As
a forlorn hope, she tried one publishing house more--Messrs. Smith,
Elder and Co. Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on which
experience had taught her to calculate--there came a letter, which
she opened in the dreary expectation of finding two hard, hopeless
lines, intimating that Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. 'were not
disposed to publish the MS.,' and, instead, she took out of the
envelope a letter of two pages. She read it trembling. It
declined, indeed, to publish that tale, for business reasons, but
it discussed its merits and demerits so courteously, so
considerately, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so
enlightened, that this very refusal cheered the author better than
a vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was added,
that a work in three volumes would meet with careful attention.
I was then just completing 'Jane Eyre,' at which I had been working
while the one-volume tale was plodding its weary round in London:
in three weeks I sent it off; friendly and skilful hands took it
in. This was in the commencement of September, 1847; it came out
before the close of October following, while 'Wuthering Heights'
and 'Agnes Grey,' my sisters' works, which had already been in the
press for months, still lingered under a different management.
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