Nelly Dean
Page 44
Speaking of young love, I am sure you will be pleased to hear that Cathy and Hareton’s modest wedding went off as planned, and the pair are now happily settled at Thrushcross Grange. Hareton will never be as cultivated as Mr Linton was, but he has gone far to mend his deficiencies. If you met him now, you would never guess that he had only but lately learned to read: you would find him just the sort of plain-spoken, down-to-earth country squire – more interested in his horses, his dogs, and his crops than in ideas – as can be met with in many a great house in Yorkshire. Cathy has come into her own as a lady, and is none the worse a mistress for having been for a time little more than a serving-maid herself. They have a little girl now, and Cathy is expecting her second confinement in December.
Old Joseph has been gathered to his forefathers. He had accumulated quite a fortune in savings from his wages – well over a thousand pounds – and we all thought he would leave it to his nephew Bram, who had cared for him patiently in his last months at Wuthering Heights. You may imagine our surprise, then, at finding that he had bequeathed the whole sum to Hareton! The young couple consulted with me about it, however, and we concluded that it would be an injustice to accept the inheritance, and so it has been put in trust for Bram, until he comes of age.
Now on to the substance of your letter: how very kind of you to offer to take me on as the housekeeper of your London establishment, and at double my present wages, too! I feel honoured that you should think of me. Yet if it be true, as you say, that servants in London are all ‘rascals, layabouts, and thieves’, why, I should think it would be uphill work to manage a house full of them – and a lonely post, too, for an honest woman. As for your claim that I owe you this service as compensation for the damage done to your health by our ‘dastardly climate’, why, the climate is not my doing – and if your health had not sent you to Italy, you would never have met the Honourable Miss De Lacy, who it appears has effected your total cure, since you think of settling again in England. And so you have some cause to be grateful to our climate, after all!
But I am only teasing you, Mr Lockwood, as I think you were teasing me. The truth is that I have agreed to take up a position of a different kind. Next Saturday, Ellen Dean, housekeeper at Thrushcross Grange, will be transformed into Mrs Robert Kenneth, wife to a doctor and mother to four children, ranging in age from two years to twenty-five. Not so different from what I have done already, you may say: managing a household, and raising the children of another mother, but there is a world of difference to me. And who knows, I may yet have a child myself – I am younger now than my mother was when she bore me.
You took such a kind interest in all I told you of my masters and mistresses – of the Earnshaws, and Lintons, and Heathcliffs – that I have presumed you will not be averse to hearing a little more, and will even extend your interest to a line or two about myself. If I have presumed too much, let me offer my apologies for wasting your time with such a long letter as this has been.
Sincerely,
Nelly Dean
Acknowledgements
This novel grows in large part out of the experience of teaching Wuthering Heights to generations of Williams College students. I thank them for the curiosity, intelligence and insight they have always brought to those classes. I am additionally grateful to Arletta Bussiere and Samreen Kazmi for assistance with research, and to the latter for her many insights into servant/employer relations. Thanks are also due to Williams College and the Oakley Center for supporting this project financially and collegially. I would also like to thank the Brontë Parsonage Museum and the people of Haworth for their part in ensuring that Haworth, the Parsonage, and the lands around it remain a place where visitors can connect with the spirit of the Brontës’ novels. Special thanks to Brenda Taylor and Julie Akhurst for the private tour of Ponden Hall.
Ilon Specht and Elinor Case-Pethica listened to every piece of this novel as it was written. They were my first audience, and their encouragement and understanding have been vital to me throughout. Many thanks to my agent, Deborah Schneider, and to Katie Espiner and Cassie Browne of Borough Press for all they have done to bring this project to fruition. Thanks most of all to two writers, Paul Park and Tracy Chevalier, who have generously offered expert advice and practical assistance at every stage of this project, while serving as role models of excellence in this curious enterprise of writing fiction. Their inspiration and their friendship are pearls beyond price.
About the Author
Alison Case received her BA from Oberlin College and her PhD in English Literature from Cornell University. A professor of English at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, she has published two books and many articles on nineteenth-century British fiction and poetry. This is her first novel.
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