So did you like going to school and when you were younger?
Well, today we're going to be talking about what it would of been like to go to
school back in the 1780s with Jane Austen.
We're going to be going into Jane Austen's two different experiences at
boarding schools and what it was like.
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So I already talked a lot about boarding schools in general in my video on
girls education in the Regency Era.
So definitely check that out if you're just interested in the overall boarding
school concept during this time period.
But, I really wanted to dive in specifically today with Jane
Austen's experiences at them.
And she went to two different boarding schools, as I said.
So let's talk about the first one.
So when Jane Austen was seven years old, she and her older sister Cassandra and
her cousin who was also named Jane, Jane Cooper get sent to a boarding school,
ran by Jane Cooper's newly widowed aunt.
It was one of those boarding schools where that aunt is like, "I'm a widow.
I need money.
I guess I'm teaching a school now?"
And so of course their extended family is trying to support her by
sending their girls to the school.
And at first the school is set in Oxford and then later it's moved to Southampton.
But Jane Austen overall only stayed there for a year, mainly because, well, Typhus.
Basically, as I talked about and the video on girls' education, illnesses could just
run through a school super quickly because these girls were all sharing bedrooms.
They were all living together.
And yeah, pretty much, Jane Austen almost died of typhus at seven years old and
we would have no Pride and Prejudice.
So Jane and Cassandra and Jane Cooper, all had typhus.
And the school mistress did not send that information home to their parents.
Maybe she didn't want them to think she wasn't capable of handling
the school, but Jane Cooper did get the message out to her mother.
And so her mom and also Mrs.
Austen descended on the school to come take care of their daughters.
And so thankfully, because of that, Jane Austen survived.
And now we get to read about Mr.
Darcy and Pemberley.
But unfortunately, Jane Cooper's mom catches the typhus from Jane and
then she dies, which is super sad.
So that was Jane's first, super short stay in a boarding school.
It was like from the spring to the summer, that's how long it
took to almost get her killed.
So she goes home.
She recovers from typhus and then pretty soon the family is up for trying again.
And this time they go about it differently.
They decide to send her to a very well established and well run boarding
school in a town called Reading, which is pretty close to London.
So now Jane, about nine years old, sets off to go to this new school
called Reading Abbey Girls' School.
And yes, it is set in the ruins of an old abbey, dun dun dun.
So part of the building is new and part of the building is where the
monks used to sleep in Reading Abbey before it was pretty much destroyed.
And yes, it's a very Gothic.
A lot of people think that she drew inspiration for
Northanger Abbey from the school.
And while she was there, workers on the Abbey discovered the hand of Saint James.
That's right.
There was like a mummified hand that used to be of course, a
Relic in the Catholic church that people would want to come and see.
But it was the hand of St.
James, they discovered, and it's all old.
So I was thinking that probably added to the Gothic moment.
You know, imagine being nine years old and being like, "They unearth a hand!"
Maybe the fact that it was of St.
James made it less Gothic.
I don't know.
But this is what's happening.
She's living in a gothic abbey ruins with dead hands happening.
So it cost her family about 36 to 37 pounds per half year for Jane
and Cassandra to go to school there.
The head of the school while Jane Austen was there is someone known as Mrs.
La Tournelle.
But that wasn't really her name.
Her real name is either Sarah Hackitt or Esther Hackitt.
And whether she was a Mrs.
has also been debated.
There is information that says she was both a widow of a guy who
pretty much died in the poor house.
Or that she simply used Mrs.
because of the respectability it adds.
Like I talk about in the video, "Does Mr.
Darcy have a first name?"
Servants once they reached a certain rank in the household would
automatically become Mrs., whether they were actually married or not,
because it was a term of respect.
And so women who were governesses or teachers, once they hit a certain age,
they just transitioned to using Mrs..
So they looked more mature and respectable, pretty much.
I remember reading this one funny thing, a governess was saying,
"I'm going to start using Mrs.
now.
And maybe that'll make people think I'm a young widow and
everybody loves a young widow.
It might get me a husband."
So I just think it's interesting how it was better to be a young
widow than to be an old maid.
Of course, that whole topic on the respectability of being
married vs being single is a whole thing for a different video.
Anyway, so Mrs.
La Tournelle is not her real name.
So why is she using that name?
Well, the basic answer is because it sounds French.
And remember one of the main accomplishments all parents
wanted for their daughters was for them to be able to speak French.
And we do know that both Jane Austen and Cassandra both had
a great command of French.
But some people attribute that more to them spending time with their cousin,
Eliza, who did speak fluent French.
And I actually have a whole video on her and her mother's lives.
Either they've come out or they're coming out.
So stay tuned for those.
So Mrs.
La Tournelle had a cork leg, which has a mysterious origin
that has never been discovered.
Mrs.
La Tournelle was very well.
Welcoming and kind, she wasn't particularly religiously devoted at all.
Meanwhile, her partner was someone named Miss Pitts, and this is the
dramatic backstory of Miss Pitts.
Pretty much what happened was that she was originally a
student at the school under Mrs.
La Tournelle.
And she was a parlour boarder,, which if you remember my video on
Regency Era girls education, that's like the super fancy student, right?
It's first class studentship here.
Anyway, she expected to inherit quite a bit of money from her uncle when he died.
But get this, her uncle dies and he leaves all of his money to his housekeeper.
Right?!
It's like his housekeeper?
And he totally left her out in the cold.
I wished there was more known about this drama because I want
to know, but it's not available.
So that's dramatic though.
Anyway, because now she is poor, but of course she has the accomplishments
of a lady and went to this good school.
Mrs. La Tournelle is kind enough to take her on as a partner in the school.
So now it's Mrs.
La Tournelle and Miss Pitts running the school.
Shortly after Jane Austen leaves, they bring on a new teacher and he's a guy.
His name is Dominique de St Quientin.
Again, I'm killing all of the French names in all of my videos.
But I'm sorry, all French people.
He's a French emigré escaping the French revolution.
That's why he moves to England.
So Dominique shows up and him and Miss Pitts totally hit it off and
they get married and it's all great.
Except for the fact that Dominique kind of has a gambling problem
and he's going to totally squander the school's funds in a few years.
But that's a total different topic there.
Not actually important to Jane Austen's story, seeing how he's not even there yet.
But just thought you'd all want to know what happens to Miss Pitts after
her uncle leaves her out in the cold.
Anyway, the school does have several other minor teachers who come in to
teach different subjects like spelling or sewing or whatever, but these are
the main players of the teachers.
And too, there happens to be a boys school of around by Doctor Valpy,
right across this big park/lawn thing, they call the Forbury.
And across there's the boys school.
And so sometimes they would have dances with the boys school.
The teacher of the boys school is friends with the teachers of the girls school.
And a lot of the brothers of the girls go to the boys school.
And so they sort of have like that intermixing with the boys
school across the Forbury too.
Okay.
So what was Mrs.
La Tournelle and her school actually liked to go to?
Lets get down to this point now.
And the answer is she ran a good school, kind of like Mrs.
Goddard did.
A lot of people think that Jane Austen based Mrs.
Goddard's school in Emma off of this school.
And Emma describes the school as,."
Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a school, and not of a seminary or an establishment or
anything which professed in long sentences of refined nonsense to combine liberal
acquirements with elegant morality upon new principals and new systems, and where
young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity."
So that's not what the school is, but what does it actually do then?
"But a real honest, old fashioned boarding school where reasonable quantity of
accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price and where girls might be sent to
be out of the way and scramble themselves in to a little education without any
danger of coming back prodigies."
Well, unfortunately for Jane Austen, she did come back from the school a prodigy.
But I think that probably had more to do with the fact that she already
was one when she was went there.
"Mrs.
Goddard school was in high repute and very deservedly for Highbury was
reckoned a particularly healthy spot.
She had an ample house and garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome food.
Let them run about a great deal in the summer and in the winter dressed
their chilblains with her own hands."
So, of course all this information on healthy spots is important
because you don't want to a repeat of the typhus incident.
It was no wonder that a train of 20 young couple now walked after her to church.
She was a plain, motherly kind of woman, who had worked hard in her youth and
now thought herself entitled to the occasional holiday of a tea visit."
So as it says, there's 20 couple of girls at the school.
Which would be 20 times two is 40.
And of course there's about 40 to 60 girls who lived at
Reading Abbey boarding school.
So what was daily life in the school like?
Well, in the morning they would have their lessons in things like
spelling, sewing, and history.
They would have dance lessons about twice a week where the dance master
would come in with his little fiddle and help them shape up their dancing.
Which they would have occasional public days where the public could come and
watch them perform their dances.
Which I think is hilarious because that's the same thing
elementary schools do today, right?
It's like all of the kids have to learn this dance and like little
song and all of the parents then have to show up and watch it.
So nothing's really changed since the 1780s.
So that would be the morning of them doing lessons.
They would be split up into different classes based, on one factor would be age.
Of course, the really young children like Jane would have been together.
All the older girls would have been in a different class.
But also partially on actual social class, the parlour boarders got
extra special lessons compared to the rest of the students it seemed like.
And also at the school, they would learn that if they were enjoying
this video, that they should like it.
That was like a very important lesson that was repeated daily.
Okay. Not really.
But if you do want to like this video, that would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
But then, after their lessons in the mornings, in the afternoons,
they pretty much ran around and did whatever they want.
They could play in the gardens.
They could read shocking novels.
She would hang out with Cassandra and possibly tag along while Cassandra
gossiped with the other girls.
And of course all the girls would eat their meals together and they
would sleep six to a bedroom.
Also at one point while Jane and Cassandra and the other Jane were
at the school, their elder brothers of Edward Austen and Edward Cooper
came to take them out to dinner.
Which I'm sure they super enjoyed, but I was thinking all the other girls at
the school probably also enjoyed it.
They were probably like watching out the window being like, "it's a boy."
I mean, they did interact with the boys school across the way, but I
think if anyone has ever been in a situation, whether you're at a girls
camp or a girl school, for some reason.
You know that if you've just been around other teenage girls, for day after day.
And then all of a sudden, a boy shows up.
It doesn't matter if he's not that great of a guy.
Everybody is in love with him.
I had this experience when I was about 14 years old working this volunteer program.
Where essentially it was a bunch of teenage girls volunteering to help,
like with these six year old kids.
For one day, they brought in this teen boy to help.
Every teen girl and the program was after this guy like he
was the last man on earth.
Because it's like, "We have not seen a boy over the age of six years old in weeks!"
Anyway, that's just what it made me think of.
Which has again, nothing to do with Jane Austen.
But was relevant and came to my mind so now it's in this video, I'm sorry.
Right around the time Jane Austen turns 11, her dad comes and takes
both her and Cassandra back home.
And that is the end of Jane Austen's formal schooling.
I say formal because technically she pretty much lives at
a boys school back home.
Her dad does take in pupils to tutor, which is something I talk about in my
sort of short biography of Jane Austen.
I will think that video here.
And also, she seems to have unrestricted access to her father's library.
She's an extensive reader.
And it's very interesting when she goes home from the school, she
starts writing her juvenile writings, which are still readable today.
And are hilarious and incredibly awesome by the way.
And so I do think that a lot of Jane Austen's education did come
from her family, from books and her own lifetime of being curious.
This has been: what it was like to go to school with Jane Austen.
Let me know in the comments below, if you think you would have
liked to go to a school, ran by a woman with a fake French name?
My name is Ellie Dashwood and this is my channel were I talk about
history, literature, and apparently awkward memories from when I was 14.
So yeah, if you like any of those things, please subscribe and have an awesome day.
Bye!!!
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