My beloved aunt, Jennifer Gosse, who has died aged 92, taught English at Downe House school in Berkshire for more than 30 years. She was an inspirational teacher, fondly remembered by generations of pupils until her retirement in 1991.
She lived in Cold Ash, the village close to the school, and in later years shared a house with her friend and fellow teacher, Mary Bellhouse, who wrote about Chinese language and history. After Mary’s death in 2017, Jennifer continued to live in their house, which adjoined the Hermitage woods, supported by her neighbours and friends, enjoying the birds and wildlife at every opportunity.
Jennifer was born in London, into the distinguished Gosse family. She was the daughter of Philip Gosse, a naturalist and author of several books on piracy, and his second wife, Irene Harmsworth (nee Hawkshaw). Philip was the son of Sir Edmund Gosse, author of the memoir Father and Son, and the grandson of the Victorian naturalist Philip Henry Gosse. Jennifer’s aunt was the painter and etcher Sylvia Gosse, and her great-aunt was Laura Epps, also a painter, who was married to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, whose work can be seen at Tate Britain.
Her parents moved to West Sussex, to a house situated below Chanctonbury Ring in the South Downs, where Jennifer spent her childhood, together with her older half-sister, Hazel, the daughter of her mother’s first marriage, who had suffered from polio at the age of five. Jennifer’s parents divorced when she was very young and she was brought up by her father and a nanny. She acquired a love for the countryside and all living creatures from an early age. Asked whether she liked reading, she replied that it was like breathing.
From 1943 Jennifer attended Downe House as a pupil. She left the school in 1950, but, after studying at Newnham College, Cambridge, eventually returned as a teacher of English in 1960. She later served as head of English, and for a while as deputy headteacher. She took great delight in her pupils’ achievements.
She was warm-hearted and erudite, seeing the good in almost everyone she met. Perhaps the last book she read, with enormous enthusiasm, was the biography of Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, which was set in the Berkshire countryside that she loved so much.
She is survived by four half-nephews, John, Stephen, Tom and Richard, and me.
