[18] Written in 1798. “Read Dickens’s ‘Hard Times,’ and another book of
‘Pliny’s Letters;’ read ‘Northanger Abbey,’ worth all Dickens and Pliny
together, yet it was the work of a girl.”--_Macaulay._
[19] Jane Austen may have had in her mind Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines; to
whom sketching from nature seems to have come by nature--who were all,
as a matter of course, accomplished artists.
[20] Weymouth and Ramsgate, among sea-bathing places, seemed to rise
most readily before her mind, though she alluded also to Southend and
Cromer--not to say described Lyme--which she made her own.
[21] The fashion was a little absurd in its stateliness. Ladies were
wont to wear nodding plumes of ostrich feathers, as at the Queen’s
drawing-rooms, standing upright on the head, till they added a foot, at
least, to the fair amazons’ height.
[22] Let us echo Henry Tilney’s praise of muslin. Will its simple,
elegant, once wide reign never return? The prevalence of calico balls
is a poor substitute for its sway.
[23] The old-fashioned term “quiz” was freely applied last century. It
was originally associated with the first specimen of eye-glass, through
which the short-sighted were supposed to quiz their neighbours. I
should suppose Jane Austen must have been called a quiz in her day. The
accusation was half coveted, half dreaded, according to the temper of
the individual who incurred it.
[24] The remonstrance is still needed.
[25] Since these words were written we have had the whole of the
“Waverley Novels,” not to mention more modern gains added to our wealth
of excellent English works of fiction.
[26] There is this to be said for the sensational horrors which
enchanted the girls of the last century, that these horrors, when
founded on the model of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, were well
principled, and free from inherent moral coarseness and license of tone.
[27] Perhaps the number of jilts in the last century have to do with
spontaneous combustion where hearts were concerned.
[28] Some of the beautiful portraits of the last century (one, if I
recollect rightly, which represents Mrs. Sheridan and her sister) give
an idea how daintily becoming, how perfectly elegant, these muslin
costumes could be.
[29] Wood and water always figure largely in Jane Austen’s landscapes.
[30] The _furor_ about the “Mysteries of Udolpho,” in its day, was,
indeed, not confined to school-girls. It extended over the whole
reading world. It was European, as well as English.
[31] Such was the style of travelling _en grand seigneur_ last century.
[32] What a quaint, pretty picture the young man in his coachman’s
great-coat, the girl in her riding-habit and straw bonnet, which she
is soon so anxious to protect from the rain, would make, taken as she
stepped in or stepped out of Henry’s “curricle!”
[33] Even a good clergyman measured his duties differently last century.
[34] Mrs. Radcliffe, who appears to have been unable to stand a joke
on her romances, even from their admirers, and who was much hurt by
a laughing reference of Sir Walter Scott’s in “Waverley,” would have
looked aghast at this levity.
[35] Revived mediævalism in æsthetics has changed all this, and gone
far to banish again the garish light of day from “modern antique”
houses.
[36] My impression is that Jane Austen began “Northanger Abbey”
with the simple intention of executing, in accordance with an early
amusement of hers, a gay parody on romances in general, and on one
romance in particular. But her genius proved too much for her; and
though she never entirely lost sight of her original design, she
departed so far from it, by prolonging the Bath portion of the tale, as
to destroy its unity, and make somewhat of a jumble of the whole book.
On the other hand, the exercise of her great gifts, in their proper
field of real life and character-drawing, has produced for us, instead
of a clever burlesque for the amusement of contemporaries, a disjointed
work of genius for the edification and enjoyment of succeeding
generations.
[37] What a candid admission from a heroine, or from any girl! But to
love flowers was not obligatory last century.
[38] Withal, one must be struck by Catherine’s unworldly
disinterestedness. She has given her love to a son of the house; but
in place of taking the opportunity to ascertain and exult over the
Tilneys’ wealth and position, she is occupied with foolish romancing on
her own account.
[39] I am able to conjecture, by the help of my own early studies,
that Jane Austen is not foreseeing, and casting mockery on some modern
sensational novels in this passage. She is simply borrowing from, and
holding up to ridicule, a leading incident in the once popular romance
of “The Children of the Abbey,” by Elizabeth Helme.
[40] If Jane Austen be right--and she was a great judge of human
nature--in the implication that an eager, enthusiastic young reader is
impelled to reproduce in personal experience what he or she reads, and
if modern sensational novels come to be _lived_ by our young men and
women, where shall we look--how shall we answer for the wrong done by
our idiotic, noxious, light literature?
[41] A period of time which would now suffice to take a traveller from
London to Brussels with ease.
[42] The Morlands were “gentlefolks,” but that did not prevent all the
fine stitching required by the family being done as a matter of course
by the ladies.
[43] Concerning this gentleman, Jane Austen says, with one of her
merry gibes, “I have only to add (aware that the rules of composition
forbid the introduction of a character not connected with my fable)
that this was the very gentleman whose negligent servant left behind
him that collection of washing bills, resulting from a long visit
to Northanger, by which my heroine was involved in one of her most
alarming adventures.”
[44] But “Northanger Abbey” has another moral--a warning against
romance run mad.
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