o f th e w o r k s o f
JA N E AU S T EN
no rth a ng e r a b bey
Cambridge University Press and the General Editor
Janet Todd wish to express their gratitude to the
University of Glasgow and the University of Aberdeen for
providing funding towards the creation of this edition.
Their generosity made possible the employment of
Antje Blank as research assistant throughout the project.
th e c a m b r i d g e e d i ti o n
o f th e w o r k s o f
JA N E AU S T EN
g e n e ra l e d i t o r : Janet Todd, University of Aberdeen
e d i t o r i a l bo a r d
Marilyn Butler, University of Oxford
Alistair Duckworth, University of Florida
Isobel Grundy, University of Alberta
Claudia Johnson, Princeton University
Jerome McGann, University of Virginia
Deirdre Le Faye, independent scholar
Linda Bree, Cambridge University Press
v o l u m e s i n th i s s e r i e s :
Juvenilia edited by Peter Sabor
Northanger Abbey edited by Barbara M. Benedict and Deirdre Le Faye
Sense and Sensibility edited by Edward Copeland
Pride and Prejudice edited by Pat Rogers
Mansfield Park edited by John Wiltshire
Emma edited by Richard Cronin and Dorothy McMillan
Persuasion edited by Janet Todd and Antje Blank
Later Manuscripts edited by Brian Southam
Jane Austen in Context edited by Janet Todd
The Circulating Library (pen and ink and watercolour and wash on
wove paper) by Isaac Cruikshank (1764–c.1811) C Yale Center for
N O R T H A N G ER A B B E Y
Edited by
Barbara M. Benedict and Deirdre Le Faye
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
C O N T EN T S
Northanger Abbey 1
vii
G EN ER A L ED I T O R ’ S P R EFAC E
ix
General Editor’s preface
validity and the text became a process rather than a fixed entity.
With this approach came emphasis on the print culture in which
the text appeared as well as on the social implications of author-
ship. Rather than being stages in the evolution of a single work, the
various versions existed in their own right, all having something to
tell.
The Cambridge edition describes fully Austen’s early publish-
ing history and provides details of composition, publication and
publishers as well as printers and compositors where known. It
accepts that many of the decisions concerning spelling, punctua-
tion, capitalising, italicising and paragraphing may well have been
the compositors’ rather than Austen’s but that others may repre-
sent the author’s own chosen style. For the novels published in Jane
Austen’s lifetime the edition takes as its copytext the latest edition
to which she might plausibly have made some contribution: that is,
the first editions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma and the second
editions of Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. Where a second
edition is used, all substantive and accidental changes between edi-
tions are shown on the page so that the reader can reconstruct the
first edition, and the dominance of either first or second editions
is avoided. For the two novels published posthumously together,
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, the copytext is the first published
edition.
Our texts as printed here remain as close to the copytexts as
possible: spelling and punctuation have not been modernised and
inconsistencies in presentation have not been regularised. The few
corrections and emendations made to the texts – beyond replac-
ing dropped or missing letters – occur only when an error is very
obvious indeed, and/or where retention might interrupt reading or
understanding: for example, missing quotation marks have been
supplied, run-on words have been separated and repeated words
excised. All changes to the texts, substantive and accidental, have
been noted in the final apparatus. Four of the six novels appeared
individually in three volumes; we have kept the volume divisions
and numbering. In the case of Persuasion, which was first published
x
General Editor’s preface
xi
General Editor’s preface
Janet Todd
University of Aberdeen
xii
AC K N O W LED G EM EN T S
xiii
Acknowledgements
xiv
CHRONOLOGY
deirdre le faye
1764
26 April Marriage of Revd George Austen, rector of
Steventon, and Cassandra Leigh; they go to live at
Deane, Hampshire, and their first three children –
James (1765), George (1766) and Edward (1767) –
are born here.
1768
Summer The Austen family move to Steventon, Hampshire.
Five more children – Henry (1771), Cassandra
(1773), Francis (1774), Jane (1775), Charles (1779) –
are born here.
1773
23 March Mr Austen becomes Rector of Deane as well as
Steventon, and takes pupils at Steventon from now
until 1796.
1775
16 December Jane Austen born at Steventon.
1781
Winter JA’s cousin, Eliza Hancock, marries Jean-François
Capot de Feuillide, in France.
1782
First mention of JA in family tradition, and the first
of the family’s amateur theatrical productions takes
place.
1783
JA’s third brother, Edward, is adopted by Mr and
Mrs Thomas Knight II, and starts to spend time with
them at Godmersham in Kent.
JA, with her sister Cassandra and cousin Jane Cooper,
stays for some months in Oxford and then
Southampton, with kinswoman Mrs Cawley.
xv
Chronology
1785
Spring JA and Cassandra go to the Abbey House School in
Reading.
1786
Edward sets off for his Grand Tour of Europe, and
does not return until autumn 1790.
April JA’s fifth brother, Francis, enters the Royal Naval
Academy in Portsmouth.
December JA and Cassandra have left school and are at home
again in Steventon. Between now and 1793 JA writes
her three volumes of Juvenilia.
1788
Summer Mr and Mrs Austen take JA and Cassandra on a trip
to Kent and London.
December Francis leaves the RN Academy and sails to East
Indies; does not return until winter 1793.
1791
July JA’s sixth and youngest brother, Charles, enters the
Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth.
27 December Edward Austen marries Elizabeth Bridges, and they
live at Rowling in Kent.
1792
27 March JA’s eldest brother, James, marries Anne Mathew;
they live at Deane.
?Winter Cassandra becomes engaged to Revd Tom Fowle.
1793
23 January Edward Austen’s first child, Fanny, is born at
Rowling.
1 February Republican France declares war on Great Britain and
Holland.
8 April JA’s fourth brother, Henry, becomes a lieutenant in
the Oxfordshire Militia.
15 April James Austen’s first child, Anna, born at Deane.
3 June JA writes the last item of her J.
1794
22 February M de Feuillide guillotined in Paris.
September Charles leaves the RN Academy and goes to sea.
?Autumn JA possibly writes the novella Lady Susan this
year.
xvi
Chronology
1795
JA probably writes ‘Elinor and Marianne’ this year.
3 May James’s wife Anne dies, and infant Anna is sent to
live at Steventon.
Autumn Revd Tom Fowle joins Lord Craven as his private
chaplain for the West Indian campaign.
December Tom Lefroy visits Ashe Rectory – he and JA have a
flirtation over the Christmas holiday period.
1796
October JA starts writing ‘First Impressions’.
1797
17 January James Austen marries Mary Lloyd, and infant Anna
returns to live at Deane.
February Revd Tom Fowle dies of fever at San Domingo and is
buried at sea.
August JA finishes ‘First Impressions’ and Mr Austen offers
it for publication to Thomas Cadell – rejected sight
unseen.
November JA starts converting ‘Elinor and Marianne’ into Sense
and Sensibility. Mrs Austen takes her daughters for a
visit to Bath. Edward Austen and his young family
move from Rowling to Godmersham.
31 December Henry Austen marries his cousin, the widowed Eliza
de Feuillide, in London.
1798
JA probably starts writing ‘Susan’ (later to become
Northanger Abbey).
17 November James Austen’s son James Edward born at Deane.
1799
Summer JA probably finishes ‘Susan’ (NA) about now.
1800
Mr Austen decides to retire and move to Bath.
1801
24 January Henry Austen resigns his commission in the
Oxfordshire Militia and sets up as a banker and army
agent in London.
May The Austen family leave Steventon for Bath, and
then go for a seaside holiday in the West Country.
JA’s traditionary West Country romance presumably
occurs between now and the autumn of 1804.
xvii
Chronology
1802
25 March Peace of Amiens appears to bring the war with
France to a close.
Summer Charles Austen joins his family for a seaside holiday
in Wales and the West Country.
December JA and Cassandra visit James and Mary at Steventon;
while there, Harris Bigg-Wither proposes to JA and
she accepts him, only to withdraw her consent the
following day.
Winter JA revises ‘Susan’ (NA ).
1803
Spring JA sells ‘Susan’ (NA ) to Benjamin Crosby; he
promises to publish it by 1804, but does not do so.
18 May Napoleon breaks the Peace of Amiens, and war with
France recommences.
Summer The Austens visit Ramsgate in Kent, and possibly
also go to the West Country again.
November The Austens visit Lyme Regis.
1804
JA probably starts writing The Watsons this year, but
leaves it unfinished.
Summer The Austens visit Lyme Regis again.
1805
21 January Mr Austen dies and is buried in Bath.
Summer Martha Lloyd joins forces with Mrs Austen and her
daughters.
18 June James Austen’s younger daughter, Caroline, born at
Steventon.
21 October Battle of Trafalgar.
1806
2 July Mrs Austen and her daughters finally leave Bath;
they visit Clifton, Adlestrop, Stoneleigh and
Hamstall Ridware, before settling in Southampton in
the autumn.
24 July Francis Austen marries Mary Gibson.
1807
19 May Charles Austen marries Fanny Palmer, in Bermuda.
1808
10 October Edward Austen’s wife Elizabeth dies at
Godmersham.
xviii
Chronology
1809
5 April JA makes an unsuccessful attempt to secure the
publication of ‘Susan’ (NA).
7 July Mrs Austen and her daughters, and Martha Lloyd,
move to Chawton, Hants.
1810
Winter S&S is accepted for publication by Thomas Egerton.
1811
February JA starts planning Mansfield Park.
30 October S&S published.
?Winter JA starts revising ‘First Impressions’ into Pride and
Prejudice.
1812
17 June America declares war on Great Britain.
14 October Mrs Thomas Knight II dies, and Edward Austen
now officially takes surname of Knight.
Autumn JA sells copyright of P&P to Egerton.
1813
28 January P&P published; JA half-way through MP.
?July JA finishes MP.
?November MP accepted for publication by Egerton about now.
1814
21 January JA commences Emma.
5 April Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
9 May MP published.
24 December Treaty of Ghent officially ends war with America.
1815
March Napoleon escapes and resumes power in France;
hostilities recommence.
29 March E finished.
18 June Battle of Waterloo finally ends war with France.
8 August JA starts Persuasion.
4 October Henry Austen takes JA to London; he falls ill, and
she stays longer than anticipated.
13 November JA visits Carlton House, and receives an invitation to
dedicate a future work to the Prince Regent.
December E published by John Murray, dedicated to the Prince
Regent (title page 1816).
1816
19 February 2nd edition of MP published.
xix
Chronology
xx
Chronology
1933
Volume the First of the J published.
1951
Volume the Third of the J published.
1952
Second edition of R. W. Chapman’s Jane Austen’s
Letters published, with additional items.
1954
R. W. Chapman publishes Jane Austen’s Minor Works,
which includes the three volumes of the J and other
smaller items.
1980
B. C. Southam publishes Jane Austen’s ‘Sir Charles
Grandison’, a small manuscript discovered in 1977.
1995
Deirdre Le Faye publishes the third (new) edition of
Jane Austen’s Letters, containing further additions to
the Chapman collections.
xxi
INTRODUCTION
c o m p o s i ti o n
Unlike some of Jane Austen’s other works, where the geographical
settings are only vaguely indicated, the greater part of this novel
is very specifically located in Bath, the elegant inland spa patron-
ised for holidays by the wealthy and leisured since the seventeenth
century; out of thirty-one chapters, four are set at the heroine’s
home in fictitious Fullerton, nine at the eponymous and equally
fictitious Northanger Abbey and eighteen in the genuine city of
Bath. This emphasis is not surprising, since Bath was a constant
backdrop to the life of the Austen family. Jane’s mother, Cassandra
Leigh (1739–1827), lived there for some years in her youth, and
married the Revd George Austen (1731–1805) at Walcot church
in 1764; Cassandra’s elder sister, Jane Leigh, and her husband,
Revd Dr Edward Cooper, lived in Royal Crescent and Bennett
Street from 1771 to 1783; and Mrs Austen’s brother, James Leigh-
Perrot (1735–1812), and his wife, Jane Cholmeley (1744–1836) –
a wealthy and childless couple, who are always referred to in Jane
Austen’s letters as ‘my uncle’ and ‘my aunt’ – soon developed the
habit of spending half the year on their estate in Berkshire and the
other half in Bath, at No. 1 Paragon Buildings.
It is not known when Austen herself first became personally
acquainted with Bath, but it was probably in the spring/summer
of 1794, when she and her elder sister, Cassandra, visited Leigh
cousins in Gloucestershire; in travelling to and from Hampshire
it would be very surprising if they did not pass through both
Bath and Gloucester en route. It must have been this Gloucester-
shire trip which gave Austen the local knowledge that she used
afterwards for her novel, and no doubt she too stopped off at
xxiii
Introduction
Petty France to change horses when taking the main road north-
wards out of Bath. As we subsequently learn that Catherine Mor-
land’s return to Fullerton involved a journey of seventy miles (vol. 2,
ch. 13), this means that Austen must have envisaged Northanger
Abbey as being somewhere in the Vale of Berkeley, lying on the
flood-plain of the river Severn and tucked under the steep west-
ern edge of the Cotswold limestone escarpment. Such a location
accounts for its name: in Old English hangra, now modernised to
‘hanger’, means ‘a wood on the side of a steeply sloping hill’,1 and
Austen unobtrusively but carefully mentions the house as ‘standing
low in a valley, sheltered from the north and east by rising woods of
oak’ (vol. 2, ch. 2). When Catherine drives up, she finds that ‘so low
did the building stand’, it could not be seen from the road (vol. 2,
ch. 5); and later, when she walks out with the family to admire the
house and grounds, she sees it has ‘steep woody hills rising behind
to give it shelter’ (vol. 2, ch. 7) – that is, a hanger to the north. Henry
Tilney’s parish of Woodston is also on the Severn flood-plain, as
‘the General seemed to think an apology necessary for the flatness
of the country’ (vol. 2, ch. 11). There was no country house in this
part of Gloucestershire which in any way resembled Northanger
Abbey as described by Austen, hence she could feel safe in plac-
ing it there, without being afraid that some local landowner might
take offence in the belief he was being pilloried in the character of
General Tilney.
Austen’s first recorded visit to Bath was in November/December
1797, when she and her mother and sister stayed with the Leigh-
Perrots in Paragon Buildings. Her next visit was in May/June 1799,
when her brother, Edward Knight, brought a family party to lodg-
ings in Queen Square; and finally, she and her family lived in Bath
from 1801 to 1806. It is an interesting possibility that during the
1797 visit she may have met the Revd Sydney Smith, then only a
country cleric and tutor to the squire’s son, but soon to become well
known as a wit, essayist, moral philosopher and joint founder of the
1
Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, fourth edition
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
xxiv
Introduction
xxv
Introduction
this context being taken to mean any historical period before 1700
and for preference as far back as medieval times, which by defi-
nition could provide more scope for wild and barbaric behaviour
than could the civilised eighteenth century. They were usually set
in European locations, and specialised in plots involving mystery,
crime and horror, with a strong element of the supernatural to
add terror to the mix. So far from entering high society, the hero-
ines in these romances invariably find themselves imprisoned in
ruined castles or abbeys in the Alps or Pyrenees, and threatened by
libertines, brigands and – apparently – ghosts. The nine chapters
covering Catherine’s visit to Northanger Abbey parody her over-
heated romantic imaginings of the potential mystery she expects to
find there, by setting them against the realities of life in a wealthy,
modernised country house in Gloucestershire. A final twist in the
tale, however, is that, although Catherine’s initial imaginings are
erroneous, there is indeed a mystery at Northanger Abbey, and she
herself is at the centre of it.
pu b l i c a ti o n
When Austen finished her text in 1799, she called it simply ‘Susan’,
and it seems she had then no thought of attempting to publish it –
the manuscript must have remained in the cupboard or on the
bookshelf, no doubt being read with amusement by her family, who
would recognise the parodies and also the genuine background to
the story. In 1801 the Revd George Austen suddenly decided to
leave Hampshire and retire to Bath, and it was probably the fact
of finding herself now actually living in the city which inspired
Jane to look afresh at ‘Susan’, perhaps in the autumn of 1802, and
to accept her family’s advice that it should be offered for publica-
tion. By this time her brother Henry was a London banker, and it
was his lawyer/agent, William Seymour, who sold the manuscript
in the spring of 1803 to the firm of Benjamin Crosby & Co., of
Stationers’ Hall Court, London, for £10, with a verbal agreement
for early publication. Crosby advertised it – Susan; a Novel, in 2
vols. – in their Flowers of Literature for 1801 & 1802 (1803), as
xxvi
Introduction
being ‘In the Press’; it was No. 15 in their list of ‘New and Useful
Books’.
In the event, however, Crosby never did publish ‘Susan’. There is
nothing to indicate how long it was before Jane Austen realised that
he did not intend to fulfil his bargain, and nothing to indicate the
reason for the firm’s change of mind. In her preface to a new edition
of Northanger Abbey in 1932, Rebecca West drew an amusing pen-
picture of what might have happened: Benjamin Crosby glanced
casually at the manuscript, and thought it ‘a pleasant tale about
pleasant people, written in simple English; and it had the further
advantage, from the point of view of the circulating libraries, that
it was plainly written by a lady who wrote from her own knowledge
of life as it was lived in country seats and at Bath’,5 hence he was
agreeable to paying £10 for it. However, when he looked at it for a
second time, more closely – perhaps when on the verge of sending it
actually to the printing press – he found it disconcerting and full of
mockery, quite unlike the novels that were the stock in trade of the
circulating libraries. The author seemed to be laughing at her char-
acters, possibly laughing at her potential readers, or even laughing
at himself for accepting such an unromantic, unsentimental tale.
For whatever combination of reasons, Crosby put the manuscript
aside and mentally wrote off his £10.
The early 1800s were an unsettled period in the Austen family’s
life, with much time spent travelling on seaside holidays and visits
in Kent and Hampshire, until Mr Austen died in January 1805 and
such journeyings came to an end. Mrs Austen and her daughters
eventually left Bath in 1806 and moved to Southampton, where
they stayed until the spring of 1809, before moving to their final
home at Chawton. It must have been exasperating for Austen to
see that another anonymous two-volume novel called Susan was
published in London early in 1809 by the firm of John Booth;6
and it may have been the knowledge of this rival production, plus a
5
Northanger Abbey, ed. Rebecca West (London: Jonathan Cape, 1932).
6
Peter Garside, James Raven and Rainer Schöwerling, eds., The English Novel 1770–1829
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), vol. 2, p. 292.
xxvii
Introduction
wish to tidy up the loose ends of her literary hopes, which led her
to write to Crosby & Co. on 5 April 1809 using the pseudonym
of ‘Mrs Ashton Dennis’, c/o the Post Office, Southampton.7 She
reminded them of the circumstances of the sale six years ago, and
stated that if they were no longer interested, she would send a sec-
ond copy of the manuscript to another publisher. Richard Crosby
replied on his father’s behalf by return of post (8 April 1809, Let-
ters, p. 175), denying that there had been any promise of early pub-
lication, threatening legal action if she published elsewhere, and
offering to return the manuscript for the £10 the firm had paid for
it. This sum was presumably beyond Austen’s means, so there the
matter rested for the time being.
Once settled in Chawton, Austen devoted herself to literary
composition, revising and publishing her two early works, Sense
and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), and going
straight on to write Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (late 1815)
without a pause. Now with the confidence of a published author,
she thought of recovering ‘Susan’, and early in 1816 her brother
Henry ‘undertook the negotiation. He found the purchaser very
willing to receive back his money, and to resign all claim to the
copyright. When the bargain was concluded and the money paid,
but not till then, the negotiator had the satisfaction of informing
him that the work which had been so lightly esteemed was by the
author of “Pride and Prejudice”.’8
In view of the publication of the other novel called Susan in
1809, Austen changed the heroine’s name to ‘Catherine’ Morland,
and wrote an ‘Advertisement’, or preface, explaining that the story
had been intended to appear in 1803, and apologising therefore
to readers in 1816 for those parts which might now appear ‘com-
paratively obsolete’. However, it seems that even as she wrote this
7
Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995), p. 174; referred to as Letters hereafter.
8
James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections,
ed. Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 106; referred to
as Memoir hereafter.
xxviii
Introduction
xxix
Introduction
xxx
Introduction
and Prejudice 54; Sense and Sensibility 40; Mansfield Park 32; Emma
28; Northanger Abbey alone 23; Persuasion alone 18; Northanger
Abbey and Persuasion together 12.
The long intervals between the novel’s completion in 1799, its
acceptance by Crosby in 1803, and Austen’s further check in 1816,
have led some critics to wonder if in fact she made any consider-
able revisions to the text before writing her ‘Advertisement’. One
passage that indicates later interpolation is the narrator’s defence of
novels, in the fifth chapter of the first volume. With high rhetoric,
the narrator calls for solidarity amongst novelists, reproaches those
who make their heroines denigrate the fictions of which they are
themselves a part, and urges readers not to affect to despise novels,
since in them can be found ‘genius, wit and taste’. In this pas-
sage Austen refers to Frances Burney’s Cecilia (1782) and Camilla
(1796), but also to Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801), and there-
fore probably added it in 1803, when Edgeworth’s text would still
be fresh in people’s minds.
Another addition which must date to 1803 is Austen’s own foot-
note at the end of chapter three of the first volume: ‘Vide a letter
from Mr. Richardson, No. 97, vol. II, Rambler.’ This refers to
Samuel Richardson’s essay published in 1751 in the twice-weekly
periodical The Rambler (20 March 1750 –14 March 1752), edited
and written mainly by Samuel Johnson, which asserts: ‘That a young
lady should be in love, and the love of the young gentleman unde-
clared, is an heterodoxy which prudence, and even policy, must
not allow.’ This essay was first publicly attributed to Richardson in
Alexander Chalmers’ edition of The British Essayists (1803).
Apart from these two additions, it is clear from the tone of the
text that it still dates to the turn of the century. By 1816 ladies had
ceased to pile their hair up into huge powdered ‘heads’, muslins
were no longer a novelty fabric worthy of discussion, and the Bath
assembly rooms were no longer quite so smart – the city had become
less of a fashionable holiday resort and marriage-mart, and more
of a residential retreat for invalids, elderly spinsters and widows,
bachelors and widowers, the atmosphere which Austen creates in
xxxi
Introduction
l i t e ra r y c o nt e x t
As the location of Northanger Abbey is a true reflection of Austen’s
own knowledge of Gloucestershire, so the parodic aspect of her
text is likewise a true reflection of her readings in contemporary
fiction. Clerics such as the Revd James Fordyce might include in
his Sermons to Young Women (1766) the warning that:
We consider the general run of Novels as utterly unfit for you. Instruc-
tion they convey none. They paint scenes of pleasure and passion alto-
gether improper for you to behold, even with the mind’s eye. Their
descriptions are often loose and luscious in a high degree; their repre-
sentations of love between the sexes are almost universally overstrained.
All is dotage, or despair; or else ranting swelled into burlesque. In short,
the majority of their lovers are either mere lunatics, or mock-heroes11
xxxii
Introduction
12
Memoir, p. 71.
13
David Gilson, A Bibliography of Jane Austen, revised edition (Winchester: St Paul’s
Bibliographies, 1997), p. 89.
xxxiii
Introduction
xxxiv
Introduction
xxxv
Introduction
xxxvi
Introduction
xxxvii
Introduction
20
Garside, Raven and Schöwerling (eds.), The English Novel 1770–1829, vol. 1,
pp. 758–9.
21
Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 760–1.
22
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 750.
xxxviii
Introduction
c r i ti c a l r ec e p ti o n
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, intelligent readers
were surfeited with the novel of manners and the gothic romance,
and it might be said that Austen’s works helped in a small way to
kill off both these schools of fiction. In 1813 Miss Milbanke, future
Lady Byron, wrote to her mother: ‘I have finished the Novel called
Pride and Prejudice, which I think a very superior work. It depends
not on any of the common resources of novel writers, no drownings,
no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lap-dogs and parrots,
nor chambermaids and milliners, nor rencontres and disguises. I
really think it is the most probable fiction I have ever read.’23
A year or so later William Gifford, editor of John Murray’s Quar-
terly Review, read Pride and Prejudice before recommending Murray
to accept the manuscript of Emma, and told him: ‘I have for the first
time looked into Pride and Prejudice;—and it is really a very pretty
thing. No dark passages; no secret chambers; no wind-howlings
in long galleries; no drops of blood upon a rusty dagger—things
that should now be left to ladies’ maids and sentimental washer-
women’.24 Although Austen could not, of course, have known of
Gifford’s opinion, she too must have felt that the gothic was out-
moded – which is perhaps why, in 1815, it is only foolish little
Harriet Smith who is still enjoying The Romance of the Forest and
The Children of the Abbey (Emma, vol. 1, ch. 4).
Following the publication of Emma in late 1815, Murray asked
Walter Scott to write an article on Austen’s novels for the Quar-
terly Review, which appeared, anonymously, in March 1816. He
commended Austen for her depiction of ordinary characters and
everyday incidents, contrasting her realism with the formulaic fic-
tion in which the heroine
23
Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife (London: John Murray, 1962), p. 159.
24
Smiles, A Publisher, vol. 1, p. 282.
xxxix
Introduction
was regularly exposed to being forcibly carried off like a Sabine virgin
by some frantic admirer. And even if she escaped the terrors of masked
ruffians, an insidious ravisher, a cloak wrapped forcibly around her
head, and a coach with the blinds up driving she could not conjecture
whither, she had still her share of wandering, of poverty, of obloquy,
of seclusion, and of imprisonment, and was frequently extended upon
a bed of sickness, and reduced to her last shilling, before the author
condescended to shield her from persecution.
The author Susan Ferrier had probably read Scott’s article when
she wrote to Lady Charlotte Bury in March 1816:
This is a wild, stormy, snowy day, and I feel as if a mental horror would
be very relishing; but the literature of the present day is not of a spirit-
stirring, hair-raising sort; everything now is addressed to the reason,
nothing to the heart or fancy . . . Formerly, in my time, a heroine was
merely a piece of beautiful matter, with long fair hair and soft blue
eyes, who was buffeted up and down the world like a shuttle-cock, and
visited with all sorts of possible and impossible miseries. Now they are
black-haired, sensible women, who do plainwork, pay morning visits,
and make presents of legs of pork;— vide ‘Emma’.25
25
The Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting, by Lady Charlotte Bury, ed. A. Francis Steuart (London:
John Lane The Bodley Head, 1908), pp. 260–1.
xl
Introduction
wit, nor humour, could make her amends for so very low a scale of
morals.’ By omitting any reference to her fondness for the popu-
lar fictions parodied in Northanger Abbey – not even repeating her
praise of Burney’s and Edgeworth’s works – the ‘Notice’ further sep-
arated it from the character sketch he was drawing. The fact that it
was published together with Persuasion may also have damaged its
critical reputation – Henry Austen’s picture of a gentle, beautifully
behaved maiden lady mirrors Anne Elliot far more closely than
either the bold narrative voice or the clumsy heroine of Northanger
Abbey, and so makes her last novel appear the more polished, and
certainly more mature, work of the two.
Like Scott, the early critics, reacting against improbable
romances, commend the novel’s medicinal realism. In March 1818,
the anonymous reviewer in the British Critic contrasts the exhaust-
ing torrent of sentimental and gothic fiction with Northanger Abbey
and Persuasion, which, albeit not morally profound, he considers
enjoyable reading. He makes no reference to the parodic aspect
of Northanger Abbey, but specifically admires Austen’s dramatisa-
tion of character, her ability to let the characters speak for them-
selves and her astute, unflinching observation in the Bath section
of the book. He thinks that her plots and subjects are common-
place, that the portrait of the General is improbable and not ‘pour-
trayed with our authoress’s usual taste and judgment’, and that
there is ‘a considerable want of delicacy in all the circumstances of
Catherine’s visit to the Abbey’; but assures his readers neverthe-
less that this is ‘one of the very best of Miss Austen’s productions,
and will every way repay the time and trouble of perusing it’. He
dismisses Persuasion as being ‘a much less fortunate performance
than that which we have just been considering’, and disapproves of
its dangerously radical encouragement of youthful desire for early
matrimony.26
Another anonymous reviewer, in the Edinburgh Magazine for
May 1818, thought that the prevailing taste for fictions that offered
historical and romantic incident, even when ‘altogether wild and
26
British Critic for March 1818, vol. 9, pp. 293–301.
xli
Introduction
27
Edinburgh Magazine for May 1818, vol. 2, pp. 453–5.
28
Gentleman’s Magazine for July 1818, vol. 88, pp. 52–3.
29
A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth with A Selection from her Letters, ed. Frances Maria
Edgeworth (London: privately printed, 1867), vol. 2, pp. 5–6.
30
Quarterly Review for January 1821, vol. 24, pp. 352–76.
xlii
Introduction
31
Edinburgh Review for January 1843, vol. 76, pp. 561–2.
32
G. O. Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1961), vol. 2, p. 307.
33
Fraser’s Magazine for 1847, vol. 36, p. 687.
34
The Leader, 22 November 1851, p. 115.
xliii
Introduction
xliv
Introduction
‘is no longer read, nor much worth reading’, while ‘Miss Edge-
worth is already little more than a name, and only finds a public for
her children’s books’. On the other hand, ‘it is evident that Miss
Austen’s works must possess elements of indestructible excellence,
since . . . she survives writers who were very popular; and forty
years after her death, gains more recognition than she gained when
alive’. Lewes recalls that ‘the charming novel, Northanger Abbey . . .
which the Quarterly Review pronounces the weakest of the series (a
verdict only intelligible to us because in the same breath Persuasion
is called the best!), is not only written with unflagging vivacity, but
contains two characters no one else could have equalled—Henry
Tilney and John Thorpe’. Later on he defines Catherine Morland
as being one of the ‘truly lovable, flesh-and-blood young women’
in the gallery of heroines.38
Sir William Frederick Pollock, a barrister and writer, in his arti-
cle ‘British Novelists—Richardson, Miss Austen, Scott’ for Fraser’s
Magazine in January 1860, praised her ‘power of impressing reality
upon her characters’ and ‘that delicate atmosphere of satire which
pervades her works’. He gave much space to discussing Sense and
Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma, a short paragraph to
Mansfield Park, a few lines to Persuasion, and dismissed Northanger
Abbey in one sentence as ‘not unworthy of its companions, although
it was not thought deserving of publication until after its writer’s
reputation was made.’39
The novelist Julia Kavanagh, in her literary biography English
Women of Letters (1862), also recognised Austen’s realism, but dis-
approved of her satirical approach: ‘She refused to build herself, or
to help to build for others, any romantic ideal of love, virtue, or
sorrow. She laughed at her first heroine, Catherine Morland . . .
and described her by negatives. Her irony, though gentle, was a
fault, and the parent of much coldness. She learned to check it, but
she never conquered it entirely. Catherine, though she makes us
smile, is amiable and innocent, and she contrasts pleasantly with
38
Edinburgh Magazine for July 1859, vol. 86, pp. 99–113.
39
Fraser’s Magazine for January 1860, vol. 61, pp. 30–5.
xlv
Introduction
saw and recognised the value of the novel, and with unusual sagacity set
to work to raise it from its degraded position . . . she resolved to paint
the world as she saw it, and to substitute rational for false amusement.
That such a resolution ever occurred to her in this precise form is, of
course, conjecture, but that she saw that the position novels held in the
opinion of the world was in a great measure the fault of the writers,
and determined to found her books on a more real base, is plain from
several passages in Northanger Abbey.41
The critic considers that in this ‘her first book, she does not, as
may be conjectured, arrive at so high a pitch of art as she afterwards
attained. In spite of some very excellent character drawing, the
book, on the whole, is crude, the interest insufficient, and the story
incompletely worked out.’ This writer still remembered the now
unfashionable gothic romances, and so was able to identify the
scene in which Catherine discovers a laundry list in the black and
gold cabinet as originating in Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest.
Criticism in the later Victorian period stems from the publica-
tion by her nephew, the Revd James Edward Austen-Leigh (1798–
1874), of the Memoir of Jane Austen in early 1870, which proved
sufficiently popular to be followed by an enlarged second edition
in 1871. Austen-Leigh repeats the family claims that his aunt pre-
ferred the works of Johnson, Cowper and Crabbe to most novels,
apart from Sir Charles Grandison and those of Maria Edgeworth,
thus once again marginalising Northanger Abbey and indeed linking
it with her teenage writings:
40
Julia Kavanagh, English Women of Letters (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1862), vol. 2,
pp. 251–74.
41
Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (1866) vol. 3, series 2, pp. 238–9, 278–82.
xlvi
Introduction
xlvii
Introduction
Catherine Morland, with all her enthusiasm and her mistakes, her
modest tenderness and right feeling, and the fine instinct which runs
through her simplicity, is the most captivating picture of a very young
girl which fiction, perhaps, has ever furnished . . . The machinery of
the story is wonderfully bad, and General Tylney [sic] an incredible
monster; but all the scenes in Bath – the vulgar Thorpes, the goodhu-
moured Mrs. Allen – are clear and vivid as the daylight, and Cather-
ine herself throughout always the most delightful little gentlewoman,
never wrong in instinct and feeling, notwithstanding all her amusing
foolishness.45
44
St Paul ’s Magazine for March 1870, vol. 5, pp. 631–43.
45
Margaret Oliphant, The Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and
Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1882), vol. 3, pp. 228–9.
xlviii
Introduction
in letters and talk and harmless flirtations before it took to itself literary
shape, and it is pleasant to turn from the high spirits of that delightful
book to some of the first letters in this collection, and so to realise
afresh, by means of such records of the woman, the perfect spontaneity
of the writer. Any one who has ever interested himself in the impulsive
little heroine . . . will feel that in one or two of these newly-printed
letters he comes very near to the secret of Catherine’s manufacture.46
xlix
Introduction
Writing in the middle of the First World War, Farrer considers ‘the
sane sensible young women of our own day’ – who, as his readers
would know, were working in munitions factories or as nurses in
military hospitals – are ‘infinitely nearer to Jane Austen’ than the
‘flopping vaporous fools who were the fashion among the Turkish-
minded male novelists’ of the Victorian era.50
The huge contribution of the twentieth century to Austenian
scholarship came with the first really scholarly edition of the novels,
by R. W. Chapman, published by Oxford University Press in 1923
in five volumes (Northanger Abbey together with Persuasion, as they
had originally appeared), which included numerous indexes and
short essays on matters of bibliographical and historical interest; for
the first time, trustworthy texts and much useful contextual knowl-
edge were available to critics, students and general readership alike.
The first writer to enjoy the benefit of Chapman’s pioneering work
was his Oxford colleague, Mary Lascelles, whose Jane Austen and
Her Art (1939) set a new standard in Austen criticism, combining
as it did biographical information with lucid discussions of Austen’s
style and narrative art; a model of clarity, it has remained in print
ever since its first appearance. Lascelles sees that
50
Quarterly Review for July 1917, vol. 228, pp. 1–30.
l
Introduction
51
Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and her Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 64.
52
Harrison R. Steeves, Before Jane Austen (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1965); Frank W. Bradbrook, Jane Austen and Her Predecessors (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1966); Kenneth L. Moler, Jane Austen’s Art of Allusion (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1968).
53
Penny Gay, Jane Austen and the Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002), pp. 71–2.
li
Introduction
54
Judith Wilt, Ghosts of the Gothic: Austen, Eliot, and Lawrence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1980), p. 126.
55
Maria Jerinic, ‘In Defense of the Gothic: Rereading Northanger Abbey’, in Jane Austen
and Discourses of Feminism, ed. Devoney Looser (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995),
p. 149.
56
Mary Waldron, Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2001), p. 30, p. 34.
lii
Introduction
57
Alison G. Sulloway, Jane Austen and the Province of Womanhood (Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 198.
58
Jocelyn Harris, Jane Austen’s Art of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989).
59
Joseph Wiesenfarth, The Errand of Form: An Assay of Jane Austen’s Art (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1967), p. 22.
liii
Introduction
liv
Introduction
lv
Introduction
lvi
Introduction
72
Tara Ghoshal Wallace, Jane Austen and Narrative Authority (Houndmills, Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1995), p. 30.
73
Bharat Tandon, Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation (London: Anthem Press,
2003), p. 74.
74
Andrew Wright, Jane Austen’s Novels: A Study in Structure (London: Chatto & Windus,
1954).
75
D. W. Harding, ‘Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen’, Scrutiny,
8 (1940), pp. 346–62; Marvin Mudrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1952).
lvii
Introduction
76
Devoney Looser (ed.) identifies five in her ‘Introduction’ to Jane Austen and Discourses
of Feminism, pp. 6–7.
77
Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1988).
78
See, for example, Carole Gerster, ‘Rereading Jane Austen: Dialogic Feminism in
Northanger Abbey’, in A Companion to Jane Austen Studies, ed. Laura Cooner Lambdin
and Robert Thomas Lambdin (London: Greenwood Press, 2000), p. 121.
lviii
Introduction
c r i ti c a l s i g n i f i c a nc e
It is largely thanks to Austen and her desire to parody the gothic
romances by Ann Radcliffe and her imitators that the memories
of them have been preserved in the pages of Northanger Abbey like
dried flowers, or flies in amber; and indeed, in modern reprints, they
remain both exciting as fantasies, and illuminating for the study of
the tastes and feelings of the past. With some willing suspension of
disbelief, it is still possible even for the sophisticated reader of the
twenty-first century to agree with Henry Tilney when he says: ‘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 stand-
ing on end the whole time’ (vol. 1, ch. 14), since Radcliffe is an adept
at creating an atmosphere of suspense and terror, however unlikely
her red herrings, cliffhangers and plot-lines may eventually turn out
to be when the last chapter is reached. There is also a further aspect
of factual, not fictional, irony involved for the modern reader to
79
Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of
Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984), p. 208.
80
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1979), pp. 107–83, especially pp. 128–45.
81
Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 47.
lix
Introduction
lx
Introduction
lxi
NOTE ON THE TEXT
lxiii
Notes on the text
font. Otherwise all changes to the copytext are recorded in the List
of Corrections and Emendations.
As will be seen from the List of Corrections and Emendations the
text is relatively clear from error and uncertainty. On two occasions
in the second volume, however, both involving General Tilney,
there is doubt about Austen’s intention in the matter of indirect
speech. The first is in the paragraph beginning ‘The elegance of
the breakfast set’ on p. 179. Closing quotation marks appear in
the penultimate line, but no opening quotation marks are given.
It seems Austen is intending particular attention to the General’s
indirect speech and the question is where to place the opening
quotation marks. Following other examples of Austen’s practice
(see for example the paragraph beginning ‘The imposing effect’ in
the same chapter, on pp. 180–1) we have chosen to place them in the
third line of the paragraph, where it seems the narrative shifts into
indirect speech mode. The second occasion is in vol. 2, ch. 11, in
the paragraph beginning ‘A day or two’ on p. 215. The copytext has
closing quotation marks after ‘in the country’ but again no opening
quotation marks are given; we have chosen to open the quotation
marks at ‘He often expressed his uneasiness’. But these choices are
inevitably speculative.
It is noticeable that whereas in the novels published in Austen’s
lifetime the great majority of direct speeches begin with a new para-
graph, this is less often the case in Northanger Abbey; in this respect
the text more closely resembles Austen’s surviving manuscripts,
where paragraphing is much more sparse than in the published
texts, and it is possible that Austen’s family, and publishers, were
cautious about intervening too much in the manuscripts of both
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Many of the idiosyncratic fea-
tures of Austen’s manuscripts however, including contractions of
verbs and spellings such as ‘agreable’ and ‘croud’, do not appear in
the published text of Northanger Abbey.
lxiv
The title page of the first edition, used as copytext for this edition
of Northanger Abbey. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of
Cambridge University Library.
A DV ER T I S EM EN T,
B Y T H E A U T H O R E S S,
TO
N O R T H A N G ER A B B E Y
1
no rth a ng e r a b bey
Volume I
Chapter 1
5
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 1
6
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 1
7
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 1
That
“The poor beetle, which we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
As when a giant dies.”24
8
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9
Chapter 2
10
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11
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12
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13
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 2
room. Mrs. Allen did all that she could do in such a case by
saying very placidly, every now and then, “I wish you could
dance, my dear,—I wish you could get a partner.” For some
time her young friend felt obliged to her for these wishes; but
they were repeated so often, and proved so totally ineffec-
tual, that Catherine grew tired at last, and would thank her
no more.
They were not long able, however, to enjoy the repose of the
eminence they had so laboriously gained.—Every body was
shortly in motion for tea, and they must squeeze out like the
rest. Catherine began to feel something of disappointment—
she was tired of being continually pressed against by people,
the generality of whose faces possessed nothing to interest,
and with all of whom she was so wholly unacquainted, that
she could not relieve the irksomeness of imprisonment by
the exchange of a syllable with any of her fellow captives; and
when at last arrived in the tea-room, she felt yet more the
awkwardness of having no party to join, no acquaintance to
claim, no gentleman to assist them.—They saw nothing of
Mr. Allen; and after looking about them in vain for a more
eligible situation, were obliged to sit down at the end of a
table, at which a large party were already placed, without
having any thing to do there, or any body to speak to, except
each other.
Mrs. Allen congratulated herself, as soon as they were
seated, on having preserved her gown from injury. “It would
have been very shocking to have it torn,” said she, “would not
it?—It is such a delicate muslin.22 —For my part I have not
seen any thing I like so well in the whole room, I assure you.”
“How uncomfortable it is,” whispered Catherine, “not to
have a single acquaintance here!”
“Yes, my dear,” replied Mrs. Allen, with perfect serenity,
“it is very uncomfortable indeed.”
14
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 2
15
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 2
“I wish she had been able to dance,” said his wife, “I wish
we could have got a partner for her.—I have been saying how
glad I should be if the Skinners were here this winter instead
of last; or if the Parrys had come, as they talked of once, she
might have danced with George Parry. I am so sorry she has
not had a partner!”
“We shall do better another evening I hope,” was Mr.
Allen’s consolation.
The company began to disperse when the dancing was
over—enough to leave space for the remainder to walk about
in some comfort; and now was the time for a heroine, who
had not yet played a very distinguished part in the events of
the evening, to be noticed and admired. Every five minutes,
by removing some of the crowd, gave greater openings for
her charms. She was now seen by many young men who had
not been near her before. Not one, however, started with rap-
turous wonder on beholding her, no whisper of eager inquiry
ran round the room, nor was she once called a divinity by any
body.24 Yet Catherine was in very good looks, and had the
company only seen her three years before, they would now
have thought her exceedingly handsome.
She was looked at however, and with some admiration; for,
in her own hearing, two gentlemen pronounced her to be a
pretty girl. Such words had their due effect; she immediately
thought the evening pleasanter than she had found it before—
her humble vanity was contented—she felt more obliged to
the two young men for this simple praise than a true quality
heroine would have been for fifteen sonnets in celebration of
her charms, and went to her chair25 in good humour with
every body, and perfectly satisfied with her share of public
attention.
16
Chapter 3
17
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 3
whether you have been at the Upper Rooms, the theatre, and
the concert; and how you like the place altogether. I have
been very negligent—but are you now at leisure to satisfy me
in these particulars? If you are I will begin directly.”
“You need not give yourself that trouble, sir.”
“No trouble I assure you, madam.” Then forming his fea-
tures into a set smile, and affectedly softening his voice, he
added, with a simpering air, “Have you been long in Bath,
madam?”
“About a week, sir,” replied Catherine, trying not to laugh.
“Really!” with affected astonishment.
“Why should you be surprized, sir?”
“Why indeed!” said he, in his natural tone—“but some
emotion must appear to be raised by your reply, and sur-
prize is more easily assumed, and not less reasonable than
any other.—Now let us go on. Were you never here before,
madam?”
“Never, sir.”
“Indeed! Have you yet honoured the Upper Rooms?”
“Yes, sir, I was there last Monday.”
“Have you been to the theatre?”
“Yes, sir, I was at the play on Tuesday.”
“To the concert?”
“Yes, sir, on Wednesday.”4
“And are you altogether pleased with Bath?”
“Yes—I like it very well.”
“Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational
again.”
Catherine turned away her head, not knowing whether she
might venture to laugh.
“I see what you think of me,” said he gravely—“I shall
make but a poor figure in your journal to-morrow.”
“My journal!”
18
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 3
19
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20
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22
Chapter 4
23
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24
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 4
others are very much admired too, but I believe Isabella is the
handsomest.”
The Miss Thorpes were introduced; and Miss Morland,
who had been for a short time forgotten, was introduced like-
wise. The name seemed to strike them all; and, after speaking
to her with great civility, the eldest young lady observed aloud
to the rest, “How excessively like her brother Miss Morland
is!”
“The very picture of him indeed!” cried the mother—and
“I should have known her any where for his sister!” was
repeated by them all, two or three times over. For a moment
Catherine was surprized; but Mrs. Thorpe and her daugh-
ters had scarcely begun the history of their acquaintance with
Mr. James Morland, before she remembered that her eldest
brother had lately formed an intimacy with a young man of
his own college, of the name of Thorpe; and that he had spent
the last week of the Christmas vacation with his family, near
London.
The whole being explained, many obliging things were said
by the Miss Thorpes of their wish of being better acquainted
with her; of being considered as already friends, through the
friendship of their brothers, &c. which Catherine heard with
pleasure, and answered with all the pretty expressions she
could command; and, as the first proof of amity, she was soon
invited to accept an arm of the eldest Miss Thorpe, and take a
turn9 with her about the room. Catherine was delighted with
this extension of her Bath acquaintance, and almost forgot
Mr. Tilney while she talked to Miss Thorpe. Friendship is
certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.10
Their conversation turned upon those subjects, of which
the free discussion has generally much to do in perfecting
a sudden intimacy between two young ladies; such as dress,
balls, flirtations, and quizzes.11 Miss Thorpe, however, being
25
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 4
four years older than Miss Morland, and at least four years
better informed, had a very decided advantage in discussing
such points; she could compare the balls of Bath with those
of Tunbridge;12 its fashions with the fashions of London;
could rectify the opinions of her new friend in many articles
of tasteful attire; could discover a flirtation between any gen-
tleman and lady who only smiled on each other; and point
out a quiz through the thickness of a crowd. These powers
received due admiration from Catherine, to whom they were
entirely new; and the respect which they naturally inspired
might have been too great for familiarity, had not the easy
gaiety of Miss Thorpe’s manners, and her frequent expres-
sions of delight on this acquaintance with her, softened down
every feeling of awe, and left nothing but tender affection.
Their increasing attachment was not to be satisfied with half
a dozen turns in the Pump-room, but required, when they
all quitted it together, that Miss Thorpe should accompany
Miss Morland to the very door of Mr. Allen’s house; and that
they should there part with a most affectionate and length-
ened shake of hands, after learning, to their mutual relief,
that they should see each other across the theatre13 at night,
and say their prayers in the same chapel14 the next morn-
ing. Catherine then ran directly up stairs, and watched Miss
Thorpe’s progress down the street from the drawing-room
window; admired the graceful spirit of her walk, the fashion-
able air of her figure and dress, and felt grateful, as well she
might, for the chance which had procured her such a friend.
Mrs. Thorpe was a widow, and not a very rich one; she was a
good-humoured, well-meaning woman, and a very indulgent
mother. Her eldest daughter had great personal beauty, and
the younger ones, by pretending to be as handsome as their
sister, imitating her air, and dressing in the same style, did
very well.
26
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27
Chapter 5
28
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29
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 5
the day unless she spent the chief of it by the side of Mrs.
Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but in which there
was scarcely ever any exchange of opinion, and not often any
resemblance of subject, for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of her
children, and Mrs. Allen of her gowns.
The progress of the friendship between Catherine and
Isabella was quick as its beginning had been warm, and they
passed so rapidly through every gradation of increasing ten-
derness, that there was shortly no fresh proof of it to be
given to their friends or themselves. They called each other
by their Christian name,7 were always arm in arm when they
walked, pinned up each other’s train for the dance, and were
not to be divided in the set;8 and if a rainy morning deprived
them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting
in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read
novels together. Yes, novels;—for I will not adopt that ungen-
erous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers,
of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very perfor-
mances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—
joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest
epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to
be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a
novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust.9 Alas!
if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of
another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I
cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse
such effusions of fancy10 at their leisure, and over every new
novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the
press now groans.11 Let us not desert one another; we are an
injured body. Although our productions have afforded more
extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other lit-
erary corporation in the world, no species of composition has
been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our
30
no rth a ng e r a b bey Volume I Chapter 5
foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities
of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England,12
or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some
dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the
Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne,13 are eulogized by a
thousand pens,—there seems almost a general wish of decry-
ing the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist,
and of slighting the performances which have only genius,
wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel reader—I
seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read
novels—It is really very well for a novel.”—Such is the com-
mon cant.—“And what are you reading, Miss ———?” “Oh!
it is only a novel!” replies the young lady; while she lays down
her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.—
“It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;”14 or, in short,
only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are
displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human
nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest
effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the
best chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been
engaged with a volume of the Spectator,15 instead of such a
work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and
told its name; though the chances must be against her being
occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which
either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person
of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the
statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters,
and topics of conversation, which no longer concern any one
living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give
no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
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“Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you
what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild
to know?”
“Oh! yes, quite; what can it be?—But do not tell me—I
would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a
skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina’s skeleton.3 Oh! I am
delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life
in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I
would not have come away from it for all the world.”
“Dear creature! how much I am obliged to you; and when
you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian4 together;
and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same
kind for you.”
“Have you, indeed! How glad I am!—What are they all?”
“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my
pocket-book. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious
Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell,
Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries.5 Those will last
us some time.”
“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they
are all horrid?”6
“Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss
Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the
world, has read every one of them. I wish you knew Miss
Andrews, you would be delighted with her. She is netting
herself the sweetest cloak you can conceive. I think her as
beautiful as an angel, and I am so vexed with the men for not
admiring her!—I scold them all amazingly about it.”
“Scold them! Do you scold them for not admiring her?”
“Yes, that I do. There is nothing I would not do for those
who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people
by halves, it is not my nature. My attachments are always
excessively strong.7 I told Capt. Hunt at one of our assemblies
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and looking at my new hat? You said you should like to see
it.”
Catherine readily agreed. “Only,” she added, “perhaps we
may overtake the two young men.”
“Oh! never mind that. If we make haste, we shall pass by
them presently, and I am dying to shew you my hat.”
“But if we only wait a few minutes, there will be no danger
of our seeing them at all.”
“I shall not pay them any such compliment, I assure you.
I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is
the way to spoil them.”
Catherine had nothing to oppose against such reasoning;
and therefore, to shew the independence of Miss Thorpe,
and her resolution of humbling the sex, they set off immedi-
ately as fast as they could walk, in pursuit of the two young
men.
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“My horse! oh, d—— it! I would not sell my horse for a
hundred. Are you fond of an open carriage, Miss Morland?”
“Yes, very; I have hardly ever an opportunity of being in
one; but I am particularly fond of it.”
“I am glad of it; I will drive you out in mine every day.”
“Thank you,” said Catherine, in some distress, from a
doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer.18
“I will drive you up Lansdown Hill19 to-morrow.”
“Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?”
“Rest! he has only come three-and-twenty miles to-day;
all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing
knocks them up so soon. No, no; I shall exercise mine at the
average of four hours every day while I am here.”
“Shall you indeed!” said Catherine very seriously, “that will
be forty miles a day.”
“Forty! aye fifty, for what I care. Well, I will drive you up
Lansdown to-morrow; mind, I am engaged.”
“How delightful that will be!” cried Isabella, turning round;
“my dearest Catherine, I quite envy you; but I am afraid,
brother, you will not have room for a third.”
“A third indeed! no, no; I did not come to Bath to drive
my sisters about; that would be a good joke, faith! Morland
must take care of you.”
This brought on a dialogue of civilities between the other
two; but Catherine heard neither the particulars nor the
result. Her companion’s discourse now sunk from its hitherto
animated pitch, to nothing more than a short decisive sen-
tence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman
they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long
as she could, with all the civility and deference of the youth-
ful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own
in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where
the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to
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the case, “I do not like him at all;” she directly replied, “I like
him very much; he seems very agreeable.”
“He is as good-natured a fellow as ever lived; a little of a
rattle;22 but that will recommend him to your sex I believe:
and how do you like the rest of the family?”
“Very, very much indeed: Isabella particularly.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so; she is just the kind of
young woman I could wish to see you attached to; she has
so much good sense, and is so thoroughly unaffected and
amiable; I always wanted you to know her; and she seems
very fond of you. She said the highest things in your praise
that could possibly be; and the praise of such a girl as Miss
Thorpe even you, Catherine,” taking her hand with affection,
“may be proud of.”
“Indeed I am,” she replied; “I love her exceedingly, and
am delighted to find that you like her too. You hardly men-
tioned any thing of her, when you wrote to me after your visit
there.”
“Because I thought I should soon see you myself. I hope
you will be a great deal together while you are in Bath. She is a
most amiable girl; such a superior understanding! How fond
all the family are of her; she is evidently the general favourite;
and how much she must be admired in such a place as this—is
not she?”
“Yes, very much indeed, I fancy; Mr. Allen thinks her the
prettiest girl in Bath.”
“I dare say he does; and I do not know any man who
is a better judge of beauty than Mr. Allen. I need not ask
you whether you are happy here, my dear Catherine; with
such a companion and friend as Isabella Thorpe, it would be
impossible for you to be otherwise; and the Allens I am sure
are very kind to you?”
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“Yes, very kind; I never was so happy before; and now you
are come it will be more delightful than ever; how good it is
of you to come so far on purpose to see me.”
James accepted this tribute of gratitude, and qualified his
conscience for accepting it too, by saying with perfect sincer-
ity, “Indeed, Catherine, I love you dearly.”
Inquiries and communications concerning brothers and
sisters, the situation of some, the growth of the rest, and other
family matters, now passed between them, and continued,
with only one small digression on James’s part, in praise of
Miss Thorpe, till they reached Pulteney-street, where he was
welcomed with great kindness by Mr. and Mrs. Allen, invited
by the former to dine with them, and summoned by the latter
to guess the price and weigh the merits of a new muff and
tippet.23 A pre-engagement in Edgar’s Buildings prevented
his accepting the invitation of one friend, and obliged him
to hurry away as soon as he had satisfied the demands of the
other. The time of the two parties uniting in the Octagon
Room24 being correctly adjusted, Catherine was then left to
the luxury of a raised, restless, and frightened imagination
over the pages of Udolpho, lost from all worldly concerns of
dressing and dinner, incapable of soothing Mrs. Allen’s fears
on the delay of an expected dress-maker, and having only one
minute in sixty to bestow even on the reflection of her own
felicity, in being already engaged for the evening.
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“Yes, sir—and Dr. Skinner and his family were here three
months; so I tell Mr. Allen he must not be in a hurry to get
away.”
Here they were interrupted by a request from Mrs. Thorpe
to Mrs. Allen, that she would move a little to accommodate
Mrs. Hughes and Miss Tilney with seats, as they had agreed
to join their party. This was accordingly done, Mr. Tilney
still continuing standing before them; and after a few min-
utes consideration, he asked Catherine to dance with him.
This compliment, delightful as it was, produced severe mor-
tification to the lady;4 and in giving her denial, she expressed
her sorrow on the occasion so very much as if she really felt
it, that had Thorpe, who joined her just afterwards, been half
a minute earlier, he might have thought her sufferings rather
too acute. The very easy manner in which he then told her
that he had kept her waiting, did not by any means reconcile
her more to her lot; nor did the particulars which he entered
into while they were standing up, of the horses and dogs of
the friend whom he had just left, and of a proposed exchange
of terriers between them, interest her so much as to prevent
her looking very often towards that part of the room where
she had left Mr. Tilney. Of her dear Isabella, to whom she
particularly longed to point out that gentleman, she could see
nothing. They were in different sets. She was separated from
all her party, and away from all her acquaintance;—one mor-
tification succeeded another, and from the whole she deduced
this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball, does
not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a
young lady. From such a moralizing strain as this, she was sud-
denly roused by a touch on the shoulder, and turning round,
perceived Mrs. Hughes directly behind her, attended by Miss
Tilney and a gentleman. “I beg your pardon, Miss Morland,”
said she, “for this liberty,—but I cannot any how get to Miss
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Thorpe, and Mrs. Thorpe said she was sure you would not
have the least objection to letting in this young lady by you.”
Mrs. Hughes could not have applied to any creature in the
room more happy to oblige her than Catherine. The young
ladies were introduced to each other, Miss Tilney expressing
a proper sense of such goodness, Miss Morland with the real
delicacy of a generous mind making light of the obligation;5
and Mrs. Hughes, satisfied with having so respectably settled
her young charge, returned to her party.
Miss Tilney had a good figure, a pretty face, and a very
agreeable countenance; and her air, though it had not all the
decided pretension, the resolute stilishness of Miss Thorpe’s,
had more real elegance. Her manners shewed good sense and
good breeding; they were neither shy, nor affectedly open;
and she seemed capable of being young, attractive, and at
a ball, without wanting to fix the attention of every man
near her, and without exaggerated feelings of extatic delight
or inconceivable vexation on every little trifling occurrence.
Catherine, interested at once by her appearance and her rela-
tionship to Mr. Tilney, was desirous of being acquainted with
her, and readily talked therefore whenever she could think of
any thing to say, and had courage and leisure for saying it.
But the hindrance thrown in the way of a very speedy inti-
macy, by the frequent want of one or more of these requisites,
prevented their doing more than going through the first rudi-
ments of an acquaintance, by informing themselves how well
the other liked Bath, how much she admired its buildings and
surrounding country, whether she drew, or played or sang, and
whether she was fond of riding on horseback.
The two dances were scarcely concluded before Catherine
found her arm gently seized by her faithful Isabella, who in
great spirits exclaimed—“At last I have got you. My dearest
creature, I have been looking for you this hour. What could
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induce you to come into this set, when you knew I was in the
other? I have been quite wretched without you.”
“My dear Isabella, how was it possible for me to get at you?
I could not even see where you were.”
“So I told your brother all the time—but he would not
believe me. Do go and see for her, Mr. Morland, said I—
but all in vain—he would not stir an inch. Was not it so,
Mr. Morland? But you men are all so immoderately lazy! I
have been scolding him to such a degree, my dear Catherine,
you would be quite amazed.—You know I never stand upon
ceremony with such people.”
“Look at that young lady with the white beads round
her head,” whispered Catherine, detaching her friend from
James—“It is Mr. Tilney’s sister.”
“Oh! heavens! You don’t say so! Let me look at her this
moment. What a delightful girl! I never saw any thing half
so beautiful! But where is her all-conquering brother? Is he
in the room? Point him out to me this instant, if he is. I die
to see him. Mr. Morland, you are not to listen. We are not
talking about you.”
“But what is all this whispering about? What is going on?”
“There now, I knew how it would be. You men have such
restless curiosity! Talk of the curiosity of women, indeed!—
’tis nothing. But be satisfied, for you are not to know any
thing at all of the matter.”
“And is that likely to satisfy me, do you think?”
“Well, I declare I never knew any thing like you. What
can it signify to you, what we are talking of ? Perhaps we are
talking about you, therefore I would advise you not to listen,
or you may happen to hear something not very agreeable.”
In this common-place chatter, which lasted some time,
the original subject seemed entirely forgotten; and though
Catherine was very well pleased to have it dropped for a while,
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then arranged, the servant who stood at the horse’s head was
bid in an important voice “to let him go,” and off they went
in the quietest manner imaginable, without a plunge or a
caper, or any thing like one. Catherine, delighted at so happy
an escape, spoke her pleasure aloud with grateful surprize;
and her companion immediately made the matter perfectly
simple by assuring her that it was entirely owing to the pecu-
liarly judicious manner in which he had then held the reins,
and the singular discernment and dexterity with which he
had directed his whip. Catherine, though she could not help
wondering that with such perfect command of his horse, he
should think it necessary to alarm her with a relation of its
tricks, congratulated herself sincerely on being under the care
of so excellent a coachman; and perceiving that the animal
continued to go on in the same quiet manner, without shew-
ing the smallest propensity towards any unpleasant vivacity,
and (considering its inevitable pace was ten miles an hour) by
no means alarmingly fast, gave herself up to all the enjoyment
of air and exercise of the most invigorating kind, in a fine mild
day of February, with the consciousness of safety. A silence
of several minutes succeeded their first short dialogue;—it
was broken by Thorpe’s saying very abruptly, “Old Allen is
as rich as a Jew7 —is not he?” Catherine did not understand
him—and he repeated his question, adding in explanation,
“Old Allen, the man you are with.”
“Oh! Mr. Allen, you mean. Yes, I believe, he is very rich.”
“And no children at all?”
“No—not any.”
“A famous thing for his next heirs. He is your godfather, is
not he?”
“My godfather!—no.”
“But you are always very much with them.”
“Yes, very much.”
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lest he should engage her again; for though she could not,
dared not expect that Mr. Tilney should ask her a third time
to dance, her wishes, hopes and plans all centered in nothing
less. Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this criti-
cal moment, for every young lady has at some time or other
known the same agitation. All have been, or at least all have
believed themselves to be, in danger from the pursuit of some
one whom they wished to avoid; and all have been anxious for
the attentions of some one whom they wished to please. As
soon as they were joined by the Thorpes, Catherine’s agony
began; she fidgetted about if John Thorpe came towards her,
hid herself as much as possible from his view, and when he
spoke to her pretended not to hear him. The cotillions were
over, the country-dancing6 beginning, and she saw nothing
of the Tilneys. “Do not be frightened, my dear Catherine,”
whispered Isabella, “but I am really going to dance with your
brother again. I declare positively it is quite shocking. I tell
him he ought to be ashamed of himself, but you and John
must keep us in countenance. Make haste, my dear creature,
and come to us. John is just walked off, but he will be back
in a moment.”
Catherine had neither time nor inclination to answer. The
others walked away, John Thorpe was still in view, and she
gave herself up for lost. That she might not appear, however,
to observe or expect him, she kept her eyes intently fixed on
her fan; and a self-condemnation for her folly, in suppos-
ing that among such a crowd they should even meet with
the Tilneys in any reasonable time, had just passed through
her mind, when she suddenly found herself addressed and
again solicited to dance, by Mr. Tilney himself. With what
sparkling eyes and ready motion she granted his request, and
with how pleasing a flutter of heart she went with him to the
set, may be easily imagined. To escape, and, as she believed,
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ever were back’d. I would not take eight hundred guineas for
them. Fletcher and I mean to get a house in Leicestershire,7
against the next season. It is so d—— uncomfortable, living
at an inn.”
This was the last sentence by which he could weary Cather-
ine’s attention, for he was just then born off by the resistless
pressure of a long string of passing ladies. Her partner now
drew near, and said, “That gentleman would have put me out
of patience, had he staid with you half a minute longer. He
has no business to withdraw the attention of my partner from
me. We have entered into a contract of mutual agreeableness
for the space of an evening, and all our agreeableness belongs
solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten them-
selves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the
other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage.
Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both;
and those men who do not chuse to dance or marry them-
selves, have no business with the partners or wives of their
neighbours.”
“But they are such very different things!—”
“—That you think they cannot be compared together.”
“To be sure not. People that marry can never part, but
must go and keep house together. People that dance, only
stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour.”
“And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing.
Taken in that light certainly, their resemblance is not striking;
but I think I could place them in such a view.—You will allow,
that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only
the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between
man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that
when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other
till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to
endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she
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“Do I?”
“Do you not?”
“I do not believe there is much difference.”
“Here you are in pursuit only of amusement all day long.”
“And so I am at home—only I do not find so much of it. I
walk about here, and so I do there;—but here I see a variety
of people in every street, and there I can only go and call on
Mrs. Allen.”
Mr. Tilney was very much amused. “Only go and call
on Mrs. Allen!” he repeated. “What a picture of intellec-
tual poverty! However, when you sink into this abyss again,
you will have more to say. You will be able to talk of Bath,
and of all that you did here.”
“Oh! yes. I shall never be in want of something to talk of
again to Mrs. Allen, or any body else. I really believe I shall
always be talking of Bath, when I am at home again—I do
like it so very much. If I could but have papa and mamma,
and the rest of them here, I suppose I should be too happy!
James’s coming (my eldest brother) is quite delightful—and
especially as it turns out, that the very family we are just got
so intimate with, are his intimate friends already. Oh! who
can ever be tired of Bath?”
“Not those who bring such fresh feelings of every sort to it,
as you do. But papas and mammas, and brothers and intimate
friends are a good deal gone by, to most of the frequenters of
Bath—and the honest relish of balls and plays, and every-day
sights, is past with them.”
Here their conversation closed; the demands of the dance
becoming now too importunate for a divided attention.
Soon after their reaching the bottom of the set, Catherine
perceived herself to be earnestly regarded by a gentleman
who stood among the lookers-on, immediately behind her
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Mr. Tilney and his sister were gone out in a phaeton together?
and then what could I do? But I had ten thousand times rather
have been with you; now had not I, Mrs. Allen?”
“My dear, you tumble my gown,” was Mrs. Allen’s reply.
Her assurance, however, standing sole as it did, was not
thrown away; it brought a more cordial, more natural smile
into his countenance, and he replied in a tone which retained
only a little affected reserve:—“We were much obliged to you
at any rate for wishing us a pleasant walk after our passing
you in Argyle-street: you were so kind as to look back on
purpose.”
“But indeed I did not wish you a pleasant walk; I never
thought of such a thing; but I begged Mr. Thorpe so earnestly
to stop; I called out to him as soon as ever I saw you; now,
Mrs. Allen, did not——Oh! you were not there; but indeed
I did; and, if Mr. Thorpe would only have stopped, I would
have jumped out and run after you.”
Is there a Henry in the world who could be insensible to
such a declaration? Henry Tilney at least was not. With a
yet sweeter smile, he said every thing that need be said of
his sister’s concern, regret, and dependence on Catherine’s
honour.—“Oh! do not say Miss Tilney was not angry,” cried
Catherine, “because I know she was; for she would not see
me this morning when I called; I saw her walk out of the
house the next minute after my leaving it; I was hurt, but
I was not affronted. Perhaps you did not know I had been
there.”
“I was not within at the time; but I heard of it from Eleanor,
and she has been wishing ever since to see you, to explain the
reason of such incivility; but perhaps I can do it as well. It
was nothing more than that my father——they were just
preparing to walk out, and he being hurried for time, and not
caring to have it put off, made a point of her being denied.
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That was all, I do assure you. She was very much vexed, and
meant to make her apology as soon as possible.”
Catherine’s mind was greatly eased by this information, yet
a something of solicitude remained, from which sprang the
following question, thoroughly artless in itself, though rather
distressing to the gentleman:—“But, Mr. Tilney, why were
you less generous than your sister? If she felt such confidence
in my good intentions, and could suppose it to be only a
mistake, why should you be so ready to take offence?”
“Me!—I take offence!”
“Nay, I am sure by your look, when you came into the box,
you were angry.”
“I angry! I could have no right.”
“Well, nobody would have thought you had no right who
saw your face.” He replied by asking her to make room for
him, and talking of the play.
He remained with them some time, and was only too agree-
able for Catherine to be contented when he went away. Before
they parted, however, it was agreed that the projected walk
should be taken as soon as possible; and, setting aside the
misery of his quitting their box, she was, upon the whole, left
one of the happiest creatures in the world.
While talking to each other, she had observed with some
surprize, that John Thorpe, who was never in the same part
of the house for ten minutes together, was engaged in con-
versation with General Tilney; and she felt something more
than surprize, when she thought she could perceive herself
the object of their attention and discourse. What could they
have to say of her? She feared General Tilney did not like
her appearance: she found it was implied in his preventing
her admittance to his daughter, rather than postpone his own
walk a few minutes. “How came Mr. Thorpe to know your
father?” was her anxious inquiry, as she pointed them out to
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chair, and, till she entered it, continued the same kind of
delicate flattery, in spite of her entreating him to have done.
That General Tilney, instead of disliking, should admire
her, was very delightful; and she joyfully thought, that there
was not one of the family whom she need now fear to meet.—
The evening had done more, much more, for her, than could
have been expected.
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word was said, sometimes she was again attacked with sup-
plications or reproaches, and her arm was still linked within
Isabella’s, though their hearts were at war. At one moment
she was softened, at another irritated; always distressed, but
always steady.
“I did not think you had been so obstinate, Catherine,”
said James; “you were not used to be so hard to persuade; you
once were the kindest, best-tempered of my sisters.”
“I hope I am not less so now,” she replied, very feelingly;
“but indeed I cannot go. If I am wrong, I am doing what I
believe to be right.”
“I suspect,” said Isabella, in a low voice, “there is no great
struggle.”
Catherine’s heart swelled; she drew away her arm, and
Isabella made no opposition. Thus passed a long ten minutes,
till they were again joined by Thorpe, who coming to them
with a gayer look, said, “Well, I have settled the matter, and
now we may all go to-morrow with a safe conscience. I have
been to Miss Tilney, and made your excuses.”
“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.”
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fine. I cannot say I admire her taste; and for my part I was
determined from the first not to go, if they pressed me ever
so much.”
Catherine, a little doubtful of this, could not help answer-
ing, “I wish you could have gone too. It is a pity you could
not all go.”
“Thank you; but it is quite a matter of indifference to me.
Indeed, I would not have gone on any account. I was saying
so to Emily and Sophia when you overtook us.”
Catherine was still unconvinced; but glad that Anne should
have the friendship of an Emily and a Sophia to console her,
she bade her adieu without much uneasiness, and returned
home, pleased that the party had not been prevented by her
refusing to join it, and very heartily wishing that it might be
too pleasant to allow either James or Isabella to resent her
resistance any longer.
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matter which has it, so that there is enough. I hate the idea
of one great fortune looking out for another. And to marry
for money I think the wickedest thing in existence.—Good
day.—We shall be very glad to see you at Fullerton, whenever
it is convenient.” And away she went. It was not in the power
of all his gallantry to detain her longer. With such news to
communicate, and such a visit to prepare for, her departure
was not to be delayed by any thing in his nature to urge; and
she hurried away, leaving him to the undivided consciousness
of his own happy address, and her explicit encouragement.
The agitation which she had herself experienced on first
learning her brother’s engagement, made her expect to raise
no inconsiderable emotion in Mr. and Mrs. Allen, by the
communication of the wonderful event. How great was her
disappointment! The important affair, which many words
of preparation ushered in, had been foreseen by them both
ever since her brother’s arrival; and all that they felt on the
occasion was comprehended in a wish for the young people’s
happiness, with a remark, on the gentleman’s side, in favour
of Isabella’s beauty, and on the lady’s, of her great good luck.
It was to Catherine the most surprizing insensibility.12 The
disclosure however of the great secret of James’s going to
Fullerton the day before, did raise some emotion in Mrs.
Allen. She could not listen to that with perfect calmness; but
repeatedly regretted the necessity of its concealment, wished
she could have known his intention, wished she could have
seen him before he went, as she should certainly have troubled
him with her best regards to his father and mother, and her
kind compliments to all the Skinners.
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write her letter. Mr. and Mrs. Morland, relying on the discre-
tion of the friends to whom they had already entrusted their
daughter, felt no doubt of the propriety of an acquaintance
which had been formed under their eye, and sent therefore
by return of post their ready consent to her visit in Glouces-
tershire. This indulgence, though not more than Catherine
had hoped for, completed her conviction of being favoured
beyond every other human creature, in friends and fortune,
circumstance and chance. Every thing seemed to co-operate
for her advantage. By the kindness of her first friends the
Allens, she had been introduced into scenes, where pleasures
of every kind had met her. Her feelings, her preferences had
each known the happiness of a return. Wherever she felt
attachment, she had been able to create it. The affection of
Isabella was to be secured to her in a sister. The Tilneys, they,
by whom above all, she desired to be favourably thought of,
outstripped even her wishes in the flattering measures by
which their intimacy was to be continued. She was to be
their chosen visitor, she was to be for weeks under the same
roof with the person whose society she mostly prized—and,
in addition to all the rest, this roof was to be the roof of an
abbey!—Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to
her passion for Henry Tilney—and castles and abbies made
usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not
fill. To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the
one, or the cloisters of the other, had been for many weeks a
darling wish, though to be more than the visitor of an hour,
had seemed too nearly impossible for desire. And yet, this
was to happen. With all the chances against her of house,
hall, place, park, court, and cottage, Northanger turned up
an abbey, and she was to be its inhabitant. Its long, damp pas-
sages, its narrow cells and ruined chapel, were to be within
her daily reach, and she could not entirely subdue the hope of
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your brother cares so very much about me. And, you know,
we shall still be sisters.”
“Yes, yes,” (with a blush) “there are more ways than one of
our being sisters.—But where am I wandering to?—Well, my
dear Catherine, the case seems to be, that you are determined
against poor John—is not it so?”
“I certainly cannot return his affection, and as certainly
never meant to encourage it.”
“Since that is the case, I am sure I shall not tease you any
further. John desired me to speak to you on the subject, and
therefore I have. But I confess, as soon as I read his letter, I
thought it a very foolish, imprudent business, and not likely
to promote the good of either; for what were you to live
upon, supposing you came together? You have both of you
something to be sure, but it is not a trifle that will support
a family now-a-days; and after all that romancers may say,
there is no doing without money.2 I only wonder John could
think of it; he could not have received my last.”
“You do acquit me then of any thing wrong?—You are
convinced that I never meant to deceive your brother, never
suspected him of liking me till this moment?”
“Oh! as to that,” answered Isabella laughingly, “I do not
pretend to determine what your thoughts and designs in time
past may have been. All that is best known to yourself. A little
harmless flirtation or so will occur, and one is often drawn on
to give more encouragement than one wishes to stand by. But
you may be assured that I am the last person in the world to
judge you severely. All those things should be allowed for in
youth and high spirits. What one means one day, you know,
one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions
alter.”
“But my opinion of your brother never did alter; it was
always the same. You are describing what never happened.”
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“Do they? I am sorry for it; I am sorry they find any thing
so disagreeable in me. I will look another way. I hope this
pleases you, (turning her back on him,) I hope your eyes are
not tormented now.”
“Never more so; for the edge of a blooming cheek is still
in view—at once too much and too little.”
Catherine heard all this, and quite out of countenance
could listen no longer. Amazed that Isabella could endure it,
and jealous for her brother, she rose up, and saying she should
join Mrs. Allen, proposed their walking. But for this Isabella
shewed no inclination. She was so amazingly tired, and it was
so odious to parade about the Pump-room; and if she moved
from her seat she should miss her sisters, she was expecting
her sisters every moment; so that her dearest Catherine must
excuse her, and must sit quietly down again. But Catherine
could be stubborn too; and Mrs. Allen just then coming up to
propose their returning home, she joined her and walked out
of the Pump-room, leaving Isabella still sitting with Captain
Tilney. With much uneasiness did she thus leave them. It
seemed to her that Captain Tilney was falling in love with
Isabella, and Isabella unconsciously encouraging him; uncon-
sciously it must be, for Isabella’s attachment to James was as
certain and well acknowledged as her engagement. To doubt
her truth or good intentions was impossible; and yet, during
the whole of their conversation her manner had been odd.
She wished Isabella had talked more like her usual self, and
not so much about money; and had not looked so well pleased
at the sight of Captain Tilney. How strange that she should
not perceive his admiration! Catherine longed to give her a
hint of it, to put her on her guard, and prevent all the pain
which her too lively behaviour might otherwise create both
for him and her brother.
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such respect, and knew not how to reply to it. Her tranquillity
was not improved by the General’s impatience for the appea-
rance of his eldest son, nor by the displeasure he expressed
at his laziness when Captain Tilney at last came down. She
was quite pained by the severity of his father’s reproof, which
seemed disproportionate to the offence; and much was her
concern increased, when she found herself the principal cause
of the lecture; and that his tardiness was chiefly resented
from being disrepectful to her. This was placing her in a very
uncomfortable situation, and she felt great compassion for
Captain Tilney, without being able to hope for his good-will.
He listened to his father in silence, and attempted not any
defence, which confirmed her in fearing, that the inquietude
of his mind, on Isabella’s account, might, by keeping him
long sleepless, have been the real cause of his rising late.—It
was the first time of her being decidedly in his company, and
she had hoped to be now able to form her opinion of him; but
she scarcely heard his voice while his father remained in the
room; and even afterwards, so much were his spirits affected,
she could distinguish nothing but these words, in a whisper
to Eleanor, “How glad I shall be when you are all off.”
The bustle of going was not pleasant.—The clock struck
ten while the trunks were carrying down, and the General
had fixed to be out of Milsom-street by that hour. His great
coat, instead of being brought for him to put on directly,
was spread out in the curricle in which he was to accompany
his son. The middle seat of the chaise was not drawn out,1
though there were three people to go in it, and his daugh-
ter’s maid had so crowded it with parcels, that Miss Morland
would not have room to sit; and, so much was he influenced
by this apprehension when he handed her in, that she had
some difficulty in saving her own new writing-desk2 from
being thrown out into the street.—At last, however, the door
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was closed upon the three females, and they set off at the
sober pace in which the handsome, highly-fed four horses
of a gentleman usually perform a journey of thirty miles:
such was the distance of Northanger from Bath, to be now
divided into two equal stages.3 Catherine’s spirits revived as
they drove from the door; for with Miss Tilney she felt no
restraint; and, with the interest of a road entirely new to her,
of an abbey before, and a curricle behind, she caught the
last view of Bath without any regret, and met with every
mile-stone before she expected it. The tediousness of a two
hours’ bait at Petty-France,4 in which there was nothing to
be done but to eat without being hungry, and loiter about
without any thing to see, next followed—and her admira-
tion of the style in which they travelled, of the fashionable
chaise-and-four—postilions handsomely liveried,5 rising so
regularly in their stirrups, and numerous out-riders properly
mounted, sunk a little under this consequent inconvenience.6
Had their party been perfectly agreeable, the delay would
have been nothing; but General Tilney, though so charming
a man, seemed always a check upon his children’s spirits, and
scarcely any thing was said but by himself; the observation of
which, with his discontent at whatever the inn afforded, and
his angry impatience at the waiters, made Catherine grow
every moment more in awe of him, and appeared to lengthen
the two hours into four.—At last, however, the order of
release was given; and much was Catherine then surprized by
the General’s proposal of her taking his place in his son’s cur-
ricle for the rest of the journey:—“the day was fine, and he
was anxious for her seeing as much of the country as possible.”
The remembrance of Mr. Allen’s opinion, respecting
young men’s open carriages, made her blush at the men-
tion of such a plan, and her first thought was to decline it;
but her second was of greater deference for General Tilney’s
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in the world: but Catherine could not at all get over the dou-
ble distress of having involved her friend in a lecture and been
a great simpleton herself, till they were happily seated at the
dinner-table, when the General’s complacent smiles, and a
good appetite of her own, restored her to peace. The dining-
parlour was a noble room, suitable in its dimensions to a much
larger drawing-room than the one in common use, and fitted
up in a style of luxury and expense which was almost lost on
the unpractised eye of Catherine, who saw little more than
its spaciousness and the number of their attendants. Of the
former, she spoke aloud her admiration; and the General,
with a very gracious countenance, acknowledged that it was
by no means an ill-sized room; and further confessed, that,
though as careless on such subjects as most people, he did
look upon a tolerably large eating-room as one of the neces-
saries of life; he supposed, however, “that she must have been
used to much better sized apartments at Mr. Allen’s?”
“No, indeed,” was Catherine’s honest assurance; “Mr.
Allen’s dining-parlour was not more than half as large:” and
she had never seen so large a room as this in her life. The
General’s good-humour increased.—Why, as he had such
rooms, he thought it would be simple not to make use of
them; but, upon his honour, he believed there might be more
comfort in rooms of only half their size. Mr. Allen’s house,
he was sure, must be exactly of the true size for rational
happiness.
The evening passed without any further disturbance, and,
in the occasional absence of General Tilney, with much pos-
itive cheerfulness. It was only in his presence that Catherine
felt the smallest fatigue from her journey; and even then, even
in moments of languor or restraint, a sense of general hap-
piness preponderated, and she could think of her friends in
Bath without one wish of being with them.
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The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals
the whole afternoon; and by the time the party broke up, it
blew and rained violently. Catherine, as she crossed the hall,
listened to the tempest with sensations of awe; and, when she
heard it rage round a corner of the ancient building and close
with sudden fury a distant door, felt for the first time that
she was really in an Abbey.—Yes, these were characteristic
sounds;—they brought to her recollection a countless variety
of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, which such buildings
had witnessed, and such storms ushered in; and most heartily
did she rejoice in the happier circumstances attending her
entrance within walls so solemn!—She had nothing to dread
from midnight assassins or drunken gallants.4 Henry had cer-
tainly been only in jest in what he had told her that morning.
In a house so furnished, and so guarded, she could have noth-
ing to explore or to suffer; and might go to her bedroom as
securely as if it had been her own chamber at Fullerton. Thus
wisely fortifying her mind, as she proceeded up stairs, she
was enabled, especially on perceiving that Miss Tilney slept
only two doors from her, to enter her room with a tolerably
stout heart; and her spirits were immediately assisted by the
cheerful blaze of a wood fire. “How much better is this,” said
she, as she walked to the fender—“how much better to find a
fire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the cold till all
the family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been obliged
to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one
by coming in with a faggot! How glad I am that Northanger
is what it is! If it had been like some other places, I do not
know that, in such a night as this, I could have answered for
my courage:—but now, to be sure, there is nothing to alarm
one.”
She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed
in motion. It could be nothing but the violence of the wind
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hand and tried to turn it; but it resisted her utmost strength.
Alarmed, but not discouraged, she tried it another way; a bolt
flew, and she believed herself successful; but how strangely
mysterious!—the door was still immoveable. She paused a
moment in breathless wonder. The wind roared down the
chimney, the rain beat in torrents against the windows, and
every thing seemed to speak the awfulness7 of her situation.
To retire to bed, however, unsatisfied on such a point, would
be vain, since sleep must be impossible with the conscious-
ness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed in her immediate
vicinity. Again therefore she applied herself to the key, and
after moving it in every possible way for some instants with
the determined celerity of hope’s last effort, the door sud-
denly yielded to her hand: her heart leaped with exultation
at such a victory, and having thrown open each folding door,
the second being secured only by bolts of less wonderful con-
struction than the lock, though in that her eye could not
discern any thing unusual, a double range of small drawers
appeared in view, with some larger drawers above and below
them; and in the centre, a small door, closed also with a lock
and key, secured in all probability a cavity of importance.
Catherine’s heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail
her. With a cheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with
curiosity, her fingers grasped the handle of a drawer and drew
it forth. It was entirely empty. With less alarm and greater
eagerness she seized a second, a third, a fourth; each was
equally empty. Not one was left unsearched, and in not one
was any thing found. Well read in the art of concealing a
treasure, the possibility of false linings to the drawers did
not escape her, and she felt round each with anxious acute-
ness in vain. The place in the middle alone remained now
unexplored; and though she had “never from the first had the
smallest idea of finding any thing in any part of the cabinet,
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and was not in the least disappointed at her ill success thus
far, it would be foolish not to examine it thoroughly while
she was about it.” It was some time however before she could
unfasten the door, the same difficulty occurring in the man-
agement of this inner lock as of the outer; but at length it did
open; and not vain, as hitherto, was her search; her quick eyes
directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back into the further
part of the cavity, apparently for concealment, and her feel-
ings at that moment were indescribable. Her heart fluttered,
her knees trembled, and her cheeks grew pale. She seized,
with an unsteady hand, the precious manuscript, for half a
glance sufficed to ascertain written characters; and while she
acknowledged with awful sensations this striking exempli-
fication of what Henry had foretold, resolved instantly to
peruse every line before she attempted to rest.
The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her
turn to it with alarm; but there was no danger of its sudden
extinction, it had yet some hours to burn; and that she might
not have any greater difficulty in distinguishing the writ-
ing than what its ancient date might occasion, she hastily
snuffed it. Alas ! it was snuffed and extinguished in one. A
lamp could not have expired with more awful effect. Cather-
ine, for a few moments, was motionless with horror. It was
done completely; not a remnant of light in the wick could
give hope to the rekindling breath.8 Darkness impenetra-
ble and immoveable filled the room. A violent gust of wind,
rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment.
Catherine trembled from head to foot. In the pause which
succeeded, a sound like receding footsteps and the closing of
a distant door struck on her affrighted ear. Human nature
could support no more. A cold sweat stood on her forehead,
the manuscript fell from her hand, and groping her way to
the bed, she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension
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had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was
proof positive of the contrary.
She had just settled this point, when the end of the path
brought them directly upon the General; and in spite of all
her virtuous indignation, she found herself again obliged to
walk with him, listen to him, and even to smile when he
smiled. Being no longer able however to receive pleasure
from the surrounding objects, she soon began to walk with
lassitude; the General perceived it, and with a concern for
her health, which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of
him, was most urgent for returning with his daughter to the
house. He would follow them in a quarter of an hour. Again
they parted—but Eleanor was called back in half a minute
to receive a strict charge against taking her friend round the
Abbey till his return. This second instance of his anxiety to
delay what she so much wished for, struck Catherine as very
remarkable.
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massy walls and smoke of former days, and in the stoves and
hot closets4 of the present. The General’s improving hand
had not loitered here: every modern invention to facilitate
the labour of the cooks, had been adopted within this, their
spacious theatre; and, when the genius of others had failed, his
own had often produced the perfection wanted. His endow-
ments of this spot alone might at any time have placed him
high among the benefactors of the convent.5
With the walls of the kitchen ended all the antiquity of the
Abbey; the fourth side of the quadrangle having, on account
of its decaying state, been removed by the General’s father,
and the present erected in its place. All that was venerable
ceased here. The new building was not only new, but declared
itself to be so; intended only for offices,6 and enclosed
behind by stable-yards, no uniformity of architecture had
been thought necessary. Catherine could have raved at the
hand which had swept away what must have been beyond
the value of all the rest, for the purposes of mere domestic
economy; and would willingly have been spared the morti-
fication of a walk through scenes so fallen, had the General
allowed it; but if he had a vanity, it was in the arrangement of
his offices; and as he was convinced, that, to a mind like Miss
Morland’s, a view of the accommodations and comforts, by
which the labours of her inferiors were softened, must always
be gratifying, he should make no apology for leading her on.
They took a slight survey of all; and Catherine was impressed,
beyond her expectation, by their multiplicity and their conve-
nience. The purposes for which a few shapeless pantries and
a comfortless scullery7 were deemed sufficient at Fullerton,
were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious
and roomy. The number of servants continually appearing,
did not strike her less than the number of their offices. Wher-
ever they went, some pattened girl stopped to curtsey, or some
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was a look from the General not designed for her observation
which sent his daughter to the bell. When the butler would
have lit his master’s candle, however, he was forbidden. The
latter was not going to retire. “I have many pamphlets to
finish,” said he to Catherine, “before I can close my eyes; and
perhaps may be poring over the affairs of the nation12 for
hours after you are asleep. Can either of us be more meetly13
employed? My eyes will be blinding for the good of others;
and yours preparing by rest for future mischief.”
But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent com-
pliment, could win Catherine from thinking, that some very
different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper
repose. To be kept up for hours, after the family were in
bed, by stupid pamphlets, was not very likely. There must be
some deeper cause: something was to be done which could
be done only while the household slept; and the probability
that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and
receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly
supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessar-
ily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it was at least better
than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural course of
things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her
reputed illness; the absence of her daughter, and probably
of her other children, at the time—all favoured the supposi-
tion of her imprisonment.—Its origin—jealousy perhaps, or
wanton cruelty—was yet to be unravelled.
In revolving these matters, while she undressed, it sud-
denly struck her as not unlikely, that she might that morning
have passed near the very spot of this unfortunate woman’s
confinement—might have been within a few paces of the cell
in which she languished out her days; for what part of the
Abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which
yet bore the traces of monastic division? In the high-arched
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farther, and that it might not cost her Henry’s entire regard.
Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with
such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be
clearer, than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delu-
sion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from
an imagination resolved on alarm, and every thing forced to
bend to one purpose by a mind which, before she entered
the Abbey, had been craving to be frightened. She remem-
bered with what feelings she had prepared for a knowledge
of Northanger. She saw that the infatuation had been cre-
ated, the mischief settled long before her quitting Bath, and
it seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of
that sort of reading which she had there indulged.
Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and charm-
ing even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not
in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the mid-
land counties of England, was to be looked for. Of the Alps
and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices, they
might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and
the South of France,1 might be as fruitful in horrors as they
were there represented. Catherine dared not doubt beyond
her own country, and even of that, if hard pressed, would
have yielded the northern and western extremities. But in
the central part of England there was surely some security
for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws of
the land, and the manners of the age. Murder was not toler-
ated, servants were not slaves, and neither poison nor sleeping
potions to be procured, like rhubarb,2 from every druggist.
Among the Alps and Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed
characters.3 There, such as were not as spotless as an angel,
might have the dispositions of a fiend. But in England it was
not so; among the English, she believed, in their hearts and
habits, there was a general though unequal mixture of good
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“Dear Catherine,
“Though, God knows, with little inclination for writ-
ing, I think it my duty to tell you, that every thing is at an end
between Miss Thorpe and me.4 —I left her and Bath yester-
day, never to see either again. I shall not enter into particulars,
they would only pain you more. You will soon hear enough
from another quarter to know where lies the blame; and I
hope will acquit your brother of every thing but the folly of
too easily thinking his affection returned. Thank God! I am
undeceived in time! But it is a heavy blow!—After my father’s
consent had been so kindly given—but no more of this. She
has made me miserable for ever! Let me soon hear from you,
dear Catherine; you are my only friend; your love I do build
upon. I wish your visit at Northanger may be over before
Captain Tilney makes his engagement known, or you will be
uncomfortably circumstanced.—Poor Thorpe is in town: I
dread the sight of him; his honest heart would feel so much.
I have written to him and my father. Her duplicity hurts me
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more than all; till the very last, if I reasoned with her, she
declared herself as much attached to me as ever, and laughed
at my fears. I am ashamed to think how long I bore with it;
but if ever man had reason to believe himself loved, I was
that man. I cannot understand even now what she would be
at, for there could be no need of my being played off to make
her secure of Tilney. We parted at last by mutual consent—
happy for me had we never met! I can never expect to know
such another woman! Dearest Catherine, beware how you
give your heart.
“Believe me,” &c.
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“Our brother!—Frederick!”
“Yes; I am sure I should be very sorry to leave you so soon,
but something has happened that would make it very dreadful
for me to be in the same house with Captain Tilney.”
Eleanor’s work was suspended while she gazed with
increasing astonishment; but Henry began to suspect the
truth, and something, in which Miss Thorpe’s name was
included, passed his lips.
“How quick you are!” cried Catherine: “you have guessed
it, I declare!—And yet, when we talked about it in Bath, you
little thought of its ending so. Isabella—no wonder now I
have not heard from her—Isabella has deserted my brother,
and is to marry your’s! Could you have believed there had
been such inconstancy and fickleness, and every thing that is
bad in the world?”
“I hope, so far as concerns my brother, you are misin-
formed. I hope he has not had any material share in bring-
ing on Mr. Morland’s disappointment. His marrying Miss
Thorpe is not probable. I think you must be deceived so far.
I am very sorry for Mr. Morland—sorry that any one you
love should be unhappy; but my surprize would be greater at
Frederick’s marrying her, than at any other part of the story.”
“It is very true, however; you shall read James’s letter
yourself.—Stay——there is one part——” recollecting with
a blush the last line.
“Will you take the trouble of reading to us the passages
which concern my brother?”
“No, read it yourself,” cried Catherine, whose second
thoughts were clearer. “I do not know what I was thinking
of,” (blushing again that she had blushed before,)—“James
only means to give me good advice.”
He gladly received the letter; and, having read it through,
with close attention, returned it saying, “Well, if it is to be
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so, I can only say that I am sorry for it. Frederick will not be
the first man who has chosen a wife with less sense than his
family expected. I do not envy his situation, either as a lover
or a son.”
Miss Tilney, at Catherine’s invitation, now read the letter
likewise; and, having expressed also her concern and sur-
prize, began to inquire into Miss Thorpe’s connexions and
fortune.
“Her mother is a very good sort of woman,” was Catherine’s
answer.
“What was her father?”
“A lawyer, I believe.—They live at Putney.”
“Are they a wealthy family?”
“No, not very. I do not believe Isabella has any fortune at
all: but that will not signify in your family.—Your father is
so very liberal! He told me the other day, that he only val-
ued money as it allowed him to promote the happiness of his
children.” The brother and sister looked at each other. “But,”
said Eleanor, after a short pause, “would it be to promote his
happiness, to enable him to marry such a girl?—She must be
an unprincipled one, or she could not have used your brother
so.—And how strange an infatuation on Frederick’s side! A
girl who, before his eyes, is violating an engagement volun-
tarily entered into with another man! Is not it inconceivable,
Henry? Frederick too, who always wore his heart so proudly!
who found no woman good enough to be loved!”
“That is the most unpromising circumstance, the strongest
presumption against him. When I think of his past declara-
tions, I give him up.—Moreover, I have too good an opinion
of Miss Thorpe’s prudence, to suppose that she would part
with one gentleman before the other was secured. It is all
over with Frederick indeed! He is a deceased man—defunct
in understanding. Prepare for your sister-in-law, Eleanor, and
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and great coated into the room where she and Eleanor were
sitting, and said, “I am come, young ladies, in a very mor-
alizing strain, to observe that our pleasures in this world are
always to be paid for, and that we often purchase them at
a great disadvantage, giving ready-monied actual happiness
for a draft on the future, that may not be honoured. Witness
myself, at this present hour. Because I am to hope for the
satisfaction of seeing you at Woodston on Wednesday, which
bad weather, or twenty other causes may prevent, I must go
away directly, two days before I intended it.”
“Go away!” said Catherine, with a very long face; “and
why?”
“Why!—How can you ask the question?—Because no time
is to be lost in frightening my old housekeeper out of her
wits,—because I must go and prepare a dinner for you to be
sure.”
“Oh! not seriously!”
“Aye, and sadly too—for I had much rather stay.”
“But how can you think of such a thing, after what the
General said? when he so particularly desired you not to give
yourself any trouble, because any thing would do.”
Henry only smiled. “I am sure it is quite unnecessary upon
your sister’s account and mine. You must know it to be so;
and the General made such a point of your providing nothing
extraordinary:—besides, if he had not said half so much as
he did, he has always such an excellent dinner at home, that
sitting down to a middling one for one day could not signify.”
“I wish I could reason like you, for his sake and my own.
Good bye. As to-morrow is Sunday, Eleanor, I shall not
return.”
He went; and, it being at any time a much simpler opera-
tion to Catherine to doubt her own judgment than Henry’s,
she was very soon obliged to give him credit for being right,
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Chapter 12
Bath, April ——
My dearest Catherine,
I received your two kind letters with the greatest delight,
and have a thousand apologies to make for not answering
them sooner. I really am quite ashamed of my idleness; but
in this horrid place one can find time for nothing. I have
had my pen in my hand to begin a letter to you almost every
day since you left Bath, but have always been prevented by
some silly trifler or other. Pray write to me soon, and direct
to my own home. Thank God! we leave this vile place to-
morrow. Since you went away, I have had no pleasure in it—
the dust is beyond any thing; and every body one cares for
is gone. I believe if I could see you I should not mind the
rest, for you are dearer to me than any body can conceive. I
am quite uneasy about your dear brother, not having heard
from him since he went to Oxford; and am fearful of some
misunderstanding. Your kind offices will set all right:—he is
the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will
convince him of it. The spring fashions are partly down;1
and the hats the most frightful you can imagine. I hope you
spend your time pleasantly, but am afraid you never think of
me. I will not say all that I could of the family you are with,
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answered. I do not believe she had ever any regard either for
James or for me, and I wish I had never known her.”
“It will soon be as if you never had,” said Henry.
“There is but one thing that I cannot understand. I see
that she has had designs on Captain Tilney, which have not
succeeded; but I do not understand what Captain Tilney
has been about all this time. Why should he pay her such
attentions as to make her quarrel with my brother, and then
fly off himself?”
“I have very little to say for Frederick’s motives, such as I
believe them to have been. He has his vanities as well as Miss
Thorpe, and the chief difference is, that, having a stronger
head, they have not yet injured himself. If the effect of his
behaviour does not justify him with you, we had better not
seek after the cause.”
“Then you do not suppose he ever really cared about her?”
“I am persuaded that he never did.”
“And only made believe to do so for mischief ’s sake?”
Henry bowed his assent.
“Well, then, I must say that I do not like him at all. Though
it has turned out so well for us, I do not like him at all. As it
happens, there is no great harm done, because I do not think
Isabella has any heart to lose. But, suppose he had made her
very much in love with him?”
“But we must first suppose Isabella to have had a heart to
lose,—consequently to have been a very different creature;
and, in that case, she would have met with very different
treatment.”
“It is very right that you should stand by your brother.”
“And if you would stand by your’s, you would not be much
distressed by the disappointment of Miss Thorpe. But your
mind is warped by an innate principle of general integrity,
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his father and sister loved and even wished her to belong
to them; and believing so far, her doubts and anxieties were
merely sportive irritations.
Henry was not able to obey his father’s injunction of
remaining wholly at Northanger in attendance on the ladies,
during his absence in London; the engagements of his curate2
at Woodston obliging him to leave them on Saturday for a
couple of nights. His loss was not now what it had been
while the General was at home; it lessened their gaiety, but
did not ruin their comfort; and the two girls agreeing in
occupation, and improving in intimacy, found themselves so
well-sufficient for the time to themselves, that it was eleven
o’clock, rather a late hour at the Abbey, before they quitted
the supper-room on the day of Henry’s departure. They had
just reached the head of the stairs, when it seemed, as far as
the thickness of the walls would allow them to judge, that
a carriage was driving up to the door, and the next moment
confirmed the idea by the loud noise of the house-bell. After
the first perturbation of surprize had passed away, in a “Good
Heaven! what can be the matter?” it was quickly decided by
Eleanor to be her eldest brother, whose arrival was often as
sudden, if not quite so unseasonable, and accordingly she
hurried down to welcome him.
Catherine walked on to her chamber, making up her mind
as well as she could, to a further acquaintance with Captain
Tilney, and comforting herself under the unpleasant impres-
sion his conduct had given her, and the persuasion of his
being by far too fine a gentleman to approve of her, that at
least they should not meet under such circumstances as would
make their meeting materially painful. She trusted he would
never speak of Miss Thorpe; and indeed, as he must by this
time be ashamed of the part he had acted, there could be no
danger of it; and as long as all mention of Bath scenes were
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can hardly see where it was. I must shew it you some day or
other. Bath is a nice place, Catherine, after all. I assure you
I did not above half like coming away. Mrs. Thorpe’s being
there was such a comfort to us, was not it? You know you and
I were quite forlorn at first.”
“Yes, but that did not last long,” said Catherine, her eyes
brightening at the recollection of what had first given spirit
to her existence there.
“Very true: we soon met with Mrs. Thorpe, and then we
wanted for nothing. My dear, do not you think these silk
gloves wear very well? I put them on new the first time of
our going to the Lower Rooms, you know, and I have worn
them a great deal since. Do you remember that evening?”
“Do I! Oh! perfectly.”
“It was very agreeable, was not it? Mr. Tilney drank tea
with us, and I always thought him a great addition, he is so
very agreeable. I have a notion you danced with him, but am
not quite sure. I remember I had my favourite gown on.”
Catherine could not answer; and, after a short trial of other
subjects, Mrs. Allen again returned to—“I really have not
patience with the General! Such an agreeable, worthy man as
he seemed to be! I do not suppose, Mrs. Morland, you ever
saw a better-bred man in your life. His lodgings were taken
the very day after he left them, Catherine. But no wonder;
Milsom-street you know.”—
As they walked home again, Mrs. Morland endeavoured
to impress on her daughter’s mind the happiness of having
such steady well-wishers as Mr. and Mrs. Allen, and the
very little consideration which the neglect or unkindness of
slight acquaintance like the Tilneys ought to have with her,
while she could preserve the good opinion and affection of her
earliest friends. There was a great deal of good sense in all this;
but there are some situations of the human mind in which
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few minutes, till, on entering the room, the first object she
beheld was a young man whom she had never seen before.
With a look of much respect, he immediately rose, and being
introduced to her by her conscious daughter as “Mr. Henry
Tilney,” with the embarrassment of real sensibility began to
apologise for his appearance there, acknowledging that after
what had passed he had little right to expect a welcome at
Fullerton, and stating his impatience to be assured of Miss
Morland’s having reached her home in safety, as the cause
of his intrusion. He did not address himself to an uncandid
judge or a resentful heart. Far from comprehending him or
his sister in their father’s misconduct, Mrs. Morland had been
always kindly disposed towards each, and instantly, pleased
by his appearance, received him with the simple professions
of unaffected benevolence; thanking him for such an atten-
tion to her daughter, assuring him that the friends of her
children were always welcome there, and intreating him to
say not another word of the past.
He was not ill inclined to obey this request, for, though
his heart was greatly relieved by such unlooked-for mildness,
it was not just at that moment in his power to say any thing
to the purpose. Returning in silence to his seat, therefore, he
remained for some minutes most civilly answering all Mrs.
Morland’s common remarks about the weather and roads.
Catherine meanwhile,—the anxious, agitated, happy, fever-
ish Catherine,—said not a word; but her glowing cheek and
brightened eye made her mother trust that this good-natured
visit would at least set her heart at ease for a time, and gladly
therefore did she lay aside the first volume of the Mirror for
a future hour.
Desirous of Mr. Morland’s assistance, as well in giving
encouragement, as in finding conversation for her guest,
whose embarrassment on his father’s account she earnestly
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her from the house seemed the best, though to his feelings
an inadequate proof of his resentment towards herself, and
his contempt of her family.
John Thorpe had first misled him. The General, perceiv-
ing his son one night at the theatre to be paying consider-
able attention to Miss Morland, had accidentally inquired of
Thorpe, if he knew more of her than her name. Thorpe, most
happy to be on speaking terms with a man of General Tilney’s
importance, had been joyfully and proudly communicative;—
and being at that time not only in daily expectation of
Morland’s engaging Isabella, but likewise pretty well resolved
upon marrying Catherine himself, his vanity induced him
to represent the family as yet more wealthy than his vanity
and avarice had made him believe them. With whomsoever
he was, or was likely to be connected, his own consequence
always required that theirs should be great, and as his intimacy
with any acquaintance grew, so regularly grew their fortune.
The expectations of his friend Morland, therefore, from the
first over-rated, had ever since his introduction to Isabella,
been gradually increasing; and by merely adding twice as
much for the grandeur of the moment, by doubling what he
chose to think the amount of Mr. Morland’s preferment, tre-
bling his private fortune, bestowing a rich aunt, and sinking
half the children, he was able to represent the whole family to
the General in a most respectable light. For Catherine, how-
ever, the peculiar object of the General’s curiosity, and his
own speculations, he had yet something more in reserve, and
the ten or fifteen thousand pounds which her father could
give her, would be a pretty addition to Mr. Allen’s estate.
Her intimacy there had made him seriously determine on
her being handsomely legacied hereafter; and to speak of her
therefore as the almost acknowledged future heiress of Fuller-
ton naturally followed. Upon such intelligence the General
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Chapter 16
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finis
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CO R R E C T I O N S A N D EM EN DAT I O N S
TO 1818 TEXT
volume i
1818 Corrected to
p. 12 line 24 us any as any
p. 21 line 2 do think do you think
p. 24 line 21 station stations
p. 35 line 33 and and not and not
p. 55 line 1 quizzers quizzes
p. 58 line 20 tnrned away, turned away,
p. 60 line 1 meant, He meant. He
p. 73 line 10–11 me.” “That me.” / “That
p. 82 line 18 haste!’ haste!”
p. 85 line 24 Thorpe, she Thorpe,” she
p. 85 line 24 cried, it cried, “it
p. 92 line 4 towarde towards
p. 100 line 20 Catherine.” Catherine.
p. 111 line 16 if if if
volume ii
p. 131 line 11 before. instead before; instead
p. 138 line 7 I only “I only
p. 139 line 10 half a half
p. 139 line 10 and half and a half
p. 145 line 10 at they sat as they sat
p. 150 line 4 now. now.”
p. 165 line 27 ornameuts ornaments
p. 179 line 12 He was “He was
p. 189 line 21 vavity vanity
263
List of corrections and emendations to 1818 text
264
a p p e n d ix
Summaries and extracts from
Ann Radcliffe’s novels
deirdre le faye
265
Appendix
A Sicilian Romance
2 vols., T. Hookham, London, 1790
Volume 1: The setting is sixteenth-century Sicily. Ferdinand, 5th
Marquis Mazzini, and the owner of Castle Mazzini in the Sicilian
mountains, was previously married to Louisa Bernini, by whom
he had two daughters and one son – Emilia (twenty), Julia (eigh-
teen) and Ferdinand junior (twenty-one). Following her death he
took a second wife, Maria de Vellorno, beautiful but frivolous and
hard, and prefers to live in Naples with her and his son while
the two girls remain in the castle under the care of Madame de
Menon, a poor relation. Life at the castle is virtuous and peaceful,
until a mysterious light is seen in the deserted southern tower; the
old steward Vincent maintains there is no one there. Later on he
tries to tell Madame de Menon something, but dies with his tale
unspoken.
The Marquis and his wife now arrive, with Ferdinand and
his friend Count Hippolitus de Vereza, to celebrate Ferdinand’s
twenty-first birthday, and the girls are delighted to see their hand-
some brother. The Marchesa is potentially adulterous and tries to
flirt with Hippolitus, who scorns her and instantly falls in love with
Julia; unfortunately he has to leave for Naples the next day. The
Marquis is very annoyed to hear about the mysterious light in the
southern tower, and stays on at the castle for the summer months;
the Marchesa takes over the girls’ pleasant apartments and puts
them into a different suite in the southern tower, where Julia finds
a portrait miniature in a cabinet, and Madame de Menon tells her
it is her mother, Louisa Bernini. A long story from Madame de
Menon to explain her connection with the Bernini family and her
present situation as a poor widow follows.
The girls hear noises at the base of the southern tower – doors
closing, groans, footsteps – and ask Ferdinand to investigate. A
door behind the tapestry in the girls’ room leads into another suite
of ruinous rooms and stairs – too dangerous to proceed further.
The Marquis tells Ferdinand that the tower is haunted, because
266
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267
Appendix
268
Summaries and extracts from Ann Radcliffe’s novels
269
Appendix
mentioned. It was spacious and lofty, and what little furniture it con-
tained was falling to decay; but, perhaps, the present tone of her
spirits might contribute more than these circumstances to give that
air of melancholy, which seemed to reign in it. She was unwilling to go
to bed, lest the dreams that had lately pursued her should return; and
determined to sit up till she found herself oppressed by sleep, when
it was probable her rest would be profound. She placed the light on a
small table, and, taking a book, continued to read for above an hour,
till her mind refused any longer to abstract itself from its own cares,
and she sat for some time leaning pensively on her arm.
The wind was high, and as it whistled through the desolate apart-
ment, and shook the feeble doors, she often started, and sometimes
even thought she heard sighs between the pauses of the gust; but
she checked these illusions, which the hour of the night and her
own melancholy imagination conspired to raise. As she sat musing,
her eyes fixed on the opposite wall, she perceived the arras, with
which the room was hung, wave backwards and forwards; she con-
tinued to observe it for some minutes, and then rose to examine it
farther. It was moved by the wind; and she blushed at the momen-
tary fear it had excited; but she observed that the tapestry was more
strongly agitated in one particular place than elsewhere, and a noise
that seemed something more than that of the wind issued thence.
The old bedstead, which La Motte had found in this apartment,
had been removed to accommodate Adeline, and it was behind the
place where this had stood, that the wind seemed to rush with par-
ticular force: curiosity prompted her to examine still farther; she felt
about the tapestry, and perceiving the wall behind shake under her
hand, she lifted the arras, and discovered a small door, whose loos-
ened hinges admitted the wind, and occasioned the noise she had
heard.
The door was held only by a bolt, having undrawn which, and
brought the light, she descended by a few steps into another chamber:
she instantly remembered her dreams. The chamber was not much
like that in which she had seen the dying Chevalier, and afterwards the
bier; but it gave her a confused remembrance of one through which
she had passed. Holding up the light to examine it more fully, she
was convinced by its structure that it was part of the ancient foun-
dation. A shattered casement, placed high from the floor, seemed
to be the only opening to admit light. She observed a door on the
opposite side of the apartment; and after some moments of hes-
itation, gained courage, and determined to pursue the inquiry. “A
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mystery seems to hang over these chambers,” said she, “which it is,
perhaps, my lot to develope; I will, at least, see to what that door
leads.”
She stepped forward, and having unclosed it, proceeded with fal-
tering steps along a suite of apartments, resembling the first in style
and condition, and terminating in one exactly like that where her
dream had represented the dying person; the remembrance struck so
forcibly upon her imagination, that she was in danger of fainting; and
looking round the room, almost expected to see the phantom of her
dream.
Unable to quit the place, she sat down on some old lumber to
recover herself, while her spirits were nearly overcome by a super-
stitious dread, such as she had never felt before. She wondered to
what part of the abbey these chambers belonged, and that they had
so long escaped detection. The casements were all too high to afford
any information from without. When she was sufficiently composed
to consider the direction of the rooms, and the situation of the abbey,
there appeared not a doubt that they formed an interior part of the
original building.
As these reflections passed over her mind, a sudden gleam of moon-
light fell upon some object without the casement. Being now suffi-
ciently composed to wish to pursue the inquiry; and believing this
object might afford her some means of learning the situation of these
rooms, she combated her remaining terrors, and, in order to distin-
guish it more clearly, removed the light to an outer chamber; but
before she could return, a heavy cloud was driven over the face of the
moon, and all without was perfectly dark: she stood for some moments
waiting a returning gleam, but the obscurity continued. As she went
softly back for the light, her foot stumbled over something on the
floor, and while she stooped to examine it, the moon again shone, so
that she could distinguish, through the casement, the eastern towers
of the abbey. This discovery confirmed her former conjectures con-
cerning the interior situation of these apartments. The obscurity of
the place prevented her discovering what it was that had impeded
her steps, but having brought the light forward, she perceived on
the floor an old dagger: with a trembling hand she took it up, and
upon a closer view perceived, that it was spotted and stained with
rust.
Shocked and surprised, she looked round the room for some
object that might confirm or destroy the dreadful suspicion which
now rushed upon her mind; but she saw only a great chair, with
271
Appendix
broken arms, that stood in one corner of the room, and a table in
a condition equally shattered, except that in another part lay a con-
fused heap of things, which appeared to be old lumber. She went
up to it, and perceived a broken bedstead, with some decayed rem-
nants of furniture, covered with dust and cobwebs, and which seemed,
indeed, as if they had not been moved for many years. Desirous, how-
ever, of examining farther, she attempted to raise what appeared to
have been part of the bedstead, but it slipped from her hand, and,
rolling to the floor, brought with it some of the remaining lum-
ber. Adeline started aside and saved herself, and when the noise it
made had ceased, she heard a small rustling sound, and as she was
about to leave the chamber, saw something falling gently among the
lumber.
It was a small roll of paper, tied with a string, and covered with
dust. Adeline took it up, and on opening it perceived an handwriting.
She attempted to read it, but the part of the manuscript she looked
at was so much obliterated, that she found this difficult, though what
few words were legible impressed her with curiosity and terror, and
induced her to return with it immediately to her chamber.
272
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273
Appendix
274
Summaries and extracts from Ann Radcliffe’s novels
She leaned pensively on the little open casement, and in deep thought
fixed her eyes on the heaven, whose blue unclouded concave was
studded thick with stars, the worlds, perhaps, of spirits, unsphered of
mortal mould. As her eyes wandered along the boundless aether, her
thoughts rose, as before, towards the sublimity of the Deity, and to the
contemplation of futurity. No busy note of this world interrupted the
course of her mind; the merry dance had ceased, and every cottager
had retired to his home. The still air seemed scarcely to breathe upon
the woods, and, now and then, the distant sound of a solitary sheep-
bell, or of a closing casement, was all that broke on silence. At length,
even this hint of human being was heard no more. Elevated and
enwrapt, while her eyes were often wet with tears of sublime devotion
and solemn awe, she continued at the casement, till the gloom of
midnight hung over the earth, and the planet, which La Voisin had
pointed out, sunk below the woods.
[Catherine recalls this, rather confusedly, as being ‘the night that poor St
Aubin died’.]
St Aubert falls ill the next morning and dies a few hours later;
his last dying instructions to Emily are to return home to La
Vallée and find a certain secret hiding place containing manuscripts,
which she must burn without reading, and he cannot tell her why.
His sister, Madame Cheron, will be her guardian from now on.
Emily herself falls ill with a slow fever, and stays on in the La
Voisin household for some weeks before returning to La Vallée.
She finds the hidden manuscripts and burns them, unread, as
instructed, although she glimpses ‘a sentence of dreadful import
[which] awakened her attention and her memory together’. She
finds also a portrait miniature of a young woman, not Emily’s
mother.
Valancourt reappears, as his estate, Estuviere, is not far distant,
and he is on the verge of proposing to Emily when they are inter-
rupted by the arrival of Madame Cheron; she is quite unlike her
brother – rich, vulgar, and bad-tempered – and she instantly dis-
approves of Valancourt as he is only a penniless soldier. Madame
Cheron takes Emily to her house in Toulouse, where the Italian
275
Appendix
Signor Montoni and his friend Signor Cavigni are frequent visi-
tors, as Montoni is courting Madame Cheron. For a time, when
Madame Cheron learns that Valancourt has rich relations, she is
prepared to reconsider him as a suitor for Emily; but then she herself
marries Montoni suddenly and secretly and withdraws her consent
to Emily’s marriage. The Montonis will go to Italy and take Emily
with them.
Volume 2:
276
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277
Appendix
278
Summaries and extracts from Ann Radcliffe’s novels
suit upon Emily. Montoni and Morano fight; both are wounded,
and Morano is thrown out of the castle. Madame Montoni com-
plains to Emily about Montoni’s cruelty – he is trying to force her
to sign away her property to him, but it should really be Emily’s
inheritance. Montoni keeps his wife locked in her own apartments,
allowing her to see only Emily and maid Annette; he then declares
to his wicked friends that his wife has tried to poison him, and
imprisons her in the east turret. Emily tries to find her aunt, with-
out success – there is only a trail of blood on the staircase. Barnardine
the porter says he has Madame Montoni in his custody in the gate-
house of the castle, and arranges to take Emily to see her the next
day.
Volume 3: Emily meets Barnardine as agreed, and he takes her
to a room with a large dark curtain at one end; Emily thinks her
aunt’s body must lie behind it, raises the curtain and does indeed
find a bleeding corpse lying there, but it is a man, one of Montoni’s
servants. Barnardine picks her up as she lies in a faint, and takes her
outside to hand her over to Morano’s men, as this was all a kidnap
plot arranged by him. However, Montoni’s men fight them off and
bring Emily back into the castle. Some strange man or ghost is said
to be wandering in the corridors, the sentries gabble of seeing this
apparition gliding along the ramparts, and moans and groans are
heard in empty rooms.
Emily and Annette are at last able to find Madame Montoni,
still alive but sick and starving:
279
Appendix
without pity or remorse, had suffered her to lie, forlorn and neglected,
under a raging fever, till it had reduced her to the present state.
[Catherine mentally conflates this scene with that of Signora Louisa’s
imprisonment in A Sicilian Romance as an explanation of Mrs Tilney’s
early decease and the General’s apparently guilty gloom.]
Madame Montoni accepts she is dying, but still refuses to sign over
her French estates to Montoni, instead telling Emily where she has
hidden the deeds; she is buried in the ruined chapel of the castle,
and Montoni now starts threatening Emily, as her aunt’s heiress,
to make over her property to him. She locks herself in her room to
avoid him and his evil friends, and at night hears distant music and
a song, which makes her think Valancourt must also be a prisoner
somewhere in the castle.
A local army is on its way to besiege the castle and rout out
Montoni and his banditti, so Emily is sent off to a cottage in
Tuscany:
When Emily, in the morning, opened her casement, she was sur-
prised to observe the beauties, that surrounded it. The cottage was
nearly embowered in the woods, which were chiefly of chesnut inter-
mixed with some cypress, larch and sycamore. Beneath the dark and
spreading branches, appeared, to the north, and to the east, the woody
Apennines, rising in majestic amphitheatre, not black with pines, as
she had been accustomed to see them, but their loftiest summits
crowned with antient forests of chesnut, oak, and oriental plane, now
animated with the rich tints of autumn, and which swept downward
to the valley uninterruptedly, except where some bold rocky promon-
tory looked out from among the foliage, and caught the passing gleam.
Vineyards stretched along the feet of the mountains, where the ele-
gant villas of the Tuscan nobility frequently adorned the scene, and
overlooked slopes clothed with groves of olive, mulberry, orange and
lemon. The plain, to which these declined, was coloured with the
richest of cultivation, whose mingled hues were mellowed into har-
mony by an Italian sun. Vines, their purple clusters blushing between
the russet foliage, hung in luxuriant festoons from the branches of
standard fig and cherry trees, while pastures of verdure, such as Emily
had seldom seen in Italy, enriched the banks of a stream that, after
descending from the mountains, wound along the landscape, which it
reflected, to a bay of the sea. There, far in the west, the waters, fading
into the sky, assumed a tint of the faintest purple, and the line of
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Summaries and extracts from Ann Radcliffe’s novels
separation between them was, now and then, discernible only by the
progress of a sail, brightened with the sunbeam, along the horizon.
[Here again, Catherine wishes that rainy Bath could be more like Italy.]
281
Appendix
DuPont confides to the Count his love for Emily, and then leaves;
Emily stays for some days at the convent of St Clair, and meets there
the elderly and deranged Sister Agnes, before returning again to
the chateau. Henri de Villefort comes to join his family, bringing
fellow-soldier Valancourt with him. The Count tells Emily that
Henri has told him that Valancourt fell into debauchery in Paris
and is now unworthy of her.
Volume 4: Emily and Valancourt have a long sentimental argu-
ment – he admits he behaved badly in Paris and is in debt; Emily
says they must part, so final farewells are taken. Housekeeper
Dorothée now tells Emily part of the history of the deceased Mar-
chioness de Villeroi, who may have been poisoned by her jealous
husband and who was buried in the convent of St Clair. They return
to the Marchioness’s deserted suite, to study a larger portrait of her
on the wall, but flee in terror when the black pall upon the bed
appears to move. The servants declare the room must be haunted,
and Ludovico offers to spend the night there, suitably armed; but
in the morning he has disappeared.
DuPont reappears and proposes to Emily, but she rejects him and
insists on returning to the convent; she finds the nuns are talking
282
Summaries and extracts from Ann Radcliffe’s novels
The Italian
3 vols., Cadell & Davies, London 1797
Volume 1: The setting is Naples in 1758. Vincentio di Vivaldi sees
Ellena Rosalba in church and falls instantly in love. She is an
orphan, living with her aunt, Signora Bianca, and earning an honest
living by undertaking needlework for the local convent; Vivaldi is
283
Appendix
the only son of rich, proud, aristocrats. He starts visiting her humble
villa, which is approached ‘from the dark arch of a ruin’; a black-
robed monkish figure appears in these ruins and warns Vivaldi off
any further contact with Ellena; he chases the figure but it eludes
him.
Vivaldi proposes marriage, to which Signora Bianca agrees,
despite their social differences. Vivaldi’s parents command him to
cease the courtship; his mother, the Marchesa, is particularly proud
and angry, and tells her confessor, the Dominican Friar Schedoni,
that he must help her to prevent such a marriage. The Monk again
appears at the ruined arch with a further warning for Vivaldi, as he
makes his next visit to the villa, where he finds Signora Bianca has
just died. Vivaldi thinks Schedoni may be the Monk, but cannot
prove this; Schedoni thinks the Marchesa will provide him with a
rich benefice if he prevents the marriage, but she is thinking only
of the family’s dignity.
Ellena decides to go to a convent for safety and propriety while
awaiting her marriage, but before she can do so, she is abducted by
three masked men and taken to a gloomy monastery in the Abruzzo
mountains. Vivaldi and his servant Paulo again chase the Monk
round the ruins, shooting at him; but despite finding a bloodstained
garment they cannot catch him; instead a door slams and they
are themselves locked in a vault. Overnight, Paulo tells Vivaldi a
rambling tale about a Friar Ansaldo and some particularly awful
crime that was confessed in the church of the Black Penitents. By
daylight, the locked door is mysteriously open, so that Vivaldi and
Paulo are free to leave.
Ellena is a prisoner in the monastery of San Stefano, scolded and
bullied by the abbess: she must either give up Vivaldi and marry a
husband chosen for her by the Marchesa or else take the veil here in
the convent. Ellena meets one of the older nuns, Sister Olivia, with
whom she finds instant sympathy. Vivaldi thinks that Schedoni has
arranged Ellena’s abduction, goes to the church of San Spirito and
quarrels with him in front of the other monks – the confessional of
the Black Penitents is mentioned, and at this Schedoni disappears
into the shadows. Vivaldi gets a clue from local fishermen as to
Ellena’s whereabouts, and sets off after her.
284
Summaries and extracts from Ann Radcliffe’s novels
285
Appendix
286
Summaries and extracts from Ann Radcliffe’s novels
287
A B B R EV I AT I O N S
E Emma
FR Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record, second
edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004)
Gilson David Gilson, A Bibliography of Jane Austen
(Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies; New Castle,
Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 1997)
JA Jane Austen
Johnson Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language
(1755)
L Jane Austen’s Letters, third edition, collected and
edited by Deirdre Le Faye (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995)
‘L&F’ ‘Love and Freindship’
LS Lady Susan
Memoir James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen
and Other Family Recollections, edited by Kathryn
Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
MP Mansfield Park
NA Northanger Abbey
P Persuasion
P&P Pride and Prejudice
OED Oxford English Dictionary
RoF Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest, edited by
Chloe Chard (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999)
S Sanditon
SR Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance, edited by Alison
Milbank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
289
List of abbreviations
290
E X P L A NAT O RY N O T E S
volume i , chapter 1
1 Catherine Morland . . . an heroine: JA used the name Catharine
[sic] for the rebellious heroine in one of her juvenile parodies of
sentimental fiction, Catharine or The Bower, written in 1792, which
opens: ‘Catharine had the misfortune, as many heroines have had
before her, of losing her Parents when she was very young.’ Either
orphaned or abandoned in infancy, sentimental heroines typically
suffer loneliness and neglect before recovering their inheritance
and family, and marrying the hero.
2 Her father . . . handsome: mysterious lineage, which turns out to
be noble, and the father’s virtuous retirement to rural life, were both
gothic clichés. The dislike of the name ‘Richard’ seems to have been
a long-standing joke with the Austen family, dating back to at least
The History of England (1791), where JA comments on Richard
III: ‘The Character of this Prince has been in general very severely
treated by Historians, but as he was a York, I am rather inclined
to suppose him a very respectable Man’; and still running in her
letter of 15–16 September 1796: ‘Mr Richard Harvey’s match is
put off, till he has got a Better Christian name, of which he has
great Hopes’ (L, p. 10).
3 independence: income from land and investments, which enabled
the Revd Mr Morland to maintain a comfortable lifestyle for him-
self and his large family in the middle rank of society, without the
necessity of relying solely upon his earnings as a clergyman.
4 livings: a clergyman of the Church of England, once instituted
to a parish, had the tenure of the church and parsonage until his
death or resignation; each parish was provided with an acreage of
glebe-land, which the clergyman could either farm himself or rent
out to tenants; and the rest of his income consisted of the fees for
291
Notes to pages 5–6
292
Notes to page 6
293
Notes to page 6
294
Notes to pages 6–7
295
Notes to pages 7–8
296
Notes to pages 8–9
297
Notes to page 9
298
Notes to pages 10–11
chapter 2
1 A thousand alarming presentiments of evil: in gothic nov-
els, premonitions of danger, and excessive displays of emotional
advice, expressed laudable sensibility. Adeline, in RoF, is twice
abducted by the servants of the wicked Marquis de Montalt –
once on horseback, and then again in his chaise (vol. 2, chs. 11
and 12–14).
2 terrific: portentous, terrifying.
3 closet: a small room opening off a larger one, probably in this
case off Mrs Morland’s bedroom. In real life, the Scottish girl
Elizabeth Grant remembered their house in Hertfordshire: ‘The
prettiest room in the house was my mother’s bedroom looking
on the orchard. It had three windows in a bow, and on one side at
either hand of the fire place were the two light closets in two tur-
rets, one she used as her washing closet, the other was neatly fitted
up for reading in’, Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, Memoirs
of a Highland Lady, ed. Andrew Tod (Edinburgh: Canongate
Publishing Ltd, 1988), vol. 1, p. 86.
4 Rooms: Assembly Rooms, in many other provincial towns as
well as Bath, were smart social centres, providing dancing, card-
playing, concerts, billiard-tables and light refreshments. Bath
had two sets of Rooms: the older, or Lower Rooms, situated
behind Bath Abbey and close to the river Avon, were also known
as Harrison’s Rooms after the entrepreneur who first built them
in 1709. The New, or Upper Rooms, on the northern side of the
city, on higher ground and near the Circus and Royal Crescent,
were opened in 1771. These rooms were ‘particularly spacious
and elegant’, and the ballroom was 105 feet long by 42 feet wide
and 42 feet high.
5 little book . . . purpose: probably a ‘pocket-book’, a small vol-
ume rather like a modern engagement diary; it had spaces for
daily entries, together with pages for cash accounts, tables for
299
Notes to page 11
300
Notes to pages 11–12
301
Notes to page 12
end of the bridge Baldwin laid out the short Argyle Street, Laura
Place (a square, but set diagonally), and then the two ruler-
straight terraces of Great Pulteney Street, 1100 feet long and
with 100 feet width between them. The perspective view down
the street was terminated by the Sydney House hotel and its pub-
lic gardens. ‘On the further side of the Avon is a new creation of
architectural beauties, which may vie with anything in the world.
Laura-place and its accompaniments; and Great Pulteney-street,
terminated by Sydney-gardens, present an assemblage of fine
buildings, which do honour to the present age’ (Feltham, Guide
to Watering Places, p. 269).
13 last volume: usually published in multiple volumes, eighteenth-
century novels typically complicate the plot and intensify the
drama and suspense until the resolution in the very final chapters.
See the summaries of Ann Radcliffe’s novels, Appendix, pp. 265–
287.
14 Mrs. Allen . . . out of doors: evil, mercenary, vulgar, jealous or
foolish chaperones are stock characters in gothic and sentimental
novels; they may be either accomplices to the villain, embarrass-
ments to the heroine, or obstacles to her union with the hero.
In Burney’s Evelina (1778), the heroine’s grandmother tries to
make her marry one of her uncultured Branghton cousins, and
betrays the secret of her apparent illegitimacy (vol. 1, letter 17).
Many years later JA’s niece Caroline Austen recalled: ‘She [JA]
was considered to read aloud remarkably well. I did not often
hear her but once I knew her take up a volume of Evelina and
read a few pages of Mr. Smith and the Brangtons [sic] and I
thought it was like a play’ (Memoir, p. 174).
In Udolpho, Emily’s aunt, Madame Cheron, is a vain, vulgar
bully: ‘The love of sway was her ruling passion, and she knew
it would be highly gratified by taking into her house a young
orphan, who had no appeal from her decisions, and on whom
she could exercise without controul the capricious humour of the
moment’ (vol. 1, ch. 10).
15 genius . . . manner: Johnson in his dictionary defines ‘genius’
as ‘mental power or faculties’ – what we would now call
‘intelligence’; ‘manner’ indicated ‘a distinguished or fashionable
air’.
302
Notes to pages 12–13
16 Dress . . . passion: the love of finery is used to signify the false val-
ues of shallow anti-heroines and corrupt, superficial characters,
trained only to display their physical charms instead of develop-
ing the moral judgement that marks the self-effacing and modest
heroine. In Burney’s Evelina, the heroine’s coarse French grand-
mother, Madame Duval, who was once a tavern-maid, embar-
rasses Evelina throughout the novel with her vulgar displays of
feminine affectations and her trivial interest in dress and gos-
sip. JA mentions her in February 1807, when a social problem
has arisen between the Austens and a Southampton neighbour:
‘What a Contretems!—in the Language of France; What an
unluckiness! in that of Mde Duval’ (Evelina, vol. 2, letter 3 and
8–9 February 1807, L, p. 120).
17 season: Bath’s spring season, popular with invalids, ran from
late February to early June, and the winter season, favoured by
pleasure-seekers, from late September to mid-December. The
summer months, in a crowded city, were considered to be too
hot for comfort. As many as 8,000 visitors came, usually staying
for six weeks; by 1800, Bath could hold 33,000 people, making
it one of the ten largest cities in England and Wales.
18 card-room: Assembly Rooms always included a room devoted
to card games, such as picquet, whist and quadrille.
19 unwearied diligence . . . gained: JA refers to a couplet from a
popular old schoolbook, A Guide to the English Tongue (London,
1707), compiled by Thomas Dyche: ‘Despair of nothing that
you wou’d attain: / Unweari’d Diligence your Point will gain’
(‘Alphabet 3’, p. 140).
20 high feathers: see note 23 below.
21 easily find seats . . . highest bench: those who were not dancing
but watching or waiting for partners sat on chairs or benches
arranged around the sides of the dance-floor; the rules of the
Lower Rooms stipulated that ‘the upper benches be reserved for
Peeresses’, and in the Upper Rooms the three front seats, at the
upper end of the room, were likewise reserved for titled ladies. See
Thomas Rowlandson’s Comforts of Bath, a set of hand-coloured
aquatint engravings published in 1798; plate X shows a dance
in progress in the Upper Rooms, with many onlookers seated or
standing on each side.
303
Notes to pages 14–17
chapter 3
1 Pump-room: the Grand Pump Room was the hub of Bath social
life, situated at the centre of the city and just beside the great
west door of Bath Abbey. The first building had been erected in
1704–6, but was replaced during 1790–5 to a design by Thomas
Baldwin, so was still very new at the time of Catherine’s visit.
The room is 60 feet long by 46 feet wide and 34 feet high,
and the inside is set round with giant Corinthian columns. The
gallery for musicians is at the west end, and at the east end is
304
Notes to pages 17–18
305
Notes to pages 19–20
306
Notes to pages 20–22
307
Notes to pages 23–25
chapter 4
1 fashionable hours: George Robbins’ 1801 Bath Directory
(printed and sold by Robbins, Bath) recommends the music in
the Pump Room: ‘There is an excellent band of musicians, who
play many hours here every morning during the season.’
2 great clock: a ten-foot-high long-case timepiece by the master
craftsman Thomas Tompion, who presented it to the city of Bath
in 1709. It was placed in the original Pump Room, then moved
to Baldwin’s new building, and still stands there today.
3 despair of nothing . . . would gain: JA quotes again the popular
couplet first mentioned in chapter 2, but continues with a refer-
ence to some further lines: ‘Great blessings ever wait on virtuous
deeds / And tho’ a late a sure reward succeeds.’ Mrs Allen’s sure,
or just, reward, turns out to be the ‘great blessing’ of renewing
acquaintance with Mrs Thorpe.
4 complaisance: ‘civility; desire of pleasing’ ( Johnson).
5 intelligence: information, news, personal gossip.
6 Merchant-Taylors’: a grammar school founded by one of Lon-
don’s merchant guilds in 1561, situated in the city of London.
The school provided accessible and affordable education for boys
of the middle rank, including thirty-seven fellowships for under-
graduate study at St John’s College, Oxford.
7 pelisse: a cloak with sleeves, or long coat, reaching to the ankles,
trimmed with fur or lace.
8 Isabella: the name of one of the heroines in The Castle of Otranto,
a Gothic Story (London: T. Lownds, 1764), the novel by Horace
Walpole that started the craze for gothic romances.
9 turn: a stroll around the room, a common activity for ladies at
public assemblies, combining gentle exercise with opportunities
for private gossip. Such an indoor stroll could also be taken in
a large country house for the same reasons; in P&P Miss Bin-
gley attempts to attract Mr Darcy’s attention at Netherfield by
inviting Elizabeth Bennet to ‘take a turn about the room . . . it
is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude’. Darcy
concludes that they must have chosen ‘to walk up and down the
room together’ in order either to exchange secrets or to display
their figures (vol. 1, ch. 10).
308
Notes to pages 25–27
309
Notes to page 28
chapter 5
1 divine service: if the Allens and the Thorpes went to Laura
Chapel, they would have heard Dr Randolph preach at 11.00
a.m.; if to the Octagon, Dr Gardiner, at 11.15 a.m.; and if to St
Mary’s Queen Square, the Revd Mr Sibley, also at 11.15 a.m.
2 genteel: ‘polite; elegant in behaviour; civil’ ( Johnson); used by
the socially self-conscious until the middle of the nineteenth
century.
3 the Crescent: more correctly called the Royal Crescent, this is
a great half-ellipse about 600 feet long, made up of thirty large
houses, their 114 Ionic columns uniting them to form a clas-
sical palace frontage. The Crescent was built in 1767–75 by
John Wood the Younger, runs from Brock Street to Marlbor-
ough Buildings, and overlooks the Crescent Fields. ‘Higher up
is the Royal Crescent, a majestic assemblage of buildings of an
elliptical form, with a single order of Ionic pillars, supporting the
superior cornice. It consists of thirty elegant houses, with a fine
lawn in front, declining towards the Avon, and commands very
extensive prospects over the city and the opposite hills. By the
west end of this crescent runs that beautiful and airy pile, called
310
Notes to pages 29–30
311
Notes to pages 30–31
312
Notes to pages 32–33
chapter 6
1 Milsom-street: built in 1762–8, Milsom Street was laid out to
link the low-lying old centre of Bath with the new developments
springing up on the hillsides to the north. It was initially purely a
residential area, but soon became the most fashionable shopping
street in Bath, with expensive lodgings above the shops.
2 coquelicot: French for ‘poppy’ – an orange-red colour fashion-
able in 1798.
3 Udolpho . . . Laurentina’s skeleton: Catherine is mis-
remembering – the name of the villainess is Laurentini. See
Appendix, p. 278.
4 the Italian: see Appendix, p. 283.
5 Castle of Wolfenbach . . . Horrid Mysteries: Isabella lists
seven recently published gothic romances: Eliza Parsons, Castle
of Wolfenbach; a German Story, 2 vols. (London: Minerva Press,
1793); Regina Maria Roche, Clermont, a Tale, 4 vols. (London:
Minerva Press, 1798); Eliza Parsons, The Mysterious Warning,
a German Tale, 4 vols. (London: Minerva Press, 1796); Carl
Friedrich Kahlert (originally anonymous), The Necromancer: or
the Tale of the Black Forest: founded on facts. Translated from the Ger-
man of Lawrence Flammenberg, by Peter Teuthold, 2 vols. (London:
Minerva Press, 1794); Francis Lathom (originally anonymous),
The Midnight Bell, a German Story, founded on incidents in real life,
3 vols. (London: printed for H. D. Symonds, 1798); Eleanor
Sleath, The Orphan of the Rhine, a Romance, 4 vols. (London:
Minerva Press, 1798); Karl Friedrich August Grosse, trans. Peter
Will, Horrid Mysteries. A Story, from the German of the Marquis
of Grosse, 4 vols. (London: Minerva Press, 1796).
6 horrid: frightening, thrilling. The term also meant ‘shocking;
offensive; unpleasing, in women’s cant’ ( Johnson), but here
Catherine intends the former, not the latter, meaning. In 1795
313
Notes to pages 33–35
314
Notes to pages 35–39
chapter 7
1 Pump-yard . . . Union-passage . . . principal inn: the Pump-
yard was and is the large, open, paved square in front of the
Pump Room and the Abbey Church. On the north side lay the
busy Cheap Street, which linked the High Street to the Bristol
Road and passed the White Hart Inn. Thomas Baldwin laid
out Union Street (built 1805–10), and improved Union-passage
parallel to it (previously the narrow medieval Cockes Lane), as
part of the Bath Improvement Act of 1789. The White Hart Inn
was demolished in 1867 and replaced by the Pump Room Hotel;
this in its turn was demolished in the twentieth century, and the
site is now occupied by an office block, Arlington House.
2 gig: a two-wheeled, one-horse, light carriage. Catherine’s sur-
prise at seeing her brother is because she realises he is playing
truant – in the middle of February he should be studying at
Oxford, halfway through the Lent term.
3 servant: an ostler from the White Hart.
4 devoirs: from the French – polite greetings, compliments.
5 horses: there is in fact only one horse, that which John Thorpe is
driving in his gig. The plural may perhaps be a printer’s error; or
perhaps JA initially wrote: ‘giving orders about the horse’s feed’ –
or some similar wording – and failed to correct the phrase fully
when she changed her mind.
6 scrape: the first part, but clumsily executed, of a bow, so called
from the noise made when the leg is drawn back without the foot
315
Notes to pages 39–41
being properly lifted off the ground. That John Thorpe cannot
or will not bow properly is an indication of his ill-breeding.
7 Tetbury: a small town in Gloucestershire, on the main road
between Oxford and Bath – some forty-six miles from Oxford
and twenty-three miles north of Bath.
8 true blood: the horse is a thoroughbred from pure stock.
9 Walcot Church: the small church of St Swithin’s, Walcot, is
on the north side of Bath. Originally a medieval foundation, it
was rebuilt in the 1730s, and JA’s parents were married there
in 1764. It was rebuilt again in the neoclassical style in 1777–
80, with further additions in 1790. George Austen was buried
there in 1805, and his ledger-stone is now displayed in the little
churchyard.
10 forehand: the front half of a horse’s body, as seen from the rider’s
seat in the saddle.
11 Christ-church man: an undergraduate at Christ Church Col-
lege, Oxford University. Founded between 1525 and 1546, and
known familiarly in Oxford as ‘The House’, Christ Church is
both a college and the cathedral for the Oxford diocese, and the
Head of the college is also Dean of the cathedral.
12 Magdalen Bridge: built over the river Cherwell in 1772–82 by
James Gwynne; the magnificent Gothic tower of Magdalen Col-
lege rises just behind it, and the combination of the two comprises
one of the architectural vistas of Oxford.
13 d——: curses and proper names were commonly replaced by
dashes in the eighteenth century to protect the printer from any
charges of blasphemy and libel.
14 Curricle-hung . . . complete: the gig’s body hangs like that
of a curricle on a light frame of two side pieces and two cross
bars at each end. The trunk was a box at the back, designed
to hold luggage; the sword-case was intended for a gentleman’s
duelling rapiers or fencing foils; the splashing-board was a screen
mounted in front of the driver’s seat. A curricle needed two horses
to draw it, but a gig only one, hence the latter was the cheaper
vehicle to buy and to run – which accounts for John Thorpe’s
boasting, as he tries to pretend his second-hand gig is nearly as
good as the more expensive carriage.
316
Notes to pages 41–43
15 fifty guineas: John Thorpe has paid £52.10s.0d. for his second-
hand gig, but as a new one would have cost only £5 more, he
has not made a bargain. The carriage-maker William Felton
published prices in his catalogue to enable every customer to
evade ‘any attempt . . . made to impose upon him, either in the
original price charged for a new carriage . . . or in the necessary
expence that may be requisite to repair the damages a carriage
may have sustained by time or accident’ (William Felton, Treatise
on Carriages, London, 1794, pp. 107–9, vi–vii).
16 pitiful: in slang, ‘paltry, contemptible’, although, ironically, the
word primarily means ‘melancholy’ or ‘compassionate’ ( John-
son).
17 Oriel: one of the colleges of Oxford University and founded in
1326. The Revd Richard Buller of Colyton took his degree at
Oriel in 1798 after being one of Mr Austen’s pupils at Steventon;
he was evidently very fond of his tutor’s family, and is mentioned
in several of JA’s letters before his early death.
18 propriety of accepting such an offer: a central dilemma in sen-
timental, conduct and gothic novels in which heroines confront
awkward social or moral situations.
19 Lansdown Hill: to the north-west of Bath, part of the high
ground between Bath and Bristol.
20 Tom Jones . . . Monk: John Thorpe’s admiration for these two
novels gives a clue to his character. Henry Fielding published The
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling in 1749: Tom Jones is a humanly
fallible hero – cheerful and generous-hearted, but also imprudent
and sensual – who has various sexual escapades before discovering
his true identity and marrying his childhood sweetheart, Sophia
Western. The Monk, by M[atthew] G[regory] Lewis, was writ-
ten in ten weeks when the author was only 19, and was published
in 1796. The rigidly pious monk Ambrosio yields to seduction
by the beautiful Matilda, who is an evil spirit in disguise; under
her influence he becomes ever more depraved, murdering his
mother and raping his half-sister in a charnel-house surrounded
by corpses; he then sells his soul to the devil and dies in great tor-
ments. The book enjoyed a considerable success, though moral
disapproval led to an expurgated edition being issued in 1798.
317
Notes to pages 43–47
chapter 8
1 stand up: begin the dance by standing facing each other in lines
or ‘sets’ of dancers. Dances were performed in twos, as the couples
progressed down the room and then up again, and partners could
not be changed until the two dances were completed. In P&P
Mrs Bennet comes home from the Meryton assembly ball and
tells her husband: ‘Jane was so admired, nothing could be like
it . . . Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful . . . he seemed quite
struck with Jane as she was going down the dance. So, he enquired
who she was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next’
(vol. 1, ch. 3). In real life, the authoress Mary Russell Mitford
was painfully conscious of the fact that she was both short and
fat, and wrote to her old friend Sir William Elford in 1815:
318
Notes to pages 48–50
319
Notes to pages 51–56
chapter 9
1 The progress of Catherine’s unhappiness . . . fresh schemes:
sentimental novels depict the meticulous stages of the heroine’s
extreme feelings, which can even lead to temporary madness.
In Burney’s Cecilia the heroine imagines her lover, Delvile, has
been injured in a duel and roams the streets in search of him:
320
Notes to pages 57–59
‘her senses were wholly disordered; she forgot her situation, her
intention, and herself . . . she seemed as if endued with supernat-
ural speed, gliding from place to place, from street to street; with
no consciousness of any plan . . . till quite spent and exhausted,
she abruptly ran into a yet open shop, where, breathless and
panting, she sunk upon the floor, and, with a look disconsolate
and helpless, sat for some time without speaking’ (vol. 5, bk 10,
ch. 7).
2 that old devil . . . into: evidently James, who came to Bath
with John Thorpe, has had to hire a carriage – a gig, as it soon
transpires, the same kind of carriage as Thorpe’s own – so that he
can drive Isabella, and Catherine can take his place with Thorpe.
In major social centres such as Bath coachmakers would generally
keep a range of vehicles for hire.
3 tumble: there are several slangy meanings for the verb ‘to tumble’,
when qualified by different prepositions, and some of them have
a sexual connotation. This may be what the coarse-minded John
Thorpe is implying here – that James and Isabella will find in the
excursion some excuse for tumbling over each other in physical
contact.
4 Claverton Down: a beauty spot above the river Avon, about
three miles east of the centre of Bath.
5 dust: slang for a fuss, or disturbance.
6 take the rest: the horse will become restive, perhaps plunging
or jibbing instead of setting off at a steady pace (from the Scot-
tish dialect word ‘reest’ or ‘reist’, describing such an ill-behaved
animal).
7 as rich as a Jew: a coarse cliché for a wealthy, often self-made,
man, since many of Europe’s bankers and moneylenders were
Jewish. John Thorpe then goes on to enquire if Mr Allen is
Catherine’s godfather, since if he were, by contemporary stan-
dards he could well be expected to give or bequeath some of
his riches to her. In the eighteenth century, to be a godparent
was a position of much more importance than it is today, and
godparents were chosen for this role not only on the grounds of
friendship or relationship with the baby’s family, but also in the
hope that they would provide social or financial assistance as the
child grew up. In return the baby was usually given the Christian
321
Notes to pages 60–65
322
Notes to pages 68–74
chapter 10
1 his glass of water: the medicinal regime at Bath would involve
regular doses of the natural waters, which were warm and tasted
strongly of the minerals they contained. The water was served
in glasses in the Pump Room.
2 cotillion ball: a ball specifically featuring the cotillion, a peasant
dance originating in France, which became popular in England
about 1770. The word means ‘under-petticoat’, and refers to the
original custom requiring that women loop up their top skirts in
order to perform the figures.
3 a lecture on the subject: the dangers of female finery as a prompt
to pride, anger, envy, social ambition and lust was a common
theme for eighteenth-century moralists. In The Spectator no. 80,
1 June 1711, Steele writes a comic moral tale of the two beauties
Brunetta and Phillis, who, after being childhood friends, start to
envy each other’s clothes: ‘These Beginnings of Dis-inclination
soon improved into a Formality of Behaviour, a general Coldness,
and by natural Steps into an irreconcileable Hatred . . . Their
Nights grew restless with Meditation of new Dresses to out-vie
each other, and inventing new Devices to recall Admirers, who
observed the Charms of the one rather than those of the other
on the last Meeting.’
4 tamboured: hand-embroidered, done with the help of a ‘tam-
bour’ (French for drum) – two circular wooden frames between
which muslin or silk was clipped to make it smooth and taut for
needlework.
5 mull . . . jackonet: both Indian muslin fabrics. Mull is a plain,
thin cotton, jackonet a heavier weave.
6 country-dancing: so called from the French ‘contre-danse’, in
which an indefinite number of dancers face each other in two
long rows. At Bath assemblies these less formal dances generally
occurred during the second part of the evening, after 8.00 p.m.
7 Leicestershire: a county in the midlands of England, bordered
by Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, War-
wickshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire. During the eighteenth
323
Notes to pages 75–83
chapter 11
1 Udolpho . . . weather: Catherine is mis-remembering again. Ann
Radcliffe has many paragraphs describing the fine weather in
the French and Italian countryside, but none specifically relating
to Udolpho, where instead she repeats descriptions of the huge
ruinous castle. Furthermore, the name of the heroine’s father is
St Aubert, not St Aubin; and the ‘beautiful weather’ is on the
night before he died. See Appendix, pp. 274 and 275.
2 Bristol: an ancient city and seaport, on the river Avon, 120 miles
west of London and thirteen miles north-west of Bath. In JA’s
time it was a commercial and manufacturing centre, second in
size only to London, and much involved in the importation of
rum, sugar and tobacco.
3 Clifton: as living conditions in the cramped and smelly medieval
streets of Bristol became ever more unpleasant, during the eigh-
teenth century rich merchants moved out and built themselves
324
Notes to pages 83–85
325
Notes to pages 86–88
326
Notes to pages 88–95
chapter 12
1 white: the fashionable colour for elegant young women in the
1790s, denoting purity and elegance. To wear white also implied
a lady was fairly wealthy, with plenty of gowns to change as
soon as they were soiled, and the ability to pay laundresses and
maidservants to keep washing them.
2 offence . . . politeness: directing a servant to deny a caller by
falsely claiming to be not at home, was a social fiction that
was sometimes necessitated by circumstances, but could also be
intended as a deliberate snub to the caller.
3 conscious innocence: gothic and sentimental heroines typically
suffer malicious slander and suspicions in dignified silence, or else
cannot defend themselves for fear of betraying a third party. In
Emmeline, Delamere bursts in upon her while she is holding Lady
Adelina’s illegitimate baby, jumps to the conclusion it is her own
and fathered by his friend Fitz-Edward, and rushes away before
Emmeline can say anything: ‘that he should have conceived such
strange suspicions of her and Fitz-Edward, equally surprised and
distressed her; since, had she an opportunity of undeceiving him,
which he did not seem willing to allow her, she could not relate
the truth but by betraying the confidence of her unfortunate
friend, and embittering that life she had incurred such hazards
to preserve.’
4 consequential manner: with a self-important or pompous tone
of voice.
5 a gentleman-like . . . lived: a grammatical construction now
obsolete, but not an error. JA used the same construction in S&S,
when Mrs Jennings describes Lucy Steele as ‘a good-hearted girl
as ever lived’ (vol. 3, ch. 2).
327
Notes to pages 95–97
chapter 13
1 Monday . . . week: Richardson’s and Burney’s heroines usually
write meticulously detailed letters and journals. JA’s own letters
to Cassandra are almost like diaries, giving as she often does an
hour-by-hour description of how she has spent the day.
2 the afternoon’s Crescent of this day: JA’s neatly elliptic summary
of the fact that Catherine and James, with John and Isabella, are
walking in the Royal Crescent on the Sunday afternoon. The Cres-
cent, with its imposing sweep of houses, comfortably flagstoned
wide promenade in front of them, and green fields below sloping
away towards the Bristol Road, was a natural amphitheatre, where
civic events were held and where all residents and visitors walked
out to see and be seen. JA mentions the Crescent several times
in her letters: ‘In the morning Lady Willoughby is to present the
Colours to some Corps of Yeomanry or other, in the Crescent . . .’
(L, 2 June 1799, p. 43); ‘On Sunday we went to Church twice,
& after evening service walked a little in the Crescent fields, but
found it too cold to stay long.’ (L, 12–13 May 1801, p. 84); ‘We did
not walk long in the Crescent yesterday, it was hot & not crouded
enough, so we went into the field . . .’ (L, 8–11 April 1805, p. 99).
328
Notes to pages 101–08
chapter 14
1 Beechen Cliff: a steep wooded hill (which could also be
described as a hanger) to the south of Bath, across the river
Avon, affording a spectacular prospect of the city.
2 Hermitage-walk: secluded rustic buildings, approached by a
lonely path, were sometimes specially erected by landowners
in the late eighteenth century to create a picturesque effect;
they were fashionable as places for romantic contemplation. The
Hermitage-walk at Northanger Abbey is probably the ‘narrow
winding path through a thick grove of old Scotch firs’ which leads
to the tea-house (vol. 2, ch. 7). In P&P, the Bennets, though
not very well off, have done some landscaping on a small scale
at Longbourn, as we learn when Lady Catherine comes to call
and Mrs Bennet commands her daughter to show ‘her ladyship
about the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the
hermitage’ (vol. 3, ch. 14).
3 amazingly: fashionable jargon meaning ‘a great deal’, or ‘very
much’.
4 Julias and Louisas: highly popular and typical Christian names
for sentimental heroines. Within the previous twenty years
these names had appeared in such titles as Julia, a Novel;
329
Notes to pages 108–10
330
Notes to pages 110–12
331
Notes to pages 112–14
332
Notes to pages 114–16
333
Notes to pages 116–22
20 there is not . . . this time of year: while the social season for Bath
was established in the winter months Clifton had developed as
a summer resort.
c h a p t e r 15
1 driven directly to the York Hotel: the York Hotel and Tavern, in
Gloucester Place, Clifton, was opened in 1790; it had ‘an elegant
Ball-room with a good organ: and commands a picturesque view
of Leigh woods and the downs. The whole building is a capital
Hotel, handsomely fitted up; and extremely well calculated for
parties who arrive here, or make excursions for a few days to this
delightful spot.’ W. Matthews, Complete Guide to Bristol (Bristol,
Matthews, 1794), p. 104.
2 early dinner: fashionable families ate dinner, the main meal of
the day, no earlier than five and often much later, although in
the country some families might dine as early as three in the
afternoon. When Cassandra Austen was visiting Godmersham
in December 1798, JA wrote to her from Steventon: ‘We dine
now at half after Three, & have done dinner I suppose before
you begin—We drink tea at half after six.—I am afraid you will
despise us’ (18–19 December 1798, L, p. 27).
3 purses . . . pastry-cook’s: tourist souvenirs and treats; spar was
the general name for any bright crystalline mineral, here refer-
ring to the crystals of quartz found in St Vincent’s Rocks at the
foot of the Avon Gorge. These were popularly called ‘Bristol
diamonds’, and were made into cheap jewellery. Pastry-cook
shops sold cakes, jellies and other luxury items such as ice cream.
4 puce-coloured sarsenet: puce is purplish-brown, a colour then
very fashionable; sarsenet is a fine soft silk.
5 A cottage . . . Richmond: rural retirement was a sentimental
cliché. Richmond-on-Thames, Surrey, is a small town some ten
miles upstream from London. For centuries it had been favoured
by royalty as a summer retreat, and in the eighteenth century
George III and his ever-increasing family spent much time at
Richmond and the adjacent village of Kew. Isabella therefore
thinks she will have a ‘charming little villa’ in a most expensive
location.
334
Notes to pages 122–25
335
Notes to pages 127–44
volume ii , chapter 1
1 animosities . . . speed: the literary trope of jealous brothers,
dating back to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, appears fre-
quently in gothic and sentimental novels, as also does that of
the abduction of the heroine by the henchmen of a depraved
nobleman.
2 hands across: part of a dance figure in which two couples, usually
at the top of the set, briefly join hands for two half-turns.
3 A living . . . resigned: Mr Morland, who is in possession of
two livings, is generously promising to appoint his son as the
incumbent of one of them, thus permanently reducing his own
income.
4 betweentwoandthreeyears: James Morland has not yet finished
his studies at Oxford, and is only about twenty-two years old.
He must graduate and reach the age of twenty-five before he can
be considered for ordination and subsequently hold a living.
chapter 2
1 se’nnight: sometimes also spelt ‘sennet’; an abbreviation of ‘seven
nights’ – i.e., a week. This expression has now died out of modern
speech, even though ‘fortnight’ – ‘fourteen nights’ – has survived.
2 ill-fated nun: nuns, either living or ghostly, who conceal crimes
of passion or supernatural secrets, frequent gothic novels. As
these novels are usually set in France or Italy, where Christianity
was of the Roman Catholic order rather than the Protestant
version which had become the established religion in England
in 1688, this gave scope for scenes to take place in convents or
monasteries, or for heroines to seek refuge therein.
3 Reformation: the reformation of the English church led to
Henry VIII’s Act in 1536 for the Dissolution of the Monaster-
ies, by which all such ecclesiastical institutions were closed down,
their inmates expelled and their buildings and lands seized for
the Crown; later on these properties were sold off to wealthy
landowners – as here, ‘an ancestor of the Tilneys’.
336
Notes to pages 146–59
chapter 3
1 absent . . . stamp: sentimental heroines frequently fall into devout
reveries that display their sensitivity to sublime beauty. See sum-
mary of Udolpho, Appendix, p. 275.
2 romancers . . . money: sentimental novels extol virtuous poverty;
in Udolpho Emily’s father, nobly born but lacking in riches, has
‘disengaged himself from the world’ and retired to ‘a summer
cottage’ on his ‘small estate in Gascony, where conjugal felicity,
and parental duties, divided his attention with the treasures of
knowledge and the illuminations of genius’ (vol. 1, ch. 1).
chapter 4
1 the mess-room will drink Isabella Thorpe: when dining
together in the officers’ mess, Captain Tilney’s friends in the
12th Light Dragoons will toast the name of the girl who is the
recipient of his latest flirtatious approaches.
chapter 5
1 middle seat . . . drawn out: a chaise usually held two passengers,
but could be made to accommodate three, by using a small central
seat that was pulled out forward of the other two.
2 writing-desk: a small wooden box containing all necessary writ-
ing materials, the lid of which opens out to provide a flat solid
surface upon which to place a sheet of paper. JA’s own writing
desk, which was probably given to her by her father in 1794,
descended in the Austen-Leigh family and is now on display in
the British Library.
3 two equal stages: two stretches of the same mileage, divided by
a pause for rest and refreshment and possibly a change of horses.
4 bait at Petty-France: ‘bait’ is the old-fashioned word meaning
‘food for horses’; it was usually necessary to halt on a journey
to refresh both the travellers and their animals. Petty-France
was and is a hamlet on the main road out of Bath, about
fourteen miles to the north of the city; it was a well-known
posting-stage, and kept many spare horses stabled in readiness for
hire.
5 handsomely liveried: wealthy families provided a uniform – a
‘livery’ – for their menservants to wear when appearing in public.
337
Notes to pages 159–62
338
Notes to pages 162–65
went towards it, and, as he passed, looked into the recess. Upon
the ground within it, stood a large chest, which he went for-
ward to examine, and, lifting the lid, he saw the remains of a
human skeleton. Horror struck upon his heart, and he invol-
untarily stepped back’ (vol. 1, ch. 4). At the end of the story,
the skeleton is identified as the remains of Adeline’s murdered
father.
12 parting cordial: novelistic jargon for (literally) a drink taken
before setting out on a journey, intended to warm and stimulate
the body; or (metaphorically) as here, a farewell message that
may be the very reverse of comforting. A contemporary recipe
for a cordial water runs as follows: ‘Take three quarts of brandy or
sack, put two handfuls of rosemary and two handfuls of balm to it
chopt pretty small, one ounce of cloves, two ounces of nutmegs,
three ounces of cinnamon; beat all the spices grossly, and steep
them with the herbs in the wine; then put it in a still pasted
up close; save near a quart of the first running, and so of the
second, and of the third; when it is distilled mix it all together,
and dissolve about a pound of double refin’d sugar in it, and
when it is settled bottle it up’ (Mrs E. Smith, The Compleat
Housewife: or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion, London,
1753, pp. 260–1).
13 massy: archaic form of ‘massive’, and so appropriate to gothic
fiction.
14 broken lute . . . darkness: Henry Tilney’s extemporary story is
based very largely upon RoF, with some touches from Udolpho –
see Appendix, pp. 269–72 and 274–82.
15 aweful . . . edifice: gothic heroines invariably experience feelings
of ill-omen and terror as they approach the ancient, decaying
buildings in which they are forced to dwell.
16 mizzling rain: atmosphere saturated with moisture – a combi-
nation of mist and drizzle.
17 her habit: Catherine is dressed in a riding-habit, a warm,
tailored garment worn by ladies for travelling as well as for horse-
riding.
18 common drawing-room: the Tilney family’s everyday drawing-
room, as opposed to the much more elaborately furnished
formal drawing-room elsewhere in the house. The General
339
Notes to pages 165–72
chapter 6
1 linen package: the parcel of her clothes, wrapped in paper or
possibly cloth.
2 recess . . . fire-place: an early eighteenth-century architectural
fashion for enhancing the visual interest of a large room – niches,
recesses or alcoves might contain statues, chests, tables, sofas or
other items of furniture.
3 curiously: intricately, skilfully.
4 midnight assassins or drunken gallants: murderous banditti
typically infest gothic ruins, and intoxicated libertines chase sen-
timental heroines down endless dark passages.
5 divisions of the shutters: shutters are folding wooden screens
fitted to the inside of the window, intended both to guard against
burglars and to exclude light, noise and draughts.
6 Japan: an enamel or lacquer. Named after the glossily-coated
wooden and metal luxury items imported from the East by mer-
chants in the later seventeenth century, japan was a varnish that
was applied and then dried and hardened by heat. Although
originally the background of the design was black, later on in
England craftsmen employed other colours as well.
340
Notes to pages 173–78
chapter 7
1 washing-bill: when visitors stayed at an inn for several days, they
would send their dirty linen out to be washed by the maids or
laundresses of the establishment; hence such items of clothing
would need to be listed, and this list would then be returned with
a statement of the charges made by the washerwoman concerned,
along with the clean clothes.
2 letters . . . breeches-ball: a servant would receive and pay for the
employer’s letters when the postman called; hair-powder was a
scented powder, usually white or grey, and made of fine flour
or starch, which was sprayed or puffed over hair or wigs; shoe-
strings (laces) were worn by fashionable young men in pref-
erence to shoe-buckles, which were now becoming outmoded.
A breeches-ball was a preparation for dry-cleaning clothes – a
compound of the natural detergent ox-gall mixed with finely-
powdered abrasive clays, used to rub dirt and grease off leather
breeches.
3 cramp line: a line of small, badly-formed handwriting, scrawled
by a semi-literate working man.
4 to love a hyacinth: fondness for flowers was a sign of natu-
ral feminine delicacy, which gothic heroines often demonstrate
by composing poems to favourite blossoms. Catherine, being
unheroic, has not bothered to notice flowers since the days of
her infancy, when ‘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’
(vol. 1, ch. 1). By mentioning a hyacinth here, JA reminds the
reader subliminally that the action is taking place in the spring,
and it can be calculated that Catherine stays at Northanger for
about four weeks, from late March until late April.
341
Notes to pages 179–80
342
Notes to pages 182–83
343
Notes to pages 183–89
chapter 8
1 lengthened absence . . . rambles: in gothic romances, a man’s
mysterious disappearances and lonely pacing up and down were
always signs that he had some guilty secret. In RoF Adeline’s
unwilling guardian La Motte takes to spending hours in the
forest, and his wife thinks jealously that he is secretly meeting
Adeline; in fact, he has hidden some stolen jewellery there, which
he is little by little selling off.
2 satin: an expensive silk fabric, often used for curtains or chair-
covers. When Elizabeth Bennet is touring with the Gardiners
and wants to avoid visiting Pemberley, she makes the excuse that
‘she was tired of great houses; after going over so many, she really
had no pleasure in fine carpets or satin curtains’ (P&P, vol. 2,
ch. 19).
3 traces of cells: it would seem that the General (or perhaps JA
on his behalf ) did not realise that these traces were not of cells
but of carrels – i.e., study cubicles for the monks, opening off the
cloister in order to give good light for reading and writing. This
further suggests that Northanger Abbey was originally a Bene-
dictine foundation, as this Order laid great stress upon schol-
arship. Remains of carrels can still be seen in the south cloister
walk at Gloucester Cathedral.
4 hot closets: small cupboards or compartments built into the
stove and heated by the fire in the oven, intended to keep plates
344
Notes to pages 189–93
345
Notes to pages 194–96
chapter 9
1 cold meat: implying a casual, unpretentious meal, as opposed to
the lavish dinners that were the norm on the other days of the
week. Conscientious employers permitted their servants time off
on Sunday for rest and church-going, and consequently dined
on food prepared in the morning or on the previous day.
2 monument . . . Mrs. Tilney: elaborate monuments and statues,
sometimes coloured and gilded, with fulsome epitaphs com-
memorating the deceased, were and are a common sight in
churches and cathedrals.
3 ashes: mouldering remains of a body. Cremation as such did not
become a legal means of disposing of a corpse until 1884.
4 dozens . . . supposititious funeral: gothic clichés popularised
by Radcliffe’s novels. In SR, the Marquis de Mazzini arranges
a public funeral for his ailing wife, but then confines her in the
castle dungeons, leaving himself free to contract a bigamous sec-
ond marriage. In Udolpho, Montoni imprisons his wife and allows
her to die of a fever, burying her corpse in the graveyard of the
castle.
5 portraits . . . generations: in gothic fictions, family portraits
serve as witnesses of true lineage, in order to identify the hero
or heroine and unseat the usurper. This trope continued to be
popular throughout the nineteenth century: in Conan Doyle’s
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), the old portrait on the
wall enables Sherlock Holmes to identify ‘Jack Stapleton, the
naturalist’, as being a member of the Baskerville family, in this
case the villain rather than the hero (chs. 13, 15).
6 enured: archaism for inured, that is, ‘hardened, or accustomed
to painful circumstances’, the characteristic condition of female
victims of gothic tyrants.
346
Notes to pages 198–205
chapter 10
1 Alps . . . South of France: typical locations for gothic romances.
2 rhubarb: rhubarb, a medicinal root plant, usually imported from
Russia and the Levant, was used as a mild laxative.
3 mixed characters: authors and critics throughout the eigh-
teenth century debated the merits of portraying literary char-
acters as simply exemplifying virtue or vice, or as mixed per-
sonalities exhibiting both good and bad qualities. The debate
was epitomised in the rivalry between Richardson, who por-
trayed idealised heroines, and Fielding, whose heroes and hero-
ines had vices; which induced Samuel Johnson, in response to the
popularity of Fielding’s Tom Jones, to write an influential essay
attacking mixed characters who might confuse young readers and
347
Notes to pages 207–12
348
Notes to pages 214–19
chapter 11
1 want of consequence and fortune: in this context, ‘consequence’
means worldly status, importance in the social order.
2 parish meeting: apart from carrying out the necessary church
services, the duties of parish clergy included dispensing charity
in the form of money, food and clothes, finding employment for
their parishioners and supervising the care of the poor. Parish
meetings, at which the clergyman officiated, would discuss such
local affairs as these, together with the repair and maintenance
of the church and the election of the churchwardens and the two
Supervisors of the Poor, who collected the Poor Rate taxes from
the wealthier parishioners.
3 club: clubs of widely different social, economic and religious
affiliations were immensely popular throughout England in the
second half of the eighteenth century. These all-male institutions
required members to engage in reciprocal responsibilities and
served to form and strengthen political and social bonds. General
Tilney’s gift of venison is probably with a view to gaining support
for his parliamentary candidacy.
4 half a buck . . . year: it was usual for landowners to share some
of their produce with their less well endowed neighbours – in
this instance townspeople, who would not have access to the
land required to raise deer. In E, among several gifts of produce
to Mrs and Miss Bates is a hindquarter of Hartfield pork – as
Emma points out to Mr Woodhouse, ‘“There will be the leg to
be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and the loin to be
dressed directly in any manner they like”’ (vol. 2, ch. 3).
5 well-connected: as the living of Woodston is owned by the
Tilney family, it is in their own interests to see that the par-
sonage is a comfortable house.
6 semi-circular sweep and green gates: as a horse-drawn carriage
is difficult to manoeuvre in a confined space, houses in the coun-
try had to be approached by a wide curved driveway (known as
a ‘sweep’) that would enable visitors to drive in at one gate and
349
Notes to pages 219–23
chapter 12
1 spring fashions . . . down: Isabella has had some news of the
latest spring fashions as worn in London.
2 Bath-street: a shopping street, and very new at the time of
Catherine’s visit, since building started only in 1791. It runs
from the King’s Bath in Stall Street to the Cross Bath, and has
Ionic colonnades on both sides, which gave shelter for sedan
chairs carrying occupants between the baths, and also for loi-
tering pedestrians such as Isabella Thorpe. In P, Mr William
350
Notes to pages 223–33
Elliot has a private talk with Mrs Clay under one of the Bath
Street colonnades, a place which provides the opportunity for an
apparently chance meeting on her shopping trip (vol. 2, ch. 10).
3 half-price: theatre-goers could attend the second half of a play at
a cut rate.
4 turban: a soft fabric head-dress, supposedly in the style of an
Indian turban. Elizabeth Grant remembered her two great aunts
wearing in 1807 ‘the very handsome head gear my Mother had
brought them from London . . . they were called dress turbans,
and were made alike of rolls of muslin folded round a catgut head-
piece and festooned with large loops of large beads ending in bead
tassels . . . They were considered extremely beautiful as well as fash-
ionable, and were much admired’ (Grant, Memoirs of a Highland
Lady, vol. 1, p. 95).
chapter 13
1 fourth week . . . longer: guests generally stayed for several weeks
when on a visit to a country-house, since travelling was too slow
and difficult to make brief visits feasible. In P&P, Elizabeth Bennet
stays at Hunsford for six weeks, from early March until nearly the
end of April, and even then Lady Catherine de Bourgh tries to
persuade her to stay on for another fortnight if not longer (vol. 2,
chs. 4, 14, 15).
2 curate: an unbeneficed cleric, usually a young man just recently
ordained, who assisted or sometimes performed the duties of a
clergyman. Rich incumbents who held several livings employed
curates, for an annual salary of some £50, to serve in their stead
in those parishes where the incumbent himself did not choose to
reside.
3 Hereford: the county town of Herefordshire, a county adjoining
Gloucestershire to the north-west.
4 post . . . unattended: the General is sending Catherine away, with
no servant to help or chaperone her, for a journey of seventy miles
that she will have to undertake by hiring and changing post-chaises
at unknown inns en route back to Salisbury.
351
Notes to pages 236–50
chapter 14
1 well-known spire: Salisbury Cathedral was and is famous for its
tall spire, 404 feet high, and consequently a landmark for miles
around.
2 post-masters: those in charge of supplying horses and carriages
for hire – usually innkeepers.
3 A heroine returning . . . bestows: sentimental heroines typically
attain wealth, nobility and happiness as a result of their fine sen-
sibility and excellence of character.
4 hack post-chaise: hired carriage.
5 post-boy: the servant who drove a hired carriage.
6 romantic: having the quality of romance – imaginary, exaggerated,
unrealistic.
7 pretty kind of: admirable, pleasant, attractive.
8 change of feelings . . . return: in gothic novels, heroines typically
return saddened by suffering to their once-happy childhood homes
before their further adventures and eventual reunion with the
hero.
9 Mechlin: Mechlin lace, a fine lace named after the town in Bel-
gium where it was originally made, and often used to trim a lady’s
gown.
c h a p t e r 15
1 French-bread: A contemporary recipe for French bread reads:
‘Take half a peck of fine flour, put to it six yolks of eggs, and
four whites, a little salt, a pint of good ale yeast, and as much
new milk, made a little warm, as will make it a thin light paste;
stir it about with your hand, but by no means knead it: then have
ready six wooden quart dishes, and fill them with dough; let them
stand a quarter of an hour to heave, and then turn them out into
352
Notes to pages 250–60
the oven; and when they are baked, rasp them: the oven must be
quick’ (Smith, Compleat Housewife, p. 176).
2 The Mirror: no. 12, Saturday 6 March 1779 – ‘Consequence
to little folks of intimacy with great ones, in a letter from John
Homespun’ – in which Homespun deplores his daughters’ newly-
acquired fashionable behaviour, including late hours, dining at six,
French jargon, and religious scepticism, the result of a week’s visit
with a wealthy lady.
3 gratitude . . . my own: sentimental heroines typically express grati-
tude to the hero for his assistance and magnanimity before confess-
ing deeper feelings for him. JA is mocking this cliché, by inventing
a ‘new circumstance in romance’, that Henry is grateful to Catherine
for her initial and very obvious affection for him.
4 near the Abbey . . . no more: it is another cliché of eighteenth-
century novels, that heroes and heroines are frequently thwarted
in love by parental greed.
5 rhodomontade: ‘an empty, noisy bluster or boast; a rant’ ( Johnson).
chapter 16
1 clandestine correspondence: the open exchange of letters indi-
cated a relationship, and between an unrelated man and woman was
customarily considered proof of marital engagement. Since receiv-
ing a personal letter from an unacknowledged suitor could impugn
a young lady’s character if the fact became public, the correspon-
dence between Henry and Catherine has to remain private until
such time as the General gives his consent to his son’s marriage.
In S&S, Elinor knows that Marianne is writing to Willoughby,
and ‘the conclusion which as instantly followed was, that however
mysteriously they might wish to conduct the affair, they must be
engaged’ (vol. 2, ch. 4).
2 rules . . . fable: eighteenth-century novels often conclude their
complicated plots with long narratives, or the intercessions of
minor characters, to explain the hero’s or heroine’s adventures and
overcome their difficulties. The practice of resolving the action
through ostensibly natural events and familiar characters who had
been introduced earlier in the novel, was rooted in the dictum of
Aristotelian poetics that required a plot to be completed within the
353
Notes to pages 260–61
354