A Foggy day in the Solent

This amused me yesterday if only because it is a standing joke here that Martin, my colleague is a Misanthropist.

1801. - I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.

From the first paragraph of 'Wuthering Heights'

but not as much as this

I HAVE just read over 'Wuthering Heights,' and, for the first time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, perhaps, really are) its faults; have gained a definite notion of how it appears to other people - to strangers who knew nothing of the author; who are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid; to whom the inhabitants, the customs, the natural characteristics of the outlying hills and hamlets in the West Riding of Yorkshire are things alien and unfamiliar.

To all such 'Wuthering Heights' must appear a rude and strange production. The wild moors of the North of England can for them have no interest: the language, the manners, the very dwellings and household customs of the scattered inhabitants of those districts must be to such readers in a great measure unintelligible, and - where intelligible - repulsive. Men and women who, perhaps, naturally very calm, and with feelings moderate in degree, and little marked in kind, have been trained from their cradle to observe the utmost evenness of manner and guardedness of language, will hardly know what to make of the rough, strong utterance, the harshly manifested passions, the unbridled aversions, and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland hinds and rugged moorland squires, who have grown up untaught and unchecked, except by Mentors as harsh as themselves. A large class of readers, likewise, will suffer greatly from the introduction into the pages of this work of words printed with all their letters, which it has become the custom to represent by the initial and final letter only - a blank line filling the interval. I may as well say at once that, for this circumstance, it is out of my power to apologise; deeming it, myself, a rational plan to write words at full length. The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does - what feeling it spares - what horror it conceals.

From Charlotte Bronte's preface to the 1850 edition of 'Wuthering Heights'

This page gives you directions to Top Withins - possibly the real Wuthering Heights but it doesn't really matter if it is or not. The area is correct and the atmosphere is 100% right. Except maybe the Japanese directions on the sign-posts - they do seem a little incongruous. Why are the Japanese so fascinated with the Brontes? Bearing in mind the absurdities which can be found at the site www.engrish.com I wonder how much of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre etc. gets lost in the translation. There must be such a cultural gap between early 19th Century Yorkshire and 21st Century Japan, that it must be like reading a tale of extra terrestrials. This of course, is echoed in what Charlotte Bronte said in the Wuthering Heights Preface above though I don't think she had Japanese readers in mind. I wonder in what year Wuthering Heights was first read by a Japanese Person? I have turned that sentence around several times and it still seems clumsy. Any suggestions for a better way of phrasing it? My aphasia seems to be kicking in.

I don't know why but just thinking of the Haworth Moors has relaxed me quite a bit. I can't find a webcam of the moors themselves but here is Haworth itself looking very empty but the picture is a few days old and early in the morning. I hope it is working for you. A strange use of tenses. I used to go up to Haworth quite a lot but it has been a long time. It is a nice easy ride from here so maybe a winter trip is on the cards.

An ending.