like George Austen aspired to employing governesses, though his rich son Edward and his wife, Elizabeth, had governesses for their five daughters while their six sons went to public school. Often children were taught to read by their mothers. It was usual to start with the Psalms. In
Northanger Abbey
Mrs Morland, a clergy wife, teaches her eleven children to read, write and number.
Jane as a child owned
The History of Goody Two-Shoes
and a French textbook,
Fables Choisies
, given her on 5 December 1783, together with an anthology,
Elegant Extracts
, Her brother Edward gave her a copy of Dr Percival's
A Father’s Instructions to his Children, consisting of Tales, Fables and Reflections; designed to promote the love of virtue, a taste for knowledge, and an early acquaintance with the works of Nature
. She also had a copy of Ann Murry’s
Mentoria: or, The Young Ladies’ Instructor
, from which she picked up general knowledge.
The headmistress of the Abbey School was a Miss Sarah Hackett who used as her professional name ‘Mrs Latournelle’ to give authenticity to her credentials as a French teacher, though she knew not a word of that language. She was a stout woman with a wooden leg, who never did any work in the afternoons. Her dress was always the same, with a white muslin kerchief round her neck, a muslin apron, short sleeves, cuffs and ruffles, with a breast bow to match the bow on her cap, both being flat with two notched ends. She may have been a former actress, for her conversation centred on plays and acting, gossip about the private lives of performers and even backstage anecdotes. This must have been more entertaining for schoolgirls than French irregular verbs. She acted as housekeeper, giving out clothes to be washed, ordering dinner and making tea. There was also a Miss Pitts, whose French was fluent and who played and sang well and was an excellent needlewoman. The curriculum comprised writing, spelling, French, needlework, drawing, music and dancing. Jane was happy enough there to write later, I could die of laughter at it, as they used to say at school.’ At this time her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, née Hancock, wrote to her cousin Phila Walter that all Uncle George Austen’s children seemed to be everything their parents could wish.
The school itself was in part of the ancient Abbey building, formerly occupied by Benedictine monks. It consisted of an antique gateway with rooms above its arch and with vast staircases either side, whose balustrades had originally been gilt. Pupils were received in a wainscotted parlour, hung round with chenille representations of tombs and weeping willows. There were several miniatures over the tall mantelshelf. There was a beautiful wild garden, where the girls were allowed to wander under tall trees on hot summer evenings. They could climb the embankment and look down on the Abbey church, begun by King Henry I and consecrated by St Thomas à Becket. As Jane Austen wrote at fifteen in her facetious
History of England
, the abolition by King Henry VIII of religious houses ‘and leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general’.
In 1785, Jane and Cassandra’s brother Edward and Jane Cooper’s brother Edward called at the school and took their sisters out for a meal at an inn, which shocked their Victorian descendants as most unseemly. Their cousin the Revd Thomas Leigh of Adlestrop called to see the girls and tipped them half a guinea each.
Mr Austen had difficulty paying the school fees and the girls left after two years in 1787. Their stay had cost their father £140, as the fees were the same as he charged for board and tuition, £35 per pupil per year.
Schools at that time offered girls little more than ‘finishing school’ was to do later. In
Sense and Sensibility
the brainless Charlotte Palmer’s landscape in coloured silks is sarcastically described by the narrator as ‘proof of her having
Northanger Abbey
Mrs Morland, a clergy wife, teaches her eleven children to read, write and number.
Jane as a child owned
The History of Goody Two-Shoes
and a French textbook,
Fables Choisies
, given her on 5 December 1783, together with an anthology,
Elegant Extracts
, Her brother Edward gave her a copy of Dr Percival's
A Father’s Instructions to his Children, consisting of Tales, Fables and Reflections; designed to promote the love of virtue, a taste for knowledge, and an early acquaintance with the works of Nature
. She also had a copy of Ann Murry’s
Mentoria: or, The Young Ladies’ Instructor
, from which she picked up general knowledge.
The headmistress of the Abbey School was a Miss Sarah Hackett who used as her professional name ‘Mrs Latournelle’ to give authenticity to her credentials as a French teacher, though she knew not a word of that language. She was a stout woman with a wooden leg, who never did any work in the afternoons. Her dress was always the same, with a white muslin kerchief round her neck, a muslin apron, short sleeves, cuffs and ruffles, with a breast bow to match the bow on her cap, both being flat with two notched ends. She may have been a former actress, for her conversation centred on plays and acting, gossip about the private lives of performers and even backstage anecdotes. This must have been more entertaining for schoolgirls than French irregular verbs. She acted as housekeeper, giving out clothes to be washed, ordering dinner and making tea. There was also a Miss Pitts, whose French was fluent and who played and sang well and was an excellent needlewoman. The curriculum comprised writing, spelling, French, needlework, drawing, music and dancing. Jane was happy enough there to write later, I could die of laughter at it, as they used to say at school.’ At this time her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, née Hancock, wrote to her cousin Phila Walter that all Uncle George Austen’s children seemed to be everything their parents could wish.
The school itself was in part of the ancient Abbey building, formerly occupied by Benedictine monks. It consisted of an antique gateway with rooms above its arch and with vast staircases either side, whose balustrades had originally been gilt. Pupils were received in a wainscotted parlour, hung round with chenille representations of tombs and weeping willows. There were several miniatures over the tall mantelshelf. There was a beautiful wild garden, where the girls were allowed to wander under tall trees on hot summer evenings. They could climb the embankment and look down on the Abbey church, begun by King Henry I and consecrated by St Thomas à Becket. As Jane Austen wrote at fifteen in her facetious
History of England
, the abolition by King Henry VIII of religious houses ‘and leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general’.
In 1785, Jane and Cassandra’s brother Edward and Jane Cooper’s brother Edward called at the school and took their sisters out for a meal at an inn, which shocked their Victorian descendants as most unseemly. Their cousin the Revd Thomas Leigh of Adlestrop called to see the girls and tipped them half a guinea each.
Mr Austen had difficulty paying the school fees and the girls left after two years in 1787. Their stay had cost their father £140, as the fees were the same as he charged for board and tuition, £35 per pupil per year.
Schools at that time offered girls little more than ‘finishing school’ was to do later. In
Sense and Sensibility
the brainless Charlotte Palmer’s landscape in coloured silks is sarcastically described by the narrator as ‘proof of her having
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