Charlotte Bronte

1895

She Was a Poor Talker and Drove Thackeray Out of the House.

In her charming memoirs Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie tells of an evening with Charlotte Bronte, the author of "Jane Eyre," spent at her father's house: 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, leaned 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, and there the conversation drops.

My sister and I were too young to be bored in those days — alarmed, impressed we might be, but not yet bored. A party was a party, a lioness was a lioness, and — shall I confess it? — at that time an extra dish of biscuits was enough to mark the evening. We felt all the importance of the occasion. Tea spread in the dining room, ladies in the drawing room, we roamed about inconveniently no doubt and excitedly, and in one of my excursions, crossing the hall, I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out into the darkness and shut the door quickly behind him. When I went back into the drawing room, again the ladies asked me where he was. I vaguely answered that I thought he was coming back.

I was puzzled at the time, nor was it all made clear to me until long years afterward, when one day Mrs. Proctor asked me if I knew what had happened once when my father had invited a party to meet Jane Eyre at his house. It was one of the dullest evenings she had ever spent in her life, she said. And then with a good deal of humor she described the situation — the ladies had all come expecting much delightful conversation, and the gloom and the constraint, and how finally, overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room, left the house and gone off to his club. — New York Advertiser.