Biographical Notes on the Pseudonymous Bells | Page 6

bundle and set on its feet in the farmhouse
kitchen, to the hour when Nelly Dean found the grim, stalwart corpse
laid on its back in the panel-enclosed bed, with wide-gazing eyes that
seemed 'to sneer at her attempt to close them, and parted lips and sharp
white teeth that sneered too.'
Heathcliff betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is NOT his love
for Catherine; which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a passion such
as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some evil genius; a fire
that might form the tormented centre--the ever- suffering soul of a
magnate of the infernal world: and by its quenchless and ceaseless
ravage effect the execution of the decree which dooms him to carry
Hell with him wherever he wanders. No; the single link that connects
Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely-confessed regard for Hareton
Earnshaw--the young man whom he has ruined; and then his
half-implied esteem for Nelly Dean. These solitary traits omitted, we
should say he was child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man's shape
animated by demon life--a Ghoul--an Afreet.
Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not
know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know: the writer who possesses
the creative gift owns something of which he is not always
master--something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.
He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and

principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply
without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no
longer consent to 'harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the
furrow'--when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the
crying of the driver'-- when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of
sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a
Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as
Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine,
you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you-- the
nominal artist--your share in it has been to work passively under
dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would not be
uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice. If
the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve
praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as
little deserve blame.
'Wuthering Heights' was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools,
out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a
solitary moor; gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be
elicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one
element of grandeur--power. He wrought with a rude chisel, and from
no model but the vision of his meditations. With time and labour, the
crag took human shape; and there it stands colossal, dark, and frowning,
half statue, half rock: in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in
the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and
moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy
fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant's foot.
CURRER BELL.

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