. 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. We saw the carriage stop, and out of it sprang the
active well-knit figure of Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss
Bronte to see our father. My father, who had been walking up and
down the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests, and then,
after a moment's delay, the door opens wide, and the two gentlemen
come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, pale, with
fair straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over
thirty; she is dressed in a little _barege_ dress, with a pattern of
faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness;
our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This, then, is the
authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking,
reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the
books--the wonderful books. To say that we little girls had been
given _Jane Eyre_ to read scarcely represents the facts of the case;
to say that we had taken it without leave, read bits here and read
bits there, been carried away by an undreamed-of and hitherto
unimagined whirlwind into things, times, places, all utterly
absorbing, and at the same time absolutely unintelligible to us,
would more accurately describe our state of mind on that summer's
evening as we look at Jane Eyre--the great