The following passage from _Wuthering Heights_ tells that Charlotte
Brontë's imagination was enjoying the latitude of a half-realized,
suggested background. It reads just like the traveller Montagu with his
horse, attendant servant on horseback, roadside inns, hostlers, and
description of country. But the connection of Montagu with Lockwood of
_Wuthering Heights_ we have already seen in the early chapters of _The
Key to the Brontë Works_:--
1802--This September I was invited to devastate the moors of a
friend in the North, and on my journey ... I unexpectedly came
within fifteen miles of Gimmerton. The hostler at a roadside
public-house was holding a pail of water to refresh my horses when
a cart of very green oats ... passed by, and he remarked--
"Yon's frough Gimmerton, nah! They're allus three wick after other
folk wi' ther harvest."
"Gimmerton?" I repeated; my residence in that locality had already
grown dim and dreamy. "Ah, I know. How far is it from this?"
"Happen fourteen mile o'er th' hills; and a rough road." A sudden
impulse seized me to visit Thrushcross Grange. It was scarcely
noon, and I conceived that I might as well pass the night under my
own roof as in an inn.... Having rested a while, I directed my
servant to inquire the way to the village; and, with great fatigue
to our beasts, we managed the distance in some three hours. I left
him there, and proceeded ... down the valley alone. The grey
church looked greyer, and the churchyard lonelier. I
distinguished a moor sheep cropping the short turf on the
graves.... The heat did not hinder me from enjoying the delightful
scenery above and below; had I seen it nearer August, I'm sure it
would have tempted me to waste a month among its solitudes. [Be it
observed he would rather have done so than have gone to "the
moors" of his friend.] In winter nothing more dreary than those
glens shut in by hills,[30] and those bluff, bold swells of heath.
So we too would imagine, judging by Montagu's description of the
district in his little work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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