The Annotated Northanger Abbey

by Jane Austen

  “You have not!” cried Catherine.

  “I have, upon my soul. Left her this moment. Told her you had sent me to say, that having just recollected a prior engagement of going to Clifton with us to-morrow, you could not have the pleasure of walking with her till Tuesday. She said very well, Tuesday was just as convenient to her; so there is an end of all our difficulties.—A pretty good thought of mine—hey?”

  Isabella’s countenance was once more all smiles and good-humour, and James too looked happy again.

  “A most heavenly thought indeed! Now, my sweet Catherine, all our distresses are over; you are honourably acquitted, and we shall have a most delightful party.”

  “This will not do,” said Catherine; “I cannot submit to this. I must run after Miss Tilney directly and set her right.”

  Isabella, however, caught hold of one hand; Thorpe of the other; and remonstrances poured in from all three. Even James was quite angry. When every thing was settled, when Miss Tilney herself said that Tuesday would suit her as well, it was quite ridiculous, quite absurd to make any further objection.

  “I do not care. Mr. Thorpe had no business to invent any such message. If I had thought it right to put it off, I could have spoken to Miss Tilney myself. This is only doing it in a ruder way; and how do I know that Mr. Thorpe has—he may be mistaken again perhaps; he led me into one act of rudeness by his mistake on Friday. Let me go, Mr. Thorpe; Isabella, do not hold me.”10

  Thorpe told her it would be in vain to go after the Tilneys; they were turning the corner into Brock-street,11 when he had overtaken them, and were at home by this time.

  “Then I will go after them,” said Catherine; “wherever they are I will go after them. It does not signify talking. If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I never will be tricked into it.” And with these words she broke away and hurried off. Thorpe would have darted after her, but Morland withheld him. “Let her go, let her go, if she will go.”

  “She is as obstinate as—”12

  Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one.

  Away walked Catherine in great agitation, as fast as the crowd would permit her,13 fearful of being pursued, yet determined to persevere. As she walked, she reflected on what had passed. It was painful to her to disappoint and displease them, particularly to displease her brother; but she could not repent her resistance. Setting her own inclination apart, to have failed a second time in her engagement to Miss Tilney, to have retracted a promise voluntarily made only five minutes before, and on a false pretence too, must have been wrong. She had not been withstanding them on selfish principles alone, she had not consulted merely her own gratification; that might have been ensured in some degree by the excursion itself, by seeing Blaize Castle; no, she had attended to what was due to others, and to her own character in their opinion. Her conviction of being right however was not enough to restore her composure, till she had spoken to Miss Tilney she could not be at ease; and quickening her pace when she got clear of the Crescent, she almost ran over the remaining ground till she gained the top of Milsom-street.14 So rapid had been her movements, that in spite of the Tilneys’ advantage in the outset,15 they were but just turning into their lodgings as she came within view of them; and the servant still remaining at the open door, she used only the ceremony of saying that she must speak with Miss Tilney that moment, and hurrying by him proceeded up stairs.16 Then, opening the first door before her, which happened to be the right, she immediately found herself in the drawing-room with General Tilney, his son and daughter.17 Her explanation, defective only in being—from her irritation18 of nerves and shortness of breath—no explanation at all, was instantly given. “I am come in a great hurry—It was all a mistake—I never promised to go—I told them from the first I could not go.—I ran away in a great hurry to explain it.—I did not care what you thought of me.—I would not stay for the servant.”19

  The business however, though not perfectly elucidated by this speech, soon ceased to be a puzzle. Catherine found that John Thorpe had given the message; and Miss Tilney had no scruple20 in owning herself greatly surprised by it. But whether her brother had still exceeded her in resentment, Catherine, though she instinctively addressed herself as much to one as to the other in her vindication, had no means of knowing. Whatever might have been felt before her arrival, her eager declarations immediately made every look and sentence as friendly as she could desire.

  The affair thus happily settled, she was introduced by Miss Tilney to her father, and received by him with such ready, such solicitous politeness as recalled Thorpe’s information to her mind, and made her think with pleasure that he might be sometimes depended on.21 To such anxious attention was the General’s civility carried, that not aware of her extraordinary swiftness in entering the house, he was quite angry with the servant whose neglect had reduced her to open the door of the apartment22 herself.23 “What did William mean by it? He should make a point of inquiring into the matter.” And if Catherine had not most warmly asserted his innocence, it seemed likely that William would lose the favour of his master for ever, if not his place, by her rapidity.24

  After sitting with them a quarter of an hour, she rose to take leave,25 and was then most agreeably surprised by General Tilney’s asking her if she would do his daughter the honour of dining and spending the rest of the day with her. Miss Tilney added her own wishes. Catherine was greatly obliged; but it was quite out of her power. Mr. and Mrs. Allen would expect her back every moment. The General declared he could say no more; the claims of Mr. and Mrs. Allen were not to be superseded;26 but on some other day he trusted, when longer notice could be given, they would not refuse to spare her to her friend. “Oh, no; Catherine was sure they would not have the least objection, and she should have great pleasure in coming.” The General attended her himself to the street-door, saying every thing gallant as they went down stairs, admiring the elasticity27 of her walk, which corresponded exactly with the spirit of her dancing,28 and making her one of the most graceful bows she had ever beheld, when they parted.29

  Catherine, delighted by all that had passed, proceeded gaily to Pulteney-street; walking, as she concluded, with great elasticity, though she had never thought of it before. She reached home without seeing any thing more of the offended party; and now that she had been triumphant throughout, had carried her point and was secure of her walk, she began (as the flutter of her spirits subsided) to doubt whether she had been perfectly right. A sacrifice was always noble; and if she had given way to their entreaties, she should have been spared the distressing idea of a friend displeased, a brother angry, and a scheme of great happiness to both destroyed, perhaps through her means. To ease her mind, and ascertain by the opinion of an unprejudiced person what her own conduct had really been, she took occasion30 to mention before Mr. Allen the half-settled scheme of her brother and the Thorpes for the following day. Mr. Allen caught at it directly. “Well,” said he, “and do you think of going too?”

  “No; I had just engaged myself to walk with Miss Tilney before they told me of it; and therefore you know I could not go with them, could I?”

  “No, certainly not; and I am glad you do not think of it. These schemes are not at all the thing. Young men and women driving about the country in open carriages! Now and then it is very well; but going to inns and public places together! It is not right; and I wonder Mrs. Thorpe should allow it. I am glad you do not think of going; I am sure Mrs. Morland would not be pleased. Mrs. Allen, are not you of my way of thinking? Do not you think these kind of projects objectionable?”31

  “Yes, very much so indeed. Open carriages are nasty things. A clean gown is not five minutes wear in them.32 You are splashed getting in and getting out; and the wind takes your hair and your bonnet in every direction. I hate an open carriage myself.”

  “I know you do; but that is not the question. Do not you think it has an odd appearance, if young ladies are frequently driven about in the
m by young men, to whom they are not even related?”

  “Yes, my dear, a very odd appearance indeed. I cannot bear to see it.”

  “Dear madam,” cried Catherine, “then why did not you tell me so before? I am sure if I had known it to be improper, I would not have gone with Mr. Thorpe at all; but I always hoped you would tell me, if you thought I was doing wrong.”

  “And so I should,33 my dear, you may depend on it; for as I told Mrs. Morland at parting, I would always do the best for you in my power. But one must not be over particular. Young people will be young people, as your good mother says herself. You know I wanted you, when we first came, not to buy that sprigged muslin,34 but you would. Young people do not like to be always thwarted.”35

  “But this was something of real consequence; and I do not think you would have found me hard to persuade.”

  “As far as it has gone hitherto, there is no harm done,” said Mr. Allen; “and I would only advise you, my dear, not to go out with Mr. Thorpe any more.”

  “That is just what I was going to say,” added his wife.

  Catherine, relieved for herself, felt uneasy for Isabella; and after a moment’s thought, asked Mr. Allen whether it would not be both proper and kind in her to write to Miss Thorpe, and explain the indecorum of which she must be as insensible36 as herself; for she considered that Isabella might otherwise perhaps be going to Clifton the next day, in spite of what had passed. Mr. Allen however discouraged her from doing any such thing. “You had better leave her alone, my dear, she is old enough to know what she is about; and if not, has a mother to advise her. Mrs. Thorpe is too indulgent beyond a doubt; but however you had better not interfere. She and your brother chuse to go, and you will be only getting ill-will.”

  Catherine submitted; and though sorry to think that Isabella should be doing wrong, felt greatly relieved by Mr. Allen’s approbation of her own conduct, and truly rejoiced to be preserved by his advice from the danger of falling into such an error herself. Her escape from being one of the party to Clifton was now an escape indeed; for what would the Tilneys have thought of her, if she had broken her promise to them in order to do what was wrong in itself? if she had been guilty of one breach of propriety, only to enable her to be guilty of another?37

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning was fair, and Catherine almost expected another attack from the assembled party. With Mr. Allen to support her, she felt no dread of the event:1 but she would gladly be spared a contest, where victory itself was painful; and was heartily rejoiced therefore at neither seeing nor hearing any thing of them. The Tilneys called for her at the appointed time; and no new difficulty arising, no sudden recollection, no unexpected summons, no impertinent intrusion to disconcert their measures,2 my heroine was most unnaturally able to fulfil her engagement, though it was made with the hero himself.3 They determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble4 hill, whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice5 render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.6

  “I never look at it,” said Catherine, as they walked along the side of the river,7 “without thinking of the south of France.”

  “You have been abroad then?” said Henry, a little surprised.8

  “Oh! no, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in the ‘Mysteries of Udolpho.’9 But you never read novels, I dare say?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read better books.”10

  “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure. ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho,’ when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again;—I remember finishing it in two days—my hair standing on end the whole time.”

  “Yes,” added Miss Tilney, “and I remember that you undertook to read it aloud to me,11 and that when I was called away for only five minutes to answer a note,12 instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the Hermitage-walk,13 and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.”

  “Thank you, Eleanor;—a most honourable testimony. You see, Miss Morland, the injustice of your suspicions. Here was I, in my eagerness to get on, refusing to wait only five minutes for my sister; breaking the promise I had made of reading it aloud, and keeping her in suspense at a most interesting part, by running away with the volume, which, you are to observe, was her own, particularly her own. I am proud when I reflect on it, and I think it must establish14 me in your good opinion.”

  “I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.”

  “It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do15—for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and Louisas.16 If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never-ceasing inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ I shall soon leave you as far behind me as—what shall I say?—I want an appropriate simile;—as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when she went with her aunt into Italy.17 Consider how many years I have had the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were a good little girl working your sampler at home!”18

  The Old Bridge, which Catherine, Henry, and Eleanor cross to reach Beechen Cliff.

  [From Mowbray Aston Green, The Eighteenth Century Architecture of Bath (Bath, 1904), p. 158]

  [List of Illustrations]

  “Not very good I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?”

  “The nicest;—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.”19

  “Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is for ever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”20

  A sampler. The small letters form a homily in rhymed verse.

  [From Candace Wheeler, The Development of Embroidery in America (New York, 1921), p. 50]

  [List of Illustrations]

  “I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say any thing wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”

  “Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! it is a very nice word indeed!—it does for every thing. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement;—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.”21

  “While, in fact,” cried his sister, “it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind of reading?”

  “To say the truth, I do not much like any other.”

  “Indeed!”

  “That is, I can read poetry and plays,22 and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels.23 But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?”

  The view of Bath from Beechen Cliff.

  [From Ninety-Six Fine Art Photographs of Bath and District (London, 1898–?)]

  [List of Illustrations]

  “Yes, I am fond of history.”

  “I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and
kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs—the chief24 of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.”25

  “Historians, you think,” said Miss Tilney, “are not happy in their flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest. I am fond of history—and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records,26 which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as any thing that does not actually pass under one’s own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn up, I read it with pleasure, by whomsoever it may be made—and probably with much greater, if the production of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson,27 than if the genuine words of Caractacus, Agricola, or Alfred the Great.”28

  “You are fond of history!—and so are Mr. Allen and my father; and I have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my small circle of friends29 is remarkable! At this rate, I shall not pity the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great30 volumes,31 which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered at the person’s courage that could sit down on purpose to do it.”

  “That little boys and girls should be tormented,” said Henry, “is what no one at all acquainted with human nature in a civilized state can deny; but in behalf of our most distinguished historians, I must observe, that they might well be offended at being supposed to have no higher aim; and that by their method and style, they are perfectly well qualified to torment readers of the most advanced reason and mature time of life. I use the verb ‘to torment,’ as I observed to be your own method, instead of ‘to instruct,’ supposing them to be now admitted as synonimous.”