Brontë’s Wildfell Hall is a romantic potboiler. Helen Huntingdon, a good woman, married to an abusive man, Arthur Huntingdon, an abusive husband, runs away and takes the name, Helen Graham. At Wildfell Hall, Graham meets Gilbert Markham, who immediately falls in love with her. The narrative is a series of misunderstandings and misfortunes, etc., that keep Markham and Graham apart until, at last, they are married.
Markham’s love burst upon him on a perfect at an ordinary May picnic. It’s a glorious August morning on a bluff overlooking a bay somewhere in Yorkshire. The ladies walk and sometimes ride in a pony carriage. Markham always remembers “the hard, white, sunny road, shaded here and there with bright green trees, and adorned with flowery banks and blossoming hedges of delicious fragrance; or through pleasant fields and lanes, all glorious in the sweet flowers and brilliant verdure of delightful May.”
Markham writes, “At length, our walk was ended. The increasing height and boldness of the hills had for some time intercepted the prospect; but, on gaining the summit of a steep acclivity, and looking downward, an opening lay before us—and the blue sea burst upon our sight!—deep violet blue—not deadly calm, but covered with glinting breakers—diminutive white specks twinkling on its bosom, and scarcely to be distinguished, by the keenest vision, from the little seamews that sported above, their white wings glittering in the sunshine: only one or two vessels were visible, and those were far away.”
When the luncheon is finished, “and the knives, dishes, &c., “restored to their baskets,” Graham finds a place to set up her easel and camp-stool on the edge of a steep and stony precipice. It looks dangerous, but Graham is looking for a fine prospect and is not frightened by its ruggedness. She is momentarily alarmed when Markham unannounced approaches her:
“Oh! I didn’t know it was you. —Why did you startle me so?” said she, somewhat testily. “I hate anybody to come upon me so unexpectedly.”
“Why, what did you take me for?” said I: “if I had known you were so nervous, I would have been more cautious; but—”
“Well, never mind. What did you come for? Are they all coming?”
“No; this little ledge could scarcely contain them all.”
“I’m glad, for I’m tired of talking.”
The food and drink at their “very respectable collation” are not given.
*Bronte published under the name Acton Bell.
See Anne. Bronte. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 1848; http://www.gutenberg.org/files/969/969-h/969-h.htm