The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Page 4

exist, and if I have warned one rash youth
from following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from
falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not been
written in vain. But, at the same time, if any honest reader shall have
derived more pain than pleasure from its perusal, and have closed the
last volume with a disagreeable impression on his mind, I humbly crave
his pardon, for such was far from my intention; and I will endeavour to
do better another time, for I love to give innocent pleasure. Yet, be it
understood, I shall not limit my ambition to this - or even to producing
'a perfect work of art': time and talents so spent, I should consider
wasted and misapplied. Such humble talents as God has given me I will
endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am able to amuse, I will try to
benefit too; and when I feel it my duty to speak an unpalatable truth,
with the help of God, I WILL speak it, though it be to the prejudice of
my name and to the detriment of my reader's immediate pleasure as
well as my own.
One word more, and I have done. Respecting the author's identity, I
would have it to he distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither
Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed to
them. As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot greatly
signify to those who know him only by his works. As little, I should
think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man, or a
woman, as one or two of my critics profess to have discovered. I take
the imputation in good part, as a compliment to the just delineation of
my female characters; and though I am bound to attribute much of the
severity of my censors to this suspicion, I make no effort to refute it,
because, in my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it
is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should
be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to
conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that
would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be
censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a

man.
JULY 22nd, 1848.

THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL


CHAPTER I

You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.
My father, as you know, was a sort of gentleman farmer in -shire; and I,
by his express desire, succeeded him in the same quiet occupation, not
very willingly, for ambition urged me to higher aims, and self-conceit
assured me that, in disregarding its voice, I was burying my talent in
the earth, and hiding my light under a bushel. My mother had done her
utmost to persuade me that I was capable of great achievements; but
my father, who thought ambition was the surest road to ruin, and
change but another word for destruction, would listen to no scheme for
bettering either my own condition, or that of my fellow mortals. He
assured me it was all rubbish, and exhorted me, with his dying breath,
to continue in the good old way, to follow his steps, and those of his
father before him, and let my highest ambition be to walk honestly
through the world, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, and
to transmit the paternal acres to my children in, at least, as flourishing a
condition as he left them to me.
'Well! - an honest and industrious farmer is one of the most useful
members of society; and if I devote my talents to the cultivation of my
farm, and the improvement of agriculture in general, I shall thereby
benefit, not only my own immediate connections and dependants, but,
in some degree, mankind at large:- hence I shall not have lived in vain.'
With such reflections as these I was endeavouring to console myself, as
I plodded home from the fields, one cold, damp, cloudy evening
towards the close of October. But the gleam of a bright red fire through
the parlour window had more effect in cheering my spirits, and
rebuking my thankless repinings, than all the sage reflections and good

resolutions I had forced my mind to frame; - for I was young then,
remember - only four-and- twenty - and had not acquired half the rule
over my own spirit that I now possess - trifling as that may be.
However, that haven of bliss must not