BRONTE.'
It cannot be said that Charlotte Bronte and Thackeray gained by personal
contact. 'With him I was painfully stupid,' she says. It was the case
of Heine and Goethe over again. Heine in the presence of the king of
German literature could talk only of the plums in the garden. Charlotte
Bronte in the presence of her hero Thackeray could not express herself
with the vigour and intelligence which belonged to her correspondence
with Mr. Williams. Miss Bronte, again, was hyper-critical of the smaller
vanities of men, and, as has been pointed out, she emphasised in
_Villette_ a trivial piece of not unpleasant egotism on Thackeray's part
after a lecture--his asking her if she had liked it. This question,
which nine men out of ten would be prone to ask of a woman friend, was
'over-eagerness' and '_naivete_' in her eyes. Thackeray, on his side,
found conversation difficult, if we may judge by a reminiscence by his
daughter Mrs. Ritchie:--
'One of the most notable persons who ever came into our bow-windowed
drawing-room in Young Street is a guest never to be forgotten by
me--a tiny, delicate, little person, whose small hand nevertheless
grasped a mighty lever which set all the literary world of that day
vibrating. I can still see the scene quite plainly--the hot summer
evening, the open windows, the carriage driving to the door as we all
sat silent and expectant; my father, who rarely waited, waiting with
us; our governess and my sister and I all in a row, and prepared for
the great event.
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