Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons

by Jane Austen

  “Yes,” added Miss Tilney, “and I remember you undertook to read it aloud to me, but when I was called away for only five minutes, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the Hermitage Walk. I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.”

  “Thank you, Eleanor—a most honourable testimony. You see, Miss Morland, the injustice of your suspicions. In my eagerness to read on, I refused to wait only five minutes for my sister. Breaking the promise of reading it aloud, I kept her in suspense at a most interesting part. And yes, I ran away with her very own volume! I am proud when I reflect on it—I think it must establish me in your good opinion.”

  “I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly—that is, except when the novels provided specific decryption clues.”

  “Amazingly it may very well be—for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and Louisas.” And Mr. Tilney went on to demonstrate a truly formidable acquaintance with fictional names and places. “Consider how many years I have had the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were a good little girl working your sampler at home!”

  “Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?”

  “The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.”

  “Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not suit him. You had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered.”

  “I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book; why not call it so?”

  “Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. A very nice word indeed, for now it does for everything.”

  “While, in fact,” cried his sister, “it ought only to be applied to you, who are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind of reading?”

  “To say the truth, I do not much like any other.”

  “Indeed!”

  “That is, I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?”

  “Yes, I am fond of history.”

  “I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, wars or pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—indeed, it is very tiresome to find that women and their brave acts are so gravely overlooked in those venerable pages, except when they are beauteous as Cleopatra!” Catherine paused, watching Lawrence or maybe Terence fly back and forth from her own bonnet to gently land on that of Miss Tilney.

  “And yet,” she went on, “I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches of the heroes, much of their thoughts and intentions must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.”

  “Historians, you think,” said Miss Tilney, “display imagination without raising interest. I am fond of history—and am well contented to take the false with the true. The principal facts have sources in reliable former histories and records. And as for the little embellishments, I rather like them as such.”

  “You are fond of history! And so are Mr. Allen and my father; and my two brothers do not dislike it. At this rate, I shall not pity the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books, it is all very well. I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into such lengthy volumes. The torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate. And though I know it is all very necessary, I have often wondered . . .”

  “That little boys and girls should be tormented,” said Henry, “no one can deny. But historians might well be offended at being supposed to have no higher aim. Indeed, they are equally well qualified to torment the most advanced readers. As you say ‘to torment,’ instead of ‘to instruct,’ it is now admitted as synonymous.”

  “You think me foolish to call instruction a torment. But if you had observed, as I have, poor little children first learning their letters and how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother, you would allow that ‘to torment’ and ‘to instruct’ might sometimes be synonymous.”

  “Very probably. But historians are not accountable for the difficulty of learning to read. And you might acknowledge that it is worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. Consider—if reading had not been taught, Mrs. Radcliffe would have written in vain—or perhaps might not have written at all.”

  Catherine assented—and a very warm panegyric from her on that lady’s merits closed the subject, at least for the moment.

  The Tilneys were soon engaged in another on which she had nothing to say. They were viewing the country with the eyes of persons of real taste accustomed to drawing.

  Here Catherine was quite lost. She knew nothing of drawing (except for stick figures and monstrous ducks)—nothing of taste. She listened to them with pointless attention, for they talked in phrases which conveyed scarcely any idea to her.

  The little which she could understand, however, appeared to contradict the very few notions she had. It seemed “a good view” were no longer to be taken from the top of a hill, and “a clear blue sky” was no longer a proof of a fine day.

  She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance. And yet—a well-informed mind harbors an inability of administering to the vanity of others. This, a sensible person would always wish to avoid. And a sensible lady should conceal it as well as she can.

  But Catherine did not know her own advantages. A good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind—except when it came to perceiving things metaphysical—cannot fail to attract a clever young man.

  In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge. She declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw. And a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste.

  He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances—side-screens and perspectives—lights and shades. And Catherine—though still mostly seeing stick figures and ducks—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.

  Delighted with her progress, and fearful of wearying her with too much wisdom at once, Henry suffered the subject to decline. And by an easy transition from a rock and withered oak near its summit, to oaks in general, to forests, wastelands, crown lands and government, he shortly found himself arrived at politics. And from politics, it was an easy step to silence—at which point all the angels in the vicinity circling them like gentle butterflies, sighed in relief.

  The general pause was put an end to by Catherine, who suddenly pointed upwards at a distant black speck moving rapidly in the blue sky.

  “Oh goodness, look! What manner of bird is that?”

  The Tilneys raised their heads and suddenly there was a different kind of silence.

  “What is it?” pressed Catherine.

  The dark bird, at first a tiny shadow silhouetted against the bright heavens, rap
idly grew in size as it approached, and in definition—so that Catherine could see the pronounced angular shape of its large, peculiar, almost reptilian wings.

  If Catherine had learned anything from the landscape and drawing lesson she had just been given, it was that distances were to be judged by relative motion and comparison to other objects in the landscape. And as such, the approaching bird was to be judged immense.

  Indeed, it could not be judged a bird at all . . .

  It had to be a dragon.

  Catherine recalled her torments in natural history and the instructions that accompanied her discovery of various flora and fauna, and the rare creatures found to be mostly native to the African and Australian continents.

  Creatures, indeed, half-way out of legend! Creatures nearly extinct, extraordinary in their ancient, hoary origins, and imbued with almost supernatural abilities.

  Indeed, this was one of the few bright sparks of what appeared to be glorious invention in a world of solid, dull, natural facts, that Catherine recalled from all her lessons. Even though invention it was not, she very well knew. But oh, it was so full of wonder!

  Dragons had existed in hidden wild places of the world, verily since the beginnings of time, claimed modern science. They were as rare as the most precious natural resources, raw diamonds, emeralds, rubies; or great, uncultured pearls. They were intelligent, indeed, remarkably sentient—preternaturally so for what otherwise appeared to be wild beasts—and like the great whales and creatures of the deep they were said to hold in them the beginnings of original wisdom.

  In modern times, they were either very well hidden, or they genuinely had become extinct in most places, never venturing out of Africa or Australia. The last living dragon had been observed briefly in the skies over an uncommonly stilled and becalmed Pacific Ocean, by Magellan sailing en route to the Spice Islands or the New World; and before that, an African dragon was captured and presented to the great Frankish monarch Charlemagne who, legend has it, tamed and kept the mystic creature as a powerful symbol of his reign, until the dragon either died or broke its chains and mysteriously disappeared.

  But not since the darkest ages was there any truly verifiable scientific account of a dragon venturing as far as the Isles of Britain!

  The creature in the sky continued its approach. As it neared, it was a thing of beauty—smooth leathery skin with a metallic tinge of gold as the sun struck the edges of its scaled wings, unfurled like sails, a strange serpentine neck and elegant head, and the wingspan of a grand cathedral. It cast a long giant shadow upon the ground, like a ghostly floating road, and Catherine stared at it in mesmerized fearless amazement. Then she finally said: “Oh, Mr. Tilney, you who know so much more than I do—oh, do tell me, I beg you, if this is a dragon; and if so, whence could it have come?”

  But Mr. Tilney in turn surprised her. He threw his sister one long intense look, then turned around with abrupt motion, saying in an unusually cool manner, “Miss Morland, it is nothing, surely. And overgrown hawk, it is all. Do let us proceed onward—”

  “A hawk?” Catherine cried. “My dear Mr. Tilney, please do not confound me so! You have just paid me the marvelous honour of providing a landscape drawing lesson, a lesson in beauty, and a lesson in perception! And if, according to anything you said about objects and the nature of relative perspective, if I am to look properly and judge what it is I see, why, the thing is monstrous! It is not a bird! And, believe me, I have seen giant monstrous ducks to make your heart stop! Why, the other day when Mr. Thorpe had driven me and—oh, yes, there was James with Miss Thorpe; we were in open carriages—a certain Brighton Duck attacked us, and—Mr. Tilney, I dare say it was not one hundredth the size of this giant flying creature!”

  “Henry—” said Miss Tilney in a strange voice.

  “A dragon is nonsense,” he replied firmly, looking ahead of them. “The creatures do not exist. They are gone, all of them, even if they had walked the earth once, in distant places—but again, this is all nonsense. Think, Miss Morland—what in the world would a practically mythic dragon be doing here in Bath?”

  But Catherine responded with animation. “Now that is one thing I can surely answer! If it is a true dragon, it is here seeking treasure, just as everyone else is! Why, it is plain as day! All accounts of dragons end in fabulous treasure hoards. And now, this is perfect absolute proof of it; this hidden wonder of infinite riches is somewhere here, nearby! Maybe right under our noses! To be sure, when I first heard talk in the pump-room the other day about a dragon sighting, I thought it was but silliness propagated by Mr. Thorpe who is always going on about everything very loudly—and I had thought he had exaggerated a large duck encounter into a giant dragon attack. So of course I gave none of it credit; though, some of the gentlemen discussing it were sensible, and friends of Mr. Allen. But now I see it is an entirely different matter!”

  While Catherine continued to make her point, the great dragon soared closer and closer. And then suddenly the heavens went momentarily dark as it passed directly overhead, eclipsing the sun like a giant sky leviathan of the deep, pouring its immense shadow over them from the height equivalent of a tall edifice, such as a large church.

  And in a blink it was racing on, and away—though Catherine imagined she had seen its great fiery eye upon her.

  “I dare say, that was not a duck,” admitted Miss Tilney with a sigh. “Come, Henry, it is no use denying.”

  For a moment Mr. Tilney continued his unusually obstinate silence. And then he threw one glance to the once more receding dark speck of fluid motion in the distant skies. “If you insist, it was indeed something other than a hawk, but I refuse to concede

  “I dare say, that was not a duck,” admitted Miss Tilney with a sigh.

  that it was anything remotely like a dragon—not until there is adequate scientific proof from a qualified party, and a reasonable explanation.”

  “Is the presence of treasure not reasonable enough?”

  “My dear Miss Morland,” he retorted. “And now, in addition to all my other intimate faults of character to which you are being exposed, I must admit to being rather more pedantic than you are. Unlike those who spread or concede to rumor, I require tangible proof. But—until such sufficiently documented material proof is in our grasp, let us speak of something more pleasant.”

  There was a long pause of silence as they resumed their stroll, and Catherine attempted to compose her thoughts and feelings. It was only then she realized that the angels had either been very quiet throughout the incident or she had momentarily stopped hearing or being aware of them.

  And that notion was more bothersome than anything else.

  But soon enough a more casual and pleasant mood was restored. Since there was no more sign of the dragon, the conversation picked up.

  “Well then,” Catherine uttered, in rather a solemn tone of voice, “I have heard that something very shocking indeed will soon come out in London.”

  Miss Tilney was startled, and hastily replied, “Indeed! And of what nature?”

  “That I do not know, nor who is the author. I have only heard that it is to be more horrible than anything we have met with yet. More terrifying than any mysterious flying creature!”

  “Good heaven! Where could you hear of such a thing?”

  “A particular friend of mine had an account of it in a letter from London yesterday. It is to be uncommonly dreadful. I shall expect murder and everything of the kind.”

  “You speak with astonishing composure! But I hope your friend’s accounts have been exaggerated; and proper measures will undoubtedly be taken by government to prevent it.”

  “Government,” said Henry, still in a bit of a serious mood, but now endeavouring not to smile, “neither desires nor dares to interfere in such matters. There must be murder; and government cares not how much.”

  The ladies stared. This time Catherine was aware of the angels moving in the ether around them, but altogether calmly.

  Mr. Tilney
laughed, and added, “Come, shall I assist your understanding, or leave you to puzzle out an explanation? Perhaps the abilities of women are neither sound nor acute—”

  “Miss Morland, do not mind what he says; but have the goodness to satisfy me as to this dreadful riot.”

  “Riot! What riot?”

  “My dear Eleanor, the riot is only in your own brain. The confusion there is scandalous. Miss Morland has been talking of nothing more dreadful than a new horror publication. And you, Miss Morland—my sister has pictured a mob of three thousand men, London flowing with blood, the 12th Light Dragoons called up, and the gallant Captain Frederick Tilney knocked off his horse by a brickbat from an upper window. Forgive her stupidity. She is by no means a simpleton in general.”

  Catherine looked grave.

  “And now, Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “that you have made us both feel very inferior, you may as well make Miss Morland understand yourself—unless you mean to have her think you intolerably rude to your sister, and a great brute in your opinion of women in general. She is not used to your odd ways.”

  “I shall be happy to make her better acquainted with them.”

  “No doubt; but that is no explanation of the present.”

  “What am I to do?”

  “You know what you ought to do. Clear your character handsomely before her. Tell her that you think very highly of the understanding of women.”

  “Miss Morland, I think very highly of the understanding of all the women in the world—especially the present company.”

  And then Mr. Tilney proceeded to shock and invoke smiles simultaneously by his wit and contrary banter.