Note 278 — Chapter II · INSTITUTIONS

Ibid., I, 237. Thackeray’s patronizing smugness and antique attitude towards women come out with a beautiful unconsciousness in a letter to one of them, and that one a prime favorite with him, Mrs. Brookfield: “I am afraid I don’t respect your sex enough, though. Yes I do, when they are occupied with loving and sentiment rather than with other business of life.” His fair correspondent could not retort that he would have found a congenial soul in Meredith’s Lady Wathin, who “both dreaded and detested brains in women, believing them to be devilish;” but she might have reminded him of the twinkling chivalry of Christopher North, who confessed, “To my aged eyes a neat ankle is set off attractively by a slight shade of cerulian.”