Heathcliff's Tale
Authors: Emma Tennant
Emma Tennant
Preface
Editor's Note
The following pages may help to elucidate one of literature's greatest enigmas: viz. the origins of the most evil hero ever to be portrayed. The second puzzle lies in tracing the causes and reasons behind the authorship of the great novel in which this demonic figure appears. How could a young woman with no experience of the worldâor, indeed, of passionâhave brought into being a man such as Heathcliff?
We are empowered in this quest for the truth behind the writing of
Wuthering Heights
by the appearance at auction at the saleroom in York of fragments of a novel and a cache of letters, including a âDeposition' by a certain Henry Newby, who declares himself the nephew of Thomas Cautley Newby, publisher of Emily Brontë's now-celebrated novel. It seems the writings are genuineâalthough an altercation has already broken out between various factions: biographers of the Brontës and libraries amongst them. We will not go in detail into these disagreements, except to say that Branwellites and Emily-supporters are evenly distributed, when it comes to deciding the thorny problem of whose hand was responsible for this âsecond novel', parts of which are presented here. Saved from the fire commanded by Charlotte Brontë in the weeks after her younger sister's death, and augmented by the strange adventures of young Master Newby as he sought the manuscript for which his unscrupulous uncle had despatched
him, these pages provide what is possibly the sole authentic glimpse into the early life of the orphan and evil-doer, Heathcliff
.
As we are constantly reminded of the actions, the romance and the violence in
Wuthering Heights,
it is pertinent here to include a brief résumé of that novel, as well as a Family Tree. The Brontës also may require some description, for those who have escaped the industry now grown up around their history. Without these, the reader might find himself as confused as poor Henry Newby
.
Briefly
, Wuthering Heights
is a tale of obsession; that of Heathcliffâthe lad found wandering on the streets of Liverpool by old Mr Earnshaw and taken back with him to The Heights to live with the familyâfor Cathy, Earnshaw's daughter; and of her obsession with him. They are separated when Cathy foolishly declares to the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, that she wishes instead to marry Edgar Linton, their wellborn neighbour at Thrushcross Grange. The tragedy which then evolves, continues to the next generation, with a daughter, young Cathy, born of the Linton union but almost certainly the daughter of Heathcliff. The portions of narrative we have been fortunate enough to acquire at the York auction throw considerable light on the otherwise not depicted consummation of the passion of Heathcliff and Cathy
.
The Brontës, who famously lived at Haworth Parsonage, were originally a family of five daughters and a son, Branwell. Emily and Branwell were a year apart in age, and it was on Emily that the burden of caring for an increasingly dissolute brother fell. Her symbiotic relationship with her brother lasted to the grave: after Branwell diedâin September 1848âEmily succumbed to the family disease of consumption and survived him by only three months. In this previously unknown collection of letters and documents we see the effects of that burden on the highly imaginative child; and we begin to understand the origins of Heathcliff
.
Chapter One
Letter from Henry Newby, Newby & Sons, Lawyers, Redhill Drive, Leeds to his uncle Thomas Cautley Newby, Publisher, 15 Mortimer Street, off Cavendish Square, London, W.l
.
January 3rd 1849
Dear Uncle
I am back at home, but not without risking life and limbâand, if I may say so, a sense of my continuing sanityâwhile attempting to fulfil your request to retrieve a manuscript from the address you kindly supplied.
I believe I should have been given more time to fulfil this task. A solicitor's clerk, as I have no hesitation in describing my occupation (for all your urgings that my father should promote me and for all that he is your brother and should manifest pride, as you care to term it, in the achievements of his youngest son)âa solicitor's clerk, as I am and must remain, dear Uncle, cannot be expected to be a literary man. There are matters to be seen to at Newby & Sons which are daily in need of urgent attention; there is little opportunity to read books or dwell on arcane subjects; and if my brothers, the sons my respected
father has elected as Partners in the firm, can be seen to be more advanced than I in the scaling of Parnassus, I am contented to permit the situation to rest that way. Or was, at least, until the journey into Hell which resulted from the avuncular demand that I should journey west of Leeds to Haworth and return with a book not yet bound and totally lacking in description. I cannot and do not care to sound a note of reproach, yet it occurs to me that I was ill-chosen for this singular and distasteful errand. One of my brothers would have done better, I hear you agree: but it goes without saying that Horace and Richard were both engaged in seasonal festivities over the past week and thus were unable to obey your command.
So it was I, Henry, who was obliged to see in the New Year at Haworth Parsonage, a circumstance so chilling it should not be recounted here. I own, to my considerable distress, that the suffering I endured cannot be committed to paper, for I lack the ability to do so. If you had despatched a literary man, Uncle, I do not doubt the resulting account would swell the coffers at 15 Mortimer Street.
The journey, undertaken on the gloomiest night of the yearâthe last, and seeing itself out with a wild storm, this punctuated by a north-east wind such as we never experience in Redhill Drive, protected as that thoroughfare is by its low-lying position in the central part of the cityâwas no more than a faint foretaste of what was to come. I thought myself unfortunate to be set down by the coach at the foot of a steep hill which constitutes Haworth's main street, for I was rapidly soaked to the skin by flurries of rain blown along what was no more than a cobbled tunnel by the rising wind. I considered myself ill-favoured once more when a local, barely
comprehensible in his dialect, misdirected me right out of the town and up to the gates of a house that had, as I was informed by an angry caretaker, no connection with the church. But even then I had no inkling of the evil fate which awaited me, when eventually I found the address written out so clearly, dear Uncle, in your letter. I could not have known, for all its forbidding exterior and despite the grim landscape of moor and bog that stretch behind the house, that I was about to experience a sensation akin to the abandoning of hope.
But this is not the account you attend with such impatience, Uncle. Your letter warned me that I would find a grieving household: the author of the manuscript I was to fetch had recently died and the family, having suffered another death only a few months before, might make difficulties at first when I came with my demand. I was to persevere, if this was the caseâfor, as Thomas Cautley Newby, publisher, of London, you had paid an advance of £25 to the lately deceased author (if works by his predecessor to the grave were offered to me I was not to take them) and the manuscript is the property of Thomas Cautley Newby. Our family firm of Newby & Sons confirmed the legality of this before I set out; though, given the above information, I felt less and less willing to obey instructions. The oddity of the late author's identity was also a factor in my growing reluctance to undertake this commission for you, Uncle: I must confess I thought you must be confused when you directed me to search for the papers of one writer, but that I would be admitted by another who would prove to be a brother or sister of the author. You would not state more, and could have saved me great discomfort and unease if you had done so. But, as you remark clearly enough
in your missive, it is not possible to know yet whether the manuscript, once found, is to be published pseudonymously or not. With these anxieties pressing closely on me, I found myself at last outside the door of Haworth Parsonage. I had already attempted, by stopping at the sexton's cottage, to learn more of the household I was about to enter, but my luck being as already described, there came no answer to my repeated knocking. So it became clear there was no alternative but to address myself to the front door of the Parsonage, and I did so, but in great trepidation. It was pitch dark, I may add, Uncle, and your favourite nephew, as you were pleased in the past to address me, was as cold and wet as a dog that has fallen in the beck, swollen now in the cut of dead grass on the moor.
The door was opened after what seemed an age and a face peered up at me. I must have been forced forward by a strong gust of the nor-easterly, for I found myself almost falling on an elderly little woman, at least sixty years old I should say, and as discomfited as I was by my appearance, unattended, in the front hall of the Parsonage.
âMister Newby' said the old lady (I had of course written âTo Whom It May Concern' to introduce my coming arrival, but had received no reply). âMister Newby, Miss Charlotte does not expect you here, sir. She wroteâdid the letter not arrive atâatâ'
âIn Leeds', I said with more irritation than I had intended to express. âMy uncle, Thomas Newby, asks me to collect a manuscript from the Parsonage at Haworth. A manuscript', I added, for my legal training did not desert me now it was needed, âwhich is the property of the publishing firm of Thomas Cautley Newby, Mortimer Street, London'.
If it did not occur to me to wonder who this guardian of the mysterious manuscript could beâfor the old harridan barred the door leading from the hall to what I assumed to be the kitchen, with arms as lined and frail as the branches of a dying saplingâthis was because a smaller door in a corner of the hall had swung open in the draught made by my entrance and I was able to see into a room, book-lined, comfortably provided with a fire and, so far as I could see at least, empty.
âYour MissâMiss Charlotte', I said, âwill I find her at home tonight? She will perhaps deliver the book to me?'
âTabby!' came a peremptory voice, a woman's, from somewhere else again. âYou have been instructed to show Mr Newby to the door if he should come here searching for Ellis Bell'.
âYes, Miss Charlotte', said old Tabby, but in a quiet tone which must have been inaudible anywhere else than the exiguous vestibule where we stood, she still preventing me from entering and I as obdurate as ever. But Tabby had seen the extent of the weathering I had taken, I suppose, and she must have observed, too, my frantic glances at the comfortable little room where an oil-lamp lit up a pleasant sequence of water-colour sketches of the Lakes that hung on the walls and a good old clock stood in the corner, its second hand ticking as if to announce a permanent haven could be found here. Her arms fell to her sides and she looked at me uncertainly.
