Besides the
Carlyles, there were Mrs. Elliott and Miss Perry, Mrs. Procter and
her daughter, most of my father's habitual friends and companions.
In the recent life of Lord Houghton I was amused to see a note quoted
in which Lord Houghton also was convened. Would that he had been
present--perhaps the party would have gone off better. It was a
gloomy and a silent evening. Every one waited for the brilliant
conversation which never began at all. Miss Bronte retired to the
sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind
governess, Miss Truelock. The room looked very dark, the lamp began
to smoke a little, the conversation grew dimmer and more dim, the
ladies sat round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by
the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all. Mrs.
Brookfield, who was in the doorway by the study, near the corner in
which Miss Bronte was sitting, leant forward with a little
commonplace, since brilliance was not to be the order of the evening.
"Do you like London, Miss Bronte?" she said; another silence, a
pause, then Miss Bronte answers, "Yes and No," very gravely. Mrs.
Brookfield has herself reported the conversation. My sister and I
were much too young to be bored in those days; alarmed, impressed we
might be, but not yet bored.
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