“Northanger Abbey” begins in a quizzical vein, with a record of
Catherine Morland’s disqualifications for her post of heroine,
according to the popular acceptation of the term in Jane Austen’s days.
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would
have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the
character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition,
were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without
being neglected or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name
was Richard, and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable
independence, besides two good livings, and he was not in the least
addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful
plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a
good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born, and
instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody
might expect, she still lived on--lived to have six children more, to
see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself.
A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where
there are heads, and legs, and arms enough for the number, but the
Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general
very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as
any. She had a thin, awkward figure, a sallow skin, without colour,
dark lank hair, and strong features; so much for her person; and not
less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all
boys’ plays, and greatly preferred cricket, not merely to dolls, but
to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding
a canary-bird, and watering a rose-bush. Indeed, she had no taste
for a garden, and if she gathered flowers at all it was chiefly for
the pleasure of mischief, at least so it was conjectured, from her
always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. Such were her
propensities; her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never
could learn or understand anything before she was taught, and sometimes
not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid.
Her mother was three months in teaching her only to repeat ‘The
Beggar’s Petition,’ and, after all, her next sister, Sally, could
say it better than she could. Not that Catherine was always stupid;
by no means; she learned the fable of ‘The Hare and Many Friends’ as
quickly as any girl in England. Her mother wished her to learn music,
and Catherine was sure she should like it, for she was very fond of
tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinet, so at eight years old she
began. She learned a year, and could not bear it; and Mrs. Morland,
who did not insist on her daughter’s being accomplished in spite of
incapacity and distaste, allowed her to leave off. The day which
dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Catherine’s life.
Her taste for drawing was not superior, though whenever she could
obtain the outside of a letter from her mother, or seize upon any other
odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that way, by drawing
houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like one another.
Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French by her
mother. Her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked
her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange, unaccountable
character! for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old,
she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom stubborn,
scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few
interruptions of tyranny. She was, moreover, noisy and wild, hated
confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as
rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.”
The story agrees with the first paragraph. With the exception of “Pride
and Prejudice,” “Northanger Abbey”--another of Jane Austen’s earlier
novels--is the most purely humorous and satirical of the whole.
At fifteen, appearances are mending with Catherine. She begins to curl
her hair, and long for balls. Her complexion improves, her features
are softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes gain more animation,
her figure more consequence, and from fifteen to seventeen her mind is
in training for a heroine. She reads--in addition to the stories which
had formerly constituted all her voluntary reading--such books as Jane
Austen tells us, in her merry mockery, heroines must read in order to
supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable
and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives. Catherine
studies Pope and Gray, Thomson and Shakespeare. Can Catherine’s
sisters, in these days of much cramming and innumerable pursuits, bring
forward even so respectable a list of authors with whom the young
readers are intimately acquainted?
In drawing[19] Catherine is most wanting. Though she cannot write
sonnets, she can read them; though there seems no chance of her
throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the piano, of
her own composition, she can listen to other people’s performances
with very little fatigue. But she has not even sufficient command of
the pencil to attempt a sketch of her lover’s profile, that she may
be detected in the design. She is not so conscious of the deficiency
in the meantime, since she has reached the age of seventeen without
the suspicion of a lover. Her biographer accounts for the blank in
that bantering tone she assumes:--“There was not one lord in the
neighbourhood; no, not even a baronet. There was not one family among
their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally
found at their door; not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her
father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.”
But the perverseness of forty families cannot interfere with the
destiny of a young lady who is to be a heroine: the wind will blow a
hero to her.
Mr. Allen, the principal squire in Mr. Morland’s Wiltshire parish of
Fullerton, is ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution;
and his wife, a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably
aware that, if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own
village, she must seek them abroad, invites the happy Catherine to
accompany her.
Catherine was in luck, for Bath was the queen of the old
watering-places; and a popular English watering-place at the close of
the last century was a centre of bustle and gaiety, just as a country
village was apt to be sunk in obscurity.
Before beginning Catherine’s Bath career, Jane Austen suddenly lapses
into seriousness for a moment, to tell her readers--lest they should
ever have doubted it--that this young Catherine, going out into the
world to meet her fortune, has an affectionate heart, her disposition
is cheerful and open--without conceit or affectation of any kind,
her manners are just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a
girl, her person is pleasing, and when in good looks pretty. Here the
author’s not very lavish indulgence to her heroine collapses--“and her
mind,” the sentence ends, is “about as ignorant and uninformed as the
female mind at seventeen usually is.”
How old was the judge who made this sweeping, though good-humouredly
disdainful estimate of the mental acquirements of her companions?
Just five or six years older. Jane Austen had not quite attained the
venerable age of twenty-three when she uttered this severe reflection.
Compared to some of Jane Austen’s other heroines, Catherine Morland
has none of the astuteness and brilliance of Elizabeth Bennet and Emma
Woodhouse, the delicate intuitions of Fanny Price, or the gentle,
womanly wisdom of Anne Elliot. Catherine is a simple, single-hearted
girl who, in her guilelessness and ignorance of the world, falls into
mistakes impossible for the others. But she does not lack judgment,
which one feels will ripen with her years. Above all, she is like every
one of her author’s heroines, right-minded and wholesome-hearted. At
the same time she is a genuinely girlish girl, as much carried away
by her feelings and her imagination as the most foolish of good girls
can be; but withal we always recognise in her the possibilities of a
sensible as well as an amiable woman.
The witty banter on the author’s part is soon resumed. At parting, Mrs.
Morland, in place of solemnly warning her daughter against the noblemen
and baronets who were in the habit of cozening away young ladies to
remote farm-houses, simply bids her wrap herself warm about the throat
when she comes from “the Rooms” at night, and try to keep an account of
what money she spends.
Sally, or rather Sarah (for what young lady of common gentility will
reach the age of sixteen without altering her name as far as she can?),
the sister next Catherine in age, does not exact from her a promise to
write by every post, and repeat each detail that happens to her.
Mr. Morland, instead of giving Catherine an unlimited order on his
banker, or even putting a hundred pounds bank bill into her hands,
gives her only ten guineas, and promises her more when she wants it.
Nay, the journey to Bath provides neither tempests nor robbers (see
again the “Mysteries of Udolpho,” with which Jane Austen was so
familiar, to which she refers with strong and repeated commendation in
this very story, which is, however, in many passages, a burlesque on
the old romance). No greater alarm occurs than a fear on Mrs. Allen’s
side of having once left her clogs behind her at an inn, and that
fortunately turns out to be groundless.
The mention of the clogs, and the inference of the nights at the inns
by the way, a necessary experience of travellers who journeyed in their
own carriages, or by post as Jane Austen herself was accustomed to do,
are the sole things which remind us that the little party travelling
thus in the last century do not belong to our neighbours to-day.
Farther removed from us is Bath when it was the height of the
fashion, and frequented by crowds of pleasure-seekers in addition to
health-seekers. Its gaiety was at once systematic and exuberant, when
all the company gathered regularly in the Pump-room, where the visitors
not only drank their allotted draughts of water, but walked about, sat,
read, gossiped, or looked at the pretty knick-nacks in what formed
a kind of bazaar. The evenings were still more social; with their
assemblies, held within the early hours that permitted their nightly
recurrence, their parties for tea and cards, in addition to dancing,
their Master of the Ceremonies to play propriety. Bath brought together
old friends and strangers from the ends of the earth, who would not
otherwise have had a chance of meeting. It enabled quiet, home-keeping
young people to see and enjoy, for a little, society and the great
world. In its use and abuse it was the scene where innumerable love
affairs had their origin and marriages were made up. Its seasons had
their stars, belles, and lions, like the London seasons.
A few foreign watering-places offer at present the nearest resemblance,
but that in a very modified degree, to Bath in its palmy days.
Jane Austen knew Bath well, both by reading and personal experience,
alike in her youth and in her mature years. She introduces it as
the locality--largely or in part--of two of her novels, and has a
pointed reference to it in a third.[20] The lady humourist indicates
with a sharp pen, as she indicates most things, the advantages and
disadvantages of the watering-places, which figured so prominently in
the social life of the period. In “Northanger Abbey” the advantages
rather prevail. If Bath brings Catherine some undesirable friends, it
brings her also the indispensable hero--not forthcoming elsewhere.
Miss Austen had resided years in Bath, and it was common ground which
had lost its illusions to her when, after she had quitted it, she
brought it and its convenient round of visitors and gaieties into
“Persuasion.”
I fancy I detect a different spirit in treating the subject in
“Northanger Abbey.” Bath had still to the author something of the
ineffable charm it must have had for Catherine Morland, in the glamour
of first acquaintance, and of the introduction of a country clergyman’s
young daughter into a brilliant and fascinating society--a society
which was then great in courtly, gallant, distinguished figures--royal,
naval, military, literary. Tunbridge had waned before Bath, which was
the field of much picturesque and interesting display. Now it was a
wandering prince or princess, who was to be mobbed and stared at by the
well-dressed throng. Another evening, patriotic enthusiasm persecuted
a brave soldier, who had served in Egypt under Abercrombie and Moore,
or a gallant sailor who had nailed his colours to the mast under
Nelson or Collingwood; or it might be the crowd surged to and fro to
enable honestly marvelling and admiring eyes to gaze on that wonderful
genius, little Miss Burney, full of self-consciousness, as she tripped
through the Rooms under the wing of the great brewer’s wife, beautiful,
dashing Mrs. Thrale, in the centre of a cluster of learned men and
_petit-maîtres_.
Mrs. Allen, Catherine Morland’s chaperon, is thoroughly
commonplace--except in a passion for dress, if that can be called
uncommon. She believes she has done her best for Catherine in preparing
her for her introduction to society, when Mrs. Allen and her maid have
seen that the girl’s hair is cut (in a crop!) and dressed by the most
stylish hand, and her clothes put on with care. The next thing is to
take her to one of the crowded assemblies, to struggle along and get
squeezed, in the rush of strangers, to reach the top of the room,
and see over the heads of the spectators--who always form a large
preponderance of the company--the high feathers[21] of some of the
privileged ladies who are dancing. Then the struggle begins again to
reach one of the tea-rooms, and finally Mrs. Allen and Catherine leave,
without speaking to anybody save Mr. Allen.
But though Mrs. Allen is content to be fine, and to look at other fine
people, Catherine’s wishes naturally extend a little further--to no
purpose, for her companion is indolent, and does nothing more than
serenely regret that they know nobody, and that the Skinners who were
at Bath last year are not there again. Catherine, though by no means
an unreasonable girl, feels slightly disappointed and tired of the
irksomeness of an imprisonment in a crush of men and women, in full
dress, with faces unknown to her, furnishing no deliverer. Her first
ball--that eagerly looked-forward-to era--threatens her with the shock
and mortification of proving a good deal of a failure.
At last, when the rooms are beginning to thin and patient sitters can
be better seen, though nobody starts with rapturous wonder on beholding
Catherine, no whisper of eager inquiry runs round the room, nor is she
once called a divinity by anybody, Catherine overhears two gentlemen
speak of her as “a pretty girl.”
“Such words had their due effect. She immediately thought the evening
pleasanter than she had found it before; her humble vanity was
contented; she felt more obliged to the two young men for this simple
praise than a true quality heroine would have been for fifteen sonnets
in celebration of her charms, and went to her chair in good humour with
everybody, and perfectly satisfied with her share of public attention.”
Fresh-hearted, girlish, young Catherine! with her innocent satisfaction
in the bare information that she possesses her moderate share of
God’s gift of womanly beauty. One can fancy her little feet, in their
clocked stockings and shoes with buckles, tapping out on the floor of
the ancient sedan-chair, in which she is borne home from her modest
revelry, that dance of which she has been defrauded.
But was it not like Jane Austen to leave her heroine without a
partner at her first ball? After all, may not the temporary eclipse
befall a girl without any fault of hers, or of others, and cannot the
example of Catherine Morland teach her fellow-sufferers good-humoured
resignation? It is the arrogant, ungenerous employment of such petty
terms of slighting reproach as “wallflowers,” with the exaggeration of
their influence by sensitive, inexperienced girls, which often renders
harmless, youthful gaieties fertile in miserable mean jealousies,
despicable, ill-bred triumphs, and endless heart-burnings.
After the usual routine of shopping and sightseeing, in addition to
the Pump-room, after the Allens had visited the Lower as well as the
Upper Rooms with which Bath was supplied, Catherine has at last the
satisfaction of finding the Master of the Ceremonies leading up to her,
according to the etiquette of his office, a gentlemanlike young man
named Tilney, who has desired to be presented to her, in order to ask
her to be his partner in a country dance.
Catherine’s partner, whom she regards with a flush of flattered
pleasure, because he has flattered her by his selection of her--an
absolute stranger in the crowded assembly, is about four or five and
twenty, rather tall, and has one of those pleasing countenances to
which Jane Austen always gave a marked and deserved preference over
mere regularity of feature or glow of colouring. As to an interesting
haggardness, a charming suspicion of wickedness, she, with all other
good women in their senses, could not see either interest or charm in
them.
Mr. Tilney possesses another advantage which was also in special
favour with the author--a very intelligent, lively eye. The languidly
supercilious and stupid “swells” of the nineteenth century would have
been odious to the brilliant novelist of the eighteenth, even though
she could have seen them endowed with tawny beards, Greek profiles, and
that comically dubious attribute, a sleepy blue eye. The reputation
of these fine gentlemen as lady-killers of the first water would have
struck her in the light of an unmitigated disgrace, and not a crowning
honour. The flavour of vice which seems to have so irresistible an
attraction for many writers and readers would have been utterly
repugnant to her, as to all pure-minded, high-souled men and women.
Henry Tilney begins his acquaintance with Catherine Morland, by making
kindly fun to her and of her, with great impartiality.
Catherine, sometimes seeing through his assumptions, sometimes
thoroughly taken in by them, is equally pleased, in sheer willingness
to be pleased.
Henry Tilney mimics successfully the stereotyped conversation of
newly-introduced partners at the Rooms. For his own amusement and
Catherine’s he describes the different lights in which he may figure
in her journal--“‘Friday--Went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged
muslin robe with blue trimmings, plain black shoes; appeared to much
advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer half-witted man, who
would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense;’ or,
‘I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr. King;
had a great deal of conversation with him; seems a most extraordinary
genius; hope I may know more of him.’ _That_, madam, is what I wish you
to say.”
He hoaxes her on the easy style of letter-writing for which ladies are
so generally celebrated.
“I have sometimes thought,” says Catherine, naïvely, “whether ladies do
write so much better letters than gentlemen.”
Mr. Tilney declares letter-writing among women is faultless, save in
three particulars--a general deficiency of subject, a total inattention
to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar.
We fear that ladies’ letters still come largely under Mr. Tilney’s
definition.
The young fellow even chaffs Mrs. Allen, when she appears to beg
Catherine to take a pin out of her sleeve. She fears a hole has been
torn in the gown, which is a favourite, though it cost but nine
shillings a yard.
“That is exactly what I should have guessed it, madam,” said Mr.
Tilney, looking at the muslin.
“Do you understand muslins, sir?”
“Particularly well: I always buy my own cravats, and am allowed to be
an excellent judge; and my sister has often trusted me in the choice
of a gown. I bought one for her the other day, and it was pronounced
to be a prodigious bargain by every lady who saw it. I gave but five
shillings a yard for it, and a true Indian muslin.”
Mrs. Allen was quite struck by his genius. “Men commonly take so little
notice of those things,” said she. “I can never get Mr. Allen to know
one of my gowns from another. You must be a great comfort to your
sister, sir.”
“I hope I am, madam.”
“And pray, sir, what do you think of Miss Morland’s gown?”
“It is very pretty, madam,” said he, gravely examining it; “but I do
not think it will wash well. I am afraid it will fray.”
“How can you,” said Catherine, laughing, “be so----” she had almost
said “strange?”
“I am quite of your opinion, sir,” replied Mrs. Allen, “and so I told
Miss Morland when she bought it.”
“But then you know, madam, muslin always turns to some account or
other; Miss Morland will get enough out of it for a handkerchief, or a
cap, or a cloak. Muslin can never be said to be wasted. I have heard my
sister say so forty times, when she has been extravagant in buying more
than she wanted, or careless in cutting it to pieces.”[22]
A few inquiries satisfy Mr. Allen that young Tilney is a clergyman
belonging to a very respectable family in Gloucestershire.
Catherine having found a partner, is next to secure a young lady
friend. Mrs. Allen stumbles unexpectedly in the Pump-room on an old
acquaintance of early days in a Mrs. Thorpe, the mother of several sons
and daughters.
Isabella Thorpe, the eldest daughter, on being introduced to Catherine,
surprises her by exclaiming on her resemblance to her brother, and
Catherine recollects that her eldest brother had spent the last week of
his college vacation with the family of a member of his college, named
Thorpe.
Miss Thorpe is a beautiful girl, four years older than Catherine, and
more than four years better informed in knowledge of the world. She
has no objection to bestow her superior knowledge--in discovering
a flirtation between any gentleman and lady who only smile on each
other, and pointing out a quiz[23]--on her companion. As for Catherine,
she might have been a little afraid of such undreamt-of powers of
observation, had it not been for what she readily accepted as the easy
gaiety of Miss Thorpe’s manner, and for the gratitude inspired by the
circumstance that her new friend was profuse in her expressions of
delight over their acquaintance.
The reproach of being “gushing,” with the affectation of being
destitute of natural affection, good principles, good feelings, and
good manners, did not exist last century. But my readers will observe
that, while Isabella Thorpe gushes to excess, Catherine, simple and
natural, is in a great measure free from the offence.
Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Thorpe renew their old intimacy, and Isabella and
Catherine rush into a bosom friendship. “They called each other by
their Christian names, were always arm-in-arm when they walked, pinned
up each other’s train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the
set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they
were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut
themselves up to read novels together.”
Jane Austen takes this opportunity of writing a spirited defence
of her art. “Yes, novels,” she repeats, “for I will not adopt the
ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers[24] of
degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances to
the number of which they are themselves adding; joining with their
greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and
scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who,
if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid
pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised
by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and
regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to
abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new
novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press
now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.
Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected
pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no
species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance,
or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers; and while the
abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England,
or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines
of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the ‘Spectator,’ and a
chapter from Sterne, are eulogised by a thousand pens, there seems
almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the
labours of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have
only genius, wit and taste to recommend them. ‘I am no novel reader;’
‘I seldom look into novels;’ ‘Do not imagine that _I_ often read
novels;’ ‘It is really very well for a novel;’--such is the common
cant. ‘And what are you reading, Miss ----?’ ‘Oh, it is only a novel!’
replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected
indifference or momentary shame. It is only ‘Cecilia,’ or ‘Camilla,’ or
‘Belinda,’ or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers
of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of
human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest
effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the
best-chosen language.[25] Now had the same young lady been engaged with
a volume of ‘The Spectator’ instead of such a work, how proudly would
she have produced the book and told its name!”
It would be strange indeed if a young lady were now discovered reading
a volume of “The Spectator.” One might as soon expect to see a modern
maiden seated at a spinning-wheel, or twirling a distaff and spindle.
But what an analysis of schoolgirl friendships, occupations, and
interests survives in the sixth chapter of “Northanger Abbey!” The
following conversation is an example of the attachment of the friends
after an acquaintance of eight or nine days, and of the “delicacy,
discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste which marked the
reasonableness of that attachment:”--
“They met by appointment, and as Isabella had arrived nearly five
minutes before her friend, her first address naturally was, ‘My dearest
creature, what can have made you so late? I have been waiting for you
at least this age!’
“‘Have you, indeed? I am very sorry for it, but really I thought I was
in very good time. It is but just one. I hope you have not been here
long?’
“‘Oh, these ten ages, at least. I am sure I have been here this
half-hour. But now let us go and sit down at the other end of the room
and enjoy ourselves. I have a hundred things to say to you. In the
first place, I was so afraid it would rain this morning, just as I
wanted to set off: it looked very showery, and that would have thrown
me into agonies! Do you know, I saw the prettiest hat you can imagine
in a shop-window in Milsom Street, just now: very like yours, only
with coquelicot ribbons instead of green; I quite longed for it. But,
my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself, all this
morning? Have you gone on with “Udolpho?”’
“‘Yes; I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the
black veil.’
“‘Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh, I would not tell you what is
behind the black veil for the world! Are you not wild to know?’
“‘Oh, yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me; I would not be
told, on any account. I know it must be a skeleton. I am sure it is
Laurentina’s skeleton! Oh, I am delighted with the book! I should like
to spend my whole life in reading it, I assure you. If it had not been
to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.’
“‘Dear creature! how much I am obliged to you! And when you have
finished “Udolpho,” we will read “The Italian” together; and I have
made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.’
“‘Have you, indeed? How glad I am! What are they all?’
“‘I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my
pocket-book--“Castle of Wolfenbach,” “Clermont,” “Mysterious Warnings,”
“Necromancer of the Black Forest,” “Midnight Bell,” “Orphan of the
Rhine,” and “Horrid Mysteries.” Those will last us some time.’
“‘Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid? Are you sure they are all
horrid?’[26]
“‘Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a
sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every
one of them. I wish you knew Miss Andrews, you would be delighted with
her. She is netting herself the sweetest cloak you can conceive. I
think her as beautiful as an angel; and I am so vexed with the men for
not admiring her. I scold them all amazingly about it.’
“‘My dearest Catherine, have you settled what to wear on your head
to-night?’ asked Isabella Thorpe, a few minutes afterwards. ‘I am
determined, at all events, to be dressed exactly like you. The men take
notice of that sometimes, you know.’
“‘But it does not signify if they do,’ said Catherine, very innocently.
“‘Signify! Oh, Heavens! I make it a rule never to mind what they say.
They are often amazingly impertinent if you do not treat them with
spirit, and make them keep their distance.’
“‘Are they? Well, I never observed _that_. They always behave very well
to me.’
“‘Oh, they give themselves such airs. They are the most conceited
creatures in the world, and think themselves of so much importance!
By-the-bye, though I have thought of it a hundred times, I have always
forgot to ask you what is your favourite complexion in a man. Do you
like them best dark or fair?’
“‘I hardly know. I never much thought about it. Something between both,
I think;--brown: not fair, and not very dark.’
“‘Very well, Catherine; that is exactly he. I have not forgot your
description of Mr. Tilney--“a brown skin, with dark eyes and rather
dark hair.” Well, my taste is different: I prefer light eyes; and as
to complexion, do you know I like a sallow better than any other.
You must not betray me, if you should ever meet with any one of your
acquaintance answering that description.’
“‘Betray you! What do you mean?’
“‘Nay, do not distress me. I believe I have said too much. Let us drop
the subject.’
“Catherine, in some amazement, complied; and after remaining a few
moments silent, was on the point of reverting to what interested her,
at that time, rather more than anything else in the world--Laurentina’s
skeleton--when her friend prevented her, by saying, ‘For Heaven’s
sake! let us move away from this end of the room. Do you know there
are two odious young men who have been staring at me this half-hour.
They really put me quite out of countenance. Let us go and look at the
arrivals. They will hardly follow us there.’
“Away they walked to the book; and while Isabella examined the names,
it was Catherine’s employment to watch the proceedings of these
alarming young men.
“‘They are not coming this way, are they? I hope they are not so
impertinent as to follow us. Pray let me know if they are coming: I am
determined I will not look up.’
“In a few moments, Catherine, with unaffected pleasure, assured her
that she need not be longer uneasy, as the gentlemen had just left the
Pump-room.
“‘And which way are they gone?’ said Isabella, turning hastily round.
‘One was a very good-looking young man.’
“‘They went towards the churchyard.’
“‘Well, I am amazingly glad I have got rid of them; and now what say
you to going to Edgar’s Buildings with me, and looking at my new hat?
You said you should like to see it.’
“Catherine readily agreed. ‘Only,’ she added, ‘perhaps we may overtake
the two young men.’
“‘Oh, never mind that. If we make haste, we shall pass by them
presently, and I am dying to show you my hat.’
“‘But if we only wait a few minutes, there will be no danger of our
seeing them at all.’
“‘I shall not pay them any such compliment, I assure you. I have no
notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil
them.’
“Catherine had nothing to oppose against such reasoning, and therefore,
to show the independence of Miss Thorpe, and her resolution of humbling
the sex, they set off immediately, as fast as they could walk, in
pursuit of the two young men.”