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? -- I 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 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 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.
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