his meditations. With time and labour the crag took human
shape; and there it stands colossal, dark and frowning, half-statue,
half-rock; in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter,
almost beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss
clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance,
grows faithfully close to the giant's foot."
Of the rude chisel we find plentiful traces in the first few chapters of
the book. The management of the narrative is singularly clumsy,
introduced by a Mr. Lockwood--a stranger to the North, an imaginary
misanthropist, who has taken a grange on the moor to be out of the way
of the world--and afterwards continued to him by his housekeeper to
amuse the long leisures of a winter illness. But, passing over this
initial awkwardness of conception, we find a manner equal to the matter
and somewhat resent Charlotte's eloquent comparison; for there are
touches, fine and delicate, that only a practised hand may dare to give,
and there is feeling in the book, not only "terrible and goblin-like,"
but patient and constant, sprightly and tender, consuming and
passionate. We find, getting over the inexperienced beginning, that the
style of the work is noble and accomplished, and that--far from being a
half-hewn and casual fancy, a head surmounting a trunk of stone--its
plan is thought out with scientific exactness, no line blurred, no clue
forgotten, the work of an intense and poetic temperament whose vision is
too vivid to be incongruous.
The first four chapters of 'Wuthering Heights' are merely introductory.
They relate Mr. Lockwood's visit there, his surprise at the rudeness of
the place in contrast with the foreign air and look of breeding that
distinguished Mr. Heathcliff and his beautiful daughter-in-law. He also
noticed the profound moroseness and ill-temper of everybody in the
house. Overtaken by a snowstorm, he was, however, constrained to sleep
there and was conducted by the housekeeper to an old chamber, long
unused, where (since at first he could not sleep) he amused himself by
looking over a few mildewed books piled on one corner of the
window-ledge. They and the ledge were scrawled all over with writing,
_Catharine Earnshaw_, sometimes varied to _Catharine Heathcliff_, and
again to _Catharine Linton_. Nothing save these three names was written
on the ledge, but the books were covered in every fly-leaf and margin
with a pen-and-ink commentary, a sort of diary, as it proved, scrawled
in a childish hand. Mr. Lockwood spent the first portion of the night in
deciphering this faded record; a string of childish mishaps and
deficiencies dated a quarter of a century ago. Evidently this Catharine
Earnshaw must have been one of Heathcliff's kin, for he figured in the
narrative as her fellow-scapegrace, and the favourite scapegoat of her
elder brother's wrath. After some time Mr. Lockwood fell asleep, to be
troubled by harassing dreams, in one of which he fancied that this
childish Catharine Earnshaw, or rather her spirit, was knocking and
scratching at the fir-scraped window-pane, begging to be let in.
Overcome with the intense horror of nightmare, he screamed aloud in his
sleep. Waking suddenly up he found to his confusion that his yell had
been heard, for Heathcliff appeared, exceedingly angry that any one had
been allowed to sleep in the oak-closeted room.
"If the little fiend had got in at the window she probably would have
strangled me," I returned... "Catharine Linton or Earnshaw, or however
she was called--she must have been a changeling, wicked little soul! She
told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years; a just
punishment for her mortal transgressions, I've no doubt.
"Scarcely were these words uttered when I recollected the association of
Heathcliff's with Catharine's name in the books.... I blushed at my
inconsideration--but, without showing further consciousness of the
offence, I hastened to add, 'The truth is, sir, I passed the first part
of the night in--.' Here I stopped afresh--I was about to say 'perusing
those old volumes,' then it would have revealed my knowledge of their
written as well as their printed contents; so I went on, 'in spelling
over the name scratched on that window-ledge: a monotonous occupation
calculated to set me asleep, like counting, or--.' 'What _can_ you mean
by talking in this way to _me_!' thundered Heathcliff with savage
vehemence. 'How--how _dare_ you, under my roof? God! he's mad to speak
so!' And he struck his forehead with rage.
"I did not know whether to resent this language or pursue my
explanation; but he seemed so powerfully affected that I took pity and
proceeded with my dreams.... Heathcliff gradually fell back into the
shelter of the bed, as I spoke; finally sitting down almost concealed
behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular and intercepted
breathing, that he struggled to vanquish an excess of violent emotion.
Not liking to show him that I had heard the conflict, I continued my
toilette rather noisily ... and soliloquised on the length of the night.
'Not three o'clock yet! I could have taken oath it had been six. Time
stagnates here: we must surely have retired to rest at eight!'
"'Always at nine in winter, and rise at four,' said my host, suppressing
a groan; and, as I fancied, by the motion of his arm's shadow, dashing a
tear from his eyes. 'Mr. Lockwood,' he added, 'you may go into my room:
you'll only be in the way, coming downstairs so early.... Take the
candle and go where you please. I shall join you directly. Keep out of
the yard, though, the dogs are unchained; and the house--Juno mounts
sentinel there, and--nay, you can only ramble about the steps and
passages. But, away with you! I'll come in two minutes.'
"I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber; when, ignorant where the
narrow lobbies led, I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a
piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied oddly his
apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice,
bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears.
'Come in! come in!' he sobbed, 'Cathy, do come! Oh, my heart's darling!
hear me _this_ time, Catharine, at last!' The spectre showed a spectre's
ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind
whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the
light.
"There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this
raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off,
half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my
ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that agony; though _why_ was
beyond my comprehension."
Mr. Lockwood got no clue to the mystery at 'Wuthering Heights'; and
later on returned to Thrushcross Grange, to fall ill of a lingering
fever. During his recovery he heard the history of his landlord, from
his housekeeper, who had been formerly an occupant of 'Wuthering
Heights,' and after that, for many years, the chief retainer at
Thrushcross Grange, where young Mrs. Heathcliff used to live when she
still was Catharine Linton.
"Do you know anything of Mr. Heathcliff's story?" said Mr. Lockwood to
his housekeeper, Nelly Dean.
"It's a cuckoo's, sir," she answered.
It is at this point that the history of 'Wuthering Heights' commences,
that violent and bitter history of the "little dark thing harboured by a
good man to his bane," carried over the threshold, as Christabel lifted
Geraldine, out of pity for the weakness which, having grown strong,
shall crush the hand that helped it; carried over the threshold, as evil
spirits are carried, powerless to enter of themselves, and yet no evil
demon, only a human soul lost and blackened by tyranny, injustice and
congenital ruin. The story of 'Wuthering Heights,' is the story of
Heathcliff. It begins with the sudden journey of the old squire, Mr.
Earnshaw, to Liverpool one summer morning at the beginning of harvest.
He had asked the children each to choose a present, "only let it be
little, for I shall walk there and back, sixty miles each way:" and the
son Hindley, a proud, high-spirited lad of fourteen, had chosen a
fiddle; six-year-old Cathy, a whip, for she could ride any horse in the
stable; and Nelly Dean, their humble playfellow and runner of errands,
had been promised a pocketful of apples and pears. It was the third