Page:The life of Charlotte Brontë (IA lifeofcharlotteb02gaskrich).pdf/149

 Those whom it concerns feel and find it out. To all others I wish only to be an obscure, steady-going, private character. To you, dear E, I wish to be a sincere friend. Give me your faithful regard; I willingly dispense with admiration."

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"It is like you to pronounce the reviews not good enough, and belongs to that part of your character which will not permit you to bestow unqualified approbation on any dress, decoration, &c., belonging to you. Know that the reviews are superb; and were I dissatisfied with them, I should be a conceited ape. Nothing higher is ever said, from perfectly disinterested motives, of any living authors. If all be well, I go to London this week; Wednesday, I think. The dressmaker has done my small matters pretty well, but I wish you could have looked them over, and given a dictum. I insisted on the dresses being made quite plainly."

At the end of November she went up to the "big Babylon," and was immediately plunged into what appeared to her a whirl; for changes, and scenes, and stimulus which would have been a trifle to others, were much to her. As was always the case with strangers, she was a little afraid at first of the family into which she was now received, fancying that the ladies looked on her with a mixture of respect and alarm; but in a few days, if this state of feeling ever existed, her simple, shy, quiet manners, her dainty personal and