| Montagu. | The Adventures of Ernest Alembert. |
| Montagu, speaking of the
church of Kirkby-Malham, "in
the ... vale of Malham," says:—"Some
of the Lamberts are
buried here—here is a monument
to ... John Lambert, who aided
Cromwell in his murder of Charles
the First (as all did who were
implicated in Cromwell's rebellion)[34]—after
the Restoration lived
he died banished and forgotten at
Guernsey. The family is now
extinct." In the chapter on Malham, Montagu accepts a guide who takes him up the vale of Malham. He mentions Malham Lake, or Tarn, and says of the River Aire in the connection that the water "delves into the mountain, and does not appear again until it reaches the village of Airton, below Malham." | Charlotte Brontë begins by
relating that there once lived an
Ernest Alembert. One of the
Alemberts having been "beheaded"
for "high treason,"[34]
"the family had decayed" until
the only survivor was Ernest
Alembert. We are told that he
beside a valley; and the
river became a lake. A stranger
putting him under a spell,
[A]lembert accepts him for a
guide, and they wend their way
up the valley. [A]lembert finds himself at a place where the torrent goes underground. |
| We have descriptions of wild moor, "tremendous" precipices, and "grand and terrific cataracts":—"At last we attained the summit of the mountain, when, looking down in the chasm beneath, horror and immensity were defined with thrilling truth." | We have descriptions of wild moors and precipices, and foaming cataracts. When they stopped to rest after a climb "the scene was grand and awful in the extreme.... The mellow hum of the bee was no longer heard.... Above rose tremendous precipices, whose vast shadows blackened all that portion of the moor [see "Peniston Crags," page 59], and deepened the frown on the face of unpropitious nature." |
| Montagu and his guide go to a cave—the cave of the Fairy Janet. Montagu falling asleep as it were, a fairy comes to his side and tells him he is in the realm of fairies. She promises to induct him into the wonders of faeryland, and "the mellow horn of the herald bee" summoned her attendants. And so on. See Charlotte Brontë's mention in Alembert of "the mellow hum of the bee." | [A]lembert and his guide go to
a cave. Farther on the guide
vanishes, but [A]lembert wakes
to find him by his side as a fairy
[Charlotte Brontë, Method I.,
interchange of the sexes], who
addresses [A]lembert as follows:— "I am a fairy. You have been, and still are, in the land of fairies. Some wonders you have seen; many more you shall see if you choose to follow me." And so on in extension. |
I have often wondered why no one has ever observed before that the hand which wrote The Adventures of Ernest Alembert must assuredly have written every line of Wuthering Heights. We may well understand why Charlotte Brontë in Wuthering Heights wrote of Catherine Linton that "the mentioning the Fairy Cave quite turned her head" with interest. And that the original of the Fairy Cave in Wuthering Heights was the Fairy Cave of Malhamdale Montagu mentions at such length in his Malham letter, the use of the names Linton and Airton in the connection irrefutably proves without other appeal: Hareton—that variant of Aire, cannot be associated with Derbyshire like "Eyre"; and despite the use of "Eyre," Aire was the name in Charlotte Brontë's mind, just as "Airton" was when she wrote "Hareton."
Both the "boy-guide" and "Gimmerton's mist" were obviously suggested to Charlotte Brontë for Wuthering Heights by Montagu, the original, as I have shown, of Lockwood:—
| Montagu. | Wuthering Heights. |
| I ... took leave of my host and followed the youthful steps of my guide whose services I had accepted.... Upon the summit of the mountain is Kilnsea Moor, over which it is impossible to find a route to Malham Water without a guide, more particularly as a mist creates a difficulty, even to a person well acquainted with the locality. | Says Heathcliffe:—"People
familiar with these moors often
miss their road on such an
evening." "Perhaps I can get a guide among your lads, ... could you spare one?" asks Lockwood of his host. |
Montagu's frequent references to the mountainous character of the Malham country were doubtless responsible for Charlotte Brontë's choice of the word "heights" used in her title. Why the name of Gimmer, from "gimmer" a female sheep, and signifying with "ton" the place of sheep, was chosen by her for Gimmerton, is clear when we read the etymology Montagu gives of Skipton. He mentions Skibden and Skipton, proceeding to explain that "Skipton, or Sceptown (from the Saxon word 'scep,' a sheep)" meant "the town of sheep"; and Montagu tells us a native spoke of the village as "the town of Malham." Hence we perceive why Charlotte Brontë coined "Gimmerton," the village of sheep, and "Gimmerden," the valley of sheep, for Malham and Malhamdale with the source of the Aire, the Fairy Cave, the Sough, the adjacent crags, the heights, the glens, the rising mists, the Methodist chapel and kirk in the lonely vale, when in the light of all the foregoing we read in Montagu's work that:—
"Here [at Malham] there is an annual fair held on the 15th of October, appropriated entirely for the sale of sheep.[35] I am within the limit of fact when I say that upwards of one hundred thousand [sheep] have been shown at one time. [Joseph takes cattle to "Gimmerton Fair," of course not in October.] The houses are mostly built of limestone, and covered with grit slates, and irregularly situated at the base of a range of steep mountains"—"the Heights."
Malham he describes as "a small township, divided into east and west portions by a rapid stream"—"the beck down Gimmerton." "There is a Methodist chapel at Malham," he states, and says that the old church of Kirkby-Malham "is in the very bosom of the vale of Malham." Thus Gimmerton Kirk, in the lonely valley of Gimmerton,[36] was Charlotte Brontë's name in Wuthering Heights for the kirk by Malham, in the lonely vale of Malham. This insight into the origin of the name of "kirk" for a Yorkshire church excuses what, without it, would have been an anachronistic misnomer. As for the Nonconformists' place of worship, Dean is made to remark:—"They call the Methodists' or Baptists' place—I can't say which it is at Gimmerton—a chapel."
In the light of the foregoing evidence it is impossible to ignore the reference Montagu makes to "the sinks," where the water from Malham Tarn sinks underground for a considerable distance. Whether Charlotte Brontë thought this would produce a quag in the neighbourhood I cannot tell; but if she has used the word "sough" (pronounced suff) in its ordinary acceptance in Yorkshire, she originally meant "a subterranean passage or tunnel, draining water as from a sink," if I may quote a definition in Dr. Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary. There is every sign in her writings of a loose, composite adaptation of Montagu's topography, etc., yet Charlotte Brontë was ever jealous of associations, and under a guise or not she frequently preserved carefully recognizable characteristics necessary to locality and to personality; and we see Montagu had associated a sough with Malham. We have mention of Gimmerton Sough in Chapter III. of Wuthering Heights, and in Chapter X.:—"... the valley of Gimmerton, with a long list of mist winding nearly to its top (for very soon after you pass the chapel ... the sough that runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour." And we have read what Montagu says about the mists of Malham.
The influence of Montagu's descriptions of this wild locality is likewise observable in the scenery and the background of Jane Eyre,[37] as I mentioned in the article "The Key to Jane Eyre" I wrote in The Saturday Review. The yews and evergreens, mentioned by Montagu in connection with Malham, and introduced by Charlotte Brontë, with other trees of the fir-tribe, in descriptions of Morton in Jane Eyre, Chap. XXX., etc., and in Wuthering Heights, are not common to Haworth.