et. Miss Wooler is and has been very pleasant. She is like good
wine: I think time improves her; and really whatever she may be in
person, in mind she is younger than when at Roe Head. Papa and she
get on extremely well. I have just heard papa walk into the
dining-room and pay her a round compliment on her good-sense. I
think so far she has been pretty comfortable and likes Haworth, but
as she only brought a small hand-basket of luggage with her she
cannot stay long.

'How are _you_? Write directly. With my love to your mother, etc.,
good-bye, dear Nell.--Yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.

TO MISS WOOLER

'_February_ 6_th_, 1852.

'Ellen Nussey, it seems, told you I spent a fortnight in London last
December; they wished me very much to stay a month, alleging that I
should in that time be able to secure a complete circle of
acquaintance, but I found a fortnight of such excitement quite
enough. The whole day was usually spent in sight-seeing, and often
the evening was spent in society; it was more than I could bear for a
length of time. On one occasion I met a party of my critics--seven
of them; some of them had been very bitter foes in print, but they
were prodigiously civil face to face. These gentlemen seemed
infinitely grander, more pompous, dashing, showy, than the few
authors I saw. Mr. Thackeray, for instance, is a man of quiet,
simple demeanour; he is however looked upon with some awe and even
distrust. His conversation is very peculiar, too perverse to be
pleasant. It was proposed to me to see Charles Dickens, Lady Morgan,
Mesdames Trollope, Gore, and some others, but I was aware these
introductions would bring a degree of notoriety I was not disposed to
encounter; I declined, therefore, with thanks.

'Nothing charmed me more during my stay in town than the pictures I
saw. One or two private collections of Turner's best water-colour
drawings were indeed a treat; his later oil-paintings are strange
things--things that baffle description.

'I twice saw Macready act--once in _Macbeth_ and once in _Othello_.
I astonished a dinner-party by honestly saying I did not like him.
It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting. A