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Chapter 14 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 Tillneys called for her at the appointed time and no new difficulty arising,
No sudden recollection,
No unexpected summons,
No new impertinent intrusion to disconcert their measures,
My heroine was most unnaturally able to fulfil her engagement although it was made with a hero himself.
They determined on walking around Beecham 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've been abroad then,
Said Henry a little surprised.
Oh no,
I only mean what I've 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're 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.
The person,
Be it gentleman or lady,
Who has not pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid.
I've read all Mrs Radcliffe's works and most of them with great pleasure.
The Mysteries of Udolpho,
When I'd once began 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 you wanted to read it aloud to me and that when I was called away only five minutes to answer a note,
Instead of waiting you took the volume into the Hermitage Walk and I was obliged to stay until you'd 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'd made on reading it aloud and keeping her in suspense at the most interesting part by running away with the volume,
Which you are to observe was her own,
Particularly her own.
I'm proud when I reflect on it and I think it must establish me in your good opinion.
I'm very glad to hear it indeed,
And now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself,
Said Catherine,
But I really thought before young men despise novels amazingly.
It is amazingly,
It may well suggest amazement if they do,
I read nearly as many as women,
I myself have read hundreds and hundreds.
Do not imagine you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julius and Louisa's.
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,
Oh what 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've had the start of you.
I'd entered on my studies at Oxford when you were a good little girl working or something at home.
Not very good I'm afraid,
But now really do you not 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're very pertinent.
Miss Morland,
He's treating you exactly as he does his sister.
He's forever finding fault with me for some incorrectness of language and now he's 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'm sure,
Cried Catherine,
I did not mean to say anything wrong,
But it is a nice book and why should I not call it so?
Very true,
Said Henry,
And this is a very nice day and we're taking a very nice walk and you two are very nice young ladies.
It's 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,
Henry.
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's 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'm fond of history.
I wish I were too.
I read it a little as a duty but it tells me nothing that does not 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 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 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 civilised state can deny.
But in behalf of our most distinguished historians,
I must observe they might well be offended as 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 observe 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'd been as much use as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell,
If you'd 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 at 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,
Said Henry,
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 it is all very worthwhile 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,
Catherine,
If reading had not been taught,
Mrs Radcliffe would have written in vain,
Or perhaps might not have written at all.
