Walking the Invisible

by Michael Stewart

  ‘But why do they drink so much now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s just habit,’ I say as I bid Alina farewell, pocket my guide fee and make my way to the Old Hall Inn for a much-needed beer.

  Post Scriptum

  The Anne Stone is now in its proper place in the top-right-hand corner of Parson’s Field, a wild meadow behind Haworth Parsonage Museum. It was a spot that Rebecca Yorke and I chose. Rebecca is the head of communications and marketing at the museum. We sat on a bench lower down and discussed how we might place the stone. At nearly a tonne in weight, it wasn’t an easy task. Anne Brontë was the only Brontë sibling who was not buried in the family vault beneath the floor of St Michael and All Angels’ Church in Haworth. Instead, she was buried in Scarborough, where she died. It was a place she had visited several times when she holidayed there with the Robinsons, as we will discover later in the book, and somewhere that she held in great affection. Her grave is in St Mary’s churchyard, beneath the castle walls, overlooking the bay. Jackie Kay’s poem acknowledges this separation and acts as a sort of homecoming:

  These dark, sober clothes

  are my disguise. No, I was not preparing

  for an early death, yours or mine.

  You got me all wrong, all the time.

  But sisters, I’ll have the last word,

  write the last line. I am still at sea –

  but if I can do some good in this world,

  I will right the wrong. I am still young,

  and the moor’s winds lift my light-dark hair.

  I am still here when the sun goes up,

  and here when the moon drops down.

  I do not now stand alone.

  Carved into a stone that sits at the top of the wild meadow behind the parsonage and looks out at the graveyard, the family vaults and the surrounding moorland, triangulating these points of biographical significance, it is the largest of the moveable stones, and contains a poem within a poem. Kay emphasised certain words, and Pip Hall has carved them flat instead of her usual V cut, so that the words sometimes jump out and at others diminish, depending on the light. It is a startling effect. One such word is ‘wrong’, which stands out twice, making us think of the wrong that was done to Anne’s work when Charlotte expurgated it following her death, and also of the errors on her original gravestone. There were five of them apparently. They didn’t even get her age right.

  One of the commonest questions I get asked, after ‘Why is the Brontë Stone broken?’ (it isn’t; it’s meant to be like that) and ‘Why is the Emily Stone so hard to find?’ (it’s not that hard), is ‘Why is the Anne Stone facing the wall?’ The answer is because I want people to read the poem while overlooking the parsonage and the vault under the church where the rest of the family are buried. But you can also see the moors that surround the parsonage from that spot. In short, standing at the stone, looking over the parsonage and the moors, I want you to experience a lump in your throat.

  I took a group of walkers to see the stone shortly after it was fitted. We disturbed a woman in her late twenties who was standing close by, beneath a hawthorn, quietly sobbing. We waited in silence for her to compose herself. She explained that she had been to see Anne’s grave in Scarborough but that this stone and this poem had moved her more.

  3

  Law Hill and the Origins of Wuthering Heights

  I’m standing in front of the gates of the former Law Hill School on Law Lane in Bank Top above Southowram, near Halifax. It is now a family home, but fastened to the outside wall is a newly sited blue plaque, which states that Emily Brontë, the author of Wuthering Heights, lived here from September 1838 to April 1839 and taught at Elizabeth Patchett’s school for girls, as it was then. These sixth months of work were the only paid employment Emily ever undertook. The work could be, by Emily’s own account, long and unpleasant. She wrote to Charlotte that it was ‘hard labour from six in the morning to near eleven at night … this is slavery’. Despite this, Emily managed to write a sequence of poems here that showed a new direction in her writing.

  I’m here to explore the story of these poems and her time at Law Hill, to find out more about Emily’s inner life. I want to familiarise myself with the key places that inspired her only novel, which was to scandalise Victorian society. And I want to explore the story of Law Hill itself, but also the surrounding Walter Clough Hall, Shibden Hall, High Sunderland Hall and the dramatic ground they cast their shadows over.

  Although teaching at Law Hill was Emily’s only paid work, her sister Charlotte never referred to it by name, preferring instead to call it the ‘Halifax School’. This is odd, given that the school was a good few miles from Halifax. For some reason, Charlotte attributed the writing of the Law Hill poems to Emily’s time at Roe Head, when she was a seventeen-year-old pupil of the school. Why did Charlotte change the dates so that it looked like Emily had written the poems three years previously? And why was she so keen to avoid naming the school? Some biographers have put the change down to a memory lapse, but the poems are clearly dated in the manuscript Charlotte used.

  We know that after the death of her siblings Charlotte changed quite a few details to make her family seem more respectable and orthodox; for instance, taking the reference to rape out of Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. She also doctored both Anne and Emily’s poems, including those that Emily wrote as a teacher here in Southowram. Did something happen to Emily at Law Hill that Charlotte wanted to conceal? Charlotte wrote to her friend Ellen Nussey to explain that Emily had given up her teaching job at the ‘Halifax School’ due to ‘ill health’, explaining that she could only regain her health by being ‘re-established by the bracing moorland air and free life of home’. But Law Hill is in a remote spot, surrounded by splendid countryside not dissimilar to that of Haworth. And there is no evidence, other than Charlotte’s letter, that Emily was unwell. On the contrary, she appears to have been the most physically robust of all the sisters, traipsing over mire and moor, through rain and hail. Could it be possible that Charlotte was covering something up?

  Law Hill was built by Jack Sharp, who is often cited as the main inspiration for the infernal character of Heathcliff. In the first half of the eighteenth century, Jack Sharp was adopted by John Walker of Walter Clough Hall, also in Southowram, about a mile from Law Hill. He was said to be an unscrupulous character who abused his uncle’s kindness. John Walker was a prosperous wool manufacturer and father to four children (Richard, John, Grace and Mary). But he most favoured his adopted son, who, through his deviousness, eventually managed to acquire much of Walker’s business. On John Walker’s death in 1771 (the year that Mr Earnshaw makes his trip to Liverpool in Wuthering Heights), Jack Sharp had full possession of the estate. But this wasn’t a legal status, and John’s eldest son, the rightful heir, mounted a challenge that he eventually won, ousting Jack in the process. Jack Sharp left, promising revenge. But not before stealing the family silver, as well as many other prized objects. He built Law Hill just one mile away so that it looked down on Walter Clough Hall. He then enticed the easy-going son into gambling and ruin. He also managed to systematically degrade a young cousin of the heir, as Hareton Earnshaw was degraded by Heathcliff. Jack Sharp’s manservant was called Joseph, the same name as Heathcliff’s manservant, and the surname of one of Miss Patchett’s servants was Earnshaw.

  Close by was High Sunderland Hall, the carvings above the door of which were similar to those of Wuthering Heights farmhouse. They included two griffins on the inside of the gateway and two misshapen nude men. A grotesque head formed the keystone to the arch of the gateway on the outside, while other heads with lewd faces peered from the cornices of the stonework. The hall was built on the edge of the moor in an exposed spot, similar to that of Wuthering Heights.

  In other words, there is much of Law Hill and its surroundings that influenced Emily’s writing at this time. On 7 December 1838, halfway through her time at Law Hill, Emily wrote a poem quite different to the others
she had been working on up to this point, which were poems relating to the fantasy world of Gondal that she and her sister Anne had immersed themselves in from childhood:

  How still, how happy! These are words

  That once would scarce agree together

  I loved the plashing of the surge –

  The changing heaven the breezy weather,

  More than smooth seas and cloudless skies

  And solemn, soothing, softened airs

  That in the forest woke no sighs

  And from the green spray shook no tears.

  How still, how happy! now I feel

  Where silence dwells is sweeter far

  Than laughing mirth with joyous swell

  However pure its raptures are

  Come sit down on this sunny stone

  ’Tis wintry light o’er flowerless moors –

  But sit – for we are all alone

  And clear expand heaven’s breathless shores

  I could think in the withered grass

  Spring’s budding wreaths we might discern

  The violet’s eye might shyly flash

  And young leaves shoot among the fern

  It is but thought – full many a night

  The snow shall clothe those hills afar

  And storms shall add a drearier blight

  And winds shall wage a wilder war

  Before the lark may herald in

  Fresh foliage twined with blossoms fair

  And summer days again begin

  Their glory-haloed crown to wear

  Yet my heart loves December’s smile

  As much as July’s golden beam

  Then let us sit and watch the while

  The blue ice curdling on the stream.

  This is uncharacteristic of Emily’s poems and expresses joy and happiness in a way that many of her others do not. The mood of the poem certainly doesn’t fit the sentiment she expresses in her letter to Charlotte. But who does the poem address? Who does she want to sit down beside her to share her love of the ‘flowerless moors’? As Brontë scholar Edward Chitham makes clear in his essay ‘Law Hill and Emily Brontë: Behind Charlotte’s Evasion’ in Brontë Studies, it is unlikely to have been a pupil, as the ‘alone’ implies that they are together for the first time without their pupils. It is, as Chitham again points out, more likely to be another teacher. One of Emily’s fellow teachers was a woman called Jane Aspden. By coincidence, Emily had visited Jane Aspden’s home when she was a girl. ‘Aspden’, also spelt ‘Aspen’ and ‘Aspin’, is the only English surname Emily ever uses in a Gondal poem, one called ‘Written in Aspin Castle’. I don’t want to jump to any undue conclusions, but it is not unreasonable to assume two things: one, that the two women were colleagues; and two, that they had things in common that would bond them in some way.

  This isn’t the only theory concerned with Emily’s personal relationships. For example, Sarah Fermi, in Emily’s Journal, maintains that Emily had a relationship with Robert Clayton, who died in 1836. And many readers and academics have been curious about how Emily is able to describe the love between Heathcliff and Catherine with such authentic passion. Of course, it’s not necessary to experience something to be able to write about it convincingly. Many authors write about murder, for example, without, we assume and hope, having first-hand knowledge. Shakespeare didn’t go to Denmark or Venice or North Africa. H.G. Wells never travelled in a time machine. Jules Verne never took a journey to the centre of the Earth. They made these things up. The imagination is a powerful tool. But that isn’t to say that Emily didn’t fall in love while she was at Law Hill. As I stand by the gate, so close to the moors that inspired Emily to write one of the most powerful accounts of obsessive and destructive love in English literature, it is tempting to wonder what really went on beneath its sturdy Georgian brickwork.

  Law Hill is situated in Bank Top, a small village above Southowram. There is a pub, the Cock and Bottle, and Sam’s minimarket, but not much else. I want to get a feel for the landscape around the school, a landscape that I’m sure, despite the long hours of work, Emily would have explored herself. My walk will take me anticlockwise along the ridge where the school is situated. I’m walking in September, the same month Emily came to Law Hill. The branches of the oaks are heavy with green acorns, the rowans ripe with bright-red berries. The sky is ominous with clouds that could disperse in the wind or empty their load over my head. I’ve got my waterproofs in my rucksack – I’m taking no chances.

  I walk up Dog Kennel Lane, an ancient pathway that is now an overgrown snicket between newly built houses, where washing lines sag with wet laundry. The view soon opens out to a huge TV mast, and the dirt track I’ve been following joins a road that sweeps around the ridge of Siddal Top. The view here is expansive, and you can see the whole of Halifax, surrounded by green and purple moor. Sometimes it is shrouded in mist. Today, the view is so clear that it seems to stretch out indefinitely. The Calder Valley has no end.

  This is the valley that hid the work of the Cragvale Coiners in the late eighteenth century as they clipped coins at an almost industrial rate, to the point where they destabilised the British economy. And it is the valley where Ted Hughes was born and Sylvia Plath was buried. It is a valley with many secrets. Surely Emily, in the little free time she was given, would have taken this short walk and been struck by the dramatic beauty of the landscape, and also by its mystery.

  Dean Clough is on my right, an impressive cluster of mill buildings and a thin chimney, first leased by the Crossleys to manufacture carpet. The mill would have been much smaller during Emily’s time. It was built up after 1841 to become the massive site that it is today. The mill was closed in 1983 and redeveloped by Ernest Hall. It is now home to art galleries, restaurants and bars, and this seat of industry has become a bed of leisure activities. Another mill stands out, close to the railway station, and its slim chimney reaches up improbably tall so that it seems to teeter and almost topple over.

  I turn left along a path and across a field. I see the wind farm above Todmorden and hear an ice-cream van in the valley below: ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’. A peculiar effect of the shape of the place amplifies the acoustics. I remember how excited I would get hearing that sound as a kid. I’d run down the street chasing the van. If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. The song is clearly humorous and playful, but I’ve always found the idea of encountering a group of bears gaily playing in the depths of the forest to be deeply disconcerting.

  There are characteristic landmarks around these parts that you invariably encounter once you reach a certain height, above the glacial scars that sweep and curve: Stoodley Pike high over Hebden; Emley Mast, a tapered concrete tower to the south, more than one thousand feet tall; and the wind farms over Ogden and Todmorden. I’m struck by the raw beauty of this landscape. By the rugged, scarred juts of fell and heath. What occurs to me about the Calder Valley, above industry and below ‘flowerless moors’, is just how rich and green it is, with dense deciduous forest. It is a great hiding place for criminals and outlaws – coiners, clippers, cutpurses and highway robbers. I stop at Siddal Top, perch on a bench and wonder if this is the spot where Emily wrote the line ‘come sit down beside me’ in one of the poems she wrote at Law Hill.

  Once on the move again, I drop down to a little hamlet called Park Nook, a cluster of weavers’ cottages with mullion windows, largely unchanged from Emily’s day. Only a man outside puffing on his vaping device spoils the illusion. In my mind, I replace the vaping machine for a clay pipe and his baseball cap for an eight-panelled cloth one. The path continues down through Elland Park Wood, which sits just above the River Calder. Soft green light dapples through the canopies of oak, ash, sycamore and beech. But above all, there are lots of old holly trees. It is a verdant space, with moss and lichen lining every bark and branch, so that in a certain light, at a certain time of day, everything glows green. Here the trees are not merely alive, they seem sentient. I think
about the rhizome network beneath my feet, busy with conversation between each life form. A nuthatch, resembling a small woodpecker, with a black robber’s mask, hunts for grubs in the nook of a trunk.

  Along a red-brick path, I stop to examine a fly-tipping spot. A piss-stained mattress is leaning against a piss-stained bed base. Near to this is a different type of hoard, a large heap of more than fifty black bin bags that have been dumped by the side of the path, containing rapid-grow compost and clay aeration balls, and what is left of the harvest: withered cannabis plants denuded of their budding flowers – another form of criminality so different to that of Emily’s day.

  I walk through an overgrown orchard that opens out into a crematorium. There are no graves, just little plastic-looking plaques and benches in honour of the dead, along with rotting flowers in concrete pots. Next to gold lettering, photos of the deceased are glued to black marble. This gaudy ceremony of remembrance would have been alien to Emily. The first official cremation in England wasn’t carried out until 1885. And it was much later, in 1902, that the Cremation Act allowed burial authorities to establish crematoria. Just as well, or the ending of Wuthering Heights, where Mr Lockwood searches for the graves of Edgar, Cathy and Heathcliff, would have been very different.

  I enter the darkness of the wood once again, past a kid on a scrambler motorbike, churning up the track, eventually making my way up a steep incline and out along a walled path. I pass a solitary wind turbine, a symbol of clean energy to some, an eyesore to others. They lie somewhere between fossil fuel and solar in my mind. I’ll not pretend that they are a welcome sight, but they are no more off-putting than a pylon. Perhaps time will soften the shock of the new and they will be seen by all with affection, in the way we now view industrial chimneys that once belched out toxic fumes.

  The path here passes Southowram Cricket Club, and I hear the familiar smack of willow on leather, followed by ‘played!’ and ‘let it go!’ Next is a sharp right down School Lane, before the village stocks, which stand outside Papa Jew’s village sandwich shop. The stocks were probably last used in the 1860s so would certainly have been active during Emily’s stay. Did she see these large wooden boards and hinges restraining some poor soul’s feet? Were they being insulted or spat on? Punched or kicked? Or something even worse? She certainly didn’t balk at depicting violence in her work. The scene where Nelly discovers Isabella’s dog hanging from a bridle hook still has the power to shock modern readers.