Northanger Abbey : and, Persuasion

Introduction

BY AUSTIN DOBSON IL cm tion MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY i897 All rights reserved

INTRODUCTION.

Even at this distance of time, the genuine devotee of Jane Austen must be conscious of a futile, but irresistible, desire to 'feel the bumps' of that Bœotian bookseller of Bath, who — having bought the manuscript of Northanger Abbey for the base price of ten pounds — refrained from putting it before the world. What can have been the phrenological conditions of a man who could remain insensible to such a sentence as this, the third in the book — ' Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard — and he had never been handsome ' ? That the sentence was an afterthought in the proof cannot be contended, for Northanger Abbey was published posthumously, and ' the curious eyes, that saw the manners in the face,' had long been closed under a black slab in Winchester Cathedral.

Only two suppositions are possible: — one, that Mr. Bull of the Circulating Library at Bath (if Mr. Bull it were) was constitutionally insensible to the charms of that master-spell which Mrs. Slipslop calls ' ironing ' ; the other, that he was an impenitent and irreclaimable adherent of the author of the Mysteries of Udolpho. The latter is the more natural conclusion. Nothing else can explain his suppression for so long a period of Miss Austen's 'copy' — the scene of NORTHANGER ABBEY AND PERSUASION which, by the way, was largely laid in Bath itself. He was infatuated with Mrs. Radcliffe, and Mrs. Radcliffe's following : the Necromancer of the Black Forest, the Orphan of the Rhine, the Midnight Bell, the Castle of Wolfenbach, and all the rest of those worshipful masterpieces which Isabella Thorpe, in chapter vi., proposes for the delectation of Catherine Morland, and the general note of which Crabbe (one remembers Miss Austen's leaning to that favourite poet l) anticipates so aptly in The Library : Hence, ye profane !

I feel a former dread, A thousand visions float around my head : Hark ! hollow blasts through empty courts resound, And shadowy forms with staring eyes stalk round. But whatever be the solution, the fact remains. Northanger Abbey, as the 'Advertisement' to the first edition of 1818, said to be by the then deceased 'authoress,' informs us, was disposed of to a Bath bookseller and even announced as forthcoming, not long after it ' was finished [i.e. prepared for press] in the year 1803,' having been 'certainly first composed,' Mr. Austen- Leigh states, as far back as 1798 (the year after the first appearance of Mrs. Radcliffe's Italian), when Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice were already existent in manuscript. ' That any bookseller should think it worth while to purchase what he did not think worth while to publish seems extraordinary,' observes Miss Austen ; and it would seem more extraordinary still were there not several other equally well-authenticated instances of similar lack of enterprise or critical incapacity in those whose business lies in books.

That this particular wiseacre should not have found out, after the successful 1 Introduction to Pride and Prejudice (Macmillan's Illustrated Standard Novels), 1895, x>-

INTRODUCTION.

publication of the first two novels, that he had an unprinted MS. by the same author in his own possession, is also extraordinary ; and, all things considered, no one can greatly commiserate him when, in the absence of such knowledge, he was induced to sell back Northanger Abbey to Henry Austen for precisely the same amount he had paid for it at the beginning. It has been said that we have Northanger Abbey in its original form — in other words, that it was not subjected, like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, to re construction or revision long after it was first completed. That, subsequent to its recovery from the Bath bookseller, it was practically untouched by its writer, is clear from the ' Advertisement ' above quoted, which expressly apologises for those parts of it which had grown 'comparatively obsolete ' in the thirteen years which had elapsed since it was finished (a statement which gives us 1816 as the date of the advertisement).

But Miss Austen also adds that ' many more years had passed since it was begun.' Much, therefore, may have been done to modify and alter it between 1798 and 1803. Miss Austen, as we know, in her girlish efforts, had amused herself by ridiculing the silly romances of the circulating library, and it is probable that Northanger Abbey was originally only a more serious and sustained attempt to do for the Radcliffe school what Cervantes had done for Esplandian and Florismarte of Hyrcania, and Mrs. Lenox for Cassandra and Cleopatra. But the ironical treatment is not always apparent, and there are indications that, as often happens, the author's growing interest in the characters diverts her insensibly from her purpose. There are, besides, passages, such as the spirited defence of novels at the end of chapter v., with its odd boutade against the Spectator, which have a X NORTHANGER ABBEY AND PERSUASION look of afterthought ; 1 and it is not very unreasonable to assume that, setting out with a purely satiric intent, Miss Austen ultimately moved in a diagonal between a study in irony and a story.

One result of this is, that her attention not being wholly confined to the creation of character, her third novel (in the order of writing) contains no personage corresponding to Mr. Collins, or to the Mrs. Norris of her next book. But Mrs. Allen is 'perfectly well ' (as Gray would say) in her colourless kind ; and as a mere study there is nothing anywhere to approach, in its vivid fidelity, that extremely objectionable specimen of the horsey university man of the Gillray and Rowlandson era, Mr. John Thorpe, who, it may be noted, admires Mrs. Radcliffe and abuses Miss Burney. Of Catherine Morland it is perhaps sufficient to say that she is attractive in spite of her environment and her function, and that her native sense of fitness is stronger than her fictitious enthusiasm. She is evidently the person really intended when Henry Tilney speaks mockingly of Isabella Thorpe as ' open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise,' and, like the hero and his sister, we instinctively feel her unlessoned charm to be greater than her acquired opinions.

Person ally, we could have willingly surrendered a good deal of the clever raillery about Mrs. Radcliffe for a little more of Beau Nash's old city, which Miss Austen knew so thoroughly. But her nice sense of artistic restraint does not admit of this. Her characters turn out of the right streets into the right crescents and cross the right crossings, as they would have done in real life, but of the topography of Bath itself, 1 The reference in this defence to Miss Edgeworth's Belinda, for instance, can scarcely have been in the first draft of the book, for Belinda was not published until 1 80 1.

INTRODUCTION.

where the author lived so long, there is not as much in the whole of Northanger Abbey as there is in one chapter of Humphry Clinker. It is the accident of posthumous publication which brings Northanger Abbey into the same volume with Persuasion. Both were first issued in 1818, after the author's death. But while Northanger Abbey had been ready for press in 1803, Persuasion was not begun until Emma was finished, and it was completed in August 1816, not many months before Miss Austen died. During its progress, indeed, her health had been slowly failing. The illness of her brother Henry in 181 5, together with some subsequent family troubles, told severely upon her spirits, producing a perceptible decline in her customary vivacity and animation. By degrees she became a confirmed invalid, first substituting a donkey carriage for her long walks, and then spending most of her time on an improvised couch of chairs that served the office of the solitary sofa, of which she could not persuade herself to deprive her aged mother.1 Never theless, she worked at Persuasion with little abatement of her creative power, although of course there have been critics wise enough (after the fact) to discover in the book not only the sadness of impending calamity, but the evidence of defective vigour.

One chapter, in fact, in going over her work, she felt to be inadequate ; and for a moment suffered some slight despondency. But a night's rest worked its usual remedy, and she speedily substituted two others (they are the last two chapters but one), con cerning which we may confidently leave the reader to decide 1 In 1 816 sofas and couches were not so common as now. Those were the stiff-backed days, when Lord Abercorn was said to have made the tour of Europe without once touching the back of his travelling carriage. NORTHANGER ABBEY AND PERSUASION whether they are in any way inferior to the rest. The can celled chapter, which may be found at pp. 167-180 of the second edition of Mr. Austen-Leigh's Memoir, certainly, as he contends, contains ' touches which scarcely any other hand could have given,' but there can be no doubt of the higher quality of those which took its place.

After Persuasion, no other finished effort came from Miss Austen's pen. Upon a fitful revival of her strength at the beginning of 18 17, she fell eagerly to work at a story, of which she wrote twelve chapters. It has no name, and the plot and purpose are undeveloped. But some of the personages sketched have more than promise. There is a Mr. Parker with fixed theories as to the fashionable watering-place he hopes to evolve out of a Sussex fishing village ; there is a rich and vulgar Lady Denham, who will certainly disappoint her relatives by the testamentary disposition of her property, and there are two maiden ladies who thoroughly ' enjoy ' bad health, and quack themselves to their hearts' content. Whatever the plot to be unravelled, there is no sign that the writer's hand had lost its cunning.

But by the 17th March 181 7, the last date upon the manuscript, she had grown too ill to continue her work, and in the July following she was dead. Of Emma, as already stated, she had said that she was going to take a heroine whom no one but herself would much like. Of Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, she wrote to a friend, ' You may perhaps like her, as she is almost too good for me.' She is too good for most of us, but not the less charming, and even the brilliancy of Elizabeth Bennett pales a little before the refined womanliness of this delightful English lady. Whether the future of Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney was wholly ideal may be doubted ; we may even have secret reservations as to the absolute bliss

INTRODUCTION.

of Emma and her Knightley ; but there can be no sort of question as to the ultimate and unalloyed happiness of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, who is another of those pleasant manly naval officers whom Miss Austen, drawing no doubt from material in her own family circle, depicts so sympathetically. They are generally the most earnest, and the most admirable of her male personages. Admiral Croft is also a seafaring character, with a seafaring wife to match, and the hearty attachment of this couple goes far to answer those critics by whom it is sometimes affirmed that Miss Austen's pages present no pictures of contented married life. For Sir Walter Elliot (a study in the General Tilney vein) and his daughters, — for the Mus groves and Mrs. Clay, and for Anne's friend Lady Russell, there is not much to say, apart from their influence upon the conduct of the story, which, either of set purpose or by reason of the author's declining health, is rather quieter and more pensive in tone than its predecessors.

But the genuine charm of its chief female character has secured its popularity, and many of Miss Austen's admirers, like Miss Martineau and Miss Mitford, give it the chief place in their affections. The publication, at long intervals, of a series of prefaces has this among its drawbacks, that it sometimes becomes necessary to correct a statement which has been made too hastily. 'The words are utter'd, and they flee' — however much one may wish to call them back. In a note to the ' Introduction ' to Mansfield Park, the present writer announced that the first review of Miss Austen in the Quarterly was written by Sir Walter Scott, and in making this announcement he was under the impression that he was making it for the first time. Certainly the fact was not NORTHANGER ABBEY AND PERSUASION known to Mr. Austen-Leigh, who, speaking gratefully else where of Sir Walter's later praises of his aunt's work, finds fault with this particular article as inferior to Whately's. Nor does it seem to have been known to Miss Austen's most accomplished biographer, Professor Goldwin Smith, who, after quoting Scott's commendations from the Diary, goes on to say that 'the Quarterly reviewed her in 1815, very poorly and in a doubtful strain.' Yet the informa tion so obligingly afforded by Mr. John Murray1 was all the while lying perdu in a note to chapter lv. of Lockhart's Life of Scott.

After explaining that he had been misled into ascribing Dr. Whately's article to his father-in law, Lockhart adds, 'The article which Scott did con tribute to the Quarterly on the novels of Miss Austen was that which the reader will find in No. xxvii. [for October 1815]. Emma, and Northanger Abbey, in particular, were great favourites of his, and he often read chapters of them to his evening circle.' If this note escaped Mr. Austen- Leigh, he unwittingly confirms its last words, for he expressly refers to his personal knowledge of the well worn condition of Sir Walter's own copy of Miss Austen's novels at Abbotsford. „ Austin Dobson. 1 Introduction to Mansfield Park (Macmillan's Illustrated Standard Novels), 1897, xi. n. October 1897. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS NORTHANGER ABBEY PACE ' Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl ' .

Frontispiece 1 What an old-fashioned gown she has got on ' . 12 Pinned up each other's train for the dance .24 ' I beg your pardon, Miss Morland ' . . . .41 Off they went without a plunge or a caper . . .48 ' Rid out this morning with my father ' . . .58 ' Stop, stop, Mr. Thorpe ' . . . .70 The same kind of delicate flattery . . . .78 ' Let me go, Mr. Thorpe ' . . . .84 ' Knocked off his horse by a brickbat ' . -95 The three villains in horsemen's greatcoats . .108 The edge of a blooming cheek is still in view . .122 ' The mess-room will drink Isabella Thorpe for a fortnight ' . 127 General Tilney was pacing the drawing-room . . 1 39 They all attended in the hall to see him mount . .148 'Mr. Tilney!' she exclaimed . .164 Henry and the friends of his solitude . . . .180 Happy the voice that proclaimed the discovery ! . .198 It was some time before she could find what she looked for . 206 They always looked another way . . . .214 NORTHANGER ABBEY AND PERSUASION PERSUASION PAGE ' In the name of heaven, who is that old fellow? ' . . 234 ' Charles spoils the children so ' . . . . 254 Declaring he should not go . . . . 259 He attended to her large, fat sighings . . . 276 Some one was taking him from her .... 287 He carpentered ...... 304 A gentleman politely drew back .... 308 Looking on her with a face as pallid as her own . . 314 Talking with a very raised voice .... 333 Arm-in-arm with Colonel Wallis .... 340 He began to compliment her on her improved looks . 345 Obliged to touch him before she could catch his notice . 365 Old Sir Archibald Drew and his grandson . . . 367 In another moment they walked off . . . -375 With all the eagerness compatible with anxious elegance . 381 ' The little Durands were there ' . . . .389 'Sits at her elbow, reading verses ' . . . .412 ' I only smirked and bowed ' . . . . .418 Placed it before Anne . 429 The mistress of a very pretty landaulette . . .

B 1 NORTHANGER ABBEY

Chapter I

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard — and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence, besides two good livings — and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful, plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born ; and, instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on — lived to have six children more — to see them grow ing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself.

A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number ; but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark, lank hair, and strong features ; — so much for her person ; — and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boys' plays, and greatly preferred cricket, not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feed ing a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed, she had no taste for a garden ; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief — at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. — Such were her propensities — her abilities were quite as extraordinary.

She never could learn or under stand anything before she was taught ; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother was three months in teaching her only to repeat the ' Beggar's Petition ' ; and after all, her next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did. Not that Catherine was always stupid — by no means ; she learnt the fable of ' The Hare and many Friends ' as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother wished her to learn music ; and Catherine was sure she should like it, for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinnet ; so at eight years old she began. She learnt a year and could not bear it ; and Mrs. Morland, who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave off.

The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Catherine's life. Her taste for drawing was not superior ; though whenever she could obtain the -outside of a letter from her mother, or seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like one another. — Writing and accounts she was taught by her father ; French by her mother : her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both when ever she could. What a strange, unaccountable character ! — for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper ; was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny ; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.

Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen, appearances were mending ; she began to curl her hair and long for balls ; her complexion improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes gained more animation, and her figure more consequence. Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she grew smart ; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father and mother remark on her personal improvement. 'Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl, — she is almost pretty to-day,' were words which caught her ears now and then ; and how welcome were the sounds ! To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be ; but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves ; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country, at the age of fourteen, to books — or at least books of information — for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine ; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.

From Pope she learnt to censure those who bear about the mockery of woe. From Gray, that Many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air. From Thomson, that it is a delightful task To teach the young idea how to shoot. And from Shakspeare she gained a great store of information — amongst the rest, that trifles light as air, Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong As proofs of Holy Writ. That The poor beetle, which we tread upon, In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great As when a giant dies. And that a young woman in love always looks like Patience on a monument Smiling at Grief. So far her improvement was sufficient — and in many other points she came on exceedingly well ; for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them ; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people's per formance with very little fatigue.

Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil — she had no notion of drawing — not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover's profile, that she might be detected in the design. There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height. At present she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray. She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility ; without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed ! But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood ; no — not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door — not one young man whose origin was unknown.

Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children. But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way. Mr. Allen, who owned the chief of the property about Fullerton, the village in Wiltshire where the Morlands lived, was ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution ; and his lady, a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably aware that, if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad invited her to go with them. Mr. and Mrs. Morland were all compliance, and Catherine all happiness.

Chapter II

In addition to what has been already said of Catherine Morland's personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath, it may be stated, for the reader's more certain information, lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be, that her heart was affectionate, her disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affectation of any kind — her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl ; her person pleasing, and, when in good looks, pretty — and her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is. When the hour of departure drew near, the maternal anxiety of Mrs. Morland will be naturally supposed to be most severe.

A thousand alarming presentiments of evil to her beloved Catherine from this terrific separation must oppress her heart with sadness, and drown her in tears for the last day or two of their being together ; and advice of the most im portant and applicable nature must of course flow from her wise lips in their parting conference in her closet. Cautions against the violence of such noblemen and baronets as delight in forcing young ladies away to some remote farmhouse, must, at such a moment, relieve the fulness of her heart. Who would not think so ? But Mrs. Morland knew so little of lords and baronets, that she entertained no notion of their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations. Her cautions were confined to the following points : ' I beg, Catherine, you will always wrap yourself up very warm about the throat, when you come from the Rooms at night ; and I wish you would try to keep some account of the money you spend ; — I will give you this little book on purpose.' Sally, or rather Sarah (for what young lady of common gentility will reach the age of sixteen without altering her name as far as she can ?), must from situation be at this time the intimate friend and confidante of her sister.

It is remarkable, however, that she neither insisted on Catherine's writing by every post, nor exacted her promise of transmitting the character of every new acquaintance, nor a detail of every interesting conversation that Bath might produce. Everything indeed relative to this important journey was done on the part of the Morlands with a degree of moderation and composure which seemed rather consistent with the common feelings of common life, than with refined susceptibilities, the tender emotions which the first separation of a heroine from her family ought always to excite. Her father, instead of giving her an unlimited order on his banker, or even putting a hundred pounds bank-bill into her hands, gave her only ten guineas, and promised her more when she wanted it. Under these unpromising auspices the parting took place, and the journey began.

It was performed with suitable quietness and uneventful safety. Neither robbers nor tem pests befriended them, nor one lucky overturn to introduce them to the hero. Nothing more alarming occurred than a fear, on Mrs. Allen's side, of having once left her clogs behind her at an inn, and that fortunately proved to be groundless. They arrived at Bath. Catherine was all eager delight ; — her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and she felt happy already. They were soon settled in comfortable lodgings in Pulteney Street. It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs. Allen, that the reader may be able to judge in what manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will probably contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate wretchedness of whicha last volume is capable — whether by her imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy — whether by intercepting her letters, ruining her character, or turning her out of doors.

Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner. The air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet, inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind, were all that could account for her being the choice of a sensible, intelligent man, like Mr. Allen. In one respect she was admirably fitted to introduce a young lady into public, being as fond of going everywhere and seeing everything herself as any young lady could be. Dress was her passion. She had a most harmless delight in being fine ; and our heroine's entree into life could not take place till after three or four days had been spent in learning what was mostly worn, and her chaperon was provided with a dress of the newest fashion.