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Jane Austen "Mansfield
Park"
Chapter 5
The young people were pleased with each other from the first. On each
side there was much to attract, and their acquaintance soon promised as
early an intimacy as good manners would warrant. Miss Crawford’s beauty
did her no disservice with the Miss Bertrams. They were too handsome
themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as
much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown
complexion, and general prettiness. Had she been tall, full formed, and
fair, it might have been more of a trial: but as it was, there could be
no comparison; and she was most allowably a sweet, pretty girl, while
they were the finest young women in the country.
Her brother was not handsome: no, when they first saw him he was
absolutely plain, black and plain; but still he was the gentleman, with
a pleasing address. The second meeting proved him not so very plain: he
was plain, to be sure, but then he had so much countenance, and his
teeth were so good, and he was so well made, that one soon forgot he was
plain; and after a third interview, after dining in company with him at
the Parsonage, he was no longer allowed to be called so by anybody. He
was, in fact, the most agreeable young man the sisters had ever known,
and they were equally delighted with him. Miss Bertram’s engagement made
him in equity the property of Julia, of which Julia was fully aware; and
before he had been at Mansfield a week, she was quite ready to be fallen
in love with.
Maria’s notions on the subject were more confused and indistinct. She
did not want to see or understand. “There could be no harm in her liking
an agreeable man— everybody knew her situation—Mr. Crawford must take
care of himself.” Mr. Crawford did not mean to be in any danger! the
Miss Bertrams were worth pleasing, and were ready to be pleased; and he
began with no object but of making them like him. He did not want them
to die of love; but with sense and temper which ought to have made him
judge and feel better, he allowed himself great latitude on such points.
“I like your Miss Bertrams exceedingly, sister,” said he, as he returned
from attending them to their carriage after the said dinner visit; “they
are very elegant, agreeable girls.”
“So they are indeed, and I am delighted to hear you say it. But you like
Julia best.”
“Oh yes! I like Julia best.”
“But do you really? for Miss Bertram is in general thought the
handsomest.”
“So I should suppose. She has the advantage in every feature, and I
prefer her countenance; but I like Julia best; Miss Bertram is certainly
the handsomest, and I have found her the most agreeable, but I shall
always like Julia best, because you order me.”
“I shall not talk to you, Henry, but I know you will like her best at
last.”
“Do not I tell you that I like her best at first?”
“And besides, Miss Bertram is engaged. Remember that, my dear brother.
Her choice is made.”
“Yes, and I like her the better for it. An engaged woman is always more
agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares
are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing
without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged: no harm can be done.”
“Why, as to that, Mr. Rushworth is a very good sort of young man, and it
is a great match for her.”
“But Miss Bertram does not care three straws for him; that is your
opinion of your intimate friend. I do not subscribe to it. I am sure
Miss Bertram is very much attached to Mr. Rushworth. I could see it in
her eyes, when he was mentioned. I think too well of Miss Bertram to
suppose she would ever give her hand without her heart.”
“Mary, how shall we manage him?”
“We must leave him to himself, I believe. Talking does no good. He will
be taken in at last.”
“But I would not have him taken in; I would not have him duped; I would
have it all fair and honourable.”
“Oh dear! let him stand his chance and be taken in. It will do just as
well. Everybody is taken in at some period or other.”
“Not always in marriage, dear Mary.”
“In marriage especially. With all due respect to such of the present
company as chance to be married, my dear Mrs. Grant, there is not one in
a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry. Look where
I will, I see that it is so; and I feel that it must be so, when I
consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect
most from others, and are least honest themselves.”
“Ah! You have been in a bad school for matrimony, in Hill Street.”
“My poor aunt had certainly little cause to love the state; but, however,
speaking from my own observation, it is a manoeuvring business. I know
so many who have married in the full expectation and confidence of some
one particular advantage in the connexion, or accomplishment, or good
quality in the person, who have found themselves entirely deceived, and
been obliged to put up with exactly the reverse. What is this but a take
in?”
“My dear child, there must be a little imagination here. I beg your
pardon, but I cannot quite believe you. Depend upon it, you see but half.
You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. There will be
little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect
too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns
to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better:
we find comfort somewhere—and those evil-minded observers, dearest Mary,
who make much of a little, are more taken in and deceived than the
parties themselves.”
“Well done, sister! I honour your esprit du corps. When I am a wife, I
mean to be just as staunch myself; and I wish my friends in general
would be so too. It would save me many a heartache.”
“You are as bad as your brother, Mary; but we will cure you both.
Mansfield shall cure you both, and without any taking in. Stay with us,
and we will cure you.”
The Crawfords, without wanting to be cured, were very willing to stay.
Mary was satisfied with the Parsonage as a present home, and Henry
equally ready to lengthen his visit. He had come, intending to spend
only a few days with them; but Mansfield promised well, and there was
nothing to call him elsewhere. It delighted Mrs. Grant to keep them both
with her, and Dr. Grant was exceedingly well contented to have it so: a
talking pretty young woman like Miss Crawford is always pleasant society
to an indolent, stay-at- home man; and Mr. Crawford’s being his guest
was an excuse for drinking claret every day.
The Miss Bertrams’ admiration of Mr. Crawford was more rapturous than
anything which Miss Crawford’s habits made her likely to feel. She
acknowledged, however, that the Mr. Bertrams were very fine young men,
that two such young men were not often seen together even in London, and
that their manners, particularly those of the eldest, were very good. He
had been much in London, and had more liveliness and gallantry than
Edmund, and must, therefore, be preferred; and, indeed, his being the
eldest was another strong claim. She had felt an early presentiment that
she should like the eldest best. She knew it was her way.
Tom Bertram must have been thought pleasant, indeed, at any rate; he was
the sort of young man to be generally liked, his agreeableness was of
the kind to be oftener found agreeable than some endowments of a higher
stamp, for he had easy manners, excellent spirits, a large acquaintance,
and a great deal to say; and the reversion of Mansfield Park, and a
baronetcy, did no harm to all this. Miss Crawford soon felt that he and
his situation might do. She looked about her with due consideration, and
found almost
everything in his favour: a park, a real park, five miles round, a
spacious modern-built house, so well placed and well screened as to
deserve to be in any collection of engravings of gentlemen’s seats in
the kingdom, and wanting only to be completely new furnished—pleasant
sisters, a quiet mother, and an agreeable man himself—with the advantage
of being tied up from much gaming at present by a promise to his father,
and of being Sir Thomas hereafter. It might do very well; she believed
she should accept him; and she began accordingly to interest herself a
little about the horse which he had to run at the B— races.
These races were to call him away not long after their acquaintance
began; and as it appeared that the family did not, from his usual goings
on, expect him back again for many weeks, it would bring his passion to
an early proof. Much was said on his side to induce her to attend the
races, and schemes were made for a large party to them, with all the
eagerness of inclination, but it would only do to be talked of.
And Fanny, what was she doing and thinking all this while? and what was
her opinion of the newcomers? Few young ladies of eighteen could be less
called on to speak their opinion than Fanny. In a quiet way, very little
attended to, she paid her tribute of admiration to Miss Crawford’s
beauty; but as she still continued to think Mr. Crawford very plain, in
spite of her two cousins having repeatedly proved the contrary, she
never mentioned him. The notice, which she excited herself, was to this
effect. “I begin now to understand you all, except Miss Price,” said
Miss Crawford, as she was walking with the Mr. Bertrams. “Pray, is she
out, or is she not? I am puzzled. She dined at the Parsonage, with the
rest of you, which seemed like being out; and yet she says so little,
that I can hardly suppose she is.”
Edmund, to whom this was chiefly addressed, replied, “I believe I know
what you mean, but I will not undertake to answer the question. My
cousin is grown up. She has the age and sense of a woman, but the outs
and not outs are beyond me.”
“And yet, in general, nothing can be more easily ascertained. The
distinction is so broad. Manners as well as appearance are, generally
speaking, so totally different. Till now, I could not have supposed it
possible to be mistaken as to a girl’s being out or not. A girl not out
has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks
very demure, and never says a word. You may smile, but it is so, I
assure you; and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far, it
is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest. The most
objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being
introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in
such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite—to confidence!
That is the faulty part of the present system. One does not like to see
a girl of eighteen or nineteen so immediately up to every thing—and
perhaps when one has seen her hardly able to speak the year before. Mr.
Bertram, I dare say you have sometimes met with such changes.”
“I believe I have, but this is hardly fair; I see what you are at. You
are quizzing me and Miss Anderson.”
“No, indeed. Miss Anderson! I do not know who or what you mean. I am
quite in the dark. But I will quiz you with a great deal of pleasure, if
you will tell me what about.”
“Ah! you carry it off very well, but I cannot be quite so far imposed
on. You must have had Miss Anderson in your eye, in describing an
altered young lady. You paint too accurately for mistake. It was exactly
so. The Andersons of Baker Street. We were speaking of them the other
day, you know. Edmund, you have heard me mention Charles Anderson. The
circumstance was precisely as this lady has represented it. When
Anderson first introduced me to his family, about two years ago, his
sister was not out, and I could not get her to speak to me. I sat there
an hour one morning waiting for Anderson, with only her and a little
girl or two in the room, the governess being sick or run away, and the
mother in and out every moment with letters of business, and I could
hardly get a word or a look from the young lady— nothing like a civil
answer—she screwed up her mouth, and turned from me with such an air! I
did not see her again for a twelvemonth. She was then out. I met her at
Mrs. Holford’s, and did not recollect her. She came up to me, claimed me
as an acquaintance, stared me out of countenance; and talked and
laughed till I did not know which way to look. I felt that I must be the
jest of the room at the time, and Miss Crawford, it is plain, has heard
the story.”
“And a very pretty story it is, and with more truth in it, I dare say,
than does credit to Miss Anderson. It is too common a fault. Mothers
certainly have not yet got quite the right way of managing their
daughters. I do not know where the error lies. I do not pretend to set
people right, but I do see that they are often wrong.”
“Those who are showing the world what female manners should be,” said
Mr. Bertram gallantly, “are doing a great deal to set them right.”
“The error is plain enough,” said the less courteous Edmund; “such girls
are ill brought up. They are given wrong notions from the beginning.
They are always acting upon motives of vanity, and there is no more real
modesty in their behaviour before they appear in public than
afterwards.”
“I do not know,” replied Miss Crawford hesitatingly. “Yes, I cannot
agree with you there. It is certainly the modestest part of the
business. It is much worse to have girls not out give themselves the
same airs and take the same liberties as if they were, which I have seen
done. That is worse than anything—quite disgusting!”
“Yes, that is very inconvenient indeed,” said Mr. Bertram. “It leads one
astray; one does not know what to do. The close bonnet and demure air
you describe so well (and nothing was ever juster), tell one what is
expected; but I got into a dreadful scrape last year from the want of
them. I went down to Ramsgate for a week with a friend last September,
just after my return from the West Indies. My friend Sneyd—you have
heard me speak of Sneyd, Edmund— his father, and mother, and sisters,
were there, all new to me. When we reached Albion Place they were out;
we went after them, and found them on the pier: Mrs. and the two Miss
Sneyds, with others of their acquaintance. I made my bow in form; and as
Mrs. Sneyd was surrounded by men, attached myself to one of her
daughters, walked by her side all the way home, and made myself as
agreeable as I could; the young lady perfectly easy in her manners, and
as ready to talk as to listen. I had not a suspicion that I could be
doing anything wrong. They looked just the same: both well-dressed, with
veils and parasols like other girls; but I afterwards found that I had
been giving all my attention to the youngest, who was not out, and had
most excessively offended the eldest. Miss Augusta ought not to have
been noticed for the next six months; and Miss Sneyd, I believe, has
never forgiven me.”
“That was bad indeed. Poor Miss Sneyd. “Though I have no younger sister,
I feel for her. To be neglected before one’s time must be very
vexatious; but it was entirely the mother’s fault. Miss Augusta should
have been with her governess. Such half-and-half doings never prosper.
But now I must be satisfied about Miss Price. Does she go to balls? Does
she dine out every where, as well as at my sister’s?”
“No,” replied Edmund; “I do not think she has ever been to a ball. My
mother seldom goes into company herself, and dines nowhere but with Mrs.
Grant, and Fanny stays at home with her.”
“Oh! then the point is clear. Miss Price is not out.”
