“Let children see and judge for themselves,” is often inconsiderately said. Where children see only a part they cannot judge of the whole; and from the superficial view which they can have in short visits and desultory conversation, they can form only a false estimate of the objects of human happiness, a false notion of the nature of society, and false opinions of characters.
For the above reasons, Mr. and Mrs. Montague were particularly cautious in the choice of their acquaintances, as they were well aware that whatever passed in conversation before children became part of their education.
When they came to Clifton they wished to have a house entirely to themselves, but, as they came late in the season, almost all the lodging houses were full, and for a few weeks they were obliged to remain in a house where some of the apartments were already occupied.
During the first fortnight they scarcely saw or heard anything of one of the families who lodged on the same floor with them. An elderly quaker, and his sister Bertha, were their silent neighbours. The blooming complexion of the lady had indeed attracted the attention of the children, as they caught a glimpse of her face when she was getting into her carriage to go out upon the Downs. They could scarcely believe that she came to the Wells on account of her health.
Besides her blooming complexion, the delicate white of her garments had struck them with admiration; and they observed that her brother carefully guarded her dress from the wheel of the carriage, as he handed her in. From this circumstance, and from the benevolent countenance of the old gentleman, they concluded that he was very fond of his sister, and that they were certainly very happy, except that they never spoke, and could be seen only for a moment.
Not so the maiden lady who occupied the ground floor. On the stairs, in the passages, at her window, she was continually visible; and she appeared to possess the art of being present in all these places at once. Her voice was eternally to be heard, and it was not particularly melodious. The very first day she met Mrs. Montague’s children on the stairs, she stopped to tell Marianne that she was a charming dear, and a charming little dear; to kiss her, to inquire her name, and to inform her that her own name was “Mrs. Theresa Tattle,” a circumstance of which there was little danger of their long remaining in ignorance; for, in the course of one morning, at least twenty single and as many double raps at the door were succeeded by vociferations of “Mrs. Theresa Tattle’s servant!” “Mrs. Theresa Tattle at home?” “Mrs. Theresa Tattle not at home!”
No person at the Wells was oftener at home and abroad than Mrs. Tattle. She had, as she deemed it, the happiness to have a most extensive acquaintance residing at Clifton. She had for years kept a register of arrivals. She regularly consulted the subscriptions to the circulating libraries, and the lists at the Ball and the Pump-rooms: so that, with a memory unencumbered with literature, and free from all domestic cares, she contrived to retain a most astonishing and correct list of births, deaths and marriages, together with all the anecdotes, amusing, instructive, or scandalous, which are necessary to the conversation of a water drinking place, and essential to the character of a “very pleasant woman.”
“A very pleasant woman,” Mrs. Tattle was usually called; and, conscious of her accomplishments, she was eager to introduce herself to the acquaintance of her new neighbours; having, with her ordinary expedition, collected from their servants, by means of her own, all that could be known, or rather, all that could be told about them. The name of Montague, at all events, she knew was a good name, and justified in courting the acquaintance. She courted it first by nods, and becks and smiles at Marianne whenever she met her; and Marianne, who was a very little girl, began presently to nod and smile in return, persuaded that a lady who smiled so much, could not be ill-natured. Besides, Mrs. Theresa’s parlour door was sometimes left more than half open, to afford a view of a green parrot. Marianne sometimes passed very slowly by this door. One morning it was left quite wide open, when she stopped to say “Pretty Poll”; and immediately Mrs. Tattle begged she would do her the honour to walk in and see “Pretty Poll,” at the same time taking the liberty to offer her a piece of iced plum-cake.
The next day Mrs. Theresa Tattle did herself the honour to wait upon Mrs. Montague, “to apologize for the liberty she taken in inviting Mrs. Montague’s charming Miss Marianne into her apartment to see Pretty Poll, and for the still greater liberty she had taken in offering her a piece of plum-cake—inconsiderate creature that she was!—which might possibly have disagreed with her, and which certainly were liberties she never should have been induced to take, if she had not been unaccountably bewitched by Miss Marianne’s striking though highly flattering resemblance to a young gentleman (an officer) with whom she had danced, now nearly twelve years ago, of the name of Montague, a most respectable young man, and of a most respectable family, with which, in a remote degree, she might presume to say, she herself was someway connected, having the honour to be nearly related to the Joneses of Merionethshire, who were cousins to the Mainwarings of Bedfordshire, who married into the family of the Griffiths, the eldest branch of which, she understood, had the honour to be cousin-german to Mr. Montague; on which account she had been impatient to pay a visit, so likely to be productive of most agreeable consequences, by the acquisition of an acquaintance whose society must do her infinite honour.”
Having thus happily accomplished her first visit, there seemed little probability of escaping Mrs. Tattle’s further acquaintance. In the course of the first week she only hinted to Mr. Montague that “some people thought his system of education rather odd; that she should be obliged to him if he would, some time or other, when he had nothing else to do, just sit down and make her understand his notions, that she might have something to say to her acquaintance, as she always wished to have when she heard any friend attacked, or any friend’s opinions.”