Tales and Novels — Volume 07 eBook

“Caroline, my dear,” continued she, “you shall not be my heroine; you are too well proportioned for a heroine—­in mind, I mean:  a heroine may—­must have a finely-proportioned person, but never a well-proportioned mind.  All her virtues must be larger than the life; all her passions those of a tragedy queen.  Produce—­only dare to produce—­one of your reasonable wives, mothers, daughters, or sisters on the theatre, and you would see them hissed off the stage.  Good people are acknowledged to be the bane of the drama and the novel—­I never wish to see a reasonable woman on the stage, or an unreasonable woman off it.  I have the greatest sympathy and admiration for your true heroine in a book; but I grant you, that in real life, in a private room, the tragedy queen would be too much for me; and the novel heroine would be the most useless, troublesome, affected, haranguing, egotistical, insufferable being imaginable!  So, my dear Caroline, I am content, that you are my sister, and my friend, though I give you up as a heroine.”

CHAPTER VII.

LETTER FROM GODFREY PERCY TO MRS. PERCY.

“London, the British Hotel.

“You will be surprised, my dear mother, to find that I am in London, instead of being, as I had hoped I should have been by this time, with the army on the continent.  Just as we were going to embark, we were countermanded, and ordered to stay at our quarters.  Conceive our disappointment—­to remain in garrison at the most stupid, idle country town in England.

“You ask how I like my brother officers, and what sort of men they are?—­Major Gascoigne, son to my father’s friend, I like extremely; he is a man of a liberal spirit, much information, and zeal for the army.  But what I particularly admire in him is his candour.  He says it is his own fault that he is not higher in the army—­that when he was a very young man, he was of too unbending a temper—­mistook bluntness for sincerity—­did not treat his superior officer with proper deference—­lost a good friend by it.

“A fine lesson for me! and the better, because not intended.

“Next to Gascoigne I like Captain Henry:  a young man of my own age, uncommonly handsome, but quite free from conceit.  There is something in his manners so gentlemanlike, and he is of so frank a disposition, that I was immediately prepossessed in his favour.—­I don’t like him the worse for having a tinge of proper pride, especially in the circumstances in which he is placed.  I understand that it is suspected he is not of a good family; but I am not impertinent enough to inquire into particulars.  I have been told, that when he first came into the regiment, some of the officers wanted to make out what family he belongs to, and whether he is, or is not, one of the Irish Henrys.  They showed their curiosity in an unwarrantable manner; and Henry, who has great feeling, and a spirit as quick