Jane Austen’s formal education was brief. Between the ages of seven and ten, she spent a little over two years attending two different boarding schools, and she returned home for good in December 1786, shortly before she turned eleven.
Now, just in time for next year’s celebration of Austen’s 250th birthday, the local museum in the English town of Reading has announced public tours of one of these schools!
Well, sort of.
It is indubitably true that Jane and her older sister, Cassandra, attended the grandly named (but not exactly grand) Reading Ladies’ Boarding School in 1785-6. It is likewise true that this school was located in the former Gateway of Reading Abbey, a medieval monastery destroyed in 1538, during Henry VIII’s anti-Catholic campaign.
The abbey’s ruins, including the Gateway, still stand, and on most Saturdays from April to October of next year, the Reading Museum will be leading tours of the Gateway that include “an exclusive visit to Austen's school” (emphasis in the original).
Alas, while these tours seem likely to be fun and informative, their level of Austen authenticity (Austen-ticity? Sorry, couldn’t resist) looks to be approximate.
The Reading Ladies’ Boarding School no longer exists, and according to the museum’s website, in 1861, the Gateway itself “collapsed in a storm” and “had to be substantially rebuilt” under the guidance of a Victorian architect. And although today’s Gateway includes a model schoolroom—which is presumably where the “exclusive” Austen tours will go—it’s a model Victorian schoolroom, where, these days, visiting school groups put on period costumes, practice writing on slates, and take lessons from a session leader pretending to be a Victorian schoolmaster. (Judging from the reviews on the website: Best. Field Trip. Ever.)
In other words, this tour of “Austen’s school” will take you to a modern interpretation of a schoolroom from a period later than Austen’s own, housed in a structure that’s been largely overhauled since Austen’s day. Plus, it looks like this “exclusive” schoolroom visit has been available, at least to school groups, since 2018, when the museum moved the exhibit into the Gateway.
Are those reasons to skip the Austen tour? Absolutely not! It’s still a visit to the remains of a medieval abbey, in a place once frequented by a little girl who would grow up to become one of England’s greatest novelists. Given how few physical traces of Austen’s life remain, that’s good enough for this Janeite.
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