Part 2 (2/2)

Latournelle never could speak a word of French; indeed, she describes her as 'a person of the old school, a stout woh she had a cork legShe was only fit for giving out clothes for the wash, andthe work of a housekeeper'

But in Mrs Sherwood's time she had a capable assistant in Madalishwoman, married to the son of a noblelad to accept the position of French teacher at Reading Grammar School under Dr Valpy Mrs Sherwood says that the St Quentins so entirely raised the credit of the seminary that when she went there it contained above sixty pupils The history of the school did not end with Reading, for the St Quentins afterwards ree Mary Russell Mitford Still later, after the fall of Napoleon, the St Quentinsbeen the mainstay of the school It hile the school was here that it received fanny Ke its pupils[20]

Mrs Sherwood tells us that the school-house at Reading, 'or rather the abbey itself, was exceedingly interesting,the ancient building

consisted of a gateith rooms above, and on each side of it a vast staircase, of which the balustrades had originally been giltThe best part of the house was encoarden, where the young ladies were allowed to wander under tall trees in hot sus'

Discipline was not severe, for the same lady inforreat that if we attended our tutor in his study for an hour or two everyever took the trouble to inquire where else we spent the rest of the day between our ossiped in one turret or another, whether we lounged about the garden, or out of theabove the gateway, no one so much as said ”Where have you been, er surprised to be told that Cassandra and Jane, together with their cousin, Jane Cooper, were allowed to accept an invitation to dine at an inn with their respective brothers, Edward Austen and Edward Cooper, and so friends

School life does not appear to have left any very deep impression on Jane Austen[21] Probably she went at too youthful an age, and her stay was too short At any rate, none of the heroines of her novels, except Anne Elliot,[22] are sent to school, though it is likely enough, as several writers have pointed out, that her Reading experiences suggested Mrs Goddard's school in _Emma_

Mrs Goddard was the mistress of a school--not of a se which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to coantladies for enorht be screwed out of health and into vanity, but a real, honest, old-fashi+oned boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accoirls ht be sent to be out of the way, and scraer of coh reputeShe had an aave the children plenty of wholesoreat deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own hands It was no wonder that a train of twenty young couples noalked after her to church She was a plain, motherly kind of woe of nine The rest of her education was coht her in his leisure hours, and Jaave her many useful hints Father,her, and perhaps even Cassandra did her share But for the most part her culture ined in the case of Elizabeth Bennet Later on, the French of Reading Abbey school was corrected and fortified by the lessons of her cousin Eliza On the whole, she greith a good stock of such accoirl bred in one of the more intellectual of the clerical houses of that day She read French easily, and knew a little of Italian; and she ell read in the English literature of the eighteenth century As a child, she had strong political opinions, especially on the affairs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries She was a veherandmother, Mary, and did not disdain to in of her Goldsrew up, the party politics of the day seem to have occupied very little of her attention, but she probably shared the feeling of moderate Toryiser aspect--revolution and ere of course very real at that date to every patriotic citizen, and came home with especial force to the Austens, whose cousin's husband perished by the guillotine,[23] and whose brothers were constantly fighting on the sea In her last published sentence at the end of _Persuasion_ the author tells us how her Anne Elliot 'gloried' in being the wife of a sailor; and no doubt she had a siard to her two naval brothers But there was then no daily authentic intelligence of events as they occurred Newspapers were a luxury of the rich in those days, and it need excite no surprise to find that the events are very seldo letters[24]

We can be in no doubt as to her fervent, and rather exclusive, love for her own country Writing to an old friend, within a few months of her own death, she says: 'I hope your letters from abroad are satisfactory

They would not be satisfactory to _ret for not being in England'

Of her favourite authors and favourite pursuits, ill speak later

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Charles Austen failed to do so in January 1799 See p 124

[14] The description of Steventon is taken, almost entirely, from the _Memoir_, pp 18-22

[15] This ritten nearly half a century ago, before the revival of hters seem to have looked upon this publicity of useful needleith some suspicion See letter from Lyme, September 14, 1804 (p 179)

[17] These letters, hitherto unpublished, are inserted by the kind permission of Mr J G Nicholson of Castlefield House, Sturton by Scawby, Lincolnshi+re

[18] Son of Mr and Mrs Walter

[19] _Life and Times of Mrs Sherwood_, edited by F J Harvey Darton, p 124

[20] _Records of a Girlhood_, vol i p 99 By Frances Ann Kemble

London, 1878

[21] There are, we think, but two references to school in her surviving correspondence--namely, in a letter to Cassandra, dated September 1, 1796, where she rehter at it, as they used to say at school'; and in another, dated May 20, 1813, where she describes a roo 'totally unschool-like'

[22] In the sarove have brought back 'the usual stock of accomplishments' from a school at Exeter

[23] See next chapter

[24] It was no uncommon occurrence for the richer folk to hand on their newspaper to their neighbours Thus we find the Austens, while at Steventon, apparently getting theirs fro Mr Pinckard's paper at Lyme (p 180) Much in the same way Sir John Middleton in _Sense and Sensibility_ would not be denied the satisfaction of sending the Dashwoods his newspaper every day