A Heroine in Bath (Chapters 1–7)

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard — and he had never been handsome. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on — lived to have six children more — to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself.

Catherine was, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features. She preferred cricket, baseball, riding on horseback and running about the country, to dolls and to nursing a dormouse. She never could learn or understand anything before she was taught; she learned the fable of "The Beggar's Petition" with great difficulty, and gave up music after a year. She was noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.

But at fifteen, appearances were mending; she began to curl her hair and long for balls; her complexion improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour. "Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl — she is almost pretty today," her parents said now and then; and to be almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive. From fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine: she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.

But at seventeen she had never been in love; there was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no, not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door. But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

Mr. Allen, who owned the chief property about Fullerton, the village in Wiltshire where the Morlands lived, was ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution; and his lady, a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, invited her to go with them. Catherine was all happiness. Her mother's parting advice consisted only of warnings against wrapping her throat at night, and keeping an account of her money; there was no talk of the violence of noblemen and baronets who delight in forcing young ladies away to some remote farmhouse.

Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment nor manner; her one passion was for dress. At their first ball, in the Upper Rooms, they knew nobody; they were squeezed in the crowd and could not get to a seat; Catherine did not dance; and Mrs. Allen said, every five minutes, "I wish you could dance, my dear — I wish you could get a partner," and "How uncomfortable it is not to have a large acquaintance here!"

At the Lower Rooms, the master of the ceremonies introduced her to a partner: Mr. Henry Tilney, a young man of four or five and twenty, rather tall, with a pleasing countenance, a very intelligent and lively eye, and, if not quite handsome, very near it. He talked well, with an arch, playful manner. He asked her, with mock solemnity, how long she had been in Bath, whether she had been to the theatre and the concert; and then, dropping his voice, told her what he supposed she would write in her journal that night: "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." He then discussed muslins with Mrs. Allen so knowingly — his sister always trusted him to choose her gowns; he had bought one the other day for five shillings a yard, a true Indian muslin — that Mrs. Allen was charmed. Catherine went home very much inclined to think of him. Whether she thought of him so much, while she drank her warm wine and water, and prepared herself for bed, as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was no more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most; for if it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.

But he did not appear again in Bath for days. Instead, Mrs. Allen found in the Pump Room an old schoolfellow, Mrs. Thorpe, a widow, with three daughters, of whom the eldest, Isabella, was very handsome, four years older than Catherine, and at least four years better informed. She knew all about fashion and flirtation and balls; she could compare the balls of Bath with those of Tunbridge; and she took up Catherine at once with the warmest professions of friendship. Isabella's brother John was at Oxford with Catherine's brother James. In a few days they were inseparable; they called each other by their Christian names, were always arm in arm, and shut themselves up together to read novels.

Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. "And what are you reading, Miss —?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

The two friends were reading The Mysteries of Udolpho. "Have you gone on with Udolpho?" Isabella asked one morning. "Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil." "Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?" "Oh! yes, quite; what can it be? — But do not tell me — I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina's skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it." And Isabella promised that when she had finished it, they would read The Italian together; and she had a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind — Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. "Are you sure they are all horrid?" "Yes, quite sure."

Isabella talked a great deal about men too: how she despised them, how she would never dance with a man who had been rude, how she never minded what they said of her; she looked about her a great deal while she talked, and particularly at two young men who had gone by, and set off to walk after them, so as to show them she did not care.

Then James Morland and John Thorpe drove into Bath in a gig. John Thorpe was a stout young man of middling height, with a plain face and ungraceful form, who seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he might be allowed to be easy. He talked of nothing but his horse and his gig: how fast it went, how much he had paid for it, how much it was worth, how much a man at Oxford had offered him; and how much wine they all drank at Oxford. He asked Catherine whether she had ever read Udolpho, and before she could answer said, "Oh Lord! not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do. Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation." "I think you must like Udolpho, if you were to read it; it is so very interesting." "Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe's; her novels are amusing enough." "Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe," said Catherine, with some hesitation. He engaged her for the next ball; and James, who was plainly in love with Isabella, told his sister that John Thorpe was the most agreeable fellow in the world.