Making Love, the Henry Tilney Way

I have a confession to make: I sometimes cheat on Jane Austen. But really she led me to it. I speak of my “other” fandom: Horatio Hornblower. I watched the first series of Hornblower films when they were first broadcast on A&E back in 1999 because I thought I would learn something about the Royal Navy in Captain Wentworth’s time, so you see it is all Jane’s fault; but by the time the first movie was over I was hooked. I read the books upon which the movies were based, and became a fan of Hornblower in its own right.

So last week I was at a yearly get-together for Hornblower fans (we call ourselves Horatians), which this year was at a former Shaker village near Lexington, Kentucky. (It sounds a little odd, but it worked, and the venue was fabulous! So peaceful and beautiful; but I digress, as is my custom.) With the Horatians con and the JASNA AGM being within a week of each other, plus the release of Jane Austen Made Me Do It, in which I have a short story, and ongoing publicity for There Must Be Murder, and an annotated edition of Sense and Sensibility that I’m working on, I’ve been insanely busy lately, but was happy to agree to write a guest post for Indie Jane; but I really wasn’t sure what to write about.

My Horatian friends are very intelligent and well-read in general, and they know all about my Jane obsession, so I put it to them. “What should I write this guest post about?” I asked. “I want to write something about Northanger Abbey or Henry Tilney.”

My friend Anna from Chicago said, “You know, I recently re-read Northanger Abbey, and I liked it, but…I don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get?”

“Why he liked her.” Her being, of course, our and Henry’s darling Catherine.

“BLASPHEMY!” I cried. “VIPER IN MY BOSOM! OF COURSE HENRY LOVED CATHERINE! HOW COULD YOU SUGGEST OTHERWISE!”

(Kidding. I made that up for comic effect. One hopes it is actually comic.)

“I used to feel the same way,” I said, very earnest. “But I started writing stories about Henry and Catherine, and you know what? I don’t see how he could avoid falling for her.” I explained why, and I think I might have swayed her just a little bit. It occurred to me later that Anna was hardly alone in that opinion. I talked a bit about the same subject last year at the JASNA AGM during the “Team Tilney Explains It All” presentation, but I don’t mind talking about it again, or writing about it in this case. Sticking with the nautical theme that sidetracked me a bit at the beginning: spoilers ahoy!

So what did Henry Tilney see in the naïve, uneducated Catherine Morland? Actually, Jane Austen tells us herself, in the penultimate chapter of Northanger Abbey.

She was assured of his affection; and that heart in return was solicited, which, perhaps, they pretty equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Henry was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine’s dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.

In other words, Henry fell in love with Catherine because she fell in love with him first. It’s not the great passion that one might wish for, but despite Austen’s sly comment about a wild imagination, it is not something at all unknown; nor should it have been a surprise to the careful reader, as Austen sowed the clues slowly and carefully throughout the book. Henry was limited mostly by the conventions of his time from saying much plainly, but the reader can watch his admiration and affection for Catherine grow.

The first clue comes at the cotillion dance in Bath. Catherine had run into Eleanor the day before at the Pump Room, and appropriately pumped Eleanor for information about her brother, and “they parted — on Miss Tilney’s side with some knowledge of her new acquaintance’s feelings, and on Catherine’s, without the smallest consciousness of having explained them,” Austen tells us.

Having been a younger sister myself, I cannot imagine Eleanor passing up such a delightful opportunity to tease her brother. I can imagine the scene:

Eleanor came into the Milsom-street lodgings and encountered her brother reading the newspaper. “Henry, you have acquired an admirer!”

Henry put down the paper and looked at her in surprise. “An admirer! Whom can you mean?”

“Why, Miss Morland! I just saw her at the pump-room. ‘How well your brother dances, Miss Tilney! Does he not come to the pump-room? Will you be at the cotillion dance?’ Implying, of course, that if I will be at the cotillion ball, you will be there as well. She could not stop talking of you.”

“Of me? Miss Morland?”

“Oh, Henry! Do not look so surprised. You have swept her off her feet with your legendary charm and wit.”

Henry went back to his newspaper. “I hardly think so, Eleanor. I barely know the girl. I’ve danced with her once, and asked her once more, but she was more eager to dance with John Thorpe.”

“If you knew anything about women, Henry, you would know that Miss Morland was not at all eager to dance with Mr. Thorpe. I suspect now that she knows we will be at the cotillion ball, you will find her to have avoided engaging herself to dance, in case you might ask her.”

Henry said nothing, but looked thoughtful. Eleanor wisely did not tease him any longer, but left her words to work upon him.

Austen’s narrative shows that Miss Tilney’s apprehensions were perfectly correct. From Vol. I, Ch. X:

She entered the rooms on Thursday evening with feelings very different from what had attended her thither the Monday before. She had then been exulting in her engagement to Thorpe, and was now chiefly anxious to avoid his sight, lest he should engage her again; for though she could not, dared not expect that Mr. Tilney should ask her a third time to dance, her wishes, hopes, and plans all centred in nothing less.

The rooms were crowded, Austen writes, Catherine “gave herself up for lost” with respect to John Thorpe, and . . .

. . . a self-condemnation for her folly, in supposing that among such a crowd they should even meet with the Tilneys in any reasonable time, had just passed through her mind, when she suddenly found herself addressed and again solicited to dance, by Mr. Tilney himself. . . .to be asked, so immediately on his joining her, asked by Mr. Tilney, as if he had sought her on purpose!

Well, perhaps he did seek her on purpose. And then they dance, and John Thorpe attempts to draw off Catherine’s attention, and Henry compares dancing to . . .  wait for it  . . . marriage. What has he  been thinking about in the past 24 hours, hmm? And are his eyes just a tiny bit green at having the girl he’s been thinking about speak with another man? General Tilney certainly notices that Henry is paying this young lady particular attention, and demands to know her identity. None of this is accidental. Austen is letting us know that Mr. Tilney’s interest is piqued.

Catherine engages herself to walk in the country the next day with Eleanor and Henry. However, John Thorpe arrives first, and convinces Catherine that Henry has gone off to Wick Rocks with Eleanor in a phaeton, and abducts her as neatly as any villain in a horseman’s great coat—just the scenario that had disturbed Henry the previous night. Imagine what he thought when, walking to Pulteney-street to meet with Catherine, he sees her driven off by the man he perfectly understands to be his rival! No wonder he was angry when he saw Catherine at the theatre the following night.

I suspect his feelings were complicated by the fact that Catherine had not only blown off Henry, she had blown off Eleanor as well. Henry knows that Eleanor does not have any close friends; that is why he spends half his time at Northanger when he has a pleasant parsonage of his own. He thinks Eleanor has met a nice, cheerful girl who will be her friend, and then she breaks an engagement.

At the theatre, out of politeness, and maybe wanting to know why he and his sister had been rejected, he goes to her box. From Vol. I, Ch. XII:

The play concluded — the curtain fell — Henry Tilney was no longer to be seen where he had hitherto sat, but his father remained, and perhaps he might be now coming round to their box. She was right; in a few minutes he appeared, and, making his way through the then thinning rows, spoke with like calm politeness to Mrs. Allen and her friend. — Not with such calmness was he answered by the latter: “Oh! Mr. Tilney, I have been quite wild to speak to you, and make my apologies. You must have thought me so rude; but indeed it was not my own fault, — was it, Mrs. Allen? Did not they tell me that Mr. Tilney and his sister were gone out in a phaeton together? and then what could I do? But I had ten thousand times rather have been with you; now had not I, Mrs. Allen?”

“My dear, you tumble my gown,” was Mrs. Allen’s reply.

Her assurance, however, standing sole as it did, was not thrown away; it brought a more cordial, more natural smile into his countenance, and he replied in a tone which retained only a little affected reserve: — “We were much obliged to you at any rate for wishing us a pleasant walk after our passing you in Argyle-street: you were so kind as to look back on purpose.”

“But indeed I did not wish you a pleasant walk; I never thought of such a thing; but I begged Mr. Thorpe so earnestly to stop; I called out to him as soon as ever I saw you; now, Mrs. Allen, did not — Oh! you were not there; but indeed I did; and, if Mr. Thorpe would only have stopped, I would have jumped out and run after you.”

Is there a Henry in the world who could be insensible to such a declaration? Henry Tilney at least was not.

Of course not! She’s adorable; how could he resist her? And he understands Catherine a little better now. She is not playing games with him, as he suspected; games she might have learned from Isabella Thorpe. She truly stumbled into an error, and asks forgiveness in such an artless way that he cannot help but forgive her. Perhaps he compares Catherine in his mind to other young ladies, the ones who did play the games that Isabella played, and that might have lost interest in him when they find out he was only a clergyman, and a younger son. Catherine wanted to spend time with him, and that was very possibly a new and pleasant experience for Henry. And once again, the General notices, and asks John Thorpe for information about Miss Morland.

A week later, this pleasant feeling was disturbed by another engagement broken—by word from that encroaching, poaching John Thorpe—only a few moments after it was entered into; but once again, Catherine’s artless explanation and determination to break away from the Thorpes and spend time with the Tilneys works its magic. From Vol. I, Ch. XIII:

Her explanation, defective only in being — from her irritation of nerves and shortness of breath — no explanation at all, was instantly given. “I am come in a great hurry — It was all a mistake — I never promised to go — I told them from the first I could not go. — I ran away in a great hurry to explain it. — I did not care what you thought of me. — I would not stay for the servant.”

The business, however, though not perfectly elucidated by this speech, soon ceased to be a puzzle. Catherine found that John Thorpe had given the message; and Miss Tilney had no scruple in owning herself greatly surprized by it. But whether her brother had still exceeded her in resentment, Catherine, though she instinctively addressed herself as much to one as to the other in her vindication, had no means of knowing. Whatever might have been felt before her arrival, her eager declarations immediately made every look and sentence as friendly as she could desire.

I think it’s safe to say that Henry now understands Catherine’s situation, and knows she is not a willing player of the Thorpe’s games, but only a victim of them. This opinion was probably reinforced when Captain Tilney showed up—handsome, single, and the heir to Northanger—and Catherine was still more interested in Henry, “listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.” Oh, yes. And then Isabella, now engaged to James Morland, dances with Captain Tilney, and Catherine thinks it is very good-natured of him to ask her. From Vol. II, Ch. I:

Henry smiled, and said, “How very little trouble it can give you to understand the motive of other people’s actions.”

“Why? — What do you mean?”

“With you, it is not, How is such a one likely to be influenced, What is the inducement most likely to act upon such a person’s feelings, age, situation, and probable habits of life considered? — but, How should I be influenced, what would be my inducement in acting so and so?”

“I do not understand you.”

“Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly well.”

“Me? — yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

“Bravo! — an excellent satire on modern language.”

“But pray tell me what you mean.”

“Shall I indeed? — Do you really desire it? But you are not aware of the consequences; it will involve you in a very cruel embarrassment, and certainly bring on a disagreement between us.

“No, no; it shall not do either; I am not afraid.”

“Well, then, I only meant that your attributing my brother’s wish of dancing with Miss Thorpe to good-nature alone convinced me of your being superior in good-nature yourself to all the rest of the world.”

Catherine blushed and disclaimed, and the gentleman’s predictions were verified. There was a something, however, in his words which repaid her for the pain of confusion; and that something occupied her mind so much that she drew back for some time, forgetting to speak or to listen, and almost forgetting where she was. . . .

That “something” might be as far as Henry can go in expressing his admiration for Miss Morland without making a declaration; Austen’s contemporary readers likely would have picked up on that.

At Northanger Abbey, Henry seizes another opportunity to express his admiration for Catherine, cloaked in witty banter, when they breakfast alone together on the first morning after their arrival. From Vol. II, Ch. VII (22):

“What beautiful hyacinths! — I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.”

“And how might you learn? — By accident or argument?”

“Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them the other day in Milsom-street; I am naturally indifferent about flowers.”

“But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable in your sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you to more frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once raised, but you may in time come to love a rose?”

A rose. Yeah, sure, Henry.

We all know the scene in which Henry finds Catherine by his mother’s room, and he already knows her so well that he can guess what she is thinking—hardly a skill developed from mere friendship. Most of the film adaptations (except Wishbone!) have Henry sternly lecture Catherine, but I submit that Henry was gentleness itself. As he has done throughout their acquaintance, he does not tell Catherine what to think, but attempts to lead her to use her own good sense by asking her a series of questions. From Vol. II, Ch. IX (24):

“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to — Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. — Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”

Dearest Miss Morland. By the end of the speech, he is compassion itself—and calling her dearest. I don’t think that’s an accident.

Henry truly shows his true quality at the end of the novel, when the General tells him he will think of Catherine no more. Until now, Henry has more or less gone along with his father’s commands—including the command to fix his interest with Miss Morland the supposed heiress, which we suspect was not onerous—but when commanded to do what he thinks is wrong, the son, the priest, rebels. In a time when the commandment to honor one’s father and mother is considered a sacred duty of all children, Henry refuses to obey his father. Prepare to swoon. From Vol. II, Ch. XV (30):

The conversation between them at Northanger had been of the most unfriendly kind. Henry’s indignation on hearing how Catherine had been treated, on comprehending his father’s views, and being ordered to acquiesce in them, had been open and bold. The General, accustomed on every ordinary occasion to give the law in his family, prepared for no reluctance but of feeling, no opposing desire that should dare to clothe itself in words, could in brook the opposition of his son, steady as the sanction of reason and the dictate of conscience could make it. But, in such a cause, his anger, though it must shock, could not intimidate Henry, who was sustained in his purpose by a conviction of its justice. He felt himself bound as much in honour as in affection to Miss Morland, and believing that heart to be his own which he had been directed to gain, no unworthy retraction of a tacit consent, no reversing decree of unjustifiable anger, could shake his fidelity, or influence the resolutions it prompted.

He steadily refused to accompany his father into Herefordshire, an engagement formed almost at the moment, to promote the dismissal of Catherine, and as steadily declared his intention of offering her his hand. The General was furious in his anger, and they parted in dreadful disagreement.

*fans self* Is it warm in here?

We all know what happened next—Henry rode ventre-a-terre to Fullerton—well, he rode there, and we like to imagine it was at least partly ventre-a-terre as that’s so delightfully heroic, though one suspects he probably spared his horse, and more likely drove his curricle in any event—and offered Catherine his hand, his home, and his heart. Fortunately he didn’t tell Catherine that the General would not approve the marriage until after she accepted him, so she could do so with a clear conscience, and stay home to cry until the General relented. Since this is a Jane Austen novel, of course the General relented, and we hasten together to perfect felicity.

One of the many things I love about reading Northanger Abbey is following the development of Henry’s affection for Catherine. Catherine’s reciprocal affection we know of right away, as the narrator tells us about it; but the conventions of the time, as well as his own good sense, prevent Henry from going all Valancourt, writing love poems on walls and suchlike silliness. Henry Tilney’s courtship of Catherine is performed as admirably as he dances, drives, and wears a great coat, and that’s saying a great deal indeed.

Margaret C. Sullivan is the Editrix of AustenBlog.com, a compendium of information about Jane Austen’s work in popular culture. She is the author of The Jane Austen Handbook; There Must Be Murder, a sequel to Northanger Abbey; and “Heard of You,” a story in the anthology Jane Austen Made Me Do It, edited by Laurel Ann Nattress. She recently annotated a new edition of Sense and Sensibility, to be published this month by Girlebooks/Librifiles. Margaret likes to bring her love of Jane Austen’s work to every aspect of her life, which led her to name her home wifi network Woodston.

 (image is from There Must Be Murder by Margaret C. Sullivan, art by Cassi Chouinard)