Letters from Bath; Or, A Friend in Exile
Page 7
Chapter Seven
Letter No. 12
Tuesday, 29th May
My Dear Julia,
I do not believe I mentioned in my last letter, that the chief part of Miss Barr’s charm, lay in the way she entirely forgot my injury once we were seated and it was not before her eyes. No doubt my elderly allies would attribute this to the typical callousness of youth, and exclaim at it in reproach; but for myself, I welcomed the respite. If I cannot be with my true friends, who have known me long enough to ignore my deficiencies with an easy conscience, then a healthy quantity of good-natured selfishness in my companion will serve almost as well.
And to be just to Miss Barr, she has greater reason than most gently-bred young ladies, to have her thoughts fixed upon her own troubles. She may not have to fret over the origins of her next meal, or speculate about the charitable resources of the parish, but her circumstances are nevertheless rather uncertain, balanced, as they seem to be, upon the benevolent impulses of Mrs. Smithton—a precarious perch indeed. Once induced, by our talk of books, into supposing conversation with me a very natural activity, Miss Barr did not hesitate to tell me the history of herself and her mother. It was simple enough, for they had all their lives dwelt in the small village in Wiltshire, until coming to Bath on the stage-coach last month (Miss Barr had hated the journey, as one of the passengers smelled of fish, and others had insisted on trying to engage them in friendly conversation). Mrs. Barr had married, when seventeen (her daughter’s current age, by the by), the fourth son of the local squire, who had been all his life so in love with the Navy, that it was considered remarkable he had ever spared sufficient thought to taking a wife. The brief enthusiasm that plunged him into matrimony, however, proved incapable of inspiring him with any desire to remain on land, and Miss Barr estimated that of the fifteen-odd years of her life during which her father remained alive, she had been in his presence perhaps a combined total of six months. For a time, her mother’s father had given them a home, though he was a clergyman with only a small living (perhaps this accounts for Miss Barr’s mistrust of dissenters). When he died, he was able, by means of a small inheritance of his own, to leave Mrs. Barr sufficient income—the monies having been invested in funds—to allow mother and daughter to live for several years in perfectly respectable lodgings. From Lieutenant Barr’s relatives they received little attention, as all his siblings had large and hopeful families, and seemed to fear any actual acts of kindness shown to the pair would result in some rude claim upon their own assets. The sole exception to this rule was Lt. Barr’s aunt, Mrs. Smithton, who arrived one year to attend her brother’s funeral, and showed a curiosity for the little neglected family, adequate to sustain a ten minute conversation with them in the churchyard. This was sufficient to inspire a desperate Mrs. Barr to write to her when, three years later, Lt. Barr died of a fever off Gibraltar, and her small inheritance, as well as whatever monies he might have accumulated, all but disappeared due to the negligence of the man into whose hands he had insisted on placing them, the last time he had returned home. Apparently the late Lieutenant, as well as being a poor judge of character, was also singularly unlucky in the matter of maritime prizes, with the result that Mrs. Barr and her daughter had no choice but to be grateful when Mrs. Smithton responded to their appeal with an invitation for them to come stay with her in Bath.
This is where Miss Barr, very correctly, ended her account, by speaking of her great-aunt’s ‘kindness in giving them a home,’ when no body else in the family would have anything to do with them; and how conscious they both were, of what was owed to her. It is to be hoped that Mrs. Smithton’s sensibilities are not acute, for a less joyous tone, in which to speak of so great a deliverance from penury, could not well be imagined, than the one then employed by Miss Barr. I ventured to ask if their benefactress expected them to perform any particular tasks in return for her generosity, and after a moment received the cautious reply, that while nothing had been said, it was understood that ‘she liked Mama always to be available to play cards with her, and to read to her in the evenings’ and that she ‘did not wish to be bothered’ by her great-niece. This, I suppose, explained why I had never seen the three together, except when they first arrived, or departed; and why shy Miss Barr seemed to spend her days cowering in chairs, with her head bent over some book or other.
Now you know my powers of sympathy are not great, but Miss Barr in her timidity reminded me so strongly of Kitty, that I found my feelings easily engaged, as I imagined how it must be for Miss Barr and her mother, to have spent so many years with almost no one to care for them except each other, now to be summarily separated for most of the day, by the whims of a virtual stranger, to whom they were, by custom, obliged to feel gratitude. Deciding, after a few seconds’ unbiased thought, that I disliked the generous Mrs. Smithton a great deal, I set myself to contriving how the Barr ladies might be wrested from her tender care. All manner of plans flew through my head, the most practical of which was persuading Mrs. Warren—or perhaps Mrs. Belmar—that she was in need of hiring a pair of gentle companions. More romantically, I wondered if a rich young suitor might be found to play the role of White Knight to Miss Barr’s Maiden in Distress, for in addition to the notable comeliness of her face, she was clearly intelligent--her ignorance of Debrett’s notwithstanding--and had been educated beyond the common lot of young ladies, though without being in the least blue. (She can read French, and a little Italian, but not Latin or Greek; nor did she try to impress me with the wide range of her studies, or throw large numbers of quotations at me, in any language.)
On the other hand, her shyness was a distinct inconvenience. A modestly retiring nature may be charming enough in a pretty young girl when it displays itself in attractive blushes, and bashful glances, and the occasional stammered speech, but when it leads her to refuse all introductions, and keep her head lowered over a book all day, praying for invisibility, it becomes an Obstacle. Indeed, I discovered that if Miss Barr had been given her choice in the matter, she would have stayed behind in Mrs. Smithton’s lodgings every day, no doubt reading in more comfort on a sofa; and it was only in deference to her mother’s wishes, that she did not do so, for Mrs. Smithton did not care one way or the other, as long as Miss Barr did not attempt to interrupt them in the card-room.
No solution had presented itself to me by the time Miss Barr and I parted that first day, nor in the days since then, in which I have furthered my acquaintance with her. Ignoring her reluctance, I made her known to my elderly allies, and even contrived a brief introduction to her mother and Mrs. Smithton, as they exited the card-room one day. Mrs. Barr’s eyes brightened perceptibly, when she saw her daughter actually engaged in a conversation with me, and the radiance of her smile as she acknowledged the introduction, entirely overshadowed Mrs. Smithton’s complete disinterest in the proceedings.
Yours, with a fixed aversion to The Benefactress, Ann Northcott
PS. My mother does not approve of my seeking out Miss Barr, though she has not forbidden it. Being herself the daughter of a squire, she cannot quite despise the granddaughter of one; but she deeply deplores my ‘repeated folly in attaching myself to young ladies of such exceptional appearance, that any comparison made by those observing us together, must be in my disfavor.’ She wondered aloud if I had a fatal predilection, for befriending the most beautiful persons around me, so that I could use their proximity as an excuse for not expending too much effort on improving the few pleasing physical attributes God has granted me.
However, as this was an old irritation which she has had many years to become accustomed to, when she found I could not be easily insulted into dropping the acquaintance, she turned away, and has said no more on the subject.