"That chainless soul," Emily Jane Brontë, was born at
Thornton, Yorkshire, England, on August 30, 1818, and died at
Haworth on December 19, 1848. She will always have a place in
English literature by reason of her one weird, powerful,
strained novel, "Wuthering Heights," and a few poems. Emily
Brontë, like her sister Charlotte, was educated at Cowan
School and at Brussels. For a time she became a governess, but
it seemed impossible for her to live away from the fascination
of the Yorkshire moors, and she went home to keep house at the
Haworth Parsonage, while her sisters taught. Two months after
the publication of "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte, that is, in
December, 1847, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily, and "Agnes
Grey," by Anne, the third sister in this remarkable trio, were
issued in one volume. The critics, who did not discover these
books were by women, suggested persistently that "Wuthering
Heights" must be an immature work by Currer Bell (Charlotte).
A year after the publication of her novel Emily died, unaware
of her success in achieving a lasting, if restricted, fame.
She was extraordinarily reserved, sensitive, and wayward, and
lived in an imagined world of her own, morbidly influenced, no
doubt, by the vagaries of her worthless brother Branwell. That
she had true genius, allied with fine strength of intellect
and character, is the unanimous verdict of competent
criticism, while it grieves over unfulfilled possibilities.
_I.--A Surly Brood_
"Mr. Heathcliff?"
A nod was the answer.
"Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, sir."
"Walk in." But the invitation, uttered with closed teeth, expressed the
sentiment "Go to the deuce!" And it was not till my horse's breast
fairly pushed the barrier that he put out his hand to unchain it. I felt
interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself
as he preceded me up the causeway, calling, "Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's
horse; and bring up some wine."
Joseph was an old man, very old, though hale and sinewy. "The Lord help
us!" he soliloquised in an undertone as he relieved me of my horse.
Wuthering Heights, Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, is a farmhouse on an
exposed and stormy edge, its name being significant of atmospheric
tumult. Its owner is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and
manners a gentleman, with erect and handsome figure, but morose
demeanour. One step from the outside brought us into the family
living-room, the recesses of which were haunted by a huge liver-coloured
bitch pointer, with a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs. As the
bitch sneaked wolfishly to the back of my legs I attempted to caress
her, an action that provoked a long, guttural growl.
"You'd better let the dog alone," growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, as
he checked her with a punch of his foot. "She's not accustomed to be
spoiled."
As Joseph was mumbling indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and
gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me
_vis-à-vis_ with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends
that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a
poker and called aloud for assistance.
"What the devil is the matter?" asked Heathcliff, as he returned.
"What the devil, indeed!" I muttered. "You might as well leave a
stranger with a brood of tigers!"
"They won't meddle with persons who touch nothing," he remarked. "The
dogs are right to be vigilant. Take a glass of wine."
Before I went home I determined to volunteer another visit to my sulky
landlord, though evidently he wished for no repetition of my intrusion.
* * * * *
Yesterday I again visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to
Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a
black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked
for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar-
faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and
shouted to me.
"What are ye for? T' maister's down i' t' fowld. There's nobbut t'
missis. I'll hae no hend wi't," muttered the head, vanishing.
Then a young man, without coat and shouldering a pitchfork, hailed me to
follow him, and showed me into the apartment where I had been formerly
received with a gruff "Sit down; he'll be in soon."
In the room sat the "missis," motionless and mute. She was slender,
scarcely past girlhood, with the most exquisite little face I have ever
had the pleasure of beholding; and her eyes, had they been agreeable in
expression, would have been irresistible. But the only sentiment they
evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation. As for the
young man who had brought me in, he slung on his person a shabby jacket,
and, erecting himself before the fire, gazed down on me from the corner
of his eyes as if there was some mortal feud unavenged between us. The
entrance of Heathcliff relieved me from an uncomfortable state.
I found in the course of the tea which followed that the lady was the
widow of Heathcliff's son, and that the rustic youth who sat down to the
meal with us was Hareton Earnshaw. Now, before passing the threshold, I
had noticed over the principal door, among a wilderness of crumbling
griffins and shameless little boys, the name "Hareton Earnshaw" and the
date "1500." Evidently the place had a history.
The snow had fallen so deeply since I entered the house that return
across the moor in the dusk was impossible.
Spending that night at Wuthering Heights on an old-fashioned couch that
filled a recess, or closet, in a disused chamber, I found, scratched on
the paint many times, the names "Catherine Earnshaw," "Catherine
Heathcliff," and again "Catherine Linton." There were many books in the
room in a dilapidated state, and, being unable to sleep, I examined
them. Some of them bore the inscription "Catherine Earnshaw, her book";
and on the blank leaves and margins, scrawled in a childish hand, was a
regular diary. I read: "Hindley is detestable. Heathcliff and I are
going to rebel.... How little did I dream Hindley would ever make me cry
so! Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him sit
or eat with us any more."
When I slept I was harrowed by nightmare, and next morning I gladly left
the house; and, piloted by my landlord across the billowy white ocean of
the moor, I reached the Grange benumbed with cold and as feeble as a
kitten from fatigue.
When my housekeeper, Mrs. Nelly Dean, brought in my supper that night I
asked her why Heathcliff let the Grange and preferred living in a
residence so much inferior.
"He's rich enough to live in a finer house than this," said Mrs. Dean;
"but he's very close-handed. Young Mrs. Heathcliff is my late master's
daughter--Catherine Linton was her maiden name, and I nursed her, poor
thing. Hareton Earnshaw is her cousin, and the last of an old family."
"The master, Heathcliff, must have had some ups and downs to make him
such a churl. Do you know anything of his history?"
"It's a cuckoo's, sir. I know all about it, except where he was born,
and who were his parents, and how he got his money. And Hareton Earnshaw
has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock."
I asked Mrs. Dean to bring her sewing, and continue the story. This she
did, evidently pleased to find me companionable.
_II.--The Story Runs Backward_
Before I came to live here (began Mrs. Dean), I was almost always at
Wuthering Heights, because my mother nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that
was Hareton's father, and I used to run errands and play with the
children. One day, old Mr. Earnshaw, Hareton's grandfather, went to
Liverpool, and promised Hindley and Cathy, his son and daughter, to
bring each of them a present. He was absent three days, and at the end
of that time brought home, bundled up in his arms under his great-coat,
a dirty, ragged, black-haired child, big enough both to walk and talk,
but only able to talk gibberish nobody could understand. He had picked
it up, he said, starving and homeless in the streets of Liverpool. Mrs.
Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors, but Mr. Earnshaw told her
to wash it, give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.
The children's presents were forgotten. This was how Heathcliff, as they
called him, came to Wuthering Heights.
Miss Cathy and he soon became very thick; but Hindley hated him. He was
a patient, sullen child, who would stand blows without winking or
shedding a tear. From the beginning he bred bad feeling in the house.
Old Earnshaw took to him strangely, and Hindley regarded him as having
usurped his father's affections. As for Heathcliff, he was insensible to
kindness. Cathy, a wild slip, with the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile,
and the lightest foot in the parish, was much too fond of Heathcliff.
Old Mr. Earnshaw died quietly in his chair by the fireside one October
evening.
Mr. Hindley, who had been to college, came home to the funeral, and set
the neighbours gossiping right and left, for he brought a wife with him.
What she was and where she was born he never informed us. She evinced a
dislike to Heathcliff, and drove him to the company of the servants, but
Cathy clung to him, and the two promised to grow up together as rude as
savages. Once Hindley shut them out for the night and they came to
Thrushcross Grange, where the Lintons took Cathy in, but would not have
anything to do with Heathcliff, the Spanish castaway, as they called
him. She stayed five weeks with the Lintons, and became very friendly
with the children, Edgar and Isabella, and when she came back was a
dignified little person, and quite a beauty.
Soon after, Hindley's son, Hareton, was born, the mother died, and the
child fell wholly into my hands, for the father grew desperate in his
sorrow, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. His treatment of
Heathcliff now was enough to make a fiend of a saint, and daily the lad
became more savagely sullen. I could not half-tell what an infernal
house we had, till at last nobody decent came near us, except that Edgar
Linton called to see Cathy, who at fifteen was the queen of the
countryside--a haughty and headstrong creature.
One day after Edgar Linton had been over from the Grange, Cathy came
into the kitchen to me and said, "Nelly, will you keep a secret for me?
To-day Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I've given him an
answer. I accepted him, Nelly. Be quick and say whether I was wrong."
"First and foremost," I said sententiously, "do you love Mr. Edgar?"
"I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and
everything he touches, and every word he says. I love his looks, and all
his actions, and him entirely and altogether. There now!"
"Then," said I, "all seems smooth and easy. Where is the obstacle?"
"Here, and here!" replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead,
and the other on her breast. "In my soul and in my heart I'm convinced
I'm wrong! I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be
in heaven; and if the wicked man in there, my brother, had not brought
Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to
marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him, and that
not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I
am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and
Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from
fire. Nelly, I dreamed I was in heaven, but heaven did not seem to be my
home, and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the
angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath
on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy."
Ere this speech was ended, Heathcliff, who had been lying out of sight
on a bench by the kitchen wall, stole out. He had heard Catherine say it
would degrade her to marry him, and he had heard no further.
That night, while a storm rattled over the heights in full fury,
Heathcliff disappeared. Catherine suffered uncontrollable grief, and
became dangerously ill. When she was convalescent she went to
Thrushcross Grange. But Edgar Linton, when he married her, three years
subsequent to his father's death, and brought her here to the Grange,
was the happiest man alive. I accompanied her, leaving little Hareton,
who was now nearly five years old, and had just begun to learn his
letters.
On a mellow evening in September, I was coming from the garden with a
basket of apples I had been gathering, when, as I approached the kitchen
door, I heard a voice say, "Nelly, is that you?"
Something stirred in the porch, and, moving nearer, I saw a tall man,
dressed in dark clothes, with dark hair and face.
"What," I cried, "you come back?"
"Yes, Nelly. You needn't be so disturbed. I want one word with your
mistress."
I went in, and explained to Mr. Edgar and Catherine who was waiting
below.
"Oh, Edgar darling," she panted, flinging her arms round his neck,
"Heathcliff's come back--he is!"
"Well, well," he said, "don't strangle me for that. There's no need to
be frantic. Try to be glad without being absurd!"
When Heathcliff came in, she seized his hands and laughed like one
beside herself.
It seemed that he was staying at Wuthering Heights, invited by Mr.
Earnshaw! When I heard this I had a presentiment that he had better have
remained away.
Later, we learned from Joseph that Heathcliff had called on Earnshaw,
whom he found sitting at cards, had joined in the play, and, seeming
plentifully supplied with money, had been asked by his ancient
persecutor to come again in the evening. He then offered liberal payment
for permission to lodge at the Heights, which Earnshaw's covetousness
made him accept.
Heathcliff now commenced visiting Thrushcross Grange, and gradually
established his right to be expected. A new source of trouble sprang up
in an unexpected form--Isabella Linton evincing a sudden and
irresistible attraction towards Heathcliff. At that time she was a
charming young lady of eighteen. I tried to persuade her to banish him
from her thoughts.
"He's a bird of bad omen, miss," I said, "and no mate for you. How has
he been living? How has he got rich? Why is he staying at Wuthering
Heights in the house of the man whom he abhors? They say Mr. Earnshaw is
worse and worse since he came. They sit up all night together
continually, and Hindley has been borrowing money on his land, and does
nothing but play and drink."
"You are leagued with the rest," she replied, "and I'll not listen to
your slanders." The antipathy of Mr. Linton towards Heathcliff reached a
point at last at which he called on his servants one day to turn him out
of the Grange, whereupon Heathcliff's revenge took the form of an
elopement with Linton's sister. Six weeks later I received a letter of
bitter regret from Isabella, asking me distractedly whether I thought
her husband was a man or a devil, and how I had preserved the common
sympathies of human nature at Wuthering Heights, where they had
returned.
On receiving this letter, I obtained permission from Mr. Linton to go to
the Heights to see his sister, and Heathcliff, on meeting me, urged me
to secure for him an interview with Catherine.
"Nelly," said he, "you know as well as I do that for every thought she
spends on Linton she spends a thousand on me. If he loved her with all
the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years
as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have. The
sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole
affection be monopolised by him."
Well, I argued, and refused, but in the long run he forced me to agree
to put a missive into Mrs. Linton's hand.
When he met her, I saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony,
to look into her face, for he was stricken with the conviction that she
was fated to die.
"Oh, Cathy, how can I bear it?" was the first sentence he uttered.
"You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff," was her reply. "You
have killed me and thriven on it, I think."
"Are you possessed with a devil," he asked, "to talk in that manner to
me when you are dying? You know you lie to say I have killed you, and
you know that I could as soon forget my existence as forget you. Is it
not sufficient that while you are at peace, I shall be in the torments
of hell?"
"I shall not be at peace," moaned Catherine.
"Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart? You loved
me. What right had you to leave me?"
"Let me alone!" sobbed Catherine. "I've done wrong, and I'm dying for
it! Forgive me!"
That night was born the Catherine you, Mr. Lockwood, saw at the Heights,
and her mother's spirit was at home with God.
When in the morning I told Heathcliff, who had been watching near all
night, he dashed his head against the knotted trunk of the tree by which
he stood and howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast, as he
besought her ghost to haunt him. "Be with me always--take any form!" he
cried. "Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"
Life with Heathcliff becoming impossible to Isabella, she left the
neighbourhood, never to revisit it, and lived near London; and there her
son, whom she christened Linton, was born a few months after her escape.
He was an ailing, peevish creature. When Linton was twelve, or a little
more, and Catherine thirteen, Isabella died, and the boy was brought to
Thrushcross Grange. Hindley Earnshaw drank himself to death about the
same time, after mortgaging every yard of his land for cash; and
Heathcliff was the mortgagee. So Hareton Earnshaw, who should have been
the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to dependence on
his father's enemy, in whose house he lived, ignorant that he had been
wronged.
The motives of Heathcliff now became clear. Under the influence of a
passionate but calculating revenge, allied with greed, he was planning
the destruction of the Earnshaw family, and the union of the Wuthering
Heights and Thrushcross Grange estates. To this end, having brought his
weakly son home to the Heights and terrorised him into a pitiable
slavery, he schemed a marriage between him and young Catherine Linton,
who was induced to accept the arrangement through sympathy with her
cousin, and the hope of removing him from the paralysing influence of
his father. The marriage was almost immediately followed by the death of
both Catherine's father and her boyish husband, who, it was afterwards
found, had been coaxed or threatened into bequeathing all his property
to his father. Thus ended Mrs. Dean's story of how the strangely
assorted occupants of Wuthering Heights had come together, my landlord
Heathcliff, the disinherited, poor Hareton Earnshaw, and Catherine
Heathcliff, who had been Catherine Linton and the daughter of Catherine
Earnshaw. I propose riding over to Wuthering Heights to inform my
landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London, and that he
may look out for another tenant for the Grange.
_III.--The Story Runs Forward_
Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty, and I went to the Heights as I
proposed. My housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to
her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not
conscious of anything odd in her request. Hareton Earnshaw unchained the
gate for me. The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen, but he
does his best, apparently, to make the least of his advantages.
Catherine, who was preparing vegetables for a meal, looked more sulky
and less spirited than when I had seen her first.
"She does not seem so amiable," I thought, "as Mrs. Dean would persuade
me to believe. She's a beauty, it is true, but not an angel."
I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden, and dropped
Mrs. Dean's note on her knee unnoticed by Hareton. But she asked aloud,
"What is that?" and chucked it off.
"A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange," I
answered. She would gladly have gathered it up at this information, but
Hareton beat her. He seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr.
Heathcliff should look at it first; but later he pulled out the letter,
and flung it on the floor as ungraciously as he could. Catherine perused
it eagerly, and then asked, "Does Ellen like you?"
"Yes, very well," I replied hesitatingly.
Whereupon she became more communicative, and told me how dull she was
now Heathcliff had taken her books away.
When Heathcliff came in, looking restless and anxious, he sent her to
the kitchen to get her dinner with Joseph; and with the master of the
house, grim and saturnine, and Hareton absolutely dumb, I made a
cheerless meal, and bade adieu early.
* * * * *
Next September, when going north for shooting, a sudden impulse seized
me to visit Thrushcross Grange and pass a night under my own roof, for
the tenancy had not yet expired. When I reached the Grange before sunset
I found a girl knitting under the porch, and an old woman reclining on
the house-steps, smoking a meditative pipe.
"Is Mrs. Dean within?" I demanded.
"Mistress Dean? Nay!" she answered. "She doesn't bide here; shoo's up at
th' Heights."
"Are you housekeeper, then?"
"Eea, aw keep th' house," she replied.
"Well, I'm Mr. Lockwood, the master. Are there any rooms to lodge me in,
I wonder? I wish to stay all night."
"T' maister!" she cried in astonishment. "Yah sud ha' sent word. They's
nowt norther dry nor mensful abaht t' place!"
Leaving her scurrying about making preparations, I climbed the stony
by-road that branches off to Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. On reaching it I
had neither to climb the gate nor to knock--it yielded to my hand. "This
is an improvement," I thought. I noticed, too, a fragrance of flowers
wafted on the air from among the homely fruit-trees.
"Con-_trary_!" said a voice as sweet as a silver bell "That for the
third time, you dunce! I'm not going to tell you again."
"Contrary, then," answered another in deep but softened tones. "And now
kiss me for minding so well."
The male speaker was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a
table, having a book before him. His handsome features glowed with
pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a
small white hand over his shoulder. So, not to interrupt Hareton
Earnshaw and Catherine Heathcliff, I went round to the kitchen, where my
old friend Nelly Dean sat sewing and singing a song.
Mrs. Dean jumped to her feet as she recognised me. "Why, bless you, Mr.
Lockwood!" she exclaimed. "Pray step in! Have you walked from
Gimmerton?"
"No, from the Grange," I replied; "and while they make me a lodging room
there I want to finish my business with your master."
"What business, sir?" said Nelly.
"About the rent," I answered.
"Oh, then it is Catherine you must settle with, or rather me, as she has
not learned to arrange her affairs yet."