Sally, or rather Sarah (for what young lady of common gentility will reach the age of sixteen without altering her name as far as she can?), the sister next Catherine in age, does not exact from her a promise to write by every post, and repeat each detail that happens to her.
Mr. Morland, instead of giving Catherine an unlimited order on his banker, or even putting a hundred pounds bank bill into her hands, gives her only ten guineas, and promises her more when she wants it.
Nay, the journey to Bath provides neither tempests nor robbers (see again the “Mysteries of Udolpho,” with which Jane Austen was so familiar, to which she refers with strong and repeated commendation in this very story, which is, however, in many passages, a burlesque on the old romance). No greater alarm occurs than a fear on Mrs. Allen’s side of having once left her clogs behind her at an inn, and that fortunately turns out to be groundless.
The mention of the clogs, and the inference of the nights at the inns by the way, a necessary experience of travellers who journeyed in their own carriages, or by post as Jane Austen herself was accustomed to do, are the sole things which remind us that the little party travelling thus in the last century do not belong to our neighbours to-day.
Farther removed from us is Bath when it was the height of the fashion, and frequented by crowds of pleasure-seekers in addition to health-seekers. Its gaiety was at once systematic and exuberant, when all the company gathered regularly in the Pump-room, where the visitors not only drank their allotted draughts of water, but walked about, sat, read, gossiped, or looked at the pretty knick-nacks in what formed a kind of bazaar. The evenings were still more social; with their assemblies, held within the early hours that permitted their nightly recurrence, their parties for tea and cards, in addition to dancing, their Master of the Ceremonies to play propriety. Bath brought together old friends and strangers from the ends of the earth, who would not otherwise have had a chance of meeting. It enabled quiet, home-keeping young people to see and enjoy, for a little, society and the great world. In its use and abuse it was the scene where innumerable love affairs had their origin and marriages were made up. Its seasons had their stars, belles, and lions, like the London seasons.
A few foreign watering-places offer at present the nearest resemblance, but that in a very modified degree, to Bath in its palmy days.
Jane Austen knew Bath well, both by reading and personal experience, alike in her youth and in her mature years. She introduces it as the locality—largely or in part—of two of her novels, and has a pointed reference to it in a third.[20] The lady humourist indicates with a sharp pen, as she indicates most things, the advantages and disadvantages of the watering-places, which figured so prominently in the social life of the period. In “Northanger Abbey” the advantages rather prevail. If Bath brings Catherine some undesirable friends, it brings her also the indispensable hero—not forthcoming elsewhere.
Miss Austen had resided years in Bath, and it was common ground which had lost its illusions to her when, after she had quitted it, she brought it and its convenient round of visitors and gaieties into “Persuasion.”
I fancy I detect a different spirit in treating the subject in “Northanger Abbey.” Bath had still to the author something of the ineffable charm it must have had for Catherine Morland, in the glamour of first acquaintance, and of the introduction of a country clergyman’s young daughter into a brilliant and fascinating society—a society which was then great in courtly, gallant, distinguished figures—royal, naval, military, literary. Tunbridge had waned before Bath, which was the field of much picturesque and interesting display. Now it was a wandering prince or princess, who was to be mobbed and stared at by the well-dressed throng. Another evening, patriotic enthusiasm persecuted a brave soldier, who had served in Egypt under Abercrombie and Moore, or a gallant sailor who had nailed his colours to the mast under Nelson or Collingwood; or it might be the crowd surged to and fro to enable honestly marvelling and admiring eyes to gaze on that wonderful genius, little Miss Burney, full of self-consciousness, as she tripped through the Rooms under the wing of the great brewer’s wife, beautiful, dashing Mrs. Thrale, in the centre of a cluster of learned men and petit-maîtres.
Mrs. Allen, Catherine Morland’s chaperon, is thoroughly commonplace—except in a passion for dress, if that can be called uncommon. She believes she has done her best for Catherine in preparing her for her introduction to society, when Mrs. Allen and her maid have seen that the girl’s hair is cut (in a crop!) and dressed by the most stylish hand, and her clothes put on with care. The next thing is to take her to one of the crowded assemblies, to struggle along and get squeezed, in the rush of strangers, to reach the top of the room, and see over the heads of the spectators—who always form a large preponderance of the company—the high feathers[21] of some of the privileged ladies who are dancing. Then the struggle begins again to reach one of the tea-rooms, and finally Mrs. Allen and Catherine leave, without speaking to anybody save Mr. Allen.