'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!

She might not have been too kind towards our Jane, but Charlotte Brontë has always been my favourite of the three. Emily might have the Gothic edge and I've always had a place for the underrated Anne, but it's Jane Eyre that always calls me back. That is until to we arrive in Haworth, and from the coach, walk down a windy path past an extensive graveyard and across some cobbled streets and up to the little cottage.




(Photos thanks to my Italian comrade Ilaria)

I won't lie to you, as we walked along I thought I'd see Cathy begging at the windows. The wind was raging like it only can in Yorkshire and despite it being July, we were freezing cold- not that any other weather could have set the scene better.


It was, apart from the 60 Italian students I was herding, perfect. It was everything I imagined that it would be. The first time I read any Brontë was in Yorkshire, so to an extent I've always known the landscape, the people, the sounds and the smells that I was being taken to. But at Haworth it seemed even more alive. The graveyard is almost as large as the village is and you do feel like there is no world outside what you can see in front of you.


You can't help but think of Wuthering Heights. Luckily I had put my geeks intuition to use and remembered to take my copy along with me and though I did resist the urge to gather the children round for an atmospheric reading, I did have a quick moment to read over the passage in which Cathy appears to Lockwood:

'I must stop it, nevertheless!' I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, 'Let me in!' and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear. 'How can I!' I said at length. 'Let ME go, if you want me to let you in!' The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer. I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on! 'Begone!' I shouted. 'I'll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.' 'It is twenty years,' mourned the voice: 'twenty years. I've been a waif for twenty years!' Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward. I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright.

I'm ashamed to admit that I had forgotten how chilling that novel is. And stood there looking at that scene it wasn't hard to imagine how Emily thought it up, alone in that house while she listened to the wind.

So though my students probably came away still not entirely sure what they'd been doing there in the first place, I can surely say that I'll be glad to go back.