Jane Austen and her works

by Sarah Tytler

III.

The bustle of the Tilneys starting on their journey is rendered trying by the exactions and complaints of the arrogant, ill-tempered master of the household; still he is all complaisance and sedulous politeness to Miss Morland; and his first fretful murmur at the chaise’s being overcrowded with parcels, is professedly that she will 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-desk from being thrown out into the street.”

Luckily, the General drives in his son’s curricle; but even the agreeable conversation of Eleanor Tilney, the bliss of their destination, the glory of travelling in “a fashionable chaise and four, postilions handsomely liveried, rising so regularly in their stirrups, and numerous outriders properly mounted,”[31] sink a little under the tediousness of a two hours’ bait at Petty France.

The General, in his anxiety that Catherine may see the country, proposes to her to change places, and drive with his son for the rest of the way.

Catherine’s recent experiences of such driving have not been encouraging, and she recalls an unfavourable opinion delivered too late by Mr. Allen, on the presence of young ladies in young men’s open carriages. For I am glad to be able to show that Catherine, though extremely in love, has neither forgotten duty nor propriety in her love; but backed by the powerful sanction, even the recommendation, of such a judge of good manners as General Tilney, she feels she need have no scruple in giving the consent she longs to give.

Henry Tilney is as far removed from John Thorpe in driving as in everything else. The young clergyman drives so well, so quietly, without making any disturbance, without parading to her, or swearing at the horses, “so different from the only gentleman-coachman whom it was in her power to compare him with! And then his hat sat so well, and the innumerable capes of his great-coat looked so becomingly important.[32] To be driven by him was, next to dancing with him, certainly the greatest happiness in the world. In addition to every other delight, she had now that of listening to her own praise, of being thanked, at least on his sister’s account, for her kindness in thus becoming her visitor, of hearing it ranked as real friendship and described as creating real gratitude.”

It is a little drawback, certainly, to hear that Henry Tilney has an establishment at his parsonage at Woodston, nearly twenty miles off, where he has to spend some of his time,[33] but what pleasure under the sun is without drawback?

Unfortunately, too, as it proves, Henry Tilney, with his propensity for chaffing, cannot resist making game of his companion with regard to her expectations of Northanger Abbey. He conjures up for her benefit a fac-simile of the abbeys and castles of her beloved romances, and pictures her like Emily in “Udolpho”—conducted by an ancient housekeeper along gloomy passages—standing by a bed with its dark velvet coverlet resembling a pall—inspecting broken lutes and cabinets of ebony, while peals of thunder rattle overhead, and the flame of her lamp sinks in the socket just as she has been impelled to unlock the folding-doors and search through every drawer of the cabinet, and has come upon a roll of manuscript.

In short, Jane Austen, speaking by Henry Tilney, in the most barefaced and liveliest manner, parodies and makes fun of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, which she has praised so highly elsewhere;[34] and this example of the humourist’s satire shows how free it is ordinarily from illiberality and harshness. She laughs merrily here at what she really esteems, the merits of which in another light she is the first to acknowledge.

It is not in a thunderstorm, but under the more prosaic inconvenience of “a scud of rain,” fixing all Catherine’s attention on the welfare of her new straw bonnet, that she arrives at her destination, with only a dim apprehension—from the modern lodge-gates, the smooth gravel of the avenue, and the Rumford grate and ornaments of pretty English china on the chimney-piece of the drawing-room, to which she is hurried—that the Abbey, in one sense, may not come up to her dreams.

The hall has been large and lofty, and there is a broad staircase of shining oak, up which Catherine is taken to her room. But that comfortable room possesses papered walls and a carpeted floor, while the windows are neither less perfect nor dimmer[35] than those of the drawing-room.

Catherine receives some consolation, as she is hastening to remove her riding-habit (the common travelling dress of the day), to dress for dinner, in time to suit the fiery punctuality of the General. Her eye falls on a large, high chest in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace. The chest, which is of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and furnished with a tarnished silver lock, might have formed a treasure among the Queen Anne furniture and art curiosities of to-day; but it is not from premature æsthetic tastes that Catherine flies to it, entranced at the sight—it is because the chest looks like a realisation of her visions, a prelude to adventures in her own person, such as those which her favourite heroines have encountered and surmounted triumphantly.

The incidents which follow the discovery of this chest would be impossible in the days of social science and board schools. They read like exaggerations, even in Jane Austen’s usually temperate, as well as witty, pages.[36]

Then we must keep in remembrance that Catherine Morland was, in age, but sweet, immature seventeen, while George III’s reign was in many things removed from that of Queen Victoria.

Miss Tilney’s maid, and later Miss Tilney herself, surprise Catherine in what looks like burglarious intentions, in her eager investigation of the chest. In the last instance, Catherine has just succeeded in throwing back the lid, and discovering——a nicely-folded white cotton counterpane!

This anti-climax does not prevent the infatuated Catherine, when she has retired for the night, during an appropriate storm of wind and rain, looking about her, at intervals, in pursuit of more old furniture. And just as she is about to step into bed, her eyes light on an ebony and gold cabinet, such as her mischievous lover has described. To be sure the cabinet is not exactly of ebony and gold, but it is of the next thing to them—black and yellow Japan—with the yellow looking like gold. The key is in the door—wonderful to relate, as Henry has said! Catherine cannot sleep till she has turned it. Naturally, the lock tries her trembling, unfamiliar fingers, but she overcomes its difficulties, only to open drawer after drawer with emptiness revealed. The middle cavity alone remains unexplored. She succeeds with the second lock as with the first, and meets her reward—a roll of paper, pushed far back for concealment, lies before her.

Catherine’s heart flutters, her knees tremble, her cheeks grow pale. She seizes the precious MS. without a doubt as to her right to take possession of it. Has one of her heroines hesitated in similar circumstances? She glances round, as if by instinct, to detect the next accomplishment of Henry Tilney’s predictions, in the waning of her light. It happens to be a half-burnt-down candle needing snuffing, instead of a lamp with the wick burnt to the socket. Sometimes modern prosaic substitutes prove convenient. Catherine has only to snuff her candle to restore its brightness. Alas! in her agitation she snuffs it out, and leaves herself at once in total darkness. Gas might not have served her any better, since gas runs the risk, in these circumstances, of being turned off.

Poor Catherine’s plight has become lamentable, since, as a matter of course, she believes she distinguishes receding footsteps, and the closing of a distant door, the moment she has put out her light. A cold sweat stands on her forehead, the manuscript falls from her hand, and, groping her way to the bed, she jumps in, seeking some suspension of agony by creeping unheroically far underneath the clothes. Sleep must be impossible, and actually eludes Catherine’s grasp till all the clocks about the place have struck three.

The housemaid’s folding back her window-shutters at eight o’clock rouses Catherine to a bright morning and a cheerful fire. With revived spirits and curiosity, she waits only to be alone, in order to surrender herself to the absorbing interest and distinction of her discovery. She sees at once she must not expect a manuscript of equal length to those she is accustomed to read when printed. Here are only some small, unconnected sheets of paper. “Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles, with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more interesting in letters, hair-powder, shoe-strings, and breeches ball; and the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramped line—‘To poultice chesnut mare’—a farrier’s bill! Such was the collection of papers (left, perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the negligence of a servant, in the place whence she had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and had robbed her of half her night’s rest! She felt humbled to the dust.”

Catherine fervently trusts that nobody—above all, not Henry Tilney, who is in some respects the originator of her misadventure, but whom, of course, she magnanimously forgives—will ever learn what she has been about.

She soon forgets her affronted discomfiture in a little conversation with Henry Tilney, in the breakfast-parlour, before the others come down. She is praising Miss Tilney’s hyacinths, and adds, “I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.”

“And how might you learn? By accident, or argument?”

“Your sister taught me: I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them, the other day, in Milsom Street. I am naturally indifferent about flowers.”[37]

Henry Tilney ends the conversation with the assertion, “At any rate, however, I am pleased that you have learnt to love a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing. Has my sister a pleasant mode of instruction?”

I need not quote further than that Catherine is delightfully embarrassed, and that she has the happiness of being still more discomposed by a hint from the General when he appears, which does sound as if the formidable great man were deigning to rally the young couple on a sympathetic habit of early rising.

But Catherine is not yet quite cured of her romantic fancies.[38] She has been forced to see that the Abbey, in spite of its indisputable pretensions to antiquity and grandeur, its fine situation, and the ostentatious display made by the present owner of his rank and fortune, in its gardens and hot-houses, is, according to her standard, a mere commonplace, handsome, country house. She has found out for herself that old chests and cabinets may be no better than humbugs; still, she must hanker after family secrets and terrible mysteries. She cannot like pompous, despotic General Tilney, before whom his daughter trembles, and his sons grow silent—let him be ever so grandly polite to herself—not even though he seems to imply his gracious approbation, before it is asked, of his son Henry’s suit, with the General’s earnest desire that Catherine may accede to that suit.

Perverse Catherine takes it into her head that the General interferes to prevent her from being shown over the Abbey, and that he avoids certain parts of the grounds. Her rampant, over-stimulated imagination leaps to the conclusion, on the customary grounds, that these suspicions peculiarities have to do with General Tilney’s late wife, of whom her husband never speaks, who has died rather suddenly, during her daughter’s absence from home.

Has Mrs. Tilney died a natural death? Catherine begins to question herself quakingly; or is she dead at all? Can her children have been imposed upon? May she not be secluded and imprisoned in some remote turret or dungeon, to serve an unknown purpose of her unworthy husband? In that case, Catherine must be destined to restore the unfortunate Mrs. Tilney to her children and the world.[39]

Catherine considers that she has a strong confirmation of her worst fears in what she is told of the General’s habits of sitting up late, and walking up and down his room at night.

Before taking it upon her to act the part of a private detective in any more original or offensive manner, Catherine sets out one evening to enter secretly the closed room which Eleanor has pointed out to her as that in which her mother died.

Catherine goes into the Bluebeard chamber—which is certainly not kept locked—on tiptoe. “She beheld what fixed her to the spot, and agitated every feature. She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, a handsome dimity bed unoccupied, arranged with a housemaid’s care, a bright Bath stove, mahogany wardrobes and neatly-painted chairs, on which the warm beams of a western sun gaily poured through two sash-windows. Catherine had expected to have her feelings worked upon, and worked upon they were. Astonishment and doubt first seized them, and a shortly-succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame.”

She is endeavouring to retreat as quickly as she has come. She has got as far as the gallery, when she hears footsteps approaching. It would be awkward for a servant, it would be dreadful for the General to meet her prowling about there.

Happily for Catherine, though she cannot think so at the time, it is Henry Tilney who comes running up the side stair.

“‘Mr. Tilney,’ she cries, taken by surprise, ‘how did you come here?’

“‘How did I come up that staircase?’ he echoes, as much astonished as she is; ‘because it is my nearest way from the stable-yard to my own chamber; and why should I not come up it?’

“Catherine recollected herself, blushed deeply, and could say no more. He seemed to be looking in her countenance for that explanation which her words did not afford. She moved on towards the gallery.

“‘And may I not, in my turn,’ said he, as he pushed back the folding doors, ‘ask how came you here? This passage is at least as extraordinary a road from the breakfast-parlour to your apartment as that staircase can be from the stables to mine.’

“‘I have been,’ said Catherine, looking down, ‘to see your mother’s room.’

“‘My mother’s room! Is there anything extraordinary to be seen there?’

“‘No, nothing at all. I thought you did not mean to come back till to-morrow.’”

But he will not be put off the subject, and a few more skilful questions enlighten him with regard to her preposterously uncharitable surmises. Though Henry Tilney is the gay deceiver who has played on her imagination not so long ago, he is considerably scandalised at the length to which she has gone. After gravely explaining to her all the simple, natural circumstances of his mother’s illness and death, and of his father’s sincere affliction for his loss—since, though his temper may have injured her in life, his judgment never did—the son takes Catherine to task very earnestly, if tenderly, for her most unwarrantable flights of fancy. “Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians.”

Catherine is punished. In the retirement of her own room she cries bitterly. She hates herself for her folly, and becomes a more reasonable woman for all time to come.[40]