And, all through, an invisible, intangible presence, something mysterious, but omnipotently alive; something that excited these three sisters; something that atoned, that not only consoled for suffering and solitude and bereavement, but that drew its strength from these things; something that moved in this book like the soul of it; something that they called "genius".
Now that, as truly as I can set it down, is the impression conveyed to a child's mind by Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. And making some deductions for a child's morbid attraction to tombstones, and a child's natural interest in children, it seems to me even now that this innocent impression is the true one. It eliminates the inessential and preserves the proportions; above all, it preserves the figure of Emily Brontë, solitary and unique.
Anyhow, I have never been able to get away from it.
More than once Mr. Malham-Dembleby has approached us with his mysterious "Key". There was his "Key to _Jane Eyre_", published in the _Saturday Review_ in 1902; there was his "Lifting of the Brontë Veil", published in the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1907; and there was the correspondence that followed. Now he has gathered all his evidence together into one formidable book, and we are faced with what he calls his "miraculous and sensational" discovery that it was Charlotte and not Emily Brontë who wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that in _Wuthering Heights_ she immortalized the great tragic passion of her life, inspired by M. Héger, who, if you please, is Heathcliff.
This is Mr. Malham-Dembleby's most important contribution to the subject. M. Héger, Mr. Malham-Dembleby declares, was Heathcliff before he was M. Pelet, or Rochester, or M. Paul. And as it was Charlotte and not Emily who experienced passion, Charlotte alone was able to immortalize it.
So much Mr. Malham-Dembleby assumes in the interests of psychology. But it is not from crude psychological arguments that he forges his tremendous Key. It is from the internal evidence of the works, supported by much "sensational" matter from the outside.
By way of internal evidence then, we have first the sensational discovery of a work, _Gleanings in Craven, or The Tourists' Guide_, by "one Frederic Montagu", published at Skipton-in-Craven in 1838, which work the author of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ must have read and drawn upon for many things, names (including her own pseudonym of Currer Bell), descriptions of scenery, local legends, as of that fairy Jannet, Queen of the Malhamdale Elves, who haunted the sources of the Aire and suggested Rochester's Queen of Elves, his fairy, Janet Eyre. Parallel passages are given showing a certain correspondence between Montagu's traveller's tale and the opening scene of _Wuthering Heights_. Montagu goes on horseback to a solitary house, like Lockwood, and, like Lockwood, is shown to bed, dreams, and is awakened by a white-faced apparition (his hostess, not his host), who holds a lighted candle, like Heathcliff, and whose features, like Heathcliff's, are convulsed with diabolical rage, and so on. Mr. Malham-Dembleby, in a third parallel column, uses the same phrases to describe Jane Eyre's arrival at Rochester's house, her dreams, and the appearance of Rochester's mad wife at her bedside; his contention being that the two scenes are written by the same hand.