Letter #4



The Abbey School in Reading or Northanger Abbey?

 Sunday 18 September 2011
Letter #4, To Cassandra, from Rowling, "My Dearest Cassandra, The letter which I have this moment received from you has diverted me beyond moderation. I could die of laughter at it, as they used to say at school. You are indeed the finest comic writer of the present age." - Jane Austen, Thursday September 1 1796.

When Jane was seven years old, she and Cassandra went away to school in Oxford with Mrs. Cawley. She was a widow and said to have been a "stiff-mannered person." During the time of Jane and Cassandra's schooling, Mrs. Cawley moved to Southampton where Jane and Cassandra came down with a putrid fever. Jane almost died.

Not too long after this Jane and Cassandra were sent away to school at the Abbey School at Reading, "Not because she was thought old enough to profit much by the instruction there imparted, but because she would have been miserable without her sister". Mrs. Austen said, "If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate."

Mrs. Sherwood, in her Autobiography, Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood, talks about the school-house at Reading, "or rather the abbey itself, was exceedingly interesting, ... the ancient building... consisted of a gateway with rooms above, and on each side of it a vast staircase, of which the balustrades had originally been gilt... The best part of the house was encompassed by a beautiful, old-fashioned garden where the young ladies were allowed to wander under tall trees in hot summer evenings." Inspiration for the abbey in Northanger Abbey and Mrs. Goddard's school in Emma?

Anyway, Jane was finished with formal schooling by the ripe-old age of nine.

I would love to be able to read Cassandra's letters to Jane.

Today, chapter four, the chapter in Jane Auster, Her Homes and Her Friends, by Constance Hill is on the Abbey School. I wrote the first part of this post on Jane and Cassandra's schooling before I went to the chapter. This was a happy surprise. I like that they also made the connection to Northanger Abbey.