Bab Bab 39 · Chapter XXXIX

Could Sir Thomas have seen all his niece’s feelings, when she wrote her

first letter to her aunt, he would not have despaired; for though a

good night’s rest, a pleasant morning, the hope of soon seeing William

again, and the comparatively quiet state of the house, from Tom and

Charles being gone to school, Sam on some project of his own, and her

father on his usual lounges, enabled her to express herself cheerfully

on the subject of home, there were still, to her own perfect

consciousness, many drawbacks suppressed. Could he have seen only half

that she felt before the end of a week, he would have thought Mr.

Crawford sure of her, and been delighted with his own sagacity.

Before the week ended, it was all disappointment. In the first place,

William was gone. The Thrush had had her orders, the wind had changed,

and he was sailed within four days from their reaching Portsmouth; and

during those days she had seen him only twice, in a short and hurried

way, when he had come ashore on duty. There had been no free

conversation, no walk on the ramparts, no visit to the dockyard, no

acquaintance with the Thrush, nothing of all that they had planned and

depended on. Everything in that quarter failed her, except William’s

affection. His last thought on leaving home was for her. He stepped

back again to the door to say, “Take care of Fanny, mother. She is

tender, and not used to rough it like the rest of us. I charge you,

take care of Fanny.”

William was gone: and the home he had left her in was, Fanny could not

conceal it from herself, in almost every respect the very reverse of

what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder, and

impropriety. Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it

ought to be. She could not respect her parents as she had hoped. On her

father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he was more negligent

of his family, his habits were worse, and his manners coarser, than she

had been prepared for. He did not want abilities but he had no

curiosity, and no information beyond his profession; he read only the

newspaper and the navy-list; he talked only of the dockyard, the

harbour, Spithead, and the Motherbank; he swore and he drank, he was

dirty and gross. She had never been able to recall anything approaching

to tenderness in his former treatment of herself. There had remained

only a general impression of roughness and loudness; and now he

scarcely ever noticed her, but to make her the object of a coarse joke.

Her disappointment in her mother was greater: _there_ she had hoped

much, and found almost nothing. Every flattering scheme of being of

consequence to her soon fell to the ground. Mrs. Price was not unkind;

but, instead of gaining on her affection and confidence, and becoming

more and more dear, her daughter never met with greater kindness from

her than on the first day of her arrival. The instinct of nature was

soon satisfied, and Mrs. Price’s attachment had no other source. Her

heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither leisure nor

affection to bestow on Fanny. Her daughters never had been much to her.

She was fond of her sons, especially of William, but Betsey was the

first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she was most

injudiciously indulgent. William was her pride; Betsey her darling; and

John, Richard, Sam, Tom, and Charles occupied all the rest of her

maternal solicitude, alternately her worries and her comforts. These

shared her heart: her time was given chiefly to her house and her

servants. Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy

without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it, without

altering her ways; wishing to be an economist, without contrivance or

regularity; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them

better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them,

without any power of engaging their respect.

Of her two sisters, Mrs. Price very much more resembled Lady Bertram

than Mrs. Norris. She was a manager by necessity, without any of Mrs.

Norris’s inclination for it, or any of her activity. Her disposition

was naturally easy and indolent, like Lady Bertram’s; and a situation

of similar affluence and do-nothingness would have been much more

suited to her capacity than the exertions and self-denials of the one

which her imprudent marriage had placed her in. She might have made

just as good a woman of consequence as Lady Bertram, but Mrs. Norris

would have been a more respectable mother of nine children on a small

income.

Much of all this Fanny could not but be sensible of. She might scruple

to make use of the words, but she must and did feel that her mother was

a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught

nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement

and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no

conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her

better, no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her company

that could lessen her sense of such feelings.

Fanny was very anxious to be useful, and not to appear above her home,

or in any way disqualified or disinclined, by her foreign education,

from contributing her help to its comforts, and therefore set about

working for Sam immediately; and by working early and late, with

perseverance and great despatch, did so much that the boy was shipped

off at last, with more than half his linen ready. She had great

pleasure in feeling her usefulness, but could not conceive how they

would have managed without her.

Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, she rather regretted when he went,

for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any

errand in the town; and though spurning the remonstrances of Susan,

given as they were, though very reasonable in themselves, with

ill-timed and powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced by

Fanny’s services and gentle persuasions; and she found that the best of

the three younger ones was gone in him: Tom and Charles being at least

as many years as they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling

and reason, which might suggest the expediency of making friends, and

of endeavouring to be less disagreeable. Their sister soon despaired of

making the smallest impression on _them_; they were quite untameable by

any means of address which she had spirits or time to attempt. Every

afternoon brought a return of their riotous games all over the house;

and she very early learned to sigh at the approach of Saturday’s

constant half-holiday.

Betsey, too, a spoiled child, trained up to think the alphabet her

greatest enemy, left to be with the servants at her pleasure, and then

encouraged to report any evil of them, she was almost as ready to

despair of being able to love or assist; and of Susan’s temper she had

many doubts. Her continual disagreements with her mother, her rash

squabbles with Tom and Charles, and petulance with Betsey, were at

least so distressing to Fanny that, though admitting they were by no

means without provocation, she feared the disposition that could push

them to such length must be far from amiable, and from affording any

repose to herself.

Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of her head, and teach

her to think of her cousin Edmund with moderated feelings. On the

contrary, she could think of nothing but Mansfield, its beloved

inmates, its happy ways. Everything where she now was in full contrast

to it. The elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony, and perhaps, above

all, the peace and tranquillity of Mansfield, were brought to her

remembrance every hour of the day, by the prevalence of everything

opposite to them _here_.

The living in incessant noise was, to a frame and temper delicate and

nervous like Fanny’s, an evil which no superadded elegance or harmony

could have entirely atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all. At

Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts,

no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course

of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance;

everybody’s feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever

supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and

as to the little irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Norris, they

were short, they were trifling, they were as a drop of water to the

ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult of her present abode. Here

everybody was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her

mother’s, which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram’s, only

worn into fretfulness). Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the

servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in

constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done

without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention

when they spoke.

In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end

of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson’s celebrated

judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield

Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.