Grandmamma never noticed my ribbons--or rather my want of them.
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It really is of no use my trying to keep to dates. I have begun several
times, and I cannot get on with it. That last piece, dated the 23rd,
took me nearly a week to write; so that what was to-morrow when I began,
was behind yesterday before I had finished. I shall just go right on
without any more pother, and put a date now and then when it is very
particular.
Grandmamma has an assembly every week,--Tuesday is her day [Note 1.]--
and now and then an extra one on Thursday or Saturday. I do not think
anything would persuade her to have an assembly, or play cards, on a
Friday. But on a Sunday evening she always has her rubber, to Flora's
horror. It does not startle me, because I remember it always was so
when I lived with her at Carlisle: nor Annas, because she knew people
did such things in the South. I find Grandmamma usually spends the
winter at the Bath: but she has not quite made up her mind whether to go
this year or not, on account of all the tumults in the North. If the
royal army should march on London (and Annas says of course they will)
we may be shut up here for a long while. But Annas says if we heard
anything certain of it, she and Flora would set off at once to "the
island", as she always calls the Isle of Wight.
Last Tuesday, I was sitting by a young lady whom I have talked with more
than once; her name is Newton. I do not quite know how we got on to the
subject, but we began to talk politics. I said I could not understand
why it was, but people in the South did not seem to care for politics
nearly so much as I was accustomed to see done. Half the ladies in the
room appeared to be trimmers; and many more wore the red ribbon alone.
Such people, with us, would never be received into a Tory family.
"We do not take things so seriously as you," said she, with a diverted
look. "That with us is an opinion which with you is an enthusiasm. I
suppose up there, where the sun never shines, you have to make some sort
of noise and fuss to keep yourselves alive."
"`The sun never shines!'" cried I. "Now, really, Miss Newton! You
don't mean to say you believe that story?"
"I am only repeating what I have been told," said she. "I never was
north of Barnet."
"We are alive enough," said I. "I wonder if you are. It looks to me
much more like living, to make beds and boil puddings and stitch shirts,
than to sit on a sofa in a satin gown, flickering a fan and talking
rubbish."
"Oh, fie!" said Miss Newton, laughing, and tapping me on the arm with
her fan. "That really will not do, Miss Courtenay. You will shock
everybody in the room."
"I can tell you, most whom I see here shock me," said I. "They seem to
have no honour and no honesty. They think white and they wear red, or
the other way about, just as it happens. If the Prince were to enter
London on Monday, what colour would all these ribbons be next Tuesday
night?"
"The colour of yours, undoubtedly," she said, laughing.
"And do you call that honesty?" said I. "These people could not change
their opinions and feelings between Monday and Tuesday: and to change
their ribbons without them would be simply falsehood."
"I told you, you take things so seriously!" she answered.
"But is it not a serious thing?" I continued. "And ought we to take
serious things any way but seriously? Miss Newton, do you not see that
it is a question of right--not a question of taste or convenience? Your
allegiance is not a piece of jewellery, that you can give to the person
you like best; it is a debt, which you can only pay to the person to
whom you owe it. Do you not see that?"
"My dear Miss Courtenay," said Miss Newton, in a low voice, "excuse me,
but you are a little too warm. It is not thought good taste, you know,
to take up any subject so very decidedly as that."
"And is right only to be thought a matter of taste?" cried I, quite
disregarding her caution. "Am I to rule my life, as I do my trimmings,
by the fashion-book? We have not come to that yet in the North, I can
assure you! We are a sturdy race there, Madam, and don't swallow our
opinions as we do pills, of whatever the apothecary likes to put into
them. We prefer to know what we are taking."
"Do excuse me," said Miss Newton, with laughter in her eyes, and laying
her hand upon my arm; "but don't you see people are looking round?"
"Let them look round!" cried I. "I am not ashamed of one word that I
have spoken."
"Dear Miss Courtenay, I am not objecting to your words. Every one, of
course, has his opinions: yours, I suppose, are your father's."
"Not a bit of it!" cried I; "they are my own!"
"But young ladies of your age should not have strong opinions," said
she. She is about five years older than I am.
"Will you tell me how to help it?" said I. "I must go through the world
with my eyes shut, if I am not to form opinions."
"Oh yes, moderately," she replied.
"Shut my eyes moderately?" I asked; "or, form opinions moderately?"
"Both," answered Miss Newton, laughing.
"Your advice is worse than wasted, my dear Miss Newton," said a voice
behind us. "That young person will never do anything in moderation."
"You know better, Hatty!" said I.
"And, as your elder sister, my darling, let me give you a scrap of
advice. Men never like contentious, arguing women. Don't be a little
goose."
I don't know whether I am a goose or a duck, but I am afraid I could
have done something to Hatty just then which I should have found
agreeable, and she would not. That elder-sister air of hers is so
absurd, for she is not eighteen months older than I am; I can stand it
well enough from Sophy, but from Hatty it really is too ridiculous. But
that was nothing, compared with the insult she had offered, not so much
to me, as through me to all womanhood. "Men don't like!" Does it
signify three halfpence what they like? Are women to make slaves of
themselves, considering what men fancy or don't fancy? Men, mark you!
Not, your father, or brother, or husband: that would be right and
reasonable enough: but, men!
"Hatty," I said, after doing battle with myself for a moment, "I think I
had better give you no answer. If I did, and if my words and tones
suited my feelings, I should scream the house down."
She burst out laughing behind her fan. I walked away at once, lest I
should be tempted to reply further. I am afraid I almost ran, for I
came bolt against a gentleman in the corner, and had to stop and make my
apologies.
"Don't run quite over me, Cary, if it suit you," said somebody who, I
thought, was in Cumberland.
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Note 1. The assemblies on a lady's visiting day required no
invitations. The rooms were open to any person acquainted with members
of the family.
Note 2. Southerners are respectfully informed that the use of only for
but is a Northern peculiarity.
Note 3. Sensitive, delicate.