Pen and ink had been used for centuries, and for children and adults alike the technology had hardly changed. Quill pens, usually made from goose or similar feathers, were the norm, although pens with metal nibs were making an appearance. Whatever the kind of pen, it needed constant dipping into an inkwell, and after writing about a dozen lines, nibs of quill pens needed trimming with a small knife – giving us the term ‘penknife’. Writing to his wife Sarah from HMS Minotaur when moored in Yarmouth Roads, William Wilkinson commented: ‘I am obliged to borrow this ink and paper, and am writing with the back of the pen.’43 This was one way of prolonging the use of a quill pen rather than trimming it.
Because quill pens wore out, there was a perpetual market for goose feathers. Many came from a traditional production area in the Lincolnshire Fens, which one visitor there described:
The geese are plucked five times in the year; the first plucking is at Lady-Day, for feathers and quills, and the same is renewed, for feathers only, four times more between that and Michaelmas. The old geese submit quietly to the operation, but the young ones are very noisy and unruly. I once saw this performed, and observed that goslings of six weeks old were not spared; for their tails were plucked…to habituate them early to what they were to come to. If the season proves cold, numbers of geese die by this barbarous custom.44
Ink could be bought in shops, but many households made their own. In 1805 a mineral agent called William Jenkin wrote down his recipe:
¾ lb. of Alleppo Galls – bruised (but not small)
4 oz. of Clean Coperas – 4 oz. of Gum Arabick
1 oz. of Roche Allum –
Put the above in 3 quarts of rain water; shake it often for about 6 or 7 days.45
Aleppo galls were good-quality oak galls that formed a substance which etched the ink into the paper, while the other ingredients provided extra colour and diluted the mixture. To stop the ink from smudging, it could be dried quickly with blotting paper.
While parchment or vellum was preferred for some official documents, paper was used for most other purposes. It was manufactured by hand, largely using finely shredded rags. This produced a paper that was much more durable than modern types made from wood pulp. Paper was sold in several grades from very fine to coarse, and it varied in colour (the whiter the better) and price. Hot-pressed paper was finished by being rolled between heated rollers, resulting in a higher-quality paper with a smoother surface. In 1775 Parson Woodforde noted: ‘For a quire of paper of a man at the door, pd. 0.1.0’,46 and over a decade later he paid the same in a shop for ‘a quire of black edg’d letter paper’.47 A quire was a bundle of twenty-four sheets, and two quires cost roughly a week’s wages for a housemaid, far more expensive than paper today.
Well-to-do young boys might start their education at home, taught by their parents, as with young William Holland, or tutored by a governess, alongside any sisters. Next, they might attend a small private school or academy. In 1782, when Carl Moritz was travelling through England, he visited one such establishment:
I found means to see the regulation of one seminary of learning, here called an academy. Of these places of education, there is a prodigious number in London and its vicinity; though, notwithstanding their pompous names, they are, in reality, nothing more than small schools, set up by private persons, for children and young people…From forty to fifty pounds [per annum] is the most that is generally paid in these academies…It is, in general, the clergy, who have small incomes, who set up these schools both in town and country.48
This is precisely what Jane Austen’s father George did for several years at the Steventon parsonage, where he taught reading, writing and the classics to his own sons (but not his daughters) alongside a handful of fee-paying pupils, some of them boarders.
Older boys could next attend a local grammar school, most of which had been set up after the dissolution of the monasteries as charitable endowments by wealthy benefactors, teaching Latin grammar to the virtual exclusion of anything else so as to enable pupils to enter Oxford or Cambridge University where Latin was also predominant. By the late eighteenth century many of these schools also taught ancient Greek and subjects like mathematics and literature, as well as oratory and team sports such as cricket. Some grammar schools were founded even earlier, in the medieval period, including Winchester College (1382) and Eton College (1440), which was granted a monopoly 10 miles around Eton ‘so it may excel all other grammar schools…and be called the lady mother and mistress of all other grammar schools’.49
Almost every English town had an endowed grammar school. They were open to the public with a public management, unlike privately run schools. However, the landed elite in particular chose to send their sons as boarders to a select number of these public grammar schools, notably Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, Rugby, Charterhouse and Shrewsbury, and in England the term ‘public school’ came to describe, bizarrely, such exclusive, private, fee-paying boarding schools for the privileged minority. When on his walking tour of England, Moritz found himself at Eton:
I passed Eton College, one of the first public schools in England…I suppose it was during the hour of recreation, or in playtime, when I got to Eton; for I saw the boys in the yard before the college, which was inclosed by a low wall, in great numbers, walking and running up and down. Their dress struck me particularly: from the biggest to the least, they all wore black cloaks, or gowns, over coloured clothes; through which there was an aperture for their arms. They also wore, besides, a square hat, or cap, that seemed to be covered with velvet…They were differently employed: some talking together, some playing, and some had their books in their hands, and were reading; but I was soon obliged to get out of their sight, they stared at me so, as I came along, all over dust, with my stick in my hand.50
Connections with influential people were needed to get children into these public schools, and William Holland was thrilled when, in 1808, his ten-year-old son William was accepted by Charterhouse in London: ‘He was nominated by Mr Windham [an Eton-educated politician] by the application of my good friend Mrs Benwell and Mrs Windham both which ladies I was well acquainted with in my younger days…It is a Glorious Act and deserves to be recorded, this has settled the education of my son William for the time to come and [I] hope it will be the foundation of his future advancement in this life.’51 As well as admitting fee-paying scholars, Charterhouse accepted poor boys, primarily the sons of impecunious gentlemen. That same year his friend Mrs Penelope Benwell (née Loveday) became Mrs Hind when she married John Hind, vicar of Findon in Sussex – her previous husband was the Reverend William Benwell, who had died in 1796.
A few years later, in 1813, Holland was even happier on hearing from the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, who promised
a studentship…for my son as soon as he can arrange matters for that purpose…so this is an important thing indeed. He is sure of patronage of the Dean, and studentships are in fact fellowships, they succeed to [church] livings…and all this I have gained through my very valuable and zealous friend Mrs. Hind and not only this but his appointment to the Charter House was through the same channel. Mrs. Hind was the first mover, and her cousin Mrs. Wyndham [Windham] took it up.52
While boys might be sent to school, girls were generally taught at home – if at all – by governesses or by their mothers, who might themselves have received minimal education. In the summer of 1812, Nelly Weeton moved to High Royd in Yorkshire as a governess for the Armitage family. In a letter to a friend, she described her status:
A governess is almost shut out of society; not choosing to associate with servants, and not being treated as an equal by the heads of the house or their visitors, she must possess some fortitude and strength of mind to render herself tranquil or happy; but indeed, the master or mistress of a house, if they have any goodness of heart, would take pains to prevent her feeling her inferiority. For my own part, I have no cause of just complaint; but I know some that are treated in a most mortifying manner.53
As a child, Nelly’s own desire to learn had been stifled, even though her widowed mother was running a school in Upholland:
my mother continually checked any propensity I shewed to writing or composing; representing to me what a useless being I should prove if I were allowed to give up my time to writing or reading, when domestic duties were likely to have so frequent a call upon me. ‘It is very likely, my dear girl,’ she would often say, ‘that you will have to earn your livelihood, at least in great measure; and a wretched subsistence do they obtain who have it to earn by their literary abilities! Or should you become a wife, think in what a ragged, neglected state your family would be if you gave up much of your time to books.’54
In Somerset, Holland grumbled about one educated girl, Elizabeth Poole: ‘This little girl is very clever and learns surprizingly and writes Latin letters but I should not like any woman the better for understanding Latin and Greek. All pedantick learning of this kind makes them conceited. I do not approve of the manner of boys in petticoats.’55 The same age as his son William, the two children enjoyed playing together whenever she was visiting her uncle Tom Poole at nearby Nether Stowey. A few years later, when she was fourteen, Holland elaborated: ‘She has a thirst after knowledge of every kind to the greatest degree. She has made great proficiency in Latin and Greek and is making the same advance in French and Italian…It is a pity she was not a boy for then such studies would turn to better account…I know not where this will end but is not a likely mode to get her well married.’56
Holland’s own daughter Margaret was given a basic education at home, with private tutors for music and French, but she never married. In spite of her education, Elizabeth did marry in 1825, at the age of twenty-eight, becoming the wife of John Sandford, Archdeacon at Wells in Somerset.57 In Nelly Weeton’s view, women deserved equal opportunities: ‘Why are not females permitted to study physic, divinity, astronomy, &c., &c., with their attendants, chemistry, botany, logic, mathematics, &c. To be sure the mere study is not prohibited, but the practise is in great measure. Who would employ a female physician? who would listen to a female divine, except to ridicule? I could myself almost laugh at the idea.’58
Young ladies were expected to become accomplished with practical skills. Education for girls was viewed as a luxury, though by Jane Austen’s childhood there was an increasing number of fee-paying ‘dame schools’ for young girls and boys. The standard of such establishments varied hugely. Many were run by older women like Nelly’s mother, who lacked qualifications and could not earn a living any other way. The term ‘dame’ was a respectful way of addressing these women, who might have no claim to rank other than schoolmistress.
At the age of seven Jane Austen was sent away to Oxford with her sister Cassandra and her cousin Jane Cooper to be taught by a private tutor.59 In the summer of 1783, after the tutor and her pupils moved to Southampton, all three girls fell ill with typhus, and Jane Austen nearly died. She and her sister recuperated at home and then joined their cousin in 1785 at the Reading Ladies’ Boarding School, but were removed at the end of the following year, putting a stop to their tuition. By the time Jane Austen was eleven years old, her formal education was over.60
If educating females was considered pointless, educating the poorest in society, both boys and girls, generated real fear that it might encourage bloody revolution, as in France, or, at the very least, a lack of deference to the elite. This opinion was not universal, and many charity schools for the poor had long been established by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. With the rapid population growth and movement into towns, increased worries about the lack of schooling for poor and destitute children led to the formation of many more charity schools and Sunday schools. Some were free of charge, others charged a penny or twopence weekly.
In the early years of the nineteenth century nonconformist churches actively set up Sunday schools and charity schools. The main group of nonconformist schools were the British Schools, established by the British and Foreign School Society, in which Joseph Lancaster was especially prominent with his Lancasterian system of schools. Following this nonconformist lead, the Church of England – through the National Society for Promoting Religious Education – began to found schools of its own for the poor that became known as National Schools and in which the clergyman Andrew Bell played a leading role.61
While touring the Midlands in 1790, John Byng expressed his prejudice against schools for the lower classes: ‘I have met some of the newly-adopted Sunday-schools today, and seen others in their schools; I am point blank against these institutions; the poor shou’d not read, and of writing I never heard, for them, the use.’62 In July 1802 William Holland took an opposite view, in support of the local Sunday school at Over Stowey, convinced that it could teach the poor to be good Christians and know their place:
We had some talk about Sunday schools yesterday. Mr King [a wealthy physician] thought that they did harm, that plowmen were better without learning. I answered that I could not think that the teaching them of their duty could do any harm; obliging children to go to Church, teaching them to read and say their Catechism, to give them some sense of Religion and a due subordination to their superiors must be of some service in these times.63
Five years later the Cornishman Davies Giddy, Member of Parliament for Bodmin in Cornwall, spoke during a House of Commons debate about the Parochial Schools Bill, which attempted (but failed) to make all parishes provide free education for the labouring poor. A renowned scientist, Giddy had himself received a privileged education, but he was unconvinced about mass education:
it would…be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture, and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them; instead of teaching them subordination, it would render them factious and refractory…it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors.64
Despite such opposition, goodwill increased towards charity schools, and in Cornwall in 1811 contributions were sought for a Sunday school at Wheal Alfred, which the mineral agent William Jenkin outlined:
Captains [of mines] John Davey and Samuel Grose (the two principal agents in Wheal Alfred Mine) having observed the profligacy [lack of decency] of the Children of many of the Labourers in that Mine, – and particularly of those who cannot read – have begun a Sundays School and have from 250 to 300 Boys and Girls under their care. But finding the expense of Books and rewards for the meritorious to be too heavy for them, they are under the necessity of soliciting the aid of those Gentlemen who are interested in the Mine, and of others who may feel disposed to assist such a praiseworthy undertaking…W. H. Hore [Hoare], a banker in London, is amongst the list of subscribers with a £5 donation. The number of Men, Boys and Girls employed in the Mine is about 1000.65
Most charity schools were obsessed with religious teaching and moral improvement, though children did acquire elementary literacy skills. James Lackington was born in Wellington, Somerset, in 1746, the eldest of a family of eleven children. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Taunton at the age of fourteen, later moving to Bristol and in 1773 to London. Taught to read by the Methodists, he became obsessed with books, and with a legacy of £10 from his grandfather and a loan of £5 from the Methodists, he established what became a thriving bookselling business. His was a rare success story. Most lower-class children never realised their potential, as was the case with Thomas Carter, who worked as a tailor in often wretched circumstances. His autobiography, published in 1845, reveals a highly intelligent man, trapped by poverty.66
In 1816 witnesses before a Parliamentary Select Committee testified that education was improving the general behaviour of ‘the lower orders’ in London. Henry Althens described the East London Auxiliary Sunday School Union Society, which had ten Sunday schools tea
ching nearly 1300 children: ‘First, they are taught to read, and our main object is to teach them to read the Bible, and we exhort them to attend to all the moral duties of life. Our chief object is to convey religious instruction to the children, believing that to be the foundation of all moral good.’67 Writing was taught only in the evenings, as a reward, more often to boys than to girls, who were considered better suited to needlework.
It was reckoned that about half of all children in England received no education at all, not even at Sunday schools, which gave children an opportunity for education on their one day off work. The concept of teenagers, a time of adolescence, did not exist until the twentieth century. Females of teenage years were either working, seeking husbands, or both, but rarely being educated. Charity schools taught boys until they were fourteen, the usual age to start an apprenticeship, though many went to work before then: the poorer the family, the shorter the childhood. By thirteen or fourteen, if not sooner, childhood for the majority was over. Only a privileged few, like William Holland’s son, remained in education.
For boys of the upper and middle classes who did not prolong their education, joining the Royal Navy was a popular next step. Nelson joined as a captain’s servant in 1771 at the age of twelve, but some boys were even younger. Jane Austen had two brothers, Francis (Frank) and Charles, who joined the navy. Francis attended the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth from the age of twelve and joined his first ship two years later, while Charles went to the same Academy in 1791 at the same age and joined his first ship three years later. Jane had four other brothers. The oldest, James, went to Oxford University and then became a clergyman. George, a sickly child who suffered from fits, was looked after by foster-parents, funded by the Austens. Edward was adopted by distant cousins, Thomas Knight and his wife, and inherited a fortune, while Henry, Jane’s favourite brother, had a varied career. After Oxford University, he joined the militia and later became an army agent and a banker, but after his bank failed, he too went into the Church and spent the rest of his life as a clergyman.
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