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?’