Jane Austen: Art vs Life in Northanger Abbey
In this month’s Musing, our guest blogger, tour guide and architectural historian Dr Moira Rudolf takes a deep dive into Northanger Abbey to challenge the frequently-made observation that Jane Austen didn’t write from the life.
Although Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey in 1798-99 as Susan, it was not published until after her death in 1817 (simultaneously with Persuasion), and concerns young Catherine Morland’s social introduction to Bath and her burgeoning relationship with Mr Tilney. Many of the entertainments which Mr Tilney quizzes Catherine about – assemblies, concerts, dancing, theatre – draw on Jane’s 1799 six-week-stay and subsequent five-year (1801-06) residence in the city.
Bath at that time had two sets of Assembly Rooms which both Jane’s uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs Leigh Perrot and the Austens subscribed to: Harrison’s Rooms (built 1709 in Terrace Walk as The Lower Rooms; burnt-out 1824) and today’s Assembly Rooms (opened 1771 as The Upper Rooms). The two worked in tandem and both contained card rooms, tea rooms and a ballroom; Harrison’s with its adjoining garden, Harrison’s Walks (the present Parade Gardens), operated as a mini-Pleasure Garden with formal sycamore-lined avenues and appealing serpentine paths leading down to the river. There was a summer house as well as outdoor supper boxes offering breakfast, tea, serenading musicians and dancing.
Catherine Morland had a lively time there, having been introduced to Mr Tilney by the real-life James King, Master of Ceremonies. Mr Tilney talked with ease, fluency, a measure of archness and, having established that Catherine on her first visit to Bath had already been to The Upper Rooms, The Theatre (Old Theatre Royal, Orchard Street) and a Concert – all things that Jane herself had done – went on to tease her about the poor figure he might cut in her journal:
‘Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings – plain black shoes – appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense …
Shall I tell you what you ought to say? … I danced with a very agreeable young man introduced by Mr King; had a great deal of conversation with him; seems a most extraordinary genius – hope I may know more of him. That, madam is what I wish you to say.’
They are interrupted by Mrs Allen who – after discussing muslin with Mr Tilney, a material he understands – remarks:
‘Bath is a charming place, sir; there are so many good shops here. We are sadly off in the country … Now here one can step out of doors and get a thing in five minutes.’
This is how Mrs Austen might have responded since the convenient location of 4 Sydney Place, Jane’s favourite Bath residence, was appreciated by all.
Jane, a fashion-conscious countrywoman used only to occasionally dressing up was, even before the move to Bath, planning her first purchases. On 25 January 1801, she wrote to her sister Cassandra:
‘I shall want two new coloured gowns for the summer, for my pink one will not do more than clear me from Steventon. I shall not trouble you, however, to get more than one of them, and that is to be a plain brown cambric muslin, for morning wear; the other, which is to be a very pretty yellow and white cloud, I mean to buy in Bath.’
Catherine Morland’s earlier visit to The Assembly Rooms had been disappointing:
‘Mrs Allen was so long in dressing, that they did not enter the ball-room till late. The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr Allen, he repaired directly to the card-room and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves … she [Catherine] had imagined that when once fairly within the door, they should easily find seats and be able to watch the dancers with perfect convenience. But this was far from being the case’….
Mrs Allen had no acquaintance in Bath, so Catherine – having not yet been introduced, ‘was unable to dance’. Eventually, they found places on the top bench of the double-tiered seating lining the room, a lowly position set aside for children or the elderly. Catherine was determined to enjoy herself:
‘Here was something less of crowd than below; and hence Miss Morland had a comprehensive view of all the company beneath her, and of all the dangers of her late passage through them. It was a splendid sight, and she began, for the first time that evening, to feel herself at a ball.’
The situation was very different when Jane went to a ball at 9pm on Monday 11th May 1801; the following day she wrote to Cassandra:
‘… I dressed myself as well as I could, & had my finery much admired at home … Before tea, it was rather a dull affair; but then the beforetea did not last long, for there was only one dance, danced by four couple. – Think of four couple, surrounded by about an hundred people, dancing in the upper rooms at Bath! – After tea we cheered up; the breaking up of private parties sent some scores more to the Ball, & tho’ it was shockingly and inhumanely thin for this place, there were people enough I suppose to have made five or six very pretty Basingstoke assemblies.’
Jane referred to herself as a ‘desperate walker’, reporting to Cassandra (19th June 1799) two country walks, the first on a Friday evening with her friends, the Mapletons:
‘We took a very charming walk from 6 to 8 up Beacon Hill, & across some fields to the Village of Charlcombe, which is sweetly situated in a little green Valley, as a Village with such a name ought to be.’
The second was to Weston, a little village, since much enlarged, around two miles west of the city centre. I believe that it is still possible to take Jane’s likely route, over Sion Hill and across the fields.
As well as enjoying walking up the Gravel Walk after church on Sundays, in search of fresh air and acquaintance in Crescent Fields, Jane enjoyed unlimited promenading in Sydney Gardens and trying out lesser-known walks, such as woodland ones off Bathwick Hill and Claverton Down. As she is known to have walked to Widcombe and Lyncombe, she is likely to have known every step of the way taken up Beechen Cliff by Catherine Morland, Mr Tilney and his sister Elizabeth:
‘That noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.’
‘The Tilneys were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing; and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures , with all the eagerness of real taste… It seemed that a good view were no longer to be taken from the top of a high hill, and that a clear blue sky was no longer a proof of a fine day… He talked of foregrounds, distances and second distances; side screens and perspectives; lights and shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.’
Jane would have known the Pleasure Garden which lined the lower part of the route. It is now vanished and forgotten and she would, I think, have been puzzled by the truncated verdure and soulless later developments that have replaced it. The view of Bath from the summit, however, remains glorious and in my view, well worth including in a landscape!
