Becoming Jane Austen
The True Love Story That Inspired
the Classic Novels
by John Spence
Part of a continuing series.
We don't know what it was like at Mrs. Cawley's, but it was not home and had the air of being somewhat haphazard and unsettled as a school. After only a few months Mrs. Cawley moved with the girls to Southampton, where in September there was an outbreak in the town of "putrid fever" - probably typhus. The Austen sisters both fell ill, but Mrs. Cawley didn't inform their parents. Jane Cooper, though wrote to her mother, and Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Austen hurried to Southampton to see about their daughters.
Jane Austen
|
Cassandra and Jan recovered, but their Aunt Cooper came down with the fever and died in October, leaving poor twelve-year-old Jane Cooper with the knowledge that she had been the unwitting instrument of her own mother's death because she had raised the alarm in Southampton. Jane Cooper now remained at home with her bereaved father, and Jane Austen and Cassandra were back at Steventon.
Mrs. Cawley apparently moved back to Oxford, making her reason for having gone to Southampton in the first place all the more obscure. She died in oxford in the autumn of 1787 and left her money to her brother, as in retrospect might have been predicted. She asked to be buried in the Cooper family vault at Henley, though her husband was buried in Oxford.
Back To Top ‹ Previous Article | Next Article ›
