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 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 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?’