Northanger Abbey — EN

CHAPTER 14

The next morn­ing was fair, and Cather­ine almost expect­ed anoth­er attack from the assem­bled par­ty. With Mr. Allen to sup­port her, she felt no dread of the event: but she would glad­ly be spared a con­test, where vic­to­ry itself was painful, and was hearti­ly rejoiced there­fore at nei­ther see­ing nor hear­ing any­thing of them. The Tilneys called for her at the appoint­ed time; and no new dif­fi­cul­ty aris­ing, no sud­den rec­ol­lec­tion, no unex­pect­ed sum­mons, no imper­ti­nent intru­sion to dis­con­cert their mea­sures, my hero­ine was most unnat­u­ral­ly able to ful­fil her engage­ment, though it was made with the hero him­self. They deter­mined on walk­ing round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beau­ti­ful ver­dure and hang­ing cop­pice ren­der it so strik­ing an object from almost every open­ing in Bath.

“I nev­er look at it,” said Cather­ine, as they walked along the side of the riv­er, “with­out think­ing of the south of France.”

“You have been abroad then?” said Hen­ry, a lit­tle surprised.

“Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the coun­try that Emi­ly and her father trav­elled through, in The Mys­ter­ies of Udolpho. But you nev­er read nov­els, I dare say?”

“Why not?”

“Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read bet­ter books.”

“The per­son, be it gen­tle­man or lady, who has not plea­sure in a good nov­el, must be intol­er­a­bly stu­pid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great plea­sure. The Mys­ter­ies of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remem­ber fin­ish­ing it in two days—my hair stand­ing on end the whole time.”

“Yes,” added Miss Tilney, “and I remem­ber that you under­took to read it aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five min­utes to answer a note, instead of wait­ing for me, you took the vol­ume into the Her­mitage Walk, and I was oblig­ed to stay till you had fin­ished it.”

“Thank you, Eleanor—a most hon­ourable tes­ti­mo­ny. You see, Miss Mor­land, the injus­tice of your sus­pi­cions. Here was I, in my eager­ness to get on, refus­ing to wait only five min­utes for my sis­ter, break­ing the promise I had made of read­ing it aloud, and keep­ing her in sus­pense at a most inter­est­ing part, by run­ning away with the vol­ume, which, you are to observe, was her own, par­tic­u­lar­ly her own. I am proud when I reflect on it, and I think it must estab­lish me in your good opin­ion.”

“I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall nev­er be ashamed of lik­ing Udolpho myself. But I real­ly thought before, young men despised nov­els amazingly.”

“It is amaz­ing­ly; it may well sug­gest amaze­ment if they do—for they read near­ly as many as women. I myself have read hun­dreds and hun­dreds. Do not imag­ine that you can cope with me in a knowl­edge of Julias and Louisas. If we pro­ceed to par­tic­u­lars, and engage in the nev­er-ceas­ing inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ I shall soon leave you as far behind me as—what shall I say?—l want an appro­pri­ate sim­i­le.—as far as your friend Emi­ly her­self left poor Valan­court when she went with her aunt into Italy. Con­sid­er how many years I have had the start of you. I had entered on my stud­ies at Oxford, while you were a good lit­tle girl work­ing your sam­pler at home!”

“Not very good, I am afraid. But now real­ly, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?”

“The nicest—by which I sup­pose you mean the neat­est. That must depend upon the bind­ing.”

“Hen­ry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very imper­ti­nent. Miss Mor­land, he is treat­ing you exact­ly as he does his sis­ter. He is for­ev­er find­ing fault with me, for some incor­rect­ness of lan­guage, and now he is tak­ing the same lib­er­ty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not suit him; and you had bet­ter change it as soon as you can, or we shall be over­pow­ered with John­son and Blair all the rest of the way.”

“I am sure,” cried Cather­ine, “I did not mean to say any­thing wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”

“Very true,” said Hen­ry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are tak­ing a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for every­thing. Orig­i­nal­ly per­haps it was applied only to express neat­ness, pro­pri­ety, del­i­ca­cy, or refine­ment—peo­ple were nice in their dress, in their sen­ti­ments, or their choice. But now every com­men­da­tion on every sub­ject is com­prised in that one word.”

“While, in fact,” cried his sis­ter, “it ought only to be applied to you, with­out any com­men­da­tion at all. You are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Mor­land, let us leave him to med­i­tate over our faults in the utmost pro­pri­ety of dic­tion, while we praise Udolpho in what­ev­er terms we like best. It is a most inter­est­ing work. You are fond of that kind of reading?”

“To say the truth, I do not much like any other.”

“Indeed!”

“That is, I can read poet­ry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dis­like trav­els. But his­to­ry, real solemn his­to­ry, I can­not be inter­est­ed in. Can you?”

“Yes, I am fond of history.”

“I wish I were too. I read it a lit­tle as a duty, but it tells me noth­ing that does not either vex or weary me. The quar­rels of popes and kings, with wars or pesti­lences, in every page; the men all so good for noth­ing, and hard­ly any women at all—it is very tire­some: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be inven­tion. The speech­es that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs—the chief of all this must be inven­tion, and inven­tion is what delights me in oth­er books.”

“His­to­ri­ans, you think,” said Miss Tilney, “are not hap­py in their flights of fan­cy. They dis­play imag­i­na­tion with­out rais­ing inter­est. I am fond of history—and am very well con­tent­ed to take the false with the true. In the prin­ci­pal facts they have sources of intel­li­gence in for­mer his­to­ries and records, which may be as much depend­ed on, I con­clude, as any­thing that does not actu­al­ly pass under one’s own obser­va­tion; and as for the lit­tle embell­ish­ments you speak of, they are embell­ish­ments, and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn up, I read it with plea­sure, by whom­so­ev­er it may be made—and prob­a­bly with much greater, if the pro­duc­tion of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robert­son, than if the gen­uine words of Car­ac­ta­cus, Agri­co­la, or Alfred the Great.”

“You are fond of his­to­ry! And so are Mr. Allen and my father; and I have two broth­ers who do not dis­like it. So many instances with­in my small cir­cle of friends is remark­able! At this rate, I shall not pity the writ­ers of his­to­ry any longer. If peo­ple like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trou­ble in fill­ing great vol­umes, which, as I used to think, nobody would will­ing­ly ever look into, to be labour­ing only for the tor­ment of lit­tle boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right and nec­es­sary, I have often won­dered at the person’s courage that could sit down on pur­pose to do it.”

“That lit­tle boys and girls should be tor­ment­ed,” said Hen­ry, “is what no one at all acquaint­ed with human nature in a civ­i­lized state can deny; but in behalf of our most dis­tin­guished his­to­ri­ans, I must observe that they might well be offend­ed at being sup­posed to have no high­er aim, and that by their method and style, they are per­fect­ly well qual­i­fied to tor­ment read­ers of the most advanced rea­son and mature time of life. I use the verb ‘to tor­ment,’ as I observed to be your own method, instead of ‘to instruct,’ sup­pos­ing them to be now admit­ted as syn­ony­mous.”

“You think me fool­ish to call instruc­tion a tor­ment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor lit­tle chil­dren first learn­ing their let­ters and then learn­ing to spell, if you had ever seen how stu­pid they can be for a whole morn­ing togeth­er, and how tired my poor moth­er is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of see­ing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that ‘to tor­ment’ and ‘to instruct’ might some­times be used as syn­ony­mous words.”

“Very prob­a­bly. But his­to­ri­ans are not account­able for the dif­fi­cul­ty of learn­ing to read; and even you your­self, who do not alto­geth­er seem par­tic­u­lar­ly friend­ly to very severe, very intense appli­ca­tion, may per­haps be brought to acknowl­edge that it is very well worth-while to be tor­ment­ed for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. Consider—if read­ing had not been taught, Mrs. Rad­cliffe^18 would have writ­ten in vain—or per­haps might not have writ­ten at all.”

Cather­ine assent­ed—and a very warm pan­e­gyric from her on that lady’s mer­its closed the sub­ject. The Tilneys were soon engaged in anoth­er on which she had noth­ing to say. They were view­ing the coun­try with the eyes of per­sons accus­tomed to draw­ing, and decid­ed on its capa­bil­i­ty of being formed into pic­tures, with all the eager­ness of real taste. Here Cather­ine was quite lost. She knew noth­ing of drawing—nothing of taste: and she lis­tened to them with an atten­tion which brought her lit­tle prof­it, for they talked in phras­es which con­veyed scarce­ly any idea to her. The lit­tle which she could under­stand, how­ev­er, appeared to con­tra­dict the very few notions she had enter­tained on the mat­ter before. It seemed as if a good view were no longer to be tak­en from the top of an high hill, and that a clear blue sky was no longer a proof of a fine day. She was hearti­ly ashamed^29 of her igno­rance. A mis­placed shame. Where peo­ple wish to attach, they should always be igno­rant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inabil­i­ty of admin­is­ter­ing to the van­i­ty of oth­ers, which a sen­si­ble per­son would always wish to avoid. A woman espe­cial­ly, if she have the mis­for­tune of know­ing any­thing, should con­ceal it as well as she can.

The advan­tages of nat­ur­al fol­ly in a beau­ti­ful girl have been already set forth by the cap­i­tal pen of a sis­ter author; and to her treat­ment of the sub­ject I will only add, in jus­tice to men, that though to the larg­er and more tri­fling part of the sex, imbe­cil­i­ty in females is a great enhance­ment of their per­son­al charms, there is a por­tion of them too rea­son­able and too well informed them­selves to desire any­thing more in woman than igno­rance. But Cather­ine did not know her own advantages—did not know that a good-look­ing girl, with an affec­tion­ate heart and a very igno­rant mind, can­not fail of attract­ing a clever young man, unless cir­cum­stances are par­tic­u­lar­ly unto­ward. In the present instance, she con­fessed and lament­ed her want of knowl­edge, declared that she would give any­thing in the world to be able to draw; and a lec­ture on the pic­turesque imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed, in which his instruc­tions were so clear that she soon began to see beau­ty in every­thing admired by him, and her atten­tion was so earnest that he became per­fect­ly sat­is­fied of her hav­ing a great deal of nat­ur­al taste. He talked of fore­grounds, dis­tances, and sec­ond dis­tances—side-screens and perspectives—lights and shades; and Cather­ine was so hope­ful a schol­ar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she vol­un­tar­i­ly reject­ed the whole city of Bath as unwor­thy to make part of a land­scape. Delight­ed with her progress, and fear­ful of weary­ing her with too much wis­dom at once, Hen­ry suf­fered the sub­ject to decline, and by an easy tran­si­tion from a piece of rocky frag­ment and the with­ered oak which he had placed near its sum­mit, to oaks in gen­er­al, to forests, the enclo­sure of them, waste lands, crown lands and gov­ern­ment, he short­ly found him­self arrived at pol­i­tics; and from pol­i­tics, it was an easy step to silence. The gen­er­al pause which suc­ceed­ed his short dis­qui­si­tion on the state of the nation was put an end to by Cather­ine, who, in rather a solemn tone of voice, uttered these words, “I have heard that some­thing very shock­ing indeed will soon come out in London.”

Miss Tilney, to whom this was chiefly addressed, was star­tled, and hasti­ly replied, “Indeed! And of what nature?”

“That I do not know, nor who is the author. I have only heard that it is to be more hor­ri­ble than any­thing we have met with yet.”

“Good heav­en! Where could you hear of such a thing?”

“A par­tic­u­lar friend of mine had an account of it in a let­ter from Lon­don yes­ter­day. It is to be uncom­mon­ly dread­ful. I shall expect mur­der and every­thing of the kind.”

“You speak with aston­ish­ing com­po­sure! But I hope your friend’s accounts have been exag­ger­at­ed; and if such a design is known before­hand, prop­er mea­sures will undoubt­ed­ly be tak­en by gov­ern­ment to pre­vent its com­ing to effect.”

“Gov­ern­ment,” said Hen­ry, endeav­our­ing not to smile, “nei­ther desires nor dares to inter­fere in such mat­ters. There must be mur­der; and gov­ern­ment cares not how much.”

The ladies stared. He laughed, and added, “Come, shall I make you under­stand each oth­er, or leave you to puz­zle out an expla­na­tion as you can? No—I will be noble. I will prove myself a man, no less by the gen­eros­i­ty of my soul than the clear­ness of my head. I have no patience with such of my sex as dis­dain to let them­selves some­times down to the com­pre­hen­sion of yours. Per­haps the abil­i­ties of women are nei­ther sound nor acute—neither vig­or­ous nor keen. Per­haps they may want obser­va­tion, dis­cern­ment, judg­ment, fire, genius, and wit.”

“Miss Mor­land, do not mind what he says; but have the good­ness to sat­is­fy me as to this dread­ful riot.”

“Riot! What riot?”

“My dear Eleanor, the riot is only in your own brain. The con­fu­sion there is scan­dalous. Miss Mor­land has been talk­ing of noth­ing more dread­ful than a new pub­li­ca­tion which is short­ly to come out, in three duodec­i­mo vol­umes, two hun­dred and sev­en­ty-six pages in each, with a fron­tispiece to the first, of two tomb­stones and a lantern—do you under­stand? And you, Miss Morland—my stu­pid sis­ter has mis­tak­en all your clear­est expres­sions. You talked of expect­ed hor­rors in London—and instead of instant­ly con­ceiv­ing, as any ratio­nal crea­ture would have done, that such words could relate only to a cir­cu­lat­ing library, she imme­di­ate­ly pic­tured to her­self a mob of three thou­sand men assem­bling in St. George’s Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tow­er threat­ened, the streets of Lon­don flow­ing with blood, a detach­ment of the Twelfth Light Dra­goons (the hopes of the nation) called up from Northamp­ton to quell the insur­gents, and the gal­lant Cap­tain Fred­er­ick Tilney, in the moment of charg­ing at the head of his troop, knocked off his horse by a brick­bat from an upper win­dow. For­give her stu­pid­i­ty. The fears of the sis­ter have added to the weak­ness of the woman; but she is by no means a sim­ple­ton in gen­er­al.”

Cather­ine looked grave. “And now, Hen­ry,” said Miss Tilney, “that you have made us under­stand each oth­er, you may as well make Miss Mor­land under­stand yourself—unless you mean to have her think you intol­er­a­bly rude to your sis­ter, and a great brute in your opin­ion of women in gen­er­al. Miss Mor­land is not used to your odd ways.”

“I shall be most hap­py to make her bet­ter acquaint­ed with them.”

“No doubt; but that is no expla­na­tion of the present.”

“What am I to do?”

“You know what you ought to do. Clear your char­ac­ter hand­some­ly before her. Tell her that you think very high­ly of the under­stand­ing of women.”

“Miss Mor­land, I think very high­ly of the under­stand­ing of all the women in the world—especially of those—whoever they may be—with whom I hap­pen to be in company.”

“That is not enough. Be more serious.”

“Miss Mor­land, no one can think more high­ly of the under­stand­ing of women than I do. In my opin­ion, nature has giv­en them so much that they nev­er find it nec­es­sary to use more than half.”

“We shall get noth­ing more seri­ous from him now, Miss Mor­land. He is not in a sober mood. But I do assure you that he must be entire­ly mis­un­der­stood, if he can ever appear to say an unjust thing of any woman at all, or an unkind one of me.”

It was no effort to Cather­ine to believe that Hen­ry Tilney could nev­er be wrong. His man­ner might some­times sur­prise, but his mean­ing must always be just: and what she did not under­stand, she was almost as ready to admire, as what she did. The whole walk was delight­ful, and though it end­ed too soon, its con­clu­sion was delight­ful too; her friends attend­ed her into the house, and Miss Tilney, before they part­ed, address­ing her­self with respect­ful form, as much to Mrs. Allen as to Cather­ine, peti­tioned for the plea­sure of her com­pa­ny to din­ner on the day after the next. No dif­fi­cul­ty was made on Mrs. Allen’s side, and the only dif­fi­cul­ty on Catherine’s was in con­ceal­ing the excess of her pleasure.

The morn­ing had passed away so charm­ing­ly as to ban­ish all her friend­ship and nat­ur­al affec­tion, for no thought of Isabel­la or James had crossed her dur­ing their walk. When the Tilneys were gone, she became ami­able again, but she was ami­able for some time to lit­tle effect; Mrs. Allen had no intel­li­gence to give that could relieve her anx­i­ety; she had heard noth­ing of any of them. Towards the end of the morn­ing, how­ev­er, Cather­ine, hav­ing occa­sion for some indis­pens­able yard of rib­bon which must be bought with­out a moment’s delay, walked out into the town, and in Bond Street over­took the sec­ond Miss Thor­pe as she was loi­ter­ing towards Edgar’s Build­ings between two of the sweet­est girls in the world, who had been her dear friends all the morn­ing. From her, she soon learned that the par­ty to Clifton had tak­en place. “They set off at eight this morn­ing,” said Miss Anne, “and I am sure I do not envy them their dri­ve. I think you and I are very well off to be out of the scrape. It must be the dullest thing in the world, for there is not a soul at Clifton at this time of year. Belle went with your broth­er, and John drove Maria.”

Cather­ine spoke the plea­sure she real­ly felt on hear­ing this part of the arrangement.

“Oh! yes,” rejoined the oth­er, “Maria is gone. She was quite wild to go. She thought it would be some­thing very fine. I can­not say I admire her taste; and for my part, I was deter­mined from the first not to go, if they pressed me ever so much.”

Cather­ine, a lit­tle doubt­ful of this, could not help answer­ing, “I wish you could have gone too. It is a pity you could not all go.”

“Thank you; but it is quite a mat­ter of indif­fer­ence to me. Indeed, I would not have gone on any account. I was say­ing so to Emi­ly and Sophia when you over­took us.

Cather­ine was still uncon­vinced; but glad that Anne should have the friend­ship of an Emi­ly and a Sophia to con­sole her, she bade her adieu with­out much uneasi­ness, and returned home, pleased that the par­ty had not been pre­vent­ed by her refus­ing to join it, and very hearti­ly wish­ing that it might be too pleas­ant to allow either James or Isabel­la to resent her resis­tance any longer.