I wonder what the
reviewer would have thought of his own sagacity could he have beheld
the pair as I did. Vainly, too, might he have looked round for the
masculine partner in the firm of "Bell & Co." How I laugh in my
sleeve when I read the solemn assertions that _Jane Eyre_ was written
in partnership, and that it "bears the marks of more than one mind
and one sex."
'The wise critics would certainly sink a degree in their own
estimation if they knew that yours or Mr. Smith's was the first
masculine hand that touched the MS. of _Jane Eyre_, and that till you
or he read it no masculine eye had scanned a line of its contents, no
masculine ear heard a phrase from its pages. However, the view they
take of the matter rather pleases me than otherwise. If they like, I
am not unwilling they should think a dozen ladies and gentlemen aided
at the compilation of the book. Strange patchwork it must seem to
them--this chapter being penned by Mr., and that by Miss or Mrs.
Bell; that character or scene being delineated by the husband, that
other by the wife! The gentleman, of course, doing the rough work,
the lady getting up the finer parts. I admire the idea vastly.
'I have read _Madeline_. It is a fine pearl in simple setting.
Julia Kavanagh has my esteem; I would rather know her than many far
more brilliant personages.
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