Part 18
Mr. Woodhouse’s habits make him go abroad rarely, but he is fond of company in a quiet way at home, and Emma finds such company is best secured in the form of “tea visits” from such accommodating old neighbours as the Bateses and Mrs. Goddard. She is delighted to see her father look comfortable, and very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well; but the prosings of the elderly and homely guests do not prove very congenial entertainment for the bright, clever young girl. Therefore she welcomes Mrs. Goddard’s respectful request to be allowed to bring a parlour boarder,[48] Miss Smith, with her.
Harriet Smith is a plump, blooming, blue-eyed, sweet-tempered girl, whose beauty delights Emma’s eye, while her innocent deference and gratitude, together with her unqualified admiration for everything at Hartfield--including its young mistress--touch Emma’s heart and flatter her vanity. She determines, in modern parlance, to “cultivate” Harriet Smith, who is to a great extent friendless, to improve her, to raise her into better society, and to make a companion of her.
Emma does not scruple to propose detaching the girl from the only friends she has--a farmer’s family named Martin. Some of the daughters had been school-fellows of Harriet’s at Mrs. Goddard’s, and they and their mother and brother had been kind to her. These Martins are tenants of Mr. Knightley at the Abbey Mill Farm, and Emma knows that he thinks highly of them; but in her youthful aristocratic fashion she leaps to the conclusion that, from their rank in life, they must be coarse and unpolished. She will be doing a good deed to separate Harriet from her former allies, to whom the girl is so superior. It will be a delightful and praise-worthy task to improve and introduce into Emma’s world this very pretty, modest young creature, who is, of course, to look up to her benefactress and attach herself closely to her.
There is a comical, often-quoted _contretemps_ constantly occurring at these parties of Emma’s. They usually end with suppers,[49] in which such little delicacies as minced chicken and scalloped oysters, carefully provided by the young hostess, are peculiarly acceptable to the guests, whose narrow incomes for the most part necessitate frugal living. But though poor Mr. Woodhouse would have made his guests welcome to anything and everything, his care for their health, in an egotistical reflection of his own experience, causes him to grieve that they will eat. “He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see anything put upon it. Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could with thorough self-approbation recommend, though he might constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing away the nicer things, to say--
“‘Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs? An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than anybody; I would not recommend an egg boiled by anybody else. But you need not be afraid; they are very small, you see; one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a _little_ bit of tart--a _very_ little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to _half_ a glass of wine?--a small half-glass put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could disagree with you.’”
Imagine the dilemma of the poor, baulked ladies, with their healthy appetites and the little treats laid before them, while the guests could hardly refuse the well-meant advice of the host.
But Emma comes to the rescue, allows her father to talk, but supplies the wants of her company in a much more satisfactory style. She is never indifferent to doing the honours of her father’s house “well and attentively.” Well-bred girls of Emma Woodhouse’s era would in her position have felt ashamed to be found “mooning” and self-absorbed, destitute of any sense of responsibility and thought for others. Nobody then described selfishness with enthusiasm, as an irresistible charm and crowning merit.
Harriet Smith’s intimacy at Hartfield is soon a settled thing. Emma does nothing by halves. As for the simple, docile girl whom Emma has taken up, Harriet is only too proud and pleased to be thus distinguished by the beautiful, “elegant” Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield.
Emma amuses herself by encouraging Harriet’s prattle, which, when it forsakes school-life, runs persistently on the two months’ holiday she had spent with the Martins at Abbey Mill Farm. At first Harriet is in blissful ignorance of the social inferiority of the Farm, and talks with exultation of the two parlours--one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard’s drawing-room; the upper maid, who had lived five-and-twenty years with Mrs. Martin; the eight cows--one of them a little Welsh cow, a very pretty little Welsh cow, of which Harriet had been so fond Mrs. Martin had said it should be called _her_ cow; and the handsome summer-house in the garden, in which, some day next year, they are all to drink tea. And Harriet, after a little encouragement, shows no dislike to talk of the young farmer who is the master of the house. He has shared in the moonlight walks and merry games of his sisters and their friend. “He had gone three miles round one day in order to bring her some walnuts because she had said how fond she was of them, and in everything else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd’s son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very clever, and understood everything. He had a very fine flock, and while she was with them he had been bid more for his wool than anybody in the county. She believed everybody spoke well of him. His mother and sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (there was a blush as she said it) that it was impossible for anybody to be a better son, and therefore she was sure whenever he married, he would make a good husband. Not that she _wanted_ him to marry. She was in no hurry at all.”
“Well done, Mrs. Martin,” thought Emma; “you know what you are about.”
“And when she had come away Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose--the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three teachers--Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson--to sup with her.”
“Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business. He does not read?”
“Oh, yes--that is, no--I do not know, but I believe he has read a good deal, but not what you would think anything of. He reads the agricultural reports, and some other books that lie in one of the window-seats, but he reads all _them_ to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of ‘Elegant Extracts,’ very entertaining. And I know he has read the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ He never read the ‘Romance of the Forest,’ nor ‘The Children of the Abbey.’ He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now, as soon as ever he can.”
Emma sets herself to change all these cordial relations with the Martins, above all the appreciation of young Martin, in which she sees special danger for her _protégée_.
Emma begins by gently “setting down” Harriet as to the position of yeomen, and the improbability of her--Emma Woodhouse--having noticed one of them, since Harriet supposes Miss Woodhouse must have seen and known Robert Martin when he rode to market. On the occasion of an accidental encounter between the young farmer and the two girls, Emma takes care to let Harriet perceive that she thinks the young man very plain and clownish in his air. Emma makes Harriet contrast his lack of “gentility”--which, by the way, was not so odious a word last century--with the well-bred manners of Mr. Elton, among others of their acquaintance.
In fact, it is for the young vicar that Emma destines her friend; and in order to bring about an attachment and marriage, which she considers will be advantageous to both, Emma encourages Mr. Elton to spend many of his disengaged evenings at Hartfield, where she has always Harriet Smith with her. The young mistress of the house is altogether oblivious of the fact that the gentleman who, though well enough disposed, is by no means without self-love, and a head which is liable to be turned, may altogether mistake her graciousness.
Mr. Knightley does not approve of the great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith. There is no use in Mrs. Weston, Emma’s attached old friend, urging that it may induce Emma to read more; as she wishes to see Harriet better informed, the girls will read together.
“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up, at various times, of books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good lists they were, very well chosen, and neatly arranged--sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen, I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time, and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting a course of steady reading from Emma.”
Mr. Knightley adds his estimate of the pretty, popular girl. “Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years’ old she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured, Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house, and of you all.”
He inveighs against the unsuitable friendship between Emma and Harriet Smith, as sure to be injurious to both. Harriet is an unconscious flatterer. Her ignorance is in itself hourly flattery. On the other hand, Hartfield will put Harriet out of conceit with her natural sphere. She will only grow refined enough to be uncomfortable among the people with whom her lot is cast.
In the middle of their argument, the two friends break off the dispute to agree in their affectionate admiration of Emma’s person. Here is a graphic and charming picture of the heroine, which removes her attractions far out of the category of what is sickly and fantastic:--“Such an eye! the true hazel eye--and so brilliant! regular features, open countenance, with a complexion--oh, what a bloom of full health! and such a pretty height and size! such a firm and upright figure! There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her glance. One hears something of a child’s being ‘the picture of health;’ now, Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of grown-up health.”
Yes, indeed, that is what every girl--plain or handsome, should desire to be, for her own good and that of all connected with her. In a summary of the bountiful gifts bestowed on the late Catherine Tait, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, what were reckoned as not the least were the health and strength, beyond those of ordinary women, which fitted her for the worthy performance of her many and arduous duties. Will girls never lay the lesson to heart in time, before they so often fritter and fling away, by culpable neglect and recklessness, one of God’s greatest boons?
Mr. Knightley returns to the charge of the mischievous association of the girls, until he stirs up Mrs. Weston to protest, with regard to Emma: “Where shall we see a better daughter, a kinder sister, a truer friend?”
“Very well,” he answers, “I will not plague you any more. Emma shall be an angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection; and Isabella always thinks as he does, except when he is not quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions with me.”
“I have a very sincere interest in Emma,” Mr. Knightley repeats. “Isabella does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest; perhaps, hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her?”
“So do I,” said Mrs. Weston gently, “very much.”
“She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love, with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attract her; and she goes so seldom from home.”
“There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution at present,” says Mrs. Weston, “as can well be.”
The truth is, Mrs. Weston and her husband have a pet plan for their favourite Emma, which is not to be disclosed prematurely.
Emma paints Harriet’s miniature, and Mr. Elton lends all the help of his advice, while complimenting Miss Woodhouse on her talent for drawing, which she regards as his gratitude on Harriet’s account.
Emma takes care to fix upon Mr. Elton as the person with whom she can entrust her little picture to be conveyed to London and framed; while he shows a sufficient sense of her confidence. “He will suit Harriet exactly,” reflects Emma, complacently; “but he does sigh, and languish, and study for compliments, rather more than I could endure as a principal.”
In the meantime, Harriet receives a direct proposal of marriage from young Martin, couched in manly, unaffected terms.
Poor little Harriet, who is really as guileless and kind-hearted as she is simple and silly, is at first much and favourably impressed.
But Emma’s influence, though she does not mean to exercise it unduly, causes Harriet, not without lingering regret, to resolve to decline the offer.
“I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey Mill Farm,” says Emma, and Harriet is fixed in her resolve.
“That would have been too dreadful, dear Miss Woodhouse. I would not give up the pleasure and honour of being acquainted with you, for anything in the world.”
Mr. Knightley comes in a happy mood to Hartfield, to tell Emma something that will please her about her little friend, Harriet Smith. Though he has condemned the friendship, he can appreciate Harriet’s girlish good qualities; he is even magnanimous enough to compliment Emma on having cured her companion of her school-girl giggle. Robert Martin has confided his attachment to his friend and landlord, who is eager to inform Emma that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of marriage from a most unexceptionable quarter--Robert Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey Mill in the summer has done his business, and he means to marry her.
“He is very obliging,” said the well-informed Emma; “but is he sure that Harriet means to marry him?”
“Well, well--means to make her an offer, then; will that do?” Mr. Knightley, “who had nothing of ceremony about him,” conceives that Emma is speaking from some scruple of womanly dignity as to his mode of expressing himself. He enlarges on the advantages of the marriage, and his satisfaction with it. He ends with the laughing supposition that Martin may be detaining Harriet in Highbury at that very moment, and she may not be thinking him one of those “tiresome wretches”--as Emma has just styled the Highbury gossips.
“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who has been smiling to herself, “how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?”
Certainly he did not absolutely know, but he had understood Harriet Smith was with her all that day.
“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday; that is, he wrote, and was refused.”
Mr. Knightley is incredulous and indignant. At last he accuses Emma, with reason, as the moving spirit in the step Harriet has taken. “You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma,” he said; and with equal sense and sincerity he contrasts Harriet with Robert Martin, to the advantage of the latter, and remarks how happy the girl had been among the Martins, till Emma’s injudicious interference.
In the hot argument which ensues, Mr. Knightley takes occasion to tell Emma that if she intends to make a match between Elton and Harriet, her labour will be in vain.
Emma laughs and disclaims.
But Mr. Knightley’s penetration is not to be baffled, and he goes on to assure her Elton will not do. He is a good sort of young man, and a respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent marriage.
It is Emma’s turn to be incredulous, though she will not admit her intentions.
The two part in mutual vexation, which causes a coolness between them for weeks.
Emma’s pride is now piqued to accomplish her design; her head gets so full of it, that she is ill-judged enough to let Harriet see what she wishes and expects, and actually talks the foolish girl--who is, at least, perfectly unassuming--into a persuasion that she has inspired Mr. Elton with a passion for her, the belief in which is more than sufficient to create an answering passion in Harriet’s soft, childish heart.
We have next an example of an old favourite employment with girls. Instead of the reading, which never went beyond a few chapters, the only literary pursuit which engages Harriet, and in which Emma, too, takes an interest, the only mental provision she is making for the evening of life,[50] is the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort she can come across.
These were days when, in gatherings of young people even a little above Harriet in rank and education, the company in cropped hair and white frocks, in Brutuses and high-necked, short-waisted coats, played at such ingenious games as “The Traveller,” and circulated riddles for the general entertainment. A new riddle was quite a precious possession to a girl, nearly as good as a new song.
Miss Nash, Mrs. Goddard’s head teacher, had written out as many as three hundred riddles, and Harriet hopes to have more.
Mr. Woodhouse is almost as much interested in the work as the girls, and tries in vain to revive old recollections of the excellent riddles of his youth, which always end in
“Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.”
Mr. Elton, who is constantly with the girls, is induced to furnish a riddle of his own composition--though, with the bashfulness of incipient authorship, he passes it off as a charade which a friend of his has addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration--and he is gone the next moment. The charade is as follows:--
“My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings, Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease; Another view of man my second brings, Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
“But, ah! united what reverse we have, Man’s boasted power and freedom all are flown; Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave, And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
“Thy ready wit the word will soon supply, May its approval beam in that soft eye!”
Emma reads, ponders, catches the meaning “courtship,” and happily confident that Mr. Elton, is coming to the point, hands the paper to Harriet.
“‘That soft eye’ can only refer to Harriet,” thinks Emma. “‘Thy ready wit.’ Humph! Harriet’s ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love to describe her so.”
Harriet’s ready wit exhibits itself in not having an idea of the answer. Can it be “Woman,” or “Neptune,” or “Trident?”
Emma is slightly exasperated; but she takes pains to explain the riddle in detail, and to draw the strongest inferences from its subject, while Harriet beams and blushes with joy and confusion.
Emma now becomes as assiduous as ever Mrs. Bennet, of Longbourn House, showed herself with regard to her daughter, Jane, and her lover Bingley, in making opportunities for Mr. Elton to propose to Harriet Smith.
But lovers are perverse, and will not always avail themselves of the best-planned assistance.
In the course of a walk which Emma and Harriet chance to take past the vicarage, in which the girls are overtaken by the vicar, Emma, having discovered that Harriet had never been inside the house, perpetrates a _ruse_ to enable her friend to see her future home. Emma contrives to break her boot-lace, then announces the accident, and asks Mr. Elton to allow her to go into the vicarage and get a bit of riband or string from his housekeeper to keep the boot on.
Mr. Elton looks all happiness, and is as alert in conducting the ladies to his house as can be wished. But though Emma retires with the housekeeper, and stays as long away as she can manage, she finds on her return that the two standing together at one of the windows, however friendly, are not yet an engaged couple.
Christmas brings Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley and their children to enliven Hartfield.
Mrs. John Knightley is a pretty, elegant little woman, gentle and quiet, wrapt up in her family--a devoted wife, a doting mother, and so tenderly attached to her father and sister, that but for those higher ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She has inherited her father’s delicate constitution, is over-careful of her children, has many fears and nerves, and is as fond of her own doctor in town as her father can be of his Mr. Perry.
Mr. John Knightley is tall, gentlemanlike, very clever, a rising barrister. He is domestic and estimable in private life. But he has a cold, dry manner, and he is capable of being sometimes out of humour. He has all the mental clearness and quickness his wife lacks, and he can on occasions act an ungracious, or say a severe thing. He is not a great favourite with his sister-in-law. She is quick in feeling the little injuries to Isabella which Isabella never feels for herself. Perhaps Emma might have passed over more, had his manners been more flattering to Isabella’s sister; but they are only those of a calmly kind brother and friend. However, his chief offence is, now and then, a want of forbearance with Mr. Woodhouse’s peculiarities and fidgetiness. Mr. John Knightley has really a great regard for his father-in-law, but sometimes the younger man cannot resist delivering a rational remonstrance, or a sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It does not often happen, but it occurs too frequently for Emma’s charity.
Though such collisions do not usually take place early in the Knightleys’ visits, one is brought about on the very evening of John Knightley and his wife’s arrival.
Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella are very happy, expatiating on the merits of a basin of nice, smooth gruel--thin, but not too thin--and exchanging their little valetudinarian confidences, when, unfortunately, a reference is made to Mrs. Knightley’s last sea-bathing experience at Southend, seeing that the two great medical authorities of the father and daughter--Perry and Wingfield--differ on the respective recommendations of Southend and Cromer.
“Southend is an unhealthy place,” Mr. Woodhouse harps. “Perry was surprised to hear you had fixed on Southend.”
“We had all our health perfectly well there,” Isabella defends her side of the question. “Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy. I am sure he may be depended upon, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air. His own brother and family have been there repeatedly.”