Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

this is the last one, in case you're getting sick of this

Original here.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

I should say upfront that if anything in this book seems out of date, which it absolutely will because I actually sold it thirteen years ago, it’s because I wrote it more than thirteen years ago. It’s my understanding that when a publisher buys a book they do so with the intention of publishing it, in order to make money from customers who might like to purchase the book. Possibly this is your understanding also.

Well, that is not what happened with this book. The publisher bought this book and even advertised it, but when the time came to start getting serious and order some paper, the publisher wandered off and had a lie-down for a decade and a half instead. Now nobody reads Gothic novels anymore, which is a real challenge because that is what this book is about. I don’t know why you would go to all the trouble of buying and advertising a book and then decide not to publish it, but here we are.

Nobody wears wigs or lives in ruined abbeys or eats dinner at two in the afternoon anymore, except in this book, because that’s what people were doing thirteen years ago, I promise you. Nowadays everybody wears those pajama-looking loose dresses with no real waistline and goes in for open floor plans with lots of sunlight and fresh air.

And people don’t go to Bath in the summer anymore. Have you noticed? Now they all want to go to the seaside and writhe around in a little striped tent that gets towed into the North Sea by a team of donkeys. They call it bathing, and it sounds terrible. When I was young going on vacation meant walking back and forth across the Pump Room exactly fifteen times so everybody could watch how you drank sparkling water, and that was excitement enough for us, let me tell you.

Anyhow, you’re going to have to use your imagination a little and pretend it’s still thirteen years ago. Otherwise it isn’t going to make any sense, and I’m certainly not going to rewrite this book a third time. And the next publisher who offers to buy one of my novels is going to get a swift kick in the teeth.

Chapter One

Catherine Morland was a lot like other girls. Father not hot. Mother living. Can’t draw for shit, can’t play piano…no French, obviously. But effectively literate. Reasonably attractive. Mother pregnant almost non-stop.

Then there’s a whole section about all the Gothic novels that she read which, again, don’t really play now that everyone is reading political satires about Whigs and orang-outangs. Which again is not my fault, and if this book had come out in 1803 like I had wanted in the first place, you would all be on the floor, but life is stern and life is earnest.

Catherine is now seventeen. Still absolutely cannot draw. She is going to Bath with her friends the Allens, because people were still going to Bath in those days. If you ask me they still should. Drinking a little mineral water, maybe soaking a gouty foot in a hot spring — perfectly sound, perfectly wholesome. Skinning yourself alive inside a tent so you can get partially drowned in freezing cold salt water and then caked in sand isn’t my idea of a good time.

Chapter Two

Have you ever noticed how girls always want to futz around with how people spell their name between thirteen and sixteen? I swear to God it’s like clockwork. Suddenly trying to cram an extra N into Nanncy or something. Maudelynne. Opheylia.

Anyhow they made it to Bath safely. Of course, since they didn’t know anybody in town, it made for a rather dull trip. They might as well have stayed at home.

Chapter Three

Fortunately in Bath one can safely meet strangers via the master of ceremonies (Another point against the seaside, incidentally), which is how Catherine came to be introduced to a young man named Mr. Tilney. He was also not handsome, incidentally. I don’t know his first name.

Have you ever noticed everybody keeps a journal nowadays? (Not now nowadays. 1803 nowadays. How I wish you could have read this book thirteen years ago!) And women are always writing letters. (They still do that, thank God.) They can’t write good letters. But at least they write better letters than men, who frankly have no business writing letters in the first place.

What else. They talked about fabric for a while. Then it was time for bed again.

Chapter Four

Catherine went back to the Pump Room the next day but he wasn’t there. Everyone was pretty much out of ideas. But Mrs. Allen ran into an old friend from school after an hour or two. Thorpe, first name Mrs.

Mrs. Thorpe had nine or twenty children at least, and Catherine had to meet all of them. Miss Isabella Thorpe and Catherine became hooked-arm friends in about ten minutes.

The lace on her (Mrs. Thorpe) pelisse was fine. Not great but fine.

Chapter Five

You know how teenage girls become friends on vacation. Like two boa constrictors swallowing the same egg. Terrifying, all-encompassing, fast. It was like that with Catherine and Isabella, who read a lot of novels together. I think everybody ought to read novels. I wish you could have read this novel thirteen years ago, instead of only just getting around to it now.

Chapter Six

The girls read some more novels. Sedley Repentant. Phantoms of Afternoon Hill. The Accursed Candle. The Wickedest Sunset of Them All. The Too-Observant Pedestrian of Blackenchance Abbey. The Skeletons of Skeleton Castle. You get the idea. What are teenagers reading nowadays? Probably Jan Potocki, I expect. Well, good luck to them.

Chapter Seven

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to cross Cheap Street? Probably not anymore. But at the time it used to be very busy.

The girls ran into their brothers, who were also friends. The brothers both seemed interested in the respective sisters — not their own — which Catherine would have noticed if she weren’t so thick and self-absorbed. But as she was, she didn’t.

John Thorpe looked awful. Bad face, no neck to speak of, completely free of elegance, dressed like a horse or worse. Both of the boys kept arguing about how long they had driven from Tetbury, which nobody cares about, unlike the busyness of Cheap Street, which interests any right-thinking Englishman who cares about the efficiency of his country’s roads.

Catherine is roped into a carriage date with John Thorpe the next day because she doesn’t know how to say “Thank you, no.” He then starts ranking the face of every woman he sees on a 1 to 10 scale.

I’m sorry to say there’s another long bit about Gothic novels. You already know how much I wanted this book to come out in 1803. I can’t keep apologizing for that.

Chapter Eight

Second appearance of Mr. Tilney. Catherine meets his sister, the third attractive person in this book. The count as it stands now is Isabella Thorpe, both Tilneys, and kind of Catherine. Catherine’s more restful to look at than attractive, actually. You know how it is with teenagers collecting new besties on vacation: If a girl’s just ordinarily friendly, and doesn’t try to engulf you whole with her jaws in the first five minutes, she doesn’t seem very impressive, so by the time Isabella comes back from dancing Catherine moves on.

Chapter Nine

John Thorpe is a real yammerer. One of those yappers it’s an absolute nightmare to get into a carriage with.

Chapter Ten

A fourth attractive character appears: General Tilney. Not a heartstopper, mind you. But good-looking, both “for his age” and more generally. I have made the whole family good-looking for ease of reference.

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