Perhaps Catherine was wrong in not demanding the cause of
that gentle emotion—but she was not experienced enough in the finesse
of love, or the duties of friendship, to know when delicate raillery
was properly called for, or when a confidence should be forced. Mrs. Allen was now quite happy—quite satisfied with Bath. She had found
some acquaintance, had been so lucky too as to find in them the family
of a most worthy old friend; and, as the completion of good fortune,
had found these friends by no means so expensively dressed as herself. Her daily expressions were no longer, “I wish we had some acquaintance
in Bath!” They were changed into, “How glad I am we have met with Mrs.
Thorpe!” and she was as eager in promoting the intercourse of the two
families, as her young charge and Isabella themselves could be; never
satisfied with the day unless she spent the chief of it by the side of
Mrs. Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but in which there was
scarcely ever any exchange of opinion, and not often any resemblance of
subject, for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of her children, and Mrs. Allen
of her gowns. The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was quick
as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so rapidly through
every gradation of increasing tenderness that there was shortly no
fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves. They
called each other by their Christian name, 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. Yes, novels; for
I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with
novel-writers, 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 patronized 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 eulogized by a thousand
pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and
undervaluing the labour 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. 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; though the chances
must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous
publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a
young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting
in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and
topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their
language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea
of the age that could endure it. CHAPTER 6


The following conversation, which took place between the two friends in
the pump-room one morning, after an acquaintance of eight or nine days,
is given as a specimen of their very warm attachment, 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 an 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 not you wild to know?”

“Oh! yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me—I would not be told
upon 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 pocketbook.