VI.
Jane Austen has here an excellent opportunity for one of her ironical paragraphs. “A heroine returning at the close of her career to her native village in all the triumph of recovered reputation, and all the dignity of a countess, with a long train of noble relations in their several phaetons, and three waiting-maids in a travelling chaise-and-four behind her, is an event on which the pen of the contriver may well delight to dwell; it gives credit to every conclusion, and the author must share in the glory she so liberally bestows. But my affair is widely different: I bring back my heroine to her home in solitude and disgrace, and no sweet elation of spirits can lead me into minuteness. A heroine in a hack post-chaise is such a blow upon sentiment as no attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand. Swiftly, therefore, shall her postboy drive through the village, amid the gaze of sundry groups, and speedy shall be her descent from it.”
But the very next sentences are full of the warm human kindness of the humourist in opposition to the cold cynicism of the mere satirist. “But whatever might be the distress of Catherine’s mind as she thus advanced towards the parsonage, and whatever the humiliation of her biographer in relating it, she was preparing enjoyment of no every-day nature for those to whom she went; first, in the appearance of her carriage, and secondly, in herself. The chaise of a traveller being a rare sight in Fullerton, the whole family were immediately at the window; and to have it stop at the sweep-gate was a pleasure to brighten every eye, and occupy every fancy—a pleasure quite unlooked-for by all but the two youngest children, a boy and a girl of six and four years old, who expected a brother and a sister in every carriage. Happy the glance that first distinguished Catherine! Happy the voice that proclaimed the discovery! But whether such happiness were the lawful property of George or Harriet could never be exactly understood.
“Her father, mother, Sarah, George and Harriet, all assembled at the door to welcome her with affectionate eagerness, was a sight to awaken the best feelings of Catherine’s heart; and in the embrace of each, as she stepped from the carriage, she found herself soothed beyond anything that she had believed possible. So surrounded, so caressed, she was even happy. In the joyfulness of family love everything for a short time was subdued; and the pleasure of seeing her leaving them at first little leisure for calm curiosity, they were all seated round the tea-table, which Mrs. Morland had hurried for the comfort of the poor traveller, whose pale and jaded looks soon caught her notice, before any inquiry so direct as to demand a positive answer was addressed to her.”
Even the soreness of the explanation becomes bearable because of the true fellow-feeling with which it is heard. Besides, though the Morlands cannot but be hurt and angry on account of the insult to their daughter, they are not naturally irritable people, and do not dwell on the injury.
“It was a strange business, and he must be a very strange man,” soon become words enough to express their indignation and wonder. In fact, her father and mother are much too philosophic for Catherine’s feelings when she has to listen to such sentences as “Catherine is safe home, and our comfort does not depend on General Tilney;” “This has been a strange acquaintance, soon made and soon ended. And you were sadly out of luck, too, in your Isabella. Ah! poor James! well, we must live and learn; and the next new friends you make I hope will be better worth keeping.”
Catherine’s great comfort at this time is in walking over to the Allens, to talk with Mrs. Allen over their never-to-be-forgotten visit to Bath. If Mrs. Allen is neither very wise nor very witty, nor possessed of any penetration to speak of—at least she mentions Henry Tilney’s name occasionally, and calls him a very agreeable young man.
For two days Mrs. Morland bears with her eldest daughter’s restlessness and sadness, but on the third morning the mother remonstrates: “My dear Catherine, I am afraid you are growing quite a fine lady. I do not know when poor Richard’s cravats would be done, if he had no friend but you,[42] your head runs too much upon Bath; but there is a time for everything—a time for balls and plays, and a time for work. You have had a long run of amusement, and now you must try to be useful.”
Catherine took up her work directly, saying, in a dejected voice, that her head did not run upon Bath—much.
“Then you are fretting about General Tilney, and that is very simple of you; for ten to one whether you ever see him again. You should never fret about trifles.” After a short silence, “I hope, my Catherine, you are not getting out of humour with home, because it is not so grand as Northanger; that would be turning your visit into an evil, indeed. Wherever you are, you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most of your time. I did not quite like, at breakfast, to hear you talk so much about the French bread at Northanger.”
“I am sure I do not care about the bread. It is all the same to me what I eat.”
“There is a very clever essay in one of the books upstairs upon much such a subject—about young girls who have been spoilt for home by great acquaintance—the ‘Mirror,’ I think—I will look it out for you some day or other, because I am sure it will do you good.”
Do sensible, kindly mothers still select such essays as those in Henry Mackenzie’s papers, and bring them for their daughters to read, with a sanguine expectation that the essays will answer their purpose? If not, is it because girls are less docile than they were wont to be, or because they are apt to imagine that they are considerably better informed than their elders, who have been in the world twice as long?
Mrs. Morland goes to fetch the work in question, but household matters keep the busy mistress of the family absent for some time. When she returns, she is unaware that a visitor has been shown in while she was away, and is surprised on re-entering the room to find a young man there she has never seen before.
With a look of much respect he immediately rises, and is introduced to Mrs. Morland by her conscious daughter as “Mr. Henry Tilney.”
With the embarrassment of real feeling he begins 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 does not address himself to an illiberal judge. Far from comprehending him and his sister in their father’s misconduct, Mrs. Morland has always been well disposed to both, and instantly pleased by his appearance, receives him with the simple professions of unaffected good-will, “thanking him for such an attention to her daughter, assuring him that the friends of her children were always welcome there, and entreating him to say not another word of the past.”
He is not disinclined to obey her request, trying as the situation is, while the agitated, happy Catherine sits perfectly silent in the conversation about the weather and the roads, which follows, “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.”
Then Henry Tilney, after a couple of minutes’ silence, and an inquiry whether the Allens are at Fullerton, with a rising colour, asks Catherine whether she will have the goodness to show him the way to her friends’ house?
“You may see the house from this window, sir,” is a piece of most malapropos information volunteered by Catherine’s younger sister Sarah, which produces only a bow of acknowledgment from the gentleman.
But good-natured, considerate Mrs. Morland comes to his aid. She sincerely pities his painful position, and believes he may have something to say, on his father’s account, which will be more easily said to Catherine alone. She sends away the couple together to the Allens.
Mrs. Morland is not entirely mistaken. Henry Tilney has some explanations to give on his father’s behalf, but “his first purpose was to explain himself, and before they reached Mr. Allen’s grounds he had done it so well that Catherine did not think it could ever be repeated too often.”
Jane Austen thus coolly defines the lovers’ relations:—Catherine “was assured of his affections, and that heart in return was solicited which, perhaps, they pretty equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Henry was now sincerely attached to her—though he felt and delighted in all the excellences of her character, and truly loved her society—I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude; or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of his giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, dreadfully derogatory to a heroine’s dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.”
It is only after the pair have, in the formal phraseology of the day, “waited on the Allens,” when Henry Tilney talks at random, and Catherine Morland, wrapped in the contemplation of her unutterable happiness, scarcely opens her lips; that she hears, to her dismay, from her lover what has passed between him and his father only two days before. On Henry’s return from Woodston to Northanger, the General had told him angrily of Miss Morland’s departure, and forbidden him to think of her any more.
But if ever a young man is justified in acting in defiance of such a command, it is Henry Tilney. He has not only been encouraged in cherishing and displaying an attachment for Catherine, his father has in every possible way compromised his son, and bound him, in honour no less than in affection, to the young girl from whom General Tilney now seeks all at once, in the most unjust and despotic manner, to separate Henry.
It can be no matter to a young fellow who has never shared the General’s mercenary motives, and who is possessed of the sentiments of a man and a gentleman, that his father has been misled, and has committed himself to the course he has taken under an error.
The father and son, after their meeting and explanation, have parted in serious disagreement, and Henry Tilney has repaired, on his own responsibility, to Fullerton. But he has considerately saved Catherine from the obligation to a conscientious rejection of his addresses, by engaging her faith before telling her what had passed.
Luckily Mr. and Mrs. Morland, when they are appealed to, and have got over their surprise at being asked to give their consent to Henry Tilney’s suit to their daughter, are inclined to be moderate and indulgent in their views. Their parental pride and affection are gratified; they have not a single objection to urge against the young man personally. They recognise his good manners and good sense, and they are ready to give him credit for his good character. “Catherine would make a sad, heedless young housekeeper, to be sure,” was the mother’s foreboding remark; but quick comes the consolation of there being nothing like practice.
The one obstacle is, that while Henry Tilney’s father refuses his consent to the marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Morland cannot formally sanction an engagement. Their tempers are mild, but their principles are steady. They do not demand a great show of regard, but a decent acquiescence must be given. The General’s money may go. Henry Tilney’s present income is enough for independence and comfort, and he is entitled eventually, under his mother’s marriage settlement, to a very considerable fortune. But he must at least have his father’s countenance to his proposals.
The young people can neither be surprised nor can they complain, however much they may deplore the decision. They part for the time, hoping against hope for a speedy change in the General. “Henry returned to what was now his only home, to watch over his young plantations and extend his improvements for her sake, to whose share in them he looked anxiously forward; and Catherine remained at Fullerton to cry. Whether the torments of absence were softened by a clandestine correspondence let us not inquire. Mr. and Mrs. Morland never did; they had been too kind to exact any promise, and whenever Catherine received a letter, as at that time happened pretty often, they always looked another way.”
The probation ends much sooner than might have been expected, and the cause of the General’s yielding is the marriage of his daughter, in the course of the summer, to a man of fortune and consequence. This accession of reflected dignity brings on such a fit of good humour, that General Tilney does not recover from it till after the good, kind Eleanor has procured his forgiveness of her brother, and their father’s ungracious permission for Henry “to be a fool if he liked it.”
What renders Eleanor Tilney’s happiness more complete is, that it is the prosperous end of a course of true love which had not formerly run smooth; the lover having only recently and unexpectedly come into the title and fortune which so recommended the match to the General, that he had never “loved his daughter so well in all her hours of companionship, utility, and patient endurance, as when he first hailed her ‘your ladyship.’”
Jane Austen adds with joy for Eleanor’s sake, that “her husband was really deserving of her, independent of his peerage, his wealth, and his attachment, being to a precision the most charming young man in the world.”
I must here point out another instance of Miss Austen’s thorough independence of precedent, and of the popular verdict in fiction. I think it is also a sign how true-hearted and unworldly she was herself in the main, under the class prejudices which she undoubtedly held, that she should, in the reasonableness which she so insisted upon, indicate how lightly within certain well-defined limits she valued the accidental advantages of rank and riches, in comparison with mutual affection, and mutual and moral affinity. To her, certainly,
“True hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood,”
when she makes her heroine, whom she loves dearly, while she laughs at her from first to last, marry with all her will a simple country clergyman and younger son, while a secondary character in the story carries off the peer and charming fellow in one.[43]
I desire to call attention to this significant treatment of her heroine because, in dealing with General Tilney’s hectoring, grasping misdemeanours, though we are perfectly sensible that Jane Austen cordially despises the man, we are also conscious that his rank and position are made to throw a respectable cloak over his infirmities. Catherine is not caused to shrink from association with such a father-in-law, as she would have been represented shrinking from him, had he happened to be a vulgar nobody, yet at the same time not more domineering, purse-proud, and mean than the well-born, well-educated General, with his oppressively artificial fine manners. Jane Austen was a born aristocrat, as she shows in many instances, but she was great enough to rise habitually above class weakness and narrowness.
The influence of the Viscount and Viscountess with General Tilney on the proscribed pair’s behalf is assisted by that right understanding of Mr. Morland’s circumstances which, as soon as the General will allow himself to be informed, they are qualified to give. “It taught him that he had been scarcely more misled by Thorpe’s first boast of the family wealth than by his subsequent malicious overthrow of it; that in no sense of the word were they necessitous or poor; and that Catherine would have three thousand pounds.”
This is a comfort, and so is the private intelligence which the calculating match-maker secures, that the Fullerton estate is at the disposal of the present proprietor, and therefore open to greedy speculation.
Accordingly, General Tilney permits his son to return to Northanger, “and thence made him the bearer of his consent, very courteously worded, in a page full of empty professions to Mr. Morland. The event which it authorised soon followed: Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang, and everybody smiled; and as this took place within a twelvemonth from the first day of their meeting, it will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the General’s cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it.”
Jane Austen ends “Northanger Abbey,” as she began it, with a little paradoxical mocking comment, fitted to bewilder stupid people.
“To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself, moreover, convinced that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience.”[44]
Among the last things which Miss Austen did was to flatter the great public—unless, indeed, one considers that she paid it the highest compliment of all—by assuming it was a clever public, and must enjoy being made game of, to its face. A stupid public was not, and has never been, Jane Austen’s public. On such her fine sense and abounding humour, pervaded by the true refinement in which neither the woman nor the gentlewoman is for a moment forgotten, fall absolutely flat. I cannot conceive such a public, which is ordinarily fond of coarse, crude mental stimulants, as appreciating and enjoying Jane Austen, though her consummate art as a story-teller may beguile it into dozing over her pages, or hurrying through them. But there is such a thing as having a good taste cultivated and not perverted, and budding intelligence may be drawn out, not stultified.
To those who are not by mental constitution impelled altogether into the abnormal school of fiction—to those who can read between the lines—reading Jane Austen will always be studying under a wise teacher, and keenly relishing an exquisite treat.
In some respects “Northanger Abbey” is among the author’s masterpieces. It contains two or three of her most finished portraits. Nowhere is her writing more incisive, her epigrams neater, her wit at once drier and more sparkling.
But “Northanger Abbey” has also blemishes which are absent from other works by the same novelist. It lacks unity; it does not grow out of itself in close sequence, like “Emma.” Its different parts are so far inconsistent with each other, for strong realism and airy burlesque do not match quite well together. There are considerable improbabilities in “Northanger Abbey”—above all, there is not a trace of the lurking pathos and pensive charm which blend with and relieve the humour of “Persuasion.”
On the contrary, the almost incessant banter of “Northanger Abbey,” excellent as it is in its way, has a certain hardness in it—perhaps, in this instance, the result of the unripe youth of the author—and possesses a tendency to fatigue and vex the reader who wishes to be serious for a moment—who regards the best of life and art as that which, in one fashion or another, reflects both life and art as serious and earnest.
