Chapter 2 — CHAPTER II.

Mr Shepherd, a civil, cautious lawyer, who, whatever might be his hold or his
views on Sir Walter, would rather have the disagreeable prompted by
anybody else, excused himself from offering the slightest hint, and only begged
leave to recommend an implicit reference to the excellent judgement of Lady
Russell, from whose known good sense he fully expected to have just such
resolute measures advised as he meant to see finally adopted.

disagreeable

Lady Russell was most anxiously zealous on the subject, and gave it much
serious consideration. She was a woman rather of sound than of quick abilities,
whose difficulties in coming to any decision in this instance were great, from
the opposition of two leading principles. She was of strict integrity herself,
with a delicate sense of honour; but she was as desirous of saving Sir
Walter’s feelings, as solicitous for the credit of the family, as
aristocratic in her ideas of what was due to them, as anybody of sense and
honesty could well be. She was a benevolent, charitable, good woman, and
capable of strong attachments, most correct in her conduct, strict in her
notions of decorum, and with manners that were held a standard of
good-breeding. She had a cultivated mind, and was, generally speaking, rational
and consistent—but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry; she had a
value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of
those who possessed them. Herself the widow of only a knight, she gave the
dignity of a baronet all its due; and Sir Walter, independent of his claims as
an old acquaintance, an attentive neighbour, an obliging landlord, the husband
of her very dear friend, the father of Anne and her sisters, was, as being Sir
Walter, in her apprehension, entitled to a great deal of compassion and
consideration under his present difficulties.

They must retrench; that did not admit of a doubt. But she was very anxious to
have it done with the least possible pain to him and Elizabeth. She drew up
plans of economy, she made exact calculations, and she did what nobody else
thought of doing: she consulted Anne, who never seemed considered by the others
as having any interest in the question. She consulted, and in a degree was
influenced by her in marking out the scheme of retrenchment which was at last
submitted to Sir Walter. Every emendation of Anne’s had been on the side
of honesty against importance. She wanted more vigorous measures, a more
complete reformation, a quicker release from debt, a much higher tone of
indifference for everything but justice and equity.

“If we can persuade your father to all this,” said Lady Russell,
looking over her paper, “much may be done. If he will adopt these
regulations, in seven years he will be clear; and I hope we may be able to
convince him and Elizabeth, that Kellynch Hall has a respectability in itself
which cannot be affected by these reductions; and that the true dignity of Sir
Walter Elliot will be very far from lessened in the eyes of sensible people, by
acting like a man of principle. What will he be doing, in fact, but what very
many of our first families have done, or ought to do? There will be nothing
singular in his case; and it is singularity which often makes the worst part of
our suffering, as it always does of our conduct. I have great hope of
prevailing. We must be serious and decided; for after all, the person who has
contracted debts must pay them; and though a great deal is due to the feelings
of the gentleman, and the head of a house, like your father, there is still
more due to the character of an honest man.”

This was the principle on which Anne wanted her father to be proceeding, his
friends to be urging him. She considered it as an act of indispensable duty to
clear away the claims of creditors with all the expedition which the most
comprehensive retrenchments could secure, and saw no dignity in anything short
of it. She wanted it to be prescribed, and felt as a duty. She rated Lady
Russell’s influence highly; and as to the severe degree of self-denial
which her own conscience prompted, she believed there might be little more
difficulty in persuading them to a complete, than to half a reformation. Her
knowledge of her father and Elizabeth inclined her to think that the sacrifice
of one pair of horses would be hardly less painful than of both, and so on,
through the whole list of Lady Russell’s too gentle reductions.

How Anne’s more rigid requisitions might have been taken is of little
consequence. Lady Russell’s had no success at all: could not be put up
with, were not to be borne. “What! every comfort of life knocked off!
Journeys, London, servants, horses, table—contractions and restrictions
every where! To live no longer with the decencies even of a private gentleman!
No, he would sooner quit Kellynch Hall at once, than remain in it on such
disgraceful terms.”

“Quit Kellynch Hall.” The hint was immediately taken up by Mr
Shepherd, whose interest was involved in the reality of Sir Walter’s
retrenching, and who was perfectly persuaded that nothing would be done without
a change of abode. “Since the idea had been started in the very quarter
which ought to dictate, he had no scruple,” he said, “in confessing
his judgement to be entirely on that side. It did not appear to him that Sir
Walter could materially alter his style of living in a house which had such a
character of hospitality and ancient dignity to support. In any other place Sir
Walter might judge for himself; and would be looked up to, as regulating the
modes of life in whatever way he might choose to model his household.”

Sir Walter would quit Kellynch Hall; and after a very few days more of doubt
and indecision, the great question of whither he should go was settled, and the
first outline of this important change made out.

There had been three alternatives, London, Bath, or another house in the
country. All Anne’s wishes had been for the latter. A small house in
their own neighbourhood, where they might still have Lady Russell’s
society, still be near Mary, and still have the pleasure of sometimes seeing
the lawns and groves of Kellynch, was the object of her ambition. But the usual
fate of Anne attended her, in having something very opposite from her
inclination fixed on. She disliked Bath, and did not think it agreed with her;
and Bath was to be her home.

Sir Walter had at first thought more of London; but Mr Shepherd felt that he
could not be trusted in London, and had been skilful enough to dissuade him
from it, and make Bath preferred. It was a much safer place for a gentleman in
his predicament: he might there be important at comparatively little expense.
Two material advantages of Bath over London had of course been given all their
weight: its more convenient distance from Kellynch, only fifty miles, and Lady
Russell’s spending some part of every winter there; and to the very great
satisfaction of Lady Russell, whose first views on the projected change had
been for Bath, Sir Walter and Elizabeth were induced to believe that they
should lose neither consequence nor enjoyment by settling there.

Lady Russell felt obliged to oppose her dear Anne’s known wishes. It
would be too much to expect Sir Walter to descend into a small house in his own
neighbourhood. Anne herself would have found the mortifications of it more than
she foresaw, and to Sir Walter’s feelings they must have been dreadful.
And with regard to Anne’s dislike of Bath, she considered it as a
prejudice and mistake arising, first, from the circumstance of her having been
three years at school there, after her mother’s death; and secondly, from
her happening to be not in perfectly good spirits the only winter which she had
afterwards spent there with herself.

Lady Russell was fond of Bath, in short, and disposed to think it must suit
them all; and as to her young friend’s health, by passing all the warm
months with her at Kellynch Lodge, every danger would be avoided; and it was in
fact, a change which must do both health and spirits good. Anne had been too
little from home, too little seen. Her spirits were not high. A larger society
would improve them. She wanted her to be more known.

The undesirableness of any other house in the same neighbourhood for Sir Walter
was certainly much strengthened by one part, and a very material part of the
scheme, which had been happily engrafted on the beginning. He was not only to
quit his home, but to see it in the hands of others; a trial of fortitude,
which stronger heads than Sir Walter’s have found too much. Kellynch Hall
was to be let. This, however, was a profound secret, not to be breathed beyond
their own circle.

Sir Walter could not have borne the degradation of being known to design
letting his house. Mr Shepherd had once mentioned the word
“advertise,” but never dared approach it again. Sir Walter spurned
the idea of its being offered in any manner; forbad the slightest hint being
dropped of his having such an intention; and it was only on the supposition of
his being spontaneously solicited by some most unexceptionable applicant, on
his own terms, and as a great favour, that he would let it at all.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like! Lady Russell had another
excellent one at hand, for being extremely glad that Sir Walter and his family
were to remove from the country. Elizabeth had been lately forming an intimacy,
which she wished to see interrupted. It was with the daughter of Mr Shepherd,
who had returned, after an unprosperous marriage, to her father’s house,
with the additional burden of two children. She was a clever young woman, who
understood the art of pleasing—the art of pleasing, at least, at Kellynch
Hall; and who had made herself so acceptable to Miss Elliot, as to have been
already staying there more than once, in spite of all that Lady Russell, who
thought it a friendship quite out of place, could hint of caution and reserve.

Lady Russell, indeed, had scarcely any influence with Elizabeth, and seemed to
love her, rather because she would love her, than because Elizabeth deserved
it. She had never received from her more than outward attention, nothing beyond
the observances of complaisance; had never succeeded in any point which she
wanted to carry, against previous inclination. She had been repeatedly very
earnest in trying to get Anne included in the visit to London, sensibly open to
all the injustice and all the discredit of the selfish arrangements which shut
her out, and on many lesser occasions had endeavoured to give Elizabeth the
advantage of her own better judgement and experience; but always in vain:
Elizabeth would go her own way; and never had she pursued it in more decided
opposition to Lady Russell than in this selection of Mrs Clay; turning from the
society of so deserving a sister, to bestow her affection and confidence on one
who ought to have been nothing to her but the object of distant civility.

From situation, Mrs Clay was, in Lady Russell’s estimate, a very unequal,
and in her character she believed a very dangerous companion; and a removal
that would leave Mrs Clay behind, and bring a choice of more suitable intimates
within Miss Elliot’s reach, was therefore an object of first-rate
importance.