ry
fate; and if I cannot be quite stoical, I think I am still tolerably
resigned.

'Mr. Lewes does not like the opening chapter, wherein he resembles
you.

'I have permitted myself the treat of spending the last week with my
friend Ellen. Her residence is in a far more populous and stirring
neighbourhood than this. Whenever I go there I am unavoidably forced
into society--clerical society chiefly.

'During my late visit I have too often had reason, sometimes in a
pleasant, sometimes in a painful form, to fear that I no longer walk
invisible. _Jane Eyre_, it appears, has been read all over the
district--a fact of which I never dreamt--a circumstance of which the
possibility never occurred to me. I met sometimes with new
deference, with augmented kindness: old schoolfellows and old
teachers, too, greeted me with generous warmth. And again,
ecclesiastical brows lowered thunder at me. When I confronted one or
two large-made priests, I longed for the battle to come on. I wish
they would speak out plainly. You must not understand that my
schoolfellows and teachers were of the Clergy Daughters School--in
fact, I was never there but for one little year as a very little
girl. I am certain I have long been forgotten; though for myself, I
remember all and everything clearly: early impressions are
ineffaceable.

'I have just received the _Daily News_. Let me speak the truth--when
I read it my heart sickened over it. It is not a good review, it is
unutterably false. If _Shirley_ strikes all readers as it has struck
that one, but--I shall not say what follows.

'On the whole I am glad a decidedly bad notice has come first--a
notice whose inexpressible ignorance first stuns and then stirs me.
Are there no such men as the Helstones and Yorkes?

'Yes, there are.

'Is the first chapter disgusting or vulgar?

'_It is not_, _it is real_.

'As for the praise of such a critic, I find it silly and nauseous,
and I scorn it.

'Were my sisters now alive they and I would laugh over this notice;
but they sleep, they will wake no more for me, and I am a fool to be
so moved by what is not worth a sigh.--Believe me, yours sincerely,

'C. B.

'You must spare me if I seem hasty, I fear I really am not so f