She was always extremely sensitive about her personal appearance, considering herself irredeemably ugly, and always thinking that people must be disgusted with her looks. She purposely made her heroine in "Jane Eyre" unattractive, as she felt it an injustice that a woman must always be judged by her looks, and she felt that novelists were somewhat to blame in the matter, as they always made their heroines beautiful in person, however unattractive in mind or character. She was extremely short,--"stunted," as she herself calls it,--never having grown any after the days of her starvation at Cowan's Bridge. She had soft brown hair, and good and expressive eyes, though she was so near-sighted; a large mouth; and a broad, square, somewhat overhanging forehead. Her voice was very sweet, and she was not at all the unattractive person she fancied herself, though by no means beautiful. She was exquisitely neat in her dress, and dainty about her gloves and shoes. She had a keen and delicate touch, and could do any difficult work with her hands, which were the smallest perhaps ever seen upon a grown woman. Her needlework was marvellous, and she was an exquisite housekeeper, attending to the minutest details herself. Her circle of friends and acquaintances was a very narrow one all her life, though after the publication of "Jane Eyre" it of course widened and improved. Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Gaskell proved themselves warm and enthusiastic friends to Charlotte; and Thackeray, who met her in London, where she visited her publishers, was much pleased with her, and wrote very kindly of her after her death. Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth became much interested in her, and she enjoyed her visits to them in Westmoreland very highly. The Lake country was a revelation to her, though she was somewhat oppressed by seeing it all in company. She writes:-- "If I could only have dropped unseen out of the carriage, and gone away by myself in amongst those grand hills and sweet dales, I should have drunk in the full power of this glorious scenery. In company, this can hardly be." Again she writes to another:-- "Decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search for the picturesque in a carriage. A wagon, a spring-cart, even a post-chaise might do; but a carriage upsets everything. I longed to slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and dales. Erratic and vagrant instincts tormented me; and these I was obliged to control, or rather suppress, for fear of growing in any degree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to 'the lioness,' the authoress."