The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

FRANCES MARY BUSS

Photo. by Russell and Sons.
Yours always [** Illegible]
Frances M. Buss

FRANCES MARY BUSS

AND HER WORK FOR EDUCATION

BY

ANNIE E. RIDLEY

“We work in hope”

The School Motto

WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

AND NEW YORK

1895

All rights reserved

PREFACE

In a life written by a friend for friends there must of necessity be more of the intimacy of private friendship than in a record written dispassionately for an unknown public. The world in general knows Frances Mary Buss as a public worker—capable, energetic, successful. By her friends she was loved as one of the most womanly of women—true, and tender, and loyal. Her work, to which all women of this generation owe so much, must assume prominence in the story of her life; but what is most desired is to show her as she was to her friends.

My warmest thanks are here offered to all who have so freely and so kindly helped me in this labour of love: first, to Miss Buss’ own family and personal friends, and to old pupils; to Mrs. Bryant, D.Sc., and the members of the staff in both schools; and, for many valuable educational details, to Miss Emily Davies, Miss Beale, Mrs. William Grey, Miss Shirreff, Miss Mary Gurney, Miss Agnes J. Ward, Miss Hughes, and Dr. and Mrs. Fitch.

A. E. R.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

EARLY LIFE.

BOOK II.

PUBLIC WORK.

BOOK III.

LATER YEARS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ERRATA.

Page 1, line 2, for “July 29” read “July 18.”

Page 29, line 12, for “lighted” read “lifted.”

Page 39, line 25, for “to play” read “for play.”

Page 111, line 27, for “lady on” read “lady in.”

• Transcriber’s Note:
  • These corrections have been applied to this electronic version of the book—Oct. 25, 2019.

INTRODUCTORY.
THEN AND NOW.

“Educate women, and you educate the teachers of men; if the child is father to the man, the woman forms the man in educating the child. The cause of female education is then, even in the most selfish sense, the cause of mankind at large.”—C. G. Nicolay.

Gracious speech can seldom have been more truthful than when the Prince of Wales said, on July 18, 1879, that few of their many public functions had afforded the Princess and himself more gratification than the opening of the great hall, given by the Clothworkers’ Company to the North London Collegiate School for Girls, a ceremony putting the final touch to the work of so many years.

It would not be easy to find a more attractive sight than this spacious building, filled with its five hundred happy young girls, either on “Founder’s Day,” when, decked in the school flower, we see them in that April mood in which

“The heart with rapture fills,

And dances with the daffodils;”

or when, on Prize-day, in the glory of summer roses, their jubilant young voices ring out in the favourite school-song, as, with fearless and confident eyes, they look “Forty years on!” while their elders, looking back down that long vista, think of the difference they can remember between Then and Now.

It was in this hall, on the prize-day of 1892, that the chairman, Mr. Fearon, drew a remarkable contrast between the present days of light for girls’ education, and the dark days of the first Schools Inquiry Commission of 1864, of which he had been a member. Then, it was still possible for the Commissioners to gravely ask if girls were capable of learning Latin and mathematics? Now, as he pointed out, this question might be answered by the results of this one year for this one school—eighteen passes, with two honours, on the University Examinations—to say nothing of the recent success at Cambridge, where a woman took a place above the Senior Wrangler.

As a member of the Commission of 1864, and, later, of the Endowed Schools Commission, Mr. Fearon was glad to claim some part in the making of this first public school for girls, of which he felt that “if ever there was an institution of which they might be proud, the success of which was calculated to stir the pulses, excite the emulation and enthusiasm of others, and give intense satisfaction to all who took part in it, either as founder, well-wishers, or friends, it was the North London Collegiate School for Girls.”

Then, from the brilliant hall, with its “rose-bud garden of girls,” the scene changed to the dark November day—November 30, 1865, a date to keep in mind—when, struggling through the November fog, Emily Davies and Frances Mary Buss made their way to the dull committee-room in Victoria Street, where the Commissioners awaited their coming.

The members of the Commission were Lord Taunton, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Stanley, Sir Stafford Northcote, the Dean of Chichester, the Rev. A. W. Thorold, Mr. Acland, Mr. Baines, Mr. Forster, Mr. Erle, and Dr. Storrar. To these, as Assistant-Commissioners, were added Messrs. D. B. Fearon, H. A. Giffard, C. H. Staunton, T. H. Green, J. L. Hammond, J. G. Fitch, J. Bryce, and H. M. Bompas.

The work of this Commission lasted from 1864 to 1869, and, later, many of the same gentlemen were appointed on the Endowed Schools Commission, and may be said to have carried on the same work, since they here applied the remedy to ills previously discovered by their researches. There are few of these names which will not be held in lasting honour by all thoughtful women who know how much is due for steady help in every cause most concerning their welfare.

It has, nevertheless, taken thirty years—since that same November 30, 1865—to give women a place side by side with men, on a Royal Commission, when, in 1894, Mrs. Bryant, D.Sc., took the seat Miss Buss was no longer able to fill on the second Royal Commission of Inquiry into Secondary Education. It is not difficult to imagine the feeling of satisfaction with which Miss Buss saw her “brilliant young fellow-worker,” as she delighted to call her, taking this proud position.

Further to mark the contrast between 1865 and 1894, we may take a passage in a letter from Miss Buss to Miss Davies, dated December 5, 1865, whilst still waiting for the Commissioners’ Report, in which she says—

“When will the evidence come, I wonder? I am so curious to know what I said, and what you said too. It is very odd, but the mist which surrounds that interview does not clear.

“They were indeed kind, and more than kind, as you say. As for Mr. Acland, he is what the ‘Home and Colonial’ consider you to be!

“I can’t get over my astonishment at their civility; and it is such fun to be told to ‘take a chair,’ as if we were the ‘party’ whom servants are so fond of announcing.”

This is the one side. Wherever it was possible to see “fun” Miss Buss would see it. But there was another side too, revealed in a little remark made by Mr. Fearon to Mrs. Bryant, when the prize-giving was over at which he gave his reminiscences of that November day: “We were all so much struck by their perfect womanliness. Why, there were tears in Miss Buss’ eyes!”

And small wonder if this were so! In 1865—thirty years ago—it was an event to cause a heart-thrill when a woman was summoned, not to meekly receive information, but actually to give it; not to listen, but to speak, and before so important a body. It is quite conceivable that as they paused on the threshold these two ladies may have felt far more than a merely imaginative flash of sympathy with brave women of old, who had faced sterner tribunals to pay forfeit with life itself for the holding of new and strange doctrines.

To say that great events may hang on smallest incidents is a mere truism, trite as true. But we cannot doubt that a real turning point in the history of the English people was reached in the first official recognition of the equal share of women in the task of training the young. From this date what was before impossible became fact, and education takes rank as a true science.

It is of special interest in our own day, when the jarring note of antagonism between men and women is too often struck, to look back and remember the help given by men to the higher education of women. We note that the two most definite starting points of the new educational movement are to be found in the very innermost sanctum, in the strongest stronghold of masculine rights and privileges—the Universities and the House of Commons.

When, in 1863, the University of Cambridge opened its Local Examinations for girls, and when, in 1864, the House of Commons gave authority to a Royal Commission to extend its inquiry into the state of the education of girls, the new era was practically inaugurated. Henceforth women became free to do whatever they had power to do.

Nor was this the first help given by men to the better education of girls. In 1848—the great year of revolution—the professors of King’s College had opened the classes which speedily developed into Queen’s College, the forerunner of Bedford and Cheltenham Colleges. In 1850 the Rev. David Laing, who had been associated with the Queen’s College movement, gave his valuable help in the expansion of Miss Buss’ first small school on similar lines into the North London Collegiate School for Ladies. In 1865 this school stood so high that Miss Buss was asked by the Commissioners to give her views of education generally. This summons was doubtless the result of the report of the Assistant Commissioners who conducted the inquiry.

It was mainly due to the efforts of Miss Davies and Miss Bostock that girls’ schools were included in this inquiry. These ladies sent up a widely signed memorial from persons who had been interested in the extension to girls of the Local Examinations. Mr. Roby, the secretary, early in 1865, responded favourably to this appeal, pointing out that, as so many girls were privately educated, the limits of investigation in their case were much narrower than those for boys, and also pointing out that the numbers and value of endowments for girls were also restricted. But, “subject to these limitations,” he added, “the Commissioners were willing to embrace in their inquiry the education of both sexes alike.”

He stated also that the Commissioners expected to derive much important information from the evidence of persons of special experience and knowledge in the various matters connected with their inquiry. Among these witnesses they were ready to include such persons as may be recommended to them as best qualified to express opinions on the subject of this memorial.

In November, 1865, Miss Davies and Miss Buss were called to give their evidence. Miss Beale followed in April, 1866, and, during that same year, information on the education and the employment of women was given by six other ladies—Miss Wolstenholme, Miss Porter, Miss Kyberd, Miss Martin, Miss Smith, and Miss Gertrude King.

In 1870 a valuable summary of this evidence was compiled by Miss Beale from the twenty large volumes issued by the Commissioners. It is from this smaller blue-book that the following extracts are taken, the evidence of Miss Davies, Miss Buss, and Miss Beale being selected as characteristic of the views of the whole.

Read in the light of the recent University honours gained by women, many of the questions and answers of these examinations will have a curious interest for the “modern girl.”

When Lord Taunton put the question to Miss Buss:—

“‘Your girls come up to you extremely ignorant,’ there is evident conviction in her brief reply: ‘Extremely ignorant!’

“‘Do they seem to be very little taught at all?’—‘In all the essentials, hardly ever. They seldom know any arithmetic, for instance. We have a large number of girls, of thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, come to us who can scarcely do the simplest sum in arithmetic.’

“‘Have you taken any interest in the movement which has been made to induce the University of Cambridge to institute examinations and confer honorary distinctions on girls?’—‘Yes; twenty-five of our pupils went up to the experimental examination.’

“‘Do you anticipate any beneficial results from the steps which the University of Cambridge has been induced to adopt?’—‘Yes; I am quite sure that great good has been done already. An immense stimulus has been given, especially to English and arithmetic. The girls have something to work for, some hope, something to aim at, and the teachers also.’

“‘As far as you are able to judge, do you think the class of school-mistresses is as good as it ought to be?’—‘The class of teachers generally is not.’

“‘In your opinion, should the education of a girl differ essentially from that of a boy in the same rank of life, with regard to the subjects which are to be taught?’—‘I think not, but it is rather difficult to ascertain what is the proper education for a boy.’

“‘You believe there is not such a distinction between the mental powers of the two classes as to require any wide distinction between the good education given to a girl and that to a boy?’—‘I am sure girls can learn anything they are taught in an interesting manner, and for which they have a motive to work.’”

Miss Beale, when asked her opinion as to the admission of girls to University degrees, replied in a slightly modified strain—

“‘It seems to me that our opinions are so divided at present as to the modifications that will be introduced into girls’ education, that I should regret to see anything done hastily to assimilate it to that which may perhaps be altered for boys; but at the same time I think it is good for boys and girls to have similar tastes that their minds may not be entirely bent in different ways, so that in their after life they should understand and be interested in the same things.’

“‘In using the word “similar,” do you mean identical?’—‘I have had some boys as pupils in mathematics, and, as far as I can judge from these and the public schools they attended, I do not think that the mathematical powers of women enable them generally (their physical strength I dare say has a great deal to do with it) to go so far in the higher mathematics as boys; and I think we should be straining the mind (which is of all things to be deprecated) if we were to try to force them to take up several examinations as are necessarily passed by those who are taking the higher branches at the Universities.’

“‘I therefore probably should not be wrong in inferring that, while you recognize the similarity of the male and female mind, you would not go the length of saying that they must necessarily move in the same channel?’—‘No, I should be sorry to see them take up classics at all exclusively, because I do not think that, as regards the education of boys, it has been the most desirable to limit it thus. That is my individual opinion.’”

But Miss Davies, after her two years’ experience as Hon. Sec. of the Cambridge Local Examinations, had no hesitation concerning identity of standard for boys and for girls, when Lord Lyttelton put the case to her—

“You have taken a very active part in persuading the two Universities to listen to facts which you had to lay before them in reference to the state of female education. Will you be so good as to tell us what difficulties you have encountered, and what objection you have met with on behalf of either gentlemen or ladies, and then make any remarks which you have to make upon these difficulties?”

Objections and difficulties equally disappear in Miss Davies’ concise answer—

“It is difficult to state objections fairly when one does not agree with them. I think it was chiefly a sort of general feeling that it was not in accordance with the fitness of things. The objections seem generally to resolve themselves into that.”

To the proposition of some special scheme of examination which might be adopted for the special requirements of women, she said simply—

“I do not see what advantage it would have. It would be difficult to frame a curriculum specially suited to girls, because almost everybody has a separate theory about what it is good for girls to learn—about what is apposite to the female mind.”

The three ladies were agreed in accepting generally the verdict of the Commissioners on the existing state of girls’ schools, afterwards thus briefly summed up—

“It cannot be denied that our picture of middle-class education is, on the whole, unfavourable. The general deficiency in girls’ education is stated with the utmost confidence, and with entire agreement, with whatever difference of statement, by many witnesses of competent authority. Want of thoroughness and foundation; slovenliness and showy superficiality; inattention to rudiments; undue time given to accomplishments, and these not taught intelligently or in any scientific manner; want of organization;—these may sufficiently indicate the character of the complaints received.”

There is also complete agreement as regards not only the need of better schools, but of better systems of training for teachers. Although thankful to accept concessions on the existing lines of boys’ education, faute de mieux, they are by no means persuaded that this education is even for boys all that could be desired. Even at that date they could venture to intimate the opinion that the mere fact of a University course did not, per se, make a good teacher.

Miss Davies called special attention to the fact, that while no endowments were applied to girls above the Elementary schools, many of these must have been intended for girls as well as boys, since they form part of bequests made “to the children” of certain parishes or districts.

Dr. Fitch has pointed out[^[1]] that at this period, whilst 1192 boys were receiving at Christ’s Hospital an education fitting them for the Universities, there were eighteen girls only, and these trained as domestic servants. Elsewhere he goes into the question, showing that while charity schools were open to girls, they were entirely excluded from the grammar schools, where boys were being trained “to serve God and the State.” There is scarcely a record, he says, of any school whose founder deliberately intended a liberal education for girls.

[1]. “Woman and the Universities,” Contemporary Review, August, 1890.

“A girl was not expected ‘to serve God or State,’ and was, therefore, not invited to the University or grammar school; but she might, if poor, be needed to contribute to the comfort of her ‘betters’ as an apprentice or a servant, and therefore the charity schools were open to her.”

And Dr. Fitch’s own experience confirms this fact. Mr. George Moore, wishing to devote £10,000 to scholarships, sent in a scheme for the consideration of some of the leading educationalists, when, finding mention only of boys, Dr. Fitch ventured to suggest the fact that boys have sisters, receiving the explanation from Mr. Moore that it was from no intention of excluding them that they had been omitted, but simply that it had never occurred to him to think of girls in such a connection.

With the Endowed Schools Commission this state of things came to an end. We cannot tell how far the influence of the evidence given by women to the Schools Inquiry Commission may have extended, but it was then decided that “in any enactment or constitution that may be brought into operation on this question the full participation of girls in endowments should be broadly laid down.”

Among Miss Buss’ most able supporters in obtaining the endowment for her new schools she counted five members of the Schools Inquiry Commission—Lord Lyttelton, the Rev. A. W. Thorold (Bishop of Rochester and of Winchester), Dr. Storrar, Mr. Fearon, and Mr. Fitch. In 1866, while the Commission were still at work, Miss Davies thus speaks of it in her “Higher Education of Women”—

“Specific schemes adapted to circumstances will be devised as occasions arise. In the meantime, any kind of recognition of the fact that the education of women is a matter worth thinking about is of the utmost practical value. In this point of view, as indicating and expressing a growing sense of the importance of the subject, the extension to girls of the Local Examinations of the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, and the steps taken by the Schools Inquiry Commission in their pending investigations, have an indirect inference quite out of proportion to the immediate and calculable results obtained, affording a moral support and encouragement the effect of which it is not easy to estimate.”

The direct influence of the Commission may be gauged by the fact that within ten years of this date Miss Buss was able to make a list of forty-five new endowed schools for girls, to contain severally from fifty to four hundred pupils, with salaries for the head-mistresses varying from £100 a year to £200 (exclusive of capitation fees). Of this list she remarks—

“It is not complete, but will be useful in establishing my point, viz. that there are some good positions for properly qualified women-teachers.

“St. Paul’s is the greatest prize in the profession, or rather would be if the scheme had become law. Do you see, the salary might be £2000 a year. Ours is second, with a hundred more pupils, and therefore more work and less pay than St. Paul’s. My object in drawing up the list was to show the importance of training and high education for women-teachers. Such prizes are not to be had elsewhere. Look at Scotch girls’ schools, at German also. We women owe a deep debt to the Endowed School Commission.”

The verdict given as the result of the Schools Inquiry Commission does not, of course, exclude the fact that there were then, and had always been, some good private schools where a good education had been given. The true teacher, like the poet, “is born and not made,” the power to teach being as much a Divine gift as that of song or of painting. It is true that the perception of every gift must depend on its full culture, the extent of success being determined by the amount of genius; but there have always been born teachers, some self-educated and some developed by exceptional home surroundings. Women of this kind have always existed as the loved and honoured centres of exceptional influence, sending out pupils formed on their own model.

Doubtless, there could have been found, at any period in the world’s history, a sufficient justification for the attitude condemned in one of the early papers in Fraser on the then quite new Queen’s College:—

‘Educate the women!’ exclaimed an accomplished and excellent man in our hearing, and with marked surprise. ‘Where is the necessity? A college for ladies! Nonsense! Women are admirably educated! I see none but well-educated women around me!’ in the tone of a man who, when told of those who hunger for bread, should reply, ‘Want bread? Nonsense! Hunger! There is no such thing! I see a good dinner before me every day.’”

But, granting that there was education, and of a real kind, we must agree that this, as a rule, was accessible only in the form of a very highly paid private governess, or in select and very expensive private schools. That even so much was not common, and not to be secured by the very highest payments, may be inferred from the account given by Miss Cobbe, in her “Autobiography,” of a typical fashionable school, where a two years’ course cost £1000, of which she says that “if the object had been to produce the minimum of result at the maximum of cost, nothing could have been better designed for the purpose.” In this school, she adds, “everything was taught in the inverse ratio of its true importance. At the bottom of the scale were morals and religion, and at the top music and dancing.”

The point to be kept before us, in considering the special work of this past half-century, is that for the middle-classes, including professional persons of moderate means, good education was practically out of reach, the cheaper schools which were open to them being, for the most part, of the order condemned by the Commissioners. It follows, therefore, that the opening of the new schools—with the best teaching on moderate terms—was a change of which the importance can scarcely yet be justly estimated, especially when, side by side with this preparatory movement, the advantages of University training were added. Before this time no girls’ schools, however advanced, had gone beyond the subjects considered suitable for women, and any women with knowledge of classics or mathematics were either exceptionally gifted, or had accidentally been taught with their brothers.

When we go back to November 30, 1865, the fog outside that committee-room is a true symbol of the gloom that prevailed regarding the higher education of women. Darkness still held rule, even though a few of the topmost peaks had already caught the first rays of the coming dawn.

At that date the future was still so veiled that it could by no possibility have occurred to Miss Davies or Miss Buss, standing there before the Commissioners, even to dream of themselves as what we now know them to have been—the representatives, one of University Education for Women, and the other of Public Schools for Girls, that is to say, of the two most powerful agencies in the greatest revolution of modern times.

But in those days Miss Buss’ school was still her own private property, and, as yet, no glimpse had crossed her mental vision of its future as the model of the great public girls’ schools now spread throughout the land. So, too, with Miss Davies. Girton was not, and even Hitchin had not come into view, though possibly some vague ideal of a true college for women may have been taking shape in Miss Davies’ mind. But if so, it must still have been as baseless as the poet’s dream, for no “sweet girl-graduate” existed as yet out of the domain of the “Princess Ida.” On this lower earth at that time, and for many a day after, she could serve only as matter for a flying jest.

There were indeed three “Colleges” for girls—Queen’s, Bedford, and Cheltenham, as well as the North London Collegiate School for Ladies—all in full work, and even then ready for the rapid expansion which followed the opening of the Universities to women. But, at that date, these could not rank as more than collegiate schools; nor was more desired, for Professor Maurice is very careful, in his inaugural address, to deprecate all intention of emulating the poet’s creation, thus guarding himself:—

“We should indeed rejoice to profit in this or any undertaking by the deep wisdom which the author of the ‘Princess’ has concealed under a veil of exquisite grace and lightness; we should not wish to think less nobly than his royal heroine does of the rights and powers of her sex, but we should be more inclined to acquiesce in the conclusions of her matured experience, than to revive—upon a miserably feeble and reduced scale, with some fatal deviations from its original statutes—her splendid but transitory foundation.”

Only the first step to the great changes of the present day had then been taken, when, in 1863, the University of Cambridge had allowed girls, as an experiment, to join the Local Examinations. Miss Buss always dated the later superiority of the teaching in her school to her experiences on that occasion. Out of eighty-four girls who went in, she sent twenty-five, of whom fifteen passed. The failure of ten in arithmetic pulled her up short, with the result that the teaching was so far changed that none failed in the next year, when girls were finally admitted on the same terms with boys, and the London Centre was formed under Miss Davies. But, even in 1866, success was so far limited, that Miss Beale could reply as follows to Lord Lyttelton’s query, “If she had heard of these new examinations?”—

“There seems to be some difficulty in applying them to the higher middle classes. I think of our own case. The brothers of our pupils go to the Universities. Now, generally speaking, those who go in for the Local Examinations occupy a much lower place in the social scale, and our pupils would not like to be classed with them, but regarded as equal in rank to those who pass at the University. These feelings are stronger in small places.”

The far-reaching effect of these examinations is indicated by Miss Buss’ opinion that “until the Local Cambridge Examinations were organized, there was no sort of recognition on the part of men that the feminine mind could under any circumstances rank with the masculine.”

We see from this fact that, before the middle of this century, the “woman’s movement” could not be said to exist at all. The question of equality—so much to the front at present—could not then even have been formulated. It is not till 1869 that we find it taken at all seriously, in a paper in the Macmillan for March of that year, by a writer who remarks that—

“Two alternatives are open to the would-be reformers of woman. The first of these is the line of Miss Lydia Becker, the second of Miss Emily Davies.”

And he adds that—

“Without wishing to disparage unduly the efforts of any earnest woman for what she believes to be the improvement of her sex, a thoughtful man must feel that the second is of the two the wiser course; the one which is most practical, most sensible, least dangerous, and most likely to secure the sympathy of the mass of Englishmen and Englishwomen.”

It is true that, in 1864, Dr. W. B. Hodgson, one of the first and best friends to the higher education of women, recognizes the fact that there might “rise up before the affrighted fancy” visions of what are derisively called “strong-minded women,” disputations, brow-beating, troubled with “a determination of words to the mouth,” loud and harsh in voice, arrogant in temper, dogmatic, self-willed, unconventional, undomestic, impatient of the matrimonial yoke as a badge of slavery, and with, perhaps, a leaning to waistcoats, and collars turned down, cigars, and hair parted on the side—such, in short, as a recent Italian dramatist, Castelvecchio, has so amusingly delineated in his “Donna Romantica.” But of this type, Dr. Hodgson adds—

“I know not whether the experience of my hearers is like mine; but assuredly of the very few women in whom it has been my lot to meet with any resemblance to this offensive type, not one has been distinguished by superior breadth or depth of culture. Very much the reverse. They have been remarkable for nothing more than the want of a truly liberal education, of which it is the high office to impart a large sympathy, a tolerant appreciation of various opinions, respect for others, and a modest distrust of self. It is not assuredly among the Mrs. Jamesons, the Mrs. Somervilles, the Mrs. Brownings, the Miss Swanwicks, that such portents are found. Dogmatism and presumption ever attend ignorance, not knowledge; shallowness, not depth.”[^[2]]

[2]. “The Education of Girls,” etc., by W. B. Hodgson, LL.D.

There were, indeed, indications of the two distinct lines of action in the work for higher education, and in the work for political reforms. But as yet they were not distinctly divided. The sympathies of the most thoughtful women went out in both directions, even whilst they might follow the one or the other more definitely. It was no more possible then than it would be possible now to draw a hard and fast line; placing on the one side the Educationalists, and on the other the workers for Suffrage and other reforms affecting women. Then, as now, women could be divided into two classes only—the wise and the foolish. Then, as now, the wise worked wisely in whatever line they followed, while the foolish worked also after their own kind.

The educational reform attracted the larger following, content to work in preparing women for the best use of extended power when the time of possession might arrive. In the mean time, the object sought was merely the preparation for actual duties, either in home-life, or in employments rendered necessary by the pressure of circumstances.

In looking back over the great educational movement, which has so changed the aspect of society, two points stand out most sharply: (1) that the work was done in the true natural order by men and women side by side; and (2) that it was done in the true spiritual order, in that quietness which is the appointed avenue to higher inspiration, that stillness which leads to vital knowledge; and also that it was done in the obedience which is the link that binds man to God—practical religion.

It is impossible to judge as yet what may be the final outcome of the intellectual freedom now opened to all women. There are signs of what was the most probable immediate effect—the exaggeration of recoil from all ancient bonds, including those of religion and duty. Whilst it would be very short-sighted to suppose that such a state of things could ever be permanent, so long as women retain any remnant of the intuitional quality which is their special dower, it may still be seasonable to call special attention to the fact that the pioneers in the educational movement are, without exception, deeply religious women. This circumstance may or may not be an accident of no particular moment. The point is that it is historic fact, and as such has its own significance. In a quite special degree, we may point to Miss Davies and to Miss Beale, as well as to Miss Buss and Miss Clough, as quite typically law-abiding and obedient women.

Quietness, in its most literal sense, is most curiously characteristic of all the educational leaders. The very thought of Emily Davies, reticent and self-controlled, gives a sense of calm and stillness. For long years we see Frances Mary Buss curbing her magnificent energies to the “daily round, the common task.” Anne Clough works in silence for a lifetime, between the first little day school in Liverpool and the success of Newnham. Dorothea Beale, though she can rise to all poetic heights, is observant of all the small sweet courtesies of lowly service, and, if “learned” in all school-lore, is also notably “learned in all gracious household ways.” And the same must be said of Frances Martin, who, in her College for Working Women, has so extended the range of the new education that none now need be left out.

Nor are these qualities less conspicuous in the group of what may be termed the “amateurs” of the movement—true “lovers” of their kind, who, having all that heart could desire of this world’s good, have made it their business to share it with those less favoured: Lady Stanley of Alderley, Lady Augusta Stanley, Lady Frederick Cavendish, Mrs. Manning and her daughter Miss E. A. Manning, Mrs. Reed, Miss Bostock, Mrs. Wedgwood, Madame Bodichon, Miss Ewart, and Miss L. M. Hubbard, all more lavish of time and thought and wealth than of words. And then all the active workers: sweet Mrs. Grey, with the touch of old-world stateliness adding strength to her sweetness; Miss Shirreff and Miss Mary Gurney, of few words, but these straight to the point; Mrs. Burbury, true to her University traditions, and Mrs. Garrett-Anderson, with the professional reticence learned in her fight through the medical schools; Miss Davenport-Hill, known to the School Board as the woman who can hold her tongue, and her sister Florence, “wisest of wise women,” as her friends call her, also with a great gift of silence; Miss Laura Soames, too early taken from us; and the many more like-minded, whose works rather than their tongues still speak for them.

It is not, indeed, that any one of these lacks the power to speak, for on some occasion most have been known to speak even from the platform, and to speak well. But not to women like these could those famous words of Mrs. Browning’s ever be held appropriate—

“A woman cannot do the thing she ought,—

Which means whatever perfect thing she can,

In life, in art, in science,—but she fears

To let the perfect action take her part,

And rest there: she must prove what she can do

Before she does it, prate of woman’s rights,

Of woman’s mission, woman’s function, till

The men (who are prating too on their side) cry,

‘A woman’s function plainly is—to talk!’”

And these quiet women are the true pioneers—the women who have actually done the work. They did not call on the world to listen to what women might, could, would, or should do under quite different conditions; they simply did—under the actually existing conditions—just the thing that needed to be done, then and there.

There was not in those days the need of perpetual discussions about “rights” or “wrongs.” The easiest way to cure the wrong seemed to lie in doing the nearest right. It was not that they were indifferent either to existing abuses, or to past wrongs, or blind to the need of necessary reforms. There was not one of them who was not stirred to the depths of her being by the wrong of past ages, or by the present anguish under which women agonize. It was because these deepest depths were so stirred that there they found themselves at one with the Divine love, which has not only suffered, but has conquered suffering—in this love finding strength for work and patience for waiting; and, as they worked and as they waited, there came forgiveness for the past, healing for the present, and hope for the future. All work that is done in the spirit of Christ is thereby lifted above anger, bitterness, or despair. In these moods no great or lasting work has been done or can be done. Not for selfish ends, not even for self-development, do the greatest workers leave the quiet of home, but only and always for freedom to do the highest duty, for the glorious liberty of love. Therefore the secret is not in revolt, but in obedience to the higher law which may indeed at times seem to be a breaking of the laws of men. By this test we may measure all our greatest women leaders. In turn we may find that each has defied to the uttermost the public opinion of her time in daring to prove her right to free action. But just in proportion to the height to which she rose we find her true womanliness strong to withstand any strain. The only real stepping out of woman’s proper sphere is when she descends to measure her strength with man on the lower level of self-love and self-seeking.

But weary as we grow of the present phase of empty “sound and fury, signifying nothing”—the language of revolt and invective—we need not fear for the future, or doubt that a true progress is taking us through all this jarring and wrangling and strife to a safe goal—

“Where beyond these voices there is peace.”

“When, at the last, a woman set herself to man,

Like perfect music unto noble words;

And so these twain upon the skirts of Time

Sit side by side, full-summ’d in all their powers,

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,

Self reverent each, and reverencing each,

Distinct in individualities,

But like each other even as those who love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men;

Then reign the worlds great bridals, chaste and calm;

Then springs the crowning race of humankind.

May these things be!”

BOOK I.

EARLY LIFE.

CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD.

“The very pulse of the machine

• • • • • •

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;

A perfect woman, nobly plann’d

To warn, to comfort, and command.”

The record of the life of Frances Mary Buss includes within it, in brief, the story of the modern educational movement, in which she took so leading a part. It is not the less a story of perfect womanliness, in a career that is one of natural and steady growth, from seed to full fruitage. The woman simply fulfils the promise of the child.

It is a life most remarkable in this completeness. To very few of the greatest even is it given to see their life-work crowned with complete success. Frances Mary Buss was one of the few who begin life with a fixed aim, and who live to see self-devotion end in triumph. And the end left her, as the beginning had found her, as humble as she was loving.

In an age of incessant movement it is very restful to find a life of constant action which is yet so quiet and orderly, with continuity of place as marked as its continuity of purpose. All her work, widely as its influence extended beyond these limits, was carried on within the parish of St. Pancras—fifty years of ceaseless energy, from eighteen years of age to sixty-eight.

In holiday-time she used her freedom for as much change as could be compressed within holiday limits, thus seeing much of Europe as well as of her native land. But, excepting for one term of absence from illness, she might always, in working time, have been found at her post.

“Not for her name only, but because of her love and good works do I love to connect her with St. Francis!” writes an old pupil;[^[3]] and though at the first shock there may seem a touch of incongruity in thus linking the great ascetic saint of the past and this essentially modern worker, there is, nevertheless, much suggestiveness in the association.

[3]. In a bright little sketch in the Woman’s Penny Paper, of June 8, 1889.

Are they not, after all, of the very same order? What is the greatest saint but that child of God who is most aware of his Divine sonship, and therefore most intent on doing his “Father’s business”? Fashions of service may change, but this fact remains changeless. The fashion of the past was to mortify the flesh, and to serve the world by prayer rather than by work. The fashion of the present sees that “laborare est orare,” and serves the world by self-devotion instead of self-denial. The past was ruled by negations, and the stern “Thou shalt not!” rose as a barrier between man and man. The “saint” was not merely, as the word signifies, one “set apart” to do the will of God “on earth as it is [done] in heaven,” but he became instead one cut off, or separated, from the life of ordinary humanity. In our day we have risen to the power of the affirmation, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and we go on to the inevitable sequence, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Not the denial or the evasion of human duties, but their fulfilment utterly, is our test of sainthood in the present. It may be less easy to trace our saints by the quiet fireside or in the busy street; in the senate house or on the market-place; but none the less saintly are these in their modern garb than those who went their way apart, as stately abbot or humble anchorite, as hooded friar or cloistered nun.

The form may change, but the fact is the same. With the fact of a great love filling his soul, St. Francis, vowed to poverty, is still richer than the richest; and our modern saint, with all life’s gifts consecrated to service, may safely make the most of life, having thus the more to share. Having love, riches and poverty alike fall into their true place, as accidents, and not essentials of being.

We go back to far Assisi, and, looking across the Umbrian plain, see the quaint quiet little hill-town—unchanged in seven centuries—still looking like a white dove fluttering down the dark slope of Monte Subiaco. Here we find the boy Francis, gay and careless, dreaming his boyish dreams of royal courts and of knightly fame; till, falling as a dark shadow across the glittering pageant, comes the vision of the world’s poverty and pain, and the dreamer wakes to take his chosen place among the poor and sorrowing. To spend and be spent for love’s sake is henceforth the aim and the achievement of this perfect life.

Then we turn to commonplace St. Pancras, within sound of the crowding, hurrying, tumultuous life of the great modern city. Here we find the girl, Frances, dreaming over her books, with who can tell what ambitious dreams of her own future, as her heart burns with the sense of conscious power? But to her, too, comes the vision of struggle and of hard toil, and to her ear the cry of pain. And she awakes from her dream, to spend and be spent, that in the future every woman may rise to her full stature, set free for ever from the trammels of ignorance and of fear.

It is the very same story, only read in the light of a different age. The key-note to these harmonious lives is the same—love. Love, simplicity, humility, poverty of self, and devotion to others, form the common chord of this heavenly music, vary the movements as we may.

With merely technical or dogmatic theology neither the mediæval nor the modern saint has much to do. Religion forms an integral part of daily life. Love to God—accepted in His appointed channels, and for His appointed ends—is the sum and substance of this creed. The life of our modern worker had its roots deep down in the love and life eternal, as is seen by its fruits. One who knew her best—her eldest brother—says of her, “All through her life she acted on the highest principle—as a loving Christian. Out of this came, as the natural fruit, her large-hearted charity, her help she gave ever willingly to all who needed assistance.” This love interpenetrated all her being and expressed itself in service, in deeds, not words. “Don’t preach, but be; your actions will do more than your words!” she was wont to say to her pupils.

It must all come back again to the key-note—love. And we notice as the special quality of the modern, as opposed to the mediæval saint, a certain humanness which stoops to the smallest things, and, so stooping, lifts them to highest uses. We read of one of the typical saints of the olden days how she pressed into the seclusion of her convent, stepping over the prostrate body of her old father, whose prayers had failed to move her. “Heaven is the price,” she would have said, in the favourite words of another such saint of our own century, the Mère Angélique, who, lying pillowless on the bare ground, spent her last dying breath in sending from her the one human creature for whom she had a human love, a young novice, who obeyed her, broken-hearted. The inevitable outcome of the ascetic ideal—of pain for pain’s sake—has always been and must be inhumanity. The distinctive outcome of the wider grasp of God’s love which in our day says instead, pain for love’s sake only, is the exact opposite—an ever deepening humanity, in which human love is lifted up into the Divine, gathering into its embrace not only every race of mankind, but the brute creation too.

That this was characteristic in a most remarkable degree of her whom we are glad to recognize as one of our foremost teachers, remarkable especially in her power of loving and of inspiring love, we see most clearly in the word which seems by common consent to be that chosen to describe her—motherly, the most human as it is the most Divine word of mortal speech.

Few things are more delightful than the effort to trace the process by which a great personality is fitted for a great work. We may rejoice that we possess sufficient indications of her childhood to show how this child grew up to make life different for the children of after times.

Frances Mary Buss, born August 16, 1827, was the eldest child—and only daughter who survived infancy—of parents who were both persons of exceptional force of character. Her father was not only an artist of skill far beyond the average, but was a man of cultivated literary and scientific tastes. His influence was a powerful factor in the training of the child who was his joy and pride in her public career, as well as the most obedient and devoted of daughters.

The mother, almost adored by her children, was one of those strong loving souls whose silent lives are eloquent beyond all speech, who are enshrined in the hearts of all within their sphere as very ideals of love and loyalty.

Mrs. Septimus Buss thus writes of—

“the large-hearted loving Mother, whose motherliness was not only for her own, but for all children. It was a family joke that she came home from her walks penniless, as she could never see a poor child looking longingly into a cake-shop without sending it happily away in possession of a ‘goody.’ Many of us remember how we naturally went to her for comfort, and always felt the trouble lightened by some brave or kind word, or personal help, if possible. What merry, cheerful, little impromptu parties there were in her ever hospitable house, among her own children and others who, having finished their work, remained to play!

“Her watchword, like Miss Buss’, was Duty. I once answered, in real fright, ‘Oh, aunt, I am sure I cannot!’ She replied, ‘Child, never say I cannot, when called to any duty, but do the best you can!’ The devoted love that her children bore her was only the due return for her unwearied care of, and tenderness to, them in every detail of their life.”

Her family regard it only as traditional that their mother was descended from Mrs. Fleetwood, the daughter of Oliver Cromwell; but I had it as an accepted fact from one of the undoubted members of that family, who was proud to claim even so remote a connection with one whom she had so much admired. Miss Andrews must have been educated at Mrs. Wyand’s school, in the generation preceding Miss Buss, and she probably spoke with authority on the matter. She also had remarkable power as a teacher, with quite original views on education, a fact interesting as throwing a sidelight on the school in which Miss Buss was educated, the best in the neighbourhood of Mornington Crescent.

In a book of “Memories,” compiled for the family circle of Dr. Henry Buss—the “Uncle Henry” to whom, as a girl, “Fanny” owed some of her first holiday trips abroad—we find it recorded that “in 1689, William and Mary brought in their train from Holland a Mrs. Buss, who held the post of nurse to the Princess Anne, afterwards queen.”

The descendants of Mrs. Buss settled chiefly in the county of Kent. At Bromley, in 1775, we find one of them, Robert Buss, holding a post in the Excise. He afterwards became a schoolmaster at Tunbridge. His son, William Church Buss, became known as “a skilled engraver,” and, marrying “pretty Mary Anne Starling,” made his home, in 1803, in Jewin Street, Aldersgate.

We must dismiss entirely all our present associations with Aldersgate, and go back to the beginning of the century, to the description given by Dr. Buss of the city at the time when his parents made their home there—

“At this time the city itself was separated by fields from the village of Islington. It was the custom for pedestrians, especially after dark, to collect at Aldersgate-bars in sufficient force to protect each other from footpads, while crossing the fields to this village.

“The site of the existing City Road Basin was a market garden, thus utilized when the Grand Junction Canal Company extended their waterway through the city to the Thames. From the village of Islington to Highgate and Hampstead it was nearly all fields. Copenhagen House stood in the midst of cornfields. This spot is now the centre of New Smithfield Cattle Market.... The river Fleet was then as wide as the New River, and was supplied with boats for rowing. Excepting the Thames, it was the nearest river, and also a favourite bathing-place for the youth of London.”

There was probably no great change, as it was still before the days of steam and rail, when the little granddaughter of William Church Buss was sent to visit her grandparents, who had then removed to Newgate Street. Her maternal grandparents still lived in Clerkenwell, near the market gardens there.

William Church Buss was a very skilful engraver, and his son, Robert William Buss, was trained by him, and was a clever engraver before he became a painter, and subsequently a well-known etcher on copper and steel, and draughtsman for wood-engravers. Working in this way, he illustrated the novels of Mrs. Trollope and Captain Marryat, and other writers, and two of the first etchings for “Pickwick” were his doing. For Charles Knight he illustrated “Chaucer,” helping also in the “Shakespeare,” “London,” and “Old England,” issued by that publisher. Many of his own original pictures were engraved and had wide sale, such as “Soliciting a Vote,” “The Musical Bore,” “Satisfaction,” “Time and Tide,” etc. And, with all this, he still found time for lectures on “The Beautiful and Picturesque,” on “Fresco,” and on “Comic Art”—this last re-written at the close of his life, and dedicated to his daughter, under the title of “Graphic Satire.”

It was when on a visit to her paternal grandparents, in Newgate Street, that the future Educationalist made her first acquaintance with school-life, after a very quaint fashion, as she thus tells us—

“To get me out of the way, my grandparents sent me to a little school in the city, on a first floor, with a few forms, and, as far as I remember, with no other appurtenances for a school at all.

“The second school to which I went was kept by a Miss Cook—a mixed school of boys and girls. In Miss Cook’s school we sat on forms, and learned lessons which it never occurred to her to explain. I remember learning a good deal of ‘Murray’s Grammar.’”

In Frances Power Cobbe’s “Autobiography” she tells us that the first practical result of her attainment of the arts of reading and writing—throwing a lurid light on the agonies of the process—was to inscribe on the gravel walk, in large letters, “Lessons, thou tyrant of the mind!” A similar inscription might have been engraven for the benefit of Miss Cook by Frances Mary Buss, after this prolonged course of Lindley Murray without explanation. But she seems to have found other solace. The tyranny of lessons was powerless to crush this independent young mind, or to repress an independence of action more suitable to the age of “Revolting Daughters,” than to that of “Mrs. Trimmer” or of “Evenings at Home.” Her next story tells how she invited a little companion to a juvenile party, which existed only in her own active imagination, until the kind mother gave it objective reality, on hearing of the small boy’s bitter disappointment. It might be at this school that Miss Buss acquired that ideal of “mixed schools” which she kept before her to the end, though she knew it was not to become fact in her day.

She was very far from spending her young life only in sitting on a form, learning lessons by rote. “Children,” says Mr. Ruskin, “should have times of being off duty, like soldiers;” or, as Dr. Abbott puts the same truth very clearly, “Children should have time to think their own thoughts.” These privileges certainly did belong to the children of the past, and, like many another clever child, the little Fanny made full use of her liberty, for she continues—

“As soon as I could begin to read I revelled in books, and especially fairy tales. I devoured every fairy tale that was to be had. In those days the books available for children were ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ ‘Miss Edgeworth’s Tales,’ ‘The Arabian Nights,’ and the old nursery stories. Of these I had single copies, which I managed to buy out of the money given to me. I had, in addition, translations of the Countess D’Aulnoy’s tales. As my father had a very fair library for the date, and as I had access to all his books, I had a wide course of reading. I knew Milton’s introduction to ‘The History of England,’ with the legends of Bladud, Lear, etc.; ‘Hume’s History,’ in every part, except the political, which I invariably skipped; the novels of the eighteenth century—‘Tom Jones,’ ‘Pamela,’ ‘The Man of Feeling,’ ‘Joseph Andrews,’ ‘Peregrine Pickle,’ etc. ‘Pamela’ was in four large volumes, the first of which I could never get because my mother hid it. At about ten years of age I became acquainted with Scott’s novels, and knew all the stories by heart, except ‘Rob Roy,’ for which I did not care. My father had the ‘Abbotsford Edition,’ with the poems, in twelve volumes. I never, however, read the poetry. In consequence of my father being engaged to illustrate books for Charles Knight, and for Bentley and Colburn, the publishers, I used to have the opportunity of reading the proofs, by going down, at six o’clock on summer mornings, to his room before any one was there. I remember my chief difficulty, however, with the proofs was paging them correctly; this I never learned to do, and therefore I read the pages as they came, fitting them into my mind properly afterwards. In that way I read Mrs. Trollope’s ‘Widow Married,’ Marryat’s ‘Peter Simple,’ etc.... During this early period of my life I must have become acquainted with the contents of about forty volumes of plays, published by Cumberland. There were also many volumes of plays of the previous century, which I knew almost by heart. Amongst these were volumes of Peruvian, Persian, and Turkish tales, belonging to a young aunt, my mother’s sister, who lent them to me. In these tales there was no attempt at connection, every person introduced merely telling his or her own story.

“I remember that, as my brother Alfred grew up, I used to find it necessary, in order to enjoy my book, to hide myself under a sofa, in a room on the second floor, which was occupied by a Government clerk. This gentleman was out all day, and therefore his room was available. My mother must have known this, because we children—the boys at any rate—were not allowed to go to this room.”

At about the same time we find the insatiable child reading Miss Strickland’s “Queens of England,” of which she says “each volume came out by itself, and I remember I used to save up all my pence to hire a volume to read, and even at that early age I made many notes.”

History remained her favourite study, and her mode of teaching it must have made it fascinating to her pupils. One of these, afterwards a member of the staff, remarks of it—

“I was at school from 1864–67, and the pleasantest part of the time was the lessons I had in history, French, geography, and literature from Miss Buss. How thorough her teaching was! It seems to me that I have never forgotten what she taught, while most of the lessons from others (except Dr. Hodgson and Miss Chessar) seem to have passed away without leaving any definite trace in my memory. Her lessons were alive; the historical characters and scenes she described seemed as familiar as if one had known them personally, and she made everything interesting because she herself had such interest in what she taught.”

Another of the old pupils says also—

“But for picturesqueness and interest her history lessons excelled all others. It was then she gave us ‘the cream of her life’s reading,’ as I have heard her say. Two lectures specially remain in my mind on ‘The Rise of the Hydes.’ There were many in the class who lost not a point from beginning to end, so graphically was the story presented to us.”

And at any time, to the last, to hear her sum up the characteristics of any special period, or describe any great event, with her instinctively picturesque presentation of the scene, was a treat of no common order.

To this graphic power of description, her early artistic surroundings must in no small degree have contributed. At one time she taught drawing in her class, but she never had the time for any artistic work of her own. She had, however, keen and cultivated artistic tastes, and her feeling for colour was especially marked. Her visits to Italy intensified this delight in colour, and she indulged it in ways sometimes regarded as hazardous by eyes accustomed only to sober British tints. But they were in the end obliged to admire these innovations. She was among the first to appreciate the new developments of decorative art, and Myra Lodge and the Cottage at Epping revealed her taste at every turn.

In the account of the next stage of her school-life, we get glimpses of her social surroundings which show that there must have been much to stimulate the child’s eager and inquiring mind—

“At ten years of age I was sent to a much higher school, kept by Mrs. Wyand, at the corner of Rutland Street, Hampstead Road. Here I met with the daughters of David Roberts, Clarkson Stanfield, and other artists. Mr. Wyand had a boys’ school, largely attended by the sons of artists. A few doors lower down lived George Cruickshank. Clarkson Stanfield also lived in Mornington Place; and, still nearer the school, Frederick Bacon, the engraver, with whose niece and adopted daughter I was on the most intimate terms. At a later date the daughters of Goodall entered the school, and also Isabella Irving, the daughter of Edward Irving, a tall, fine dark girl, very like her father. Her brother, Martin Irving, was in the boys’ school.”

We have to bear in mind that at this date Mornington Crescent occupied much the same position, as a literary and artistic centre, which is held by Hampstead at the present day. Even as late as 1850, the westward migrations had not begun, for market gardens filled the space between Kensington High Street and Chelsea proper, and Notting Hill Square was on the verge of the country. In 1850, University and King’s Colleges made a centre in the west central district; and the establishment even of a Collegiate School for Ladies was regarded as a slight infringement of the dignity of Camden Street, which could boast at that date of so choice an intellectual cotérie as Professor De Morgan, Professor Key, Professor Hoppus, and Dr. Kitto. It was near enough to town life, and yet near the country, long stretches of green fields and flowery hedges leading to the heights of Hampstead and Highgate. Regent’s Park was the nearest of the parks, and the New Road had not then outgrown the freshness of its name.

In these records of Miss Buss’ childhood we seem taken back to another world, as we read of the “long coast journey to the Docks,” on the way to Margate, when the child sees “the remains of the illuminations of the day before for the celebration of the Princess Victoria’s birthday.” In the next year also there are, again at Margate, “triumphal arches in honour of the Queen’s coronation.” And then there is the first sight of the young Queen—

“I had been taken to the park by my grandmother, and an open carriage passed with three ladies in deep mourning—one was the Queen, the other the Duchess of Kent, and the third a lady in waiting. The following year I also saw the Queen in an open carriage going to the Academy. She then wore a white dress, and a very large bonnet lined with pink. I think she had a green parasol.”

On another occasion there is “a vision of scarlet and of a mass of white drapery” as “the young couple are returning from St. James’ Chapel on the Queen’s birthday.”

Very pleasant, in its old-fashioned simplicity, must have been the life of this artistic circle, united in tastes and occupations, and living, as it were, between town and country, with the advantages of both. It was no wonder that, under such influences, this child early developed intellectual tastes. But her growth was equal on all sides, love of books being only one of her varied “talents.” She tells us—

“At that date it was considered necessary that every girl should work; and before I was ten years of age I had made a shirt for my father, all the parts being cut out and arranged by my mother, sewing machines not being then invented. So, too, as it was long before the days of Peak and Frean, or Huntley and Palmer, for our childish parties, I used to help my mother make all the biscuits, as well as the cakes and tarts. I remember one large grown-up party which my parents gave, on which occasion the door was smoothed in some way, and a very handsome border painted round it by my father (an elaborate design about two feet wide). This was my first appearance among grown-up people, and I quite well remember the delight I felt at the idea of being asked to dance by a very tall man, an engraver, whose name I forget, whom I met in after years and found to be very insignificant. The belles of that evening were the Miss Cumberlands, daughters of the publisher, for whom at that time my father was painting a series of theatrical portraits.”

Among the celebrated actors forming this series were Charles Matthews, Reeve, Harley, Mrs. Nesbit, Buckstone, Ellen Tree, Vandenhof, Macready, and Dowton. At an early age “Fanny” had been taken to the theatre, of which we learn that “at that date the Sadler’s Wells Theatre was held in high repute. The stage was very large, and being situated near the New River was able to utilize a great deal of water.” We may imagine the excitement of the children over the arrival of these wonderful personages; how they peered silently over the banisters, and how, when the sittings were over, they stole into the studio to examine the costumes which were left for the artist’s use, with what glee to discover, for instance, that Vandenhof’s cap, in some great character, was “made of a large blue sugar-bag covered with some coloured material.”

Amateur theatricals were a favourite amusement at the young parties—at first, when the kind father was the chief performer, in “a series of dancing card figures, exhibited on a sheet as shadows, he writing and reading the text;” afterwards, the performances were of more ambitious character, at Mr. Wyand’s school, when the boys were allowed to invite their sisters and friends, and “where the plays were written by the boys, and the women’s parts taken by boys, to our great delight, as they invariably tumbled over their skirts.”

In one play, the king’s part is taken by John Blockley, son of the author of the then favourite song “Love Not,” in a play in which the chief characters are “King Edward” and the “Sultan of Turkey,” Edward being a “tall, thin, shy lad, who in the meekest possible way announced that while he lived no Turkish prince should wield Edward’s sceptre” (a folded sheet of exercise paper). “My brother Alfred contributed a large cloak, lined with red, which continued to be a famous piece of stage property. The swords, shields, etc., were made by my father.”

The pupils who knew the school when Miss Buss was in full vigour will read with interest these early developments of the dramatic power which played such part in the tableaux vivants, plays, charades, or costume dances of that period. These entertainments, involving parties counted by hundreds where ordinary folk have units, were a great feature of school-life. They must have formed a delightful break in that excessive study so condemned by the world outside, which assuredly in no wise prevented the most hilarious enjoyment of these revels, shared by all, from the dignified head down to the most frolicsome of the “little ones.”

And for all readers it is pleasant to have these glimpses of the happy home-life in which this loving nature had such free room for growth. So much is implied as we see the busy father making time for play with his children, as well as for “writing letters on grammar,” which the studious little daughter “used to find on the stairs;” or again, as we note the good mother, not less busy, kindly shutting her eyes to those surreptitious studies under the sofa, instead of calling on her only girl to take her part in amusing the younger children, of whom, in course of time, one sister and eight brothers made their appearance in the active household. Of these, however, only four brothers attained manhood.

In later years the elder sister needed no bidding to stand by the mother to whom she was devoted, and whose comfort and stay she became in the long struggle with the many claims on a narrow income. In those days life was a struggle to even the most distinguished artists, and fame was by no means synonymous with fortune.

In the natural course of things more than one opportunity came to the girl to change this home struggle for a life of her own under easier auspices. And once she had felt the force of the temptation; but duty had early become the watchword of her life; and as she looked at the mother burdened with her weight of cares, the good daughter, at a cost none but herself could measure, turned from the dreams of her girlhood, from the hopes of womanhood, and kept her place by her mother’s side.

Years afterwards in a few words she tells us all the story—

“I have had real heart-ache, such as at intervals in earlier life I had to bear: when I put aside marriage; when Mr. Laing died; and again when my dearest mother, the brave, loving, strong, tender woman, left all her children. I quite believe in heart-ache! God’s ways are not our ways!”

CHAPTER II.
GIRLHOOD.

“O’er wayward childhood would’st thou hold firm rule

And sun thee in the light of happy faces,

Love, hope, and patience, these must be thy graces,

And in thine own heart let them first keep school.”

Coleridge.

Of Miss Buss as a girl we have a very telling little sketch in her own words, showing how this happy childhood merged only too quickly into a girlhood early fitting her for the strenuous life-work towards which she was moving on through long silent years of training.

“I may as well take this opportunity of saying that within a month after I had reached my fourteenth birthday I began to teach, and that never since, with the exception of holidays and two occasions of serious illness, have I spent my days out of a schoolroom. I was in sole charge of a large school for a week at a time when I was sixteen. When I was twenty-three I was mistress of a large private school, containing nearly a hundred pupils; that hundred was turned into two hundred by the time I was twenty-five.

“I mention these facts just to show you how intensely active my life has been, for it is always to be borne in mind that in addition to spending my days in the schoolroom, I had to gain the whole of my education, such as it is, in the evening or in the holidays, and that for some years in my early life there was a great burden of money anxieties.

“You will see that I have never, therefore, known leisure. Of late years, since the work has developed so much, I have done less teaching, but until the last four or five years, and for some years after the opening of the Cambridge Examinations, I was the sole mistress of the highest class, teaching every subject in it—English, French, German, and some Latin.

“After the Cambridge Examinations began it was necessary to be free one hour in the morning, in order to see what was going on in other classes.

“As a matter of fact, I have had to teach almost everything at different times. For some years I assisted in the teaching of model and freehand drawing.

“Circumstances never seemed favourable for my having time to do anything, so to speak, but live inside the schoolroom, and there carry into practice such theories as crossed my mind. I think it would have been much better for me if I had been able to have had a greater knowledge of the theory of the profession by private study, but hard practice has taught me something.”

In one of this girl’s early sayings—“Why are women so little thought of? I would have girls trained to match their brothers!”—we have the key-note of her harmonious life. It was experience transmuted into sympathy. In the stress of her own girlish efforts she gained her life-long feeling for the half-educated, on whom is too early laid the burden of money getting. Then, when occasion demanded, she was ready to give up her own ease, and to undertake the heavy work which has secured to thousands of wage-earning girls the practical training of a thorough education.

Not less plainly, also, do we see, in her desire to fit herself for her own work, the first impetus to secure for all teachers the training needed for their special calling; an object ever close to her heart, and one in which her success will be her strongest claim to the gratitude of future generations.

The claim of an increasing family was no doubt in this, as in so many cases, the reason why the mother and daughter opened the first school in Clarence Road. And then, like so many other sisters, this girl would watch her brothers going off to school or college for the studies in which she—being a girl—could have no share. But, like many a good sister before and since, she would contentedly put aside her own dreams or desires, doing her best to help her brothers. Such sacrifice was taken simply as the highest duty, and thus turned to deepest delight; but we can see how this loving obedience was in reality a storing up of energy for the great revolution of which she had caught the earliest intimations.

It is a pleasant thought to take in passing that this good sister—happier than many—had brothers equally good. If she was all that a sister could be she found in them good brothers, who were friends and fellow-workers, helping her in all the great aims of her life. Her eldest brother, the Rev. Alfred J. Buss, as clerk to the governing body of the schools, quite relieved her mind from all anxiety concerning business arrangements; whilst the religious instruction given by the Rev. Septimus Buss carried on the early tradition of the school. There was a wide gap between the eldest of the family and number seven, so that her relation with this brother, after the mother’s death, was half maternal as well as half sisterly. When he early became engaged to her pupil, cousin, and friend, and thus gave her the truest and most tender of sisters, the bond was doubled, and the children of this beloved pair—her namesake Francis, especially—became as her very own. Her letters are full of allusion to “my boy,” who was her joy from his peculiarly engaging babyhood till he fulfilled her heart’s desire by taking Holy Orders. His next brother followed in this example, first set by the son of the Rev. A. J. Buss, now Minor Canon of Lincoln.

This clerical bent was very strong in the family. As a boy, Alfred Joseph Buss shared his sister’s enthusiasm for teaching, and for any hope of head-mastership Holy Orders were essential. Before he was out of his teens he became the first assistant-master in the then newly opened North London Collegiate School for Boys. He was also English tutor at one time to the young Orleans princes. But later in life he found himself drawn most strongly to the work of the parish priest. Septimus Buss inherited so much of his father’s genius, that he seemed destined for art, having a picture in the Royal Academy whilst only nineteen years of age. But, though in obedience to his father he worked hard at painting, he still had his own intentions, and worked harder at Greek and Latin. Knowing, however, that there was at that time an extra strain upon the family finances, he bravely kept his own wishes to himself till he had earned the means of carrying them out. The story of these two brothers is among the helpful and instructive tales that ought some day to be written, to show what can be done by high aims and resolute will. Of both it may be said that they are all the stronger as fighters in their splendid battle against East End misery, because, in their own boyhood, they knew how “to endure hardness as good soldiers.”

This attraction to the clerical profession was a natural sequence to early associations. The most powerful influence of Miss Buss’ girlish life was undoubtedly that of her revered friend of whom Mrs. Septimus Buss writes, when alluding to—

“the earnest spiritual influence of the Rev. David Laing, who built the church and schools of Holy Trinity, Kentish Town, giving his whole fortune and his life to found the parish. His teaching by precept and practice was self-sacrifice, and the large-hearted charity that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, coupled with the wide culture that welcomed new thought, and proved all things. His hospitable home was constantly open to his parishioners, where he received them among his cultured circle of literary, scientific, and artistic friends. He at once took his stand by the North London Collegiate School, while others waited till its success was sure. We, oldest of old pupils, still thrill with somewhat of the past enthusiasm when we recall his inspiring teaching. The band of devoted workers he gathered round him in his parish—which was then almost unique for the number of works of charity carried on in it, and for the weekly lectures by Mr. S. C. Hall and others—testified to his personal influence, the motive power of which was not what he saw, but what he was.”

In memory of her lamented friend, Miss Buss, after his death, established six “Laing Scholarships,” by which so many girls who needed this help received a free education in her school. Thus for ten years Mr. Laing’s memory was kept in mind. With the changes of 1870 these Scholarships ceased, but Miss Buss’ devotion to Mrs. Laing knew no intermission till her old friend’s death in 1876; and Miss Fawcett has an interesting little comment on this unfailing thoughtfulness—

“All associated with our dear friend must have been struck with her loyalty and faithfulness to her old friends. I am thinking especially of her treatment of Mrs. Laing, for so many years. Sunday by Sunday she went to see her after morning service as regularly as the day came round; flowers were sent to her very frequently, also nice books to read. On her birthday Miss Buss never failed to see her before the school-work began.”

Among the school records there is a letter which is of interest as showing the close relations which existed between Mr. and Mrs. Laing and the school. It is addressed to the chairman presiding at the first prize-day after the double loss which made so sad a change for the young head-mistress—the death within a year of her mother and of Mr. Laing—

“Rev. and dear Sir,

“May I beg you to express my great regret at the impossibility of my being at your meeting to-day? I do not say that it would not have been very painful to attend, when two so loved and honoured are missing since we last assembled for the same purpose; but it is still more painful to stay away. I wished to show my true interest in the cause Mr. Laing had so much at heart; my warm regard for the friends he so much valued; my deep sense of the respect and affection shown to his memory in the establishment of the Laing Scholarships.

“Many to-day will remember how in much pain and weakness he filled his place last year, but a few days before he took to the bed whence he was to rise no more. It was the last evidence he was permitted to give of his feeling with regard to the work carried on here; and I feel I can do nothing better than adopt that which in various ways he has so often said to me, ‘Miss Buss is doing a great and good work. Hundreds will rise up and call her blessed.’

“I am, yours faithfully,

“Mary E. Laing.”

To the influence of Mr. Laing, and of his no less admirable wife, Miss Buss owed much of the mental and moral breadth for which she was afterwards so distinguished. In their home she was always welcome, finding a never-failing sympathy and encouragement. Often in our quiet talks she delighted to refer to these early memories, speaking of the advantage such a friendship had been to her in her young life; and to this grateful memory it is probable that many of her own young assistants, especially those least fortunate in their social surroundings, may have owed much of the thoughtful kindness so valuable to girls beginning their career as teachers.

With the knowledge of the satisfaction she would have felt in fuller recognition of Mr. Laing’s services to education in general, as well as in particular to her own school, it will not be out of place here to give some notes supplied by the Rev. A. J. Buss, with his own comment on them—

“There is much that I would say about the connection with Mr. Laing—about himself as a great leader (almost unacknowledged) in the educational movement of the latter half of this century. To me the question is an interesting one, for I loved Mr. Laing as a young man, and cherish his memory as most precious now that I am advanced in life. It is at least remarkable that he who, as honorary secretary and a member of the Board of Management of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, took some part in the foundation of Queen’s, should have been a prime mover in the foundation of that school which has become the North London Collegiate School for Girls, and has rendered possible, and given such impetus to, the higher education of girls and women.”

The story of the rise of Queen’s College is of interest from many points of view, beyond that concerning our present purpose of showing the influences that inspired Frances Mary Buss with her special zeal for education. In knowing Mr. Laing she came into direct touch with the newest educational effort, and must have heard the whole question discussed from all sides.

Mr. Laing, in 1843, rescued the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution from decay, remaining its active honorary secretary till his death in 1860. This society was formed—

“with the idea of benefiting governesses in every possible way; to help in temporary difficulty; to provide annuities for aged governesses; to help the younger to help themselves; to provide a home for governesses during engagements, and an asylum for the aged; also a system of registration, free of expense, to those seeking engagements.”

The whole of these objects were contemplated in 1843, and, in 1844, were a matter of negotiation with the National Society, with the Committee of Council, and with the heads of the Church.

In giving an account of the early work—as a reply to an article in Fraser’s Magazine (July, 1849), commenting unfavourably on the efforts that were then made—Mr. Laing shows that with the foundation of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution the first principles of all future movements were really incorporated. He says—

“In undertaking an institution for the benefit of governesses, it was felt to be absurd and short-sighted to remedy existing evils without an attempt at their removal.... To do this the character of the whole class must be raised, and there was the bright thought that to raise the character of governesses as a class was to raise the whole tone of Christian society throughout the country.”

But it was easier to plan such a college than to carry out these plans, and several years passed without practical results. Reference is made, year by year, on the subject, in the annual reports of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution.

In that for 1845, we find that “difficulties which the committee had not anticipated, have arisen with the several authorities, from whom Boards of Examiners, with power to grant a diploma of qualification, might originate.”

In the report for 1846, “an act of incorporation and arrangements for a diploma” are still “subjects of consideration, upon which the committee are prepared to enter into communication with all parties friendly to the cause. Unexpected difficulties still intervene.”

It was in 1848 that the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution received a royal charter of incorporation, thus worded—

“We have been graciously pleased to permit the name of Queen’s College, in which certificates of qualification are granted to governesses, and in which arrangements have been made with professors of high talent and standing in society to open classes in all branches of female education.”

Queen’s College was governed by a council of gentlemen, and its first principal, Professor Maurice, was followed by Professor Plumptre. A committee of lady-visitors was formed, but the duties of these ladies was merely to be present while the teaching was done by men. Among them we find the familiar names of Mrs. S. C. Hall, Mrs. Marcet, Miss Maurice, Mrs. Kay Shuttleworth, and Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood.

It would appear, from the report of 1849, that while the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution was thus working for better education for women and girls, other schemes had been proposed, first by Miss Murray, one of her Majesty’s ladies in waiting, and then by the professors of King’s College. Eventually, the formation of a Committee of Education, of which Mr. Laing and Professors Maurice and Nicolay were active members, brought things to a practical point, as Professor Nicolay states[^[4]] that the “Committee of Education,” thus formed, did its work in connection with, if not actually for, the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution.

[4]. In the English Education Journal, 1849.

In his inaugural lecture at Hanover Square, in 1848, Professor Maurice shows how this institution, beginning with a provision for distress among governesses, came to associate distress with incompetency, and hence to provide better instruction. In like manner, beginning as examiners, the professors soon found that before they could examine they must first teach, and for this purpose organized the classes that grew into Queen’s College.

In Fraser’s Magazine, early in the fifties, are to be found several papers concerning the foundation of Queen’s College, thus finally summed up by the editor—

“With reference to the article on Queen’s College in our last number, Mr. Laing, as Hon. Sec. to the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, desires us to state that the society was in communication with the Government and other parties respecting the establishment of the college as early as 1844, whilst there was no communication with the present professors until 1847; and that her Majesty granted to the society the permission to use the Royal name for the college before any connection was formed with the present professors.

“Whilst, therefore, the success of the college is wholly attributable to the character and talents of its teachers, the college would have existed under any circumstances.”

In the same year, six months later, Bedford College was founded, mainly by Mrs. Reid and Miss Bostock, and among the ladies interested we find many names afterwards prominent in the movement for opening the Universities to women, as those of Lady Romilly, Lady Belcher, Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Crompton, Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Goldsmid, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Bryan Walter Procter, Lady Pollock, Miss Julia Smith, Mrs. Strutt (afterwards Lady Belper), Miss Emily Davies, Miss Anna Swanwick, and Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood.

One distinct difference between Queen’s College and Bedford College is that the first was managed by men, with a man as the principal and women only as lady-visitors. Bedford College had from the first a mixed committee, and the visitor who represented the head might be of either sex. Latterly Miss Anna Swanwick has held this post. Results seem to indicate the advantage of giving women an equal share in the education of girls.

It was by Mr. Laing’s introduction that Miss Buss became one of the first pupils of the evening classes at Queen’s College. The Queen’s College of that day (1848) bore little resemblance to the colleges of a quarter of a century later, but there was an enormous stride onwards in the curriculum offered to its first pupils.

In her “History of Cheltenham College,” Miss Beale gives us a glimpse of these classes—

“Queen’s College offered to grant certificates to governesses.... My sisters and I were amongst some of the first to offer ourselves for examination. For Holy Scripture the examiner was the Rev. E. H. Plumptre, afterwards Dean of Wells, so well known for his Biblical Commentaries, his great learning, and his translations of the Greek dramatists and Dante. He also examined in classics. In modern history and literature we had the pleasure of being examined by Professor Maurice. The viva voce was a delightful conversation; he led us on by his sympathetic manner and kindly appreciation so that we hardly remembered he was an examiner. For French and German our examiners were Professors Brasseur and Bernays; for mathematics, Professor Hall and Mr. Cock; for music, Sterndale Bennett; and for pedagogy, the head of the Battersea Training College.”

The names of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, for English literature and composition; of Professor Nicolay, for history and geography; and of Professor Hullah, for vocal music, also appear on the list.

It was of classes like these that, as a girl of twenty-one, Frances Mary Buss became a happy pupil. Her father’s interest in art and science had prepared her to enter into the spirit of such teaching, and to profit by the influence of the great men who threw their whole souls into their work. What this meant to the girls thus privileged is shown in lives like those of Miss Buss, Miss Beale, Miss Frances Martin, or Miss Julia Wedgwood, and many more perhaps less known to fame.

A memory comes back to me of an evening in 1881, spent at Myra Lodge, where the difference between the old and the new order of things was emphasized in a marked degree. Standing out from the far past, as precursors of the new era, were Miss Buss herself, Miss Beale, and Miss Frances Martin; midway, as a Schools Inquiry Commissioner, was Mr. J. G. Fitch; while the moderns bloomed out in Dr. Sophie Bryant, one of the earliest Cambridge Local candidates, and the very first woman-Doctor of Science; Miss Rose Aitkin, B.A., stood for the arts; and, I think, Miss Sara A. Burstall (since B.A.) as the first girl who had, like her brothers, educated herself by her brains, passing, largely by scholarships, up from the Camden School, through the Upper School, and on to Girton.

It was a thing to remember to hear how the three elder women spoke of the old and new days, and then to see what had been done for the girls through their efforts. Miss Buss told us many things of her girlhood, and her difficulties in fitting herself for her work; and especially of the stimulus and delight of the new world of thought and feeling opened by those first lectures. Miss Beale and Miss Martin, coming later, had enjoyed all the advantages of Queen’s College, but they did not the less appreciate those first lectures. As they spoke in glowing terms of Professor Maurice, one could not but wish that he might have been there to see the three grand women who have done so much for womanhood—pupils worthy of even such a master.

The picture fixed itself in my mind of Frances Mary Buss, in the first ardour of this new intellectual awakening. She was teaching all day in her own school, so that she could take only the evening classes. There were at that time no omnibuses, and night after night, her day’s work done, the enthusiastic girl walked from Camden Town to Queen’s College and back. Night after night she sat up into the small hours, entranced by her new studies, preparing thus not only for the papers which won for her the desired certificates, but for that greater future of which she did not then even dream.

In her Autobiography, Miss Cobbe gives a very telling summary of the education of the earlier part of this century, in her account of the particular school in which her own education had been, as it was called, “finished,” at a cost, for two years, of £1000. How she began it for herself afterwards she also tells, but of this finished portion she thus writes—

“Nobody dreamed that any one of us could, in later life, be more or less than an ornament to Society. That a pupil in that school should become an artist or authoress would have been regarded as a deplorable dereliction. Not that which was good or useful to the community, or even that which would be delightful to ourselves, but that which would make us admired in society was the raison d’être of such requirement.

“The education of women was probably at its lowest ebb about half a century ago. It was at that period more pretentious than it had ever been before, and infinitely more costly; and it was likewise more shallow and senseless than can easily be believed. To inspire young women with due gratitude for their present privileges, won for them by my contemporaries, I can think of nothing better than to acquaint them with some of the features of school-life in England in the days of their mothers. I say advisedly in those of their mothers, for in those of their grandmothers things were by no means equally bad. There was much less pretence, and more genuine instruction, so far as it extended.”

We are justified in the conclusion that Mrs. Wyand’s school, in which Frances Mary Buss received her training, as pupil and then as assistant, was one of the survivals from this olden time. From one of the pupils, who was there as a child while Miss Buss was assistant-mistress, we have a sketch of Mrs. Wyand as a slight, erect little lady, with very dark eyes, and with black hair, in the ringlets of that era, confined on each side by tortoiseshell side-combs. She always wore long rustling silk gowns, and altogether was an impressive personage, before whom the most volatile schoolgirl at once grew staid and sober. Mention of Miss Buss herself seems limited to a certain satisfaction in having carried provocation to so great an extent as to make the young teacher cry. But we may easily imagine that before the end of that encounter the tables were turned, and that then may have begun the treatment of “naughty girls” so successful in later life.

Thanks to the good training received under Mrs. Wyand, Miss Buss was able, at the age of eighteen, to take an active part in the school opened by Mrs. Buss in Clarence Road. Before she was twenty-three she had gained the Queen’s College Diploma, and she then became the head of the new school in Camden Street, which was the outcome of this first venture.

The course of instruction included most of the subjects now taught, and Miss Eleanor Begbie—who claims to have been the first pupil in Camden Street, and who has been superintendent of the Sandall Road School, familiar, therefore, with all new methods—affirms confidently that the Science and Art classes taken by Mr. Buss were “as good, and quite as interesting, as anything given now.”

This is confirmed by Mrs. Pierson, who says of these very happy school-days—

“Her dear father greatly added to the enjoyment of school life by giving us courses of lectures illustrated by diagrams on geology, astronomy, botany, zoology, and chemistry, quite equal to those given by highly paid professors of the present day, and he gave them for love, and nothing extra was put down in the bills, although each course was an education by itself, given in his lucid and most interesting way.”

These lectures, as Mrs. S. Buss says in her reminiscences—

“awakened in many a pupil the thirst for reading and study. His artistic talent, and the pleasant excursions for sketching from Nature, were novel inspirations in the days when the ordinary girlish specimens of copied drawings resembled nothing in Nature. A good elocutionist himself, he taught us to read and recite with expression.”

His daughter had the same gift, inherited or acquired, and her school has always been specially distinguished in all examinations for the excellence of the reading.

Mrs. S. Buss mentions, in addition to Mrs. Laing, as also specially interested in the school—

“the Rev. Canon Dale, Vicar of St. Pancras, and his two sons, Pelham and Lawford Dale; the Rev. Cornelius Hart, Vicar of Old St. Pancras; the Rev. R. P. Clemenger, Vicar of St. Thomas’, Agar Town; the Revs. E. Spooner and Charles Lee, the immediate successors of Mr. Laing; the Countess of Hardwicke, one of the earliest and most faithful friends of the school, whose daughter, Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, still continues the yearly prize for good conduct, and whose warm letter of sympathy, in January, was one of the many we received. We all remember, too, Judge Payne, and his witty impromptu verses at so many prize-givings.”

When we listen to these memories of the earlier school-days, we cannot dispute the position that—

“The foundation of the North London Collegiate School for Ladies was not merely the commencement of one special school, but was an era in education. If we very old pupils can carry our mind back to the time when the ‘Guide to Knowledge’ and ‘Mangnall’s Questions’ were the chief standard school-books for most of the scientific and historical instruction that girls received; when the mildest form of gymnastics (such as jumping over a stick held a few inches above the ground) was deemed so unladylike that some girls were withdrawn from the earliest classes formed; when the study of the most rudimentary physiology horrified the Mrs. Grundies of the period, who would not permit their daughters to continue the course after the first lesson (like the mother of later times at the primary school, who wrote to the teacher, ‘Mrs. S—— asks that my Mary Jane do not go again to those lessons where they talk about their bodies: first, which it is nasty; and second, which it is rude!’); the time when we learnt pages of dictionary, with meanings, in the first class, and rules of dry-as-dust grammar, without any meaning to us for years afterwards; the time when it was asserted and believed, that a girl’s mind was incapable of grasping any mathematical knowledge beyond the first four rules of arithmetic;—we can, remembering those good old times, see what a wonderful stride was taken in girls’ education by the North London Collegiate School, even in its infancy. Can we not recall those long tramps, to and fro, when the present North London Railway ran only between Chalk Farm and Fenchurch Street, and when there was no service of omnibuses between the various districts? Fares, even when a conveyance could be had, were fares, sixpence or a shilling. Do we not remember the overskirts insisted on by Miss Buss as a protection from the wet, at a time when waterproof clothing was unknown? What dressing and undressing went on round the stove, where Miss Reneau sat with the default list, to put down the name of any too riotous girl! What a delight the giant strides and see-saws were to the athletic young damsels of the period, while the more staid elders waited anxiously for the chance of a turn with the dear head-mistress, who gave up her hour of leisure to talk and walk with us on the playground, and give us a word of sympathy, counsel, or encouragement, or tell some funny story, or teach some new game, sharing her brimming cup of life with us all—ever regardless of her own need of rest!”

From letters at this period we have a glimpse of this young head-mistress at work and at play, both of which she did very thoroughly. The work must have been rather overdone, and we may admire the self-control which is remembered as so marked a characteristic, when we see that it came from real self-conquest. In 1859 she writes to her brother Septimus, speaking of herself and her cousin Maria (Mrs. Septimus Buss)—

“As usual at this period—and, for that matter, at most periods—of the year, we are over-worked. At times I am so irritable I feel inclined to throw things at people, and twice this week I have allowed myself to be provoked into a fit of temper. It is so grievous afterwards to reflect upon. Why was I made so gunpowdery? I do think, however, the provocation was very great, though that, of course, is no excuse.”

The next letter is to her father in holiday-time:—

“Dinan, 1860.

“Everything has combined to make this holiday delightful, and I am so well and happy, that I feel as if I was only twenty years of age, instead of a hundred, as I do in Camden Street. I find myself talking slang to the boys, and actually shouting fag-ends of absurd choruses from mere lightheartedness.

“I am very sorry to say that I do not feel any more industrious, though doubtless I shall have to recover from that complaint in London. Also I regret to say that I have to-day incurred the severe displeasure of our wee blue-eyed laddie!”

CHAPTER III.
INFLUENCE.

“You were the sower of a deathless seed,

The reaper of a glorious harvest, too;

But man is greater than his greatest deed,

And nobler than your noblest work were you!”

Emily Hickey.

“I am always thinking of the first time I ever saw her—in the old house in Camden Street, when I was seven years old, a timid child, sent upstairs with a message, which I stood and mumbled at the door. I remember her now—an elegant dark young lady, she seemed to me—with curls and a low-necked dress, as we all had then. She told me to come forward and deliver my message as if I wasn’t frightened; and I remember now how her vigorous intensity seemed to sweep me up like a strong wind. And that is forty-four years ago!”

This graphic sketch, from the pen of Mrs. Alfred Marks, gives us the young head of the new school as she must have looked in 1850, when the first venture in Clarence Road became the North London Collegiate School for Ladies, reconstructed after the lines of Queen’s College, founded two years before.

Among the many appreciative notices with which the entire press of England met the news of the death of one of the foremost educators of the time, none went so straight to the mark as that of a country paper, the Bath Herald, which seized on the most distinctive point of this remarkable personality. After observing that it is rare for the influence of a school-mistress to be felt beyond her immediate circle, it thus proceeds—

“There is not a county of her native country, not a colony of its empire, where the news of this death will not have saddened the hearts of pupils and friends.

“When she began her great work the matter of girls’ education was still a ‘question.’ Miss Buss solved it in the most direct and practical fashion; and every college for women, and every high school for girls, is a memorial of her labours. A personality of singular charm, and of what the slang of the day calls ‘magnetism,’ wholly without pedantry or self-consciousness, persuaded Royal Commissioners, City Companies, Lord Mayors and Royal Princesses, physicians, and even Universities, that women might be thoroughly educated without any danger to themselves or the State. To mention her name to any one of the many thousand pupils scattered over the face of the earth, was to raise constantly emotions of affection and pride. Undoubtedly she was one of the ‘pioneers’ of the century, and is secure of a niche in the temples of memory and of fame.”

These words are written at the end of her career, but they were true from the beginning. It is most truly characteristic of her that her power was exercised without self-consciousness. On one occasion I had remarked on her wonderful influence, and find her answer in a brief sentence, after which she turns to some more practical subject with her instinctive distaste for introspection or self-dissection: “What you say about personal influence strikes me curiously. I cannot possibly measure it or even understand it. To a certain extent I am conscious of an influence over young girls, but am not able to explain it.”

To those who knew her well, the explanation comes readily enough as we find her power of impressing others to be the result of the vividness of her sympathy, and of the imagination which, transcending mere personal limitations, is able actually to enter into the life of others, no matter how diverse in temperament or in circumstances.

Speaking of her as she was in middle life, Mrs. Marks offers a suggestion full of interest, as she says—

“Her utter spontaneity, her sense of people and things in their living essences, made a very deep and lasting impression on me. And some kind words she said to me—which showed she had seen into my very heart—were a greater encouragement to me than I can express. Their meaning was that she felt I was spontaneous, and had not settled down into conventionality; and as things were very real to me, it was a comfort to know that she too thought them so.”

It was doubtless as a direct consequence of this vision of the “soul of things” that the mere names of things meant so much more to Miss Buss than to most of us, to whom in general a name is the mere husk of the thing it stands for. Seeing through these names as she did, they stood to her for all the living reality of which they were the symbols. With the name, she came into possession of all that went to make up the personality represented by it. Surroundings, time, place, with every other relation, became an inseparable part of any name that once fixed itself in this truly royal memory. To every one who met her it was a standing wonder how she could know so much of the thousands of girls who had passed under her care. That she did know them is a fact that comes into almost every memorial relating to her, from those first simple days when she gave herself without stint to the little band of pupils, up to the very last, when her circle of influence was bounded only by the bounds of the empire itself.

It is not surprising that so many of these girls should bear for life the impress of this strong influence. But still there is something to call for comment in the depth of the feeling thus aroused. Before even the suggestion of approaching death had lifted the veil of commonplace, which so often hides from us the beauty of those with whom we walk the dusty path of everyday life, there came, in answer to questions about the “story of the school,” so many reminiscences of the early days, giving the freshness of early enthusiasm, all undimmed by the daily intercourse of nearly fifty years, that one could not but marvel.

Many of those first pupils have remained as teachers, many others have settled in the neighbourhood as friends, and to not a few this deep affection has been the master-passion of their lives. In the wisdom of these later times it is thought well to chill the fervour of the too engrossing devotion to which very young enthusiasts are prone. But nothing seems to have checked the ardour of these early days, while only good has resulted from a love which has moulded so many lives to strength and beauty.

One of the old pupils says of this time—

“She was true, so staunch, so utterly wanting in all the little pettinesses that so often mar even noble characters, that it is no wonder we, her own girls, made a ‘hero’ of her and worshipped her. But it was a noble worship, and killed our selfishness. We wanted not so much her approbation, but to live such lives that, could she know them, might deserve her approval.”

And another, of later date, commenting on the modern repression of youthful enthusiasm, fixes on the point that essentially divides the influence that is only life-giving from that which is sickly and morbid—

“Any devotion roused by her love and care for those brought into contact with her never savoured of this foolish adoration, because her sympathy, though so personal, was in a sense so impersonal and altruistic. She helped people because they wanted help, and not that she might be an absorbing personality to them.”

Of a piece with the selflessness of such ministry is another characteristic mentioned by the same writer—

“There is one point which always specially struck and helped me, and that was the wonderful way she had of bringing together people who would help each other by virtue of her sympathetic insight into character. Many most fruitful friendships must owe their origin to her loving thought. Even when, from the fulness of her own life, she was unable, to the same extent in the small details, to ‘mother’ all her ‘children,’ yet she always had some friend or ‘other child’ ready to go on with what she had begun.”

How she could keep to her old friends, when the pupil grew up to closer intimacy, is shown in one of the letters written to me while she was still amongst us. It is also touching in the light it throws on her relation to the sanctities and sorrows of quiet home-life, and what she could be to those who needed her. It is happy to remember that in the lovely home of this dear pupil-friend the beloved teacher found rest and refreshment in many a weary time; and we may thank Mrs. Pierson for this glimpse into that deeper life, of which she writes from a full heart—

“It is not often that ladies contend for the honour of age, but Miss Begbie and I have had one or two friendly squabbles as to which of us is the elder ‘old pupil.’ I think it was the second term of the opening of dear Miss Buss’ school, in 1850, that I became one of her happy pupils, and from that day to this she has been my loving guide and friend, sharing many deep sorrows and deeper joys. She has been so great an influence in my life that I have always felt I could realize the verse, ‘For a good man some would even dare to die.’

“In those early days we were a comparative handful of girls, and had the benefit of Miss Buss’ society nearly all to ourselves, enjoying the very cream of her young life, intellect, and enthusiasm.

“It was all like fairyland teaching to me, and in the exuberance of my enjoyment, I am obliged to confess that I was a little troublesome, and often managed to upset the equilibrium of the class, bringing upon myself the ordeal of a lecture in Miss Buss’ private room after school. I always went into that room raging like a young lioness, but invariably came out a plaintive lamb, vowing never to offend again. In order to comfort and soothe my passionate grief, dear Miss Buss often kept me to tea with her and her pleasant family party, and I fear that that enjoyment had a demoralizing effect upon my good resolutions.

“I was motherless when I first knew Miss Buss, and had been utterly spoilt by an over-indulgent father until he married again a lady quite out of sympathy with a girl of fourteen. I should have turned into a veritable fury, and ended in perdition, if I had not come across the spiritual influence of dear Miss Buss. She supplied every want in my soul, and I gladly gave myself to her loving guidance, often falling, but always encouraged, until in after years I was strong enough to be able to part with life’s best treasures one by one, and to say—

“‘It is well with my husband,

It is well with my child.’

“I could fill a volume with all dear Miss Buss has enabled me to be, to do and to suffer, and with what she has been to me through all—and not to me only, for all the girls of my time worshipped her, and she never of her own accord loses touch with an old pupil. But what I have said will doubtless suffice for your purpose.”

A large volume might indeed be filled with “memories”—extending from those early days till a year ago—of the kindness and sympathy ever flowing out from that time to this. It seemed to me very striking when the same post brought two letters—one dating back to 1850, the other only to 1890—and, spite of the forty years between, telling just the same story.

The one shows us the young teacher standing at the parlour door, “with a kiss for each pupil at the end of the day’s work,” with a “grace of manner and gentle voice” deeply impressing the child to whom for forty-four years afterwards she became “ever a most kind and constant friend, ever ready with sympathy.”

Then comes a picture of a wild, daring girl, dashing to the end of the long garden and back in the rain, on her return to be called into the parlour to account for herself. Of the reproof she adds—

“I remember little but its gentleness, and the kind arm round me while it was being given; but, at the end, I was required to promise never to do anything because I was dared to do it. After that Miss Buss led me by a silken thread all through my school-days, though the other teachers often found me headstrong and troublesome.”

There is an account of how Miss Buss ended a standing feud between the girl and “Mademoiselle” by the exaction of a promise from the reluctant pupil that she would set herself to win the French prize. And finally comes the graver side of this happy relation—

“When at the age of thirteen I left school to go abroad, Miss Buss still continued her kindness, writing to me while I was away, and giving me kind welcome on my return. To see her again was always my first thought after the home-greeting.

“After my first trouble she wrote thus to me—

“‘I feel much for you, dear E——. Your experience of life is beginning early, and so is your discipline. Discipline, though wholesome, is never pleasant. And then, when one is young, one’s feelings are so acute. I remember what I went through at your age, and under similar circumstances. Nevertheless, my greater experience than yours, poor child, makes me confess that “tribulation worketh patience.” Amidst all your trials, dear E——, always trust me. I do not intend to let a light thing come between me and “auld lang syne” folks.’”

The second letter is also from one of the madcap order—a wilful, high-spirited bit of mischief, fascinating in her pranks, but often enough a source of real anxiety to her teachers, and even to the dignified head herself, known to this child only when almost worn out with the long strain of school-life and of her heavy public work. But here are words as straight from the child’s heart as from that of the woman who could count back through nearly fifty years of friendship—

“Jan. 31, 1895.

“Dear Miss Edwards,

“There is so much I want to say, but I do not know how to say it. This distance is so awful.

“I think it is because I cannot realize that I shall never see Miss Buss again. If I were near I could realize it better; it seems more like some fearful dream to me.

“I wish I was near you to tell you how deeply I sympathize and share in the sorrow that I know the loss of so kind and true a friend must be to you.

“And how many hundreds of girls will feel the same!

“All the world over there will be hearts aching to think that they will never see Miss Buss again.

“I can but judge others by myself, and I know that it was not till I had left school, and had been out here some time, that I realized more fully what a great blessing had been mine that I had been allowed to know Miss Buss; that, while I was at the age when girls most need loving, firm guidance, I should have had Her for a kind teacher and friend. It will always be to me one of the best and happiest remembrances of my life, for I truly feel it a great honour bestowed on me.”

There will always be the two kinds of girl—the one who is content with the life of the present moment, and the one who “looks before and after,” to whom the present moment is only a fixed point between past and future. In speaking for herself, one of the first kind speaks for many more, as she naïvely says, “I fancy we were too much occupied with ourselves to think much about Miss Buss while we were at school!” The second class speak for themselves in every variety of intensity, but all to the same purpose: “No one can ever know what she was to me. All that I am, and all that I have, I owe to her influence or to her help!” Over and over comes the same cry, in which the blank of present loss foretells the future loneliness bereft of the strength and comfort of the past.

From one of the younger pupils we have again the growing sense of what she had less kindly felt at the moment—

“I feel that there are so many women, not in England only, but all over the world, who will rise up to call her ‘blessed.’ As time goes on I more appreciate the training I had under her, and it seems to me now, that but for her influence I could not possibly have fulfilled the home and public duties that have fallen to my lot, and that it has been a pleasure to me to undertake.”

And yet another—

“We who were with her in the impressionable days of our youth must all feel how much we owe her, in the view of life she gave us, and the tone of healthy energy she brought into our lives. I am sure her loss will be as widely felt as that of Arnold by his old pupils long ago.”

To give the experience of all who come back year by year to give a record of their work in hospital ward or East End slum, in home workhouses or foreign missions, would be too heavy a task; but, as illustrative of the wide range of influence exercised in matters social and philanthropic, we may give a letter from one in whom the “Gospel of Work” found an apt disciple.

Mrs. Heberden, one of the first three ladies elected as lady guardians in St. Pancras, was, as Sarah Ward Andrews, one of the pupils of the second decade, dating from 1861, but she has the same record of delight in the teaching and the same devotion to the teacher as those of earlier date. What most impressed her, however, she gives as follows:—

“During my stay Miss Buss’ mother died, and though in great sorrow, she continued all her work. I remember her remark that, ‘Work, originally a curse to mankind, was now a blessing, not permitting us to dwell on our trials and losses.’ From that time Miss Buss was a great factor for all that is best and highest in my life; and when, in 1873, I lived near her in Hampstead, I was brought into active public life by her request. She asked me to help in the School Board election of that year, when Miss Chessar and Mrs. Cowell were returned for Marylebone.

“All the great interest I have taken in women’s work began then, encouraged by Miss Buss’ earnest sympathy and advice.

“In 1880 I was elected Poor Law Guardian in St. Pancras, for the ward in which Holy Trinity Church stands, where Miss Buss had attended for a long time. Her name secured me much support; without it, I doubt if I should have been returned, for the opposition to Women Guardians was then very great, and the difficulties enormous. Miss Buss’ counsel was most valuable to me at this time as always, so wise and judicious. ‘Forward, but not too fast,’ was ever her motto.”

Here is another word to the same purpose, from an East End hospital:—

“How many lives will be impoverished now! She was so true and great-hearted. Wasn’t it wonderful how she remembered the details of so many lives? She never treated us collectively. My life would have been so different but for the time spent with her. She prepared many for a sharp wrestle with life’s difficulties. And how she remembered one’s home people too!

“Such a wave of sadness comes over me as I think of her; and yet, what a life hers was to rejoice over! So full and generous. Hers was such a rich loving nature. Surely many, thinking of what she has done, may indeed ‘take heart again!’ If I felt less, I might be able to say more.”

We could go on adding witness after witness in those who have thus loved her. One thing only is more wonderful than this general love, and that is the power of loving to which it all came as response. It is by putting together the impressions of complete satisfaction given to each of these many varying needs, that we finally reach some adequate estimate of this grand personality. Each person in any relation to her, had a special and real place in her regard, just as each child has its own place in its mother’s heart—a place of its very own. In this wide heart there was room for all, and each distinct and distinctly separate. There was here no mere jumble of meaningless amiability. The loves and the likings were quite definite. And possibly the dislikings also; but of these no one heard very much. Of hate and scorn there was none for anything but evil itself. Her practice, like her teaching, was “to be merciless to the sin, but very tender to the sinner.”

Almost more telling, in their intensity of regret, than even these thanksgivings for the joy of such a friendship, are the thoughts of one who was “glad just to claim a place among the old pupils” in the crowded church on that sad New Year’s Eve, when every heart in the vast assembly beat in unison in the same love and sorrow. During life there seemed always a vitalizing principle in the influence of the leader thus mourned; and who may measure the latent forces set free in this great wave of feeling?—forces that might help to bring about the hope of these first words—

“As for the public loss, that is greater than we can understand, because we shall never know how much she has done for women till we know how much women will be able to do in the future. But she helped more than women by what she did. She raised the whole standard of life in raising the standard of women’s education.”

And then, in the light of this flash of insight into the greatness of the work, comes a sense of personal loss, in a lament which seems to bear with it the echo of all the sighs of all the women of past ages, who desired and aspired, but yet strove in vain, to break the chains of ignorance that held them bound—chains broken at length by this strong hand!

How many a girl must have inwardly rebelled against the deadening routine of the old conventional schools, though so few had the strength by which this once “timid child” won her own freedom. Measuring what have been by the force of that first never-forgotten impression of the “vigorous intensity that swept her up like a strong wind,” her words of regret that her school-life had not been spent under that influence come as among the saddest of the laments of that sorrowful day—

“Thinking it over after she was gone, a perfect agony of regret came over me that I was not always her pupil. In church, that day, the regret was so pregnant that it almost stupefied me.... When I think that Miss Buss was at our very doors, I can scarcely bear to look back. Think of what I might have been saved—the unutterable loneliness of those five years, the misery, the deliberate fostering, of set purpose, of a morbid self-consciousness and self-distrust. Why, I have never got over it! The deadening effect of those five years clings to me still. I consider that it kept me back fifteen years. Instead of leaving school broken-spirited and irresolute, I should have had the inspiration of knowing that I had been part of the great human movement. As it was, I had to grope my way to modern thought.

“I made very few friends at school, and shrunk from all. If I had gone there I should have found a door open into the real life I sought. But, above all, just think of exchanging Miss S—— for Miss Buss!—spontaneity for repression, an honest straightforward ideal of duty, for a system based upon ‘Mason on Self-knowledge’! (That book ought to be burnt by the common hangman.)

“Oh, I thought some bitter thoughts as I sat that day among the old pupils, thankful just to have the right to sit there at all!”

There seems indeed good cause for regret that a nature so sensitive should not have had full room for unchecked growth in the warm sunny atmosphere of this school, when the young teacher was free to throw herself into the lives of her pupils. Freedom of growth—with all the joy of such freedom—forms the great wonder of those early days.

The proof of the true vitality of this growth is in the fact that these early pupils came themselves into possession of that power of impressing others which was so distinctive of their teacher.

I was very much struck by this fact when I first heard of Miss Buss from one of these old pupils, Miss L. Agnes Jones, who, though only for a few months under her influence, never lost the impression either of the teaching or of the teacher, so unlike all previous experience. Years afterwards, the time for action found her ready, and she became a potent factor in the first stages of the change that has affected so many lives.

All the “memories” from old pupils bear witness to the same thing, put strongly by one who was afterwards a member of her staff:—

“She was to me a guide, a magnet, leading me on, higher and higher, above all self-seeking, all petty vanities, all ignoble ambitions.... I speak reverently when I say that her whole life seems to me a sort of ladder or pulley to help us up nearer to the Perfect Life lived on earth by our Great Model.”

One example of this life giving influence may be given, belonging to the early days when, through Miss Jones, I also had come within its sphere, and felt its fascination. Up to the day when, in a chance call on one of us, she heard us talk of Miss Buss and her work, Miss Fanny Franks had been quite content and happy as a somewhat exceptionally successful daily governess, appreciated by her pupils and their parents, and taking just pride in the instruction given after her own original fashion. She taught in this way for part of five days a week, and, for the rest, lived a pleasant girl-life at home with her sisters, all undisturbed by educational theories.

One flash of the new inspiration was enough to change all this easy and happy experience into struggle and effort. After the talk on that first day Miss Franks had gone straight to Miss Buss and offered her services. “But, my dear, you have had no training! In these days some credentials are necessary,” was the sufficiently discouraging reply. But having now seen Miss Buss for herself, there was no going back for the new adherent. If training were necessary, training must be had. At what cost is shown in her letter—

“Having given up so much to this end, I should be sorry not to go on. By ‘going on’ I mean the examination, and by ‘giving up,’ leaving home and coming to live up here with only books for seven or eight months. This examination and the hard study, and the ill-health and spirits consequent thereupon, are the reasons why I did not take an express-train to London immediately on receipt of dear Miss Jones’ letter, which at any other time would have gladdened me beyond expression. But it is all Miss Buss’ fault. She first inspired me with the idea of an examination. Had it not been for her I should, in happy ignorance, have looked upon myself as a good and capable teacher, not merely in the making—as now—but ready and fit to do whatever she might propose.”

Having been the cause of so decided a change, Miss Buss was too loyal not to do all in her power to make it a success. In her letters to me I find allusions during the whole time which show her thoughtful consideration of the best means to the end. She found a post in the school, and lost no chance of fruitful suggestion. At her wish Miss Franks attended Mr. Payne’s lectures, at the College of Preceptors, on the Theory, History, and Practice of Education, and no one was more pleased when Miss Franks came out as an Associate of the college. Again, when Miss Franks finally discovered her true vocation, Miss Buss arranged to give her two days a week for the Kindergarten experiments, now so supreme a success.

And now, being herself a leader, with her own band of students taking a foremost place in the Kindergarten movement, Miss Franks is only the more loyal to her own chosen leader, and among the many expressions of loss come her pathetic words—

“The sad time has come, and we have lost our wonderful friend. Never will there be another Frances Buss! It makes me ache to think of the faithful ones like Miss Begbie, and many others, who have worked under her flag for so many years, and have lost their splendid leader! Ah me! it is a sad time for us all!”

CHAPTER IV.
HELPFULNESS.

“A mother, though no infant at thy breast

Was nursed, no children clung about thy knee;

Yet shall the generations call thee blest,

Mother of nobler women yet to be.”

To F. M. B.

Just ten years after that picture of splendid vigour which had so taken captive “the timid child of seven,” we have a companion portrait in a not less lasting impression made on a shy girl of seventeen, who after the long lapse of years, thus recalls that first interview—

“You ask me what it is which stands out most clearly in my early recollections of our dear friend. It is nearly thirty-three years since I saw her first, but I always remember her as I saw her then. She was seated at her table (a round table) in what in those days was always called ‘the parlour.’ It corresponded to the ‘office’ of the present day, but with this difference, that Miss Buss was always to be found there whenever she was not occupied with her girls, in teaching or in superintending their work. She was her own secretary, and we all became thoroughly accustomed to seeing her writing there, but ready to lay aside her pen and give her undivided attention to any one who needed it. Indeed, to the best of my recollection, the door always stood partly open. I felt there was something different about her from what I was accustomed to observe in other women. There was such a mingling of motherliness and sweetness with intense earnestness and thoroughness about her work. She was at that time in deep mourning. Her mother had died shortly before, and also the Reverend David Laing, under whose wing she had begun, and for several years carried on, her school. The double grief had been felt very keenly, and she had been so ill that her hair was already mingled with grey. I remember the way she dressed it—the front hair being brought down over the ears, and the back rolled under and covered with a black net. Her black dress was plainly made, but fitted well. It was long, and made her look taller than she was.

“I felt attracted to her at once, and, as I got to know her, I found that my first impressions were more than justified by experience.”

The change is very striking from the vivacious and vigorous young head of the new school of 1850 and this grave, kind woman of 1860, a change greater than the mere lapse of time can justify. But the loss of her mother, followed so closely by that of her friend Mr. Laing, who had been the mainstay of all her school career, must have been to her as the uprooting of her very life. To the end she spoke of her mother with the same deep tenderness. She had been friend as well as mother, a double tie that meant so much as the daughter grew to be the helper. Family claims took firm grasp of this loyal nature, and the mother’s death meant also taking her place to the father, left for the time helpless without the all-pervading care that had stood between him and all the minor miseries that loom so large to the artist temperament.

How this trust was fulfilled shows in the daughter’s words when, fifteen years afterwards, this work of love was ended.

“Jan. 3, 1875.

“On Saturday I go away with my father to Worthing. He has been growing more and more feeble, and is a constant source of anxiety. I feel that he needs me, and yet I cannot give up more time to him than can be got on Sunday. But, you see, this means Sunday as well as week-days. If you could peep in on me it would be a pleasure to see your dear face. I think often of you in my hurricane-speed life.”

“Feb. 11.

“My father is still very ill. It looks as if he were fading away. He is so patient, gentle, and loving to us all, and especially to me, that I can scarcely keep up.”

“Feb. 20.

“My heart is wrung with grief. My dear, dear father is, we believe, sinking. I am going now to him, and shall stay in the house. He likes to have my hand in his, and to speak faintly from time to time of my mother. He tells me I alone can soothe him as she did. He is very peaceful, and suffering no pain, but he is too weak to help himself in the least.”

“Mar. 10.

“I am so sorry to know you are again ill. It makes me sigh. As soon as I can I will call, but I am almost breaking down from nervous prostration.

“My Liverpool journey, though likely to be useful, was trying. It is full of my dear father.

“You cannot imagine how large a blank he has left in my life. Only time can fill it up. He was the one person to whom I was necessary, and to whom my presence always carried pleasure, and I cannot get into the way of remembering that he is not.”

“Mar. 13.

“I am not well. Some old symptoms have returned, though not in a bad form. I can get through the day, but my evenings and nights are distressing. I am in a sort of anguish which does actually seem to affect my heart. Yet I would not recall my dear, dear father if I could. But nature must have some expression, and I really loved him. Besides, I was nearest to him and closest to him! Many things we understand better now.”

Knowing so well the power of a mother’s love, this daughter had grown into that mother’s power of giving herself out, a power that is universally felt as her chief characteristic. Here is a description of her as she was at the time when this portrait is drawn—

“I think, in those early days, it was her sweet and motherly way of drawing each one of us to her, and caring for each particular person’s concerns, and remembering them, which impressed me more than anything else, excepting indeed her very encouraging manner. She lost no opportunity of saying a loving word of praise, and it would be accompanied by a motherly hug, which warmed one’s heart for a long time. That comfortable, loving manner was a great power among teachers and pupils. Many a girl who had given trouble in one department or another, would go out of the parlour, after a talk with Miss Buss, thoroughly softened and helped into a right frame of mind.”

This motherly kindness won the devotion of a lifetime from the lonely girl so early called to face the world, and Caroline Fawcett well earned her great privilege of being one of the little band whose love soothed the last hours of the friend who had been so much in their lives. Her latest thought, as she writes on that sad New Year’s Eve, is the same as the first of so many years before—

“But, indeed, it must be a great miss for us, the never being able to go to her for motherly loving sympathy. One of the lights that will go on shining out of her life, and will kindle others, is that loving motherliness. If one could only show a little of it, following in her dear footsteps!”

This aspect of her character impressed even those who had to do with Miss Buss outside her own work. Mr. Garrod, secretary to the Teachers’ Guild, who knew her in her public life, says of her: “To me she seemed to be one who was born to shine as head of a family, and to have the domestic rather than the public excellencies.”

Her school can fairly be regarded as her family, for she may be said to have “mothered” them all—teachers as well as pupils—even in the later days, when public work took so much of her attention. Miss Emily Hickey, one of the visiting professors, who came so much less into contact with her than did the teaching staff, puts this well, as she says of her intense “motherliness”—

“There is no other word for it. No one brought into any emotional contact with her, could fail to realize this, and one can see how much it must have had to do in binding so fast to her so many women so much younger than she, both in years and in experience.”

Mrs. Marks says also—

“I remember when I saw her again some years afterwards, and I remember how like a mother she seemed to me who wanted a mother so dreadfully. Always after that I thought of her as a sort of universal mother. There are few women like that!”

On reading these words, a pupil of later years adds to them—

“I, too, wanted a mother, and found so much of what I wanted in her. These might have been my own words, and are, indeed, almost identical with what I have said.”

And yet another—

“I have every reason to remember her with tender regard, and to deeply regret her loss. From the fact that I was motherless, she took an especial interest in my studies and health, making my father and myself deeply grateful to her. I more than ever feel what a friend I have lost. Camden Town is very lonely without her.”

Mrs. Marks continues—

“And then the general impression of geniality and life which was always so conspicuous! She was so warm, everything about her was infused with warmth. There was no cold impersonality in any of her thoughts. They were all alive. I need not say how kind she was.”

This kindness was all-inclusive, going down to the least as well as rising to the highest. Among the hundreds of letters of condolence received by Miss Buss’ family was one from the firm which undertook the charge of the school clocks, speaking strongly of the kind and gracious way in which their employés had always been treated.

And there is a characteristic story of her in connection with her old cabman Downes, who drove her, year after year, to school and to church. On one occasion, hurrying to catch the train to Cambridge, Downes upset his cab, and Miss Buss was extricated without having time to decide whether she was hurt or not, her business being too important to admit of delay. Her first act on reaching her destination was to telegraph to Downes to assure him that she was not hurt.

All records go to show how lasting was her interest in all who made any claim on her, confirming the words of another of her staff, when she says, “Girls, as soon as they left school, felt that they had a friend ever ready to sympathize with them in sorrow or in joy. A happy marriage was a delight to her”—a remark confirmed by a passage in one of Miss Buss’ letters, where she says, “I wish Ada would bring Mr. Z—— to Myra. I like to see my sons-in-law. He cannot be shyer than Mr. Q——.”

Here is a note just after the opening of the new buildings by the Prince and Princess of Wales, written for the wedding-day of one of her pupils—

“Dear Mary,

“Just a line to express my love and good wishes for you and yours to-morrow.

“May God bless you in your new state of life! I shall be with you in spirit, and think of you all.

“I hope you have received the little tea-table. The mats for it have been delivered I know, but I am not sure about the table.

“I hope Eleanor will send me a short note to say where you have gone, and to give me some account of to-morrow’s ceremony.

“With my dear love and good wishes,

“Believe me, yours affectionately,

“Frances M. Buss.”

To “meet the glad with joyful smiles” would always have been easy to her, but she was more often called “to wipe the weeping eyes;” for the words of another of the recent pupils was curiously true—

“Of late years it has often struck me as melancholy that the most successful and happiest of her old pupils, settled in homes of their own, or teaching in schools at a distance, could do little more than send an occasional letter, or pay a flying visit, while numbers of the unsuccessful, the weak and helpless, came back to her for the advice and help she never failed to give. Seeing, as she did, numbers of these, she was very strongly impressed by the absolute necessity for young girls to be trained to some employment by which they might, if necessary, earn a livelihood. For women to be dependent on brothers and relations, she considered an evil to be avoided at all costs, and she tried to keep before us the fact that training for any work must develop a woman’s intellect and powers, and therefore make her—married or single—a better and a nobler being.”

Another friend adds on this point—

“She was so kind and unprejudiced by unconventionality, that she was just as interested and sympathetic and helpful towards an old pupil, who came to her about trying to set up a business (such as dressmaking or millinery), as she was to one going to Girton or trying for a head-mistress-ship.”

As instance of the thoroughness that characterized her efforts to help the girls, one of them gives a little experience which will come home to many a mother, as she recalls the solicitude with which Miss Buss went to any medical consultation needed by delicate girls under her care—

“I left school to become a governess myself, and during my first holiday she made an opportunity for a quiet talk with me, entering into all my plans and difficulties, and helping me greatly by her wise and loving counsel. No effort was too great for her to make, if she could thereby help or benefit any of us. Many years later, when my sister had been under Dr. Playfair’s treatment, he ordered her abroad, and she was to be accompanied by a companion of whom he should approve. Miss Buss not only offered to let her join her party, shortly to start for Marienbad, but went herself to see Dr. Playfair at eight a.m. (the only time she was free during term-time), in order that he might be satisfied with her as an escort. This meeting proved a mutual pleasure to them.”

It is pleasant to know that, out of this special thoughtfulness, there came to Miss Buss, not only the companionship in travel, but frequent resting in the happy home of these girls; and also—a very great satisfaction—the gift to the school of the “Crane Scholarship,” to mark their mother’s appreciation of this motherly care of her children.

But the help given so kindly was by no means limited to inspiration, instruction, or advice, carefully and considerably as this might be thought out for each separate case. Where the means of acting on her suggestions were wanting her sympathy expressed itself in more tangible terms. I remember, one day, after discussing ways and means in some instance of this sort, stopping short, and saying to her, “Do you know how many girls you are helping at this moment?” In the most matter-of-fact way she answered reflectively, “Well, I could scarcely say, without going into the question!” Occasionally she would ask help of some one of a little band of friends willing to give it—often of Miss Laura Soames—so soon to follow her—and of Miss Edith Prance, and others. But more often than not she said nothing about it, generally taking it on herself. When the school had been her own this was easy enough, but in a public school the fees must be paid even by the head-mistress herself. She was, however, free to please herself as to the help she gave at Myra Lodge, and those who may have made calculations of the income derived from the pupils there, might, if they had known all, have found themselves far from accurate in their sum total.

Here is a little story from far-away times, showing not only her burdens, but that still rarer gift, her unwavering steadfastness to an obligation once taken up—

“Among her friends was one family whose means were not in full proportion to the large-heartedness which made the good mother decide to keep as her own a little motherless baby, which she had taken in during its mother’s fatal illness. Not only did her own little daughters welcome the baby sister, but even the over-worked father accepted without a murmur the sleepless nights which were a small part of his contribution to the new-comer. As soon as Miss Buss heard the story she said at once, ‘And I must do my part. Her education shall be my care!’”

—a care that lasted beyond school-days, and included the finding of a fitting occupation for later life.

Still another record may be added as typical of so many more; a story none the less touching for the humorous way in which it is told—

“A Short Tribute from ‘A Lame Dog.’

“The work of ‘helping lame dogs over stiles’ is not recognized publicly or read on the list amongst the various names of the good works and societies with which our dear Miss Buss was connected, and probably only the ‘Lame Dogs’ themselves know what a kind strong hand helped them to climb the dreaded barrier; but surely among the many thousands who call themselves ‘Old North Londoners,’ or ‘Bussites,’ there is a long roll-call of such silent work, deeply graven upon the hearts of those who, like myself, know.

“The first morning on which I took my place in the class-room among several other new-comers introduced me individually to Miss Buss, for on hearing my name mentioned she called me to her and asked how it was spelt. This impressed me very much at the time, as I was the only one upon whom this honour was conferred, and my surname was hardly one to deserve special attention.

“As time went on, however, the little extra notice was sufficiently explained, for I discovered that another family in the school bore a name nearly similar to my own, and indeed, throughout my school-life, I was constantly being congratulated upon honours never won, and credited with talents really possessed by the happy bearer of the other name.

“This incident doubtless might appear to be trivial and insignificant to many, but to one nervously entering a new sphere of life this was not so; from that moment I felt I was known to the head-mistress as having a separate individuality, although insignificant enough among so many.

“A few years went on, and school-days passed happily enough, without my having any special intercourse with Miss Buss, until, owing to an unexpected crisis in affairs at home, it was suddenly arranged for me to leave.

“Then it was that I really began to know our dear head-mistress, and to realize what she was to her girls, and how much she cared individually for each one.

“On a memorable morning for the second time she called me out to have a chat with her, and fully discussed my future. She pointed out the drudgery incumbent upon one who was only inefficiently educated, and upon finding that my personal desire was to have studied more thoroughly, she insisted most strongly upon my remaining at school for another year.

“I held no scholarship, neither, as affairs then stood, could I receive any help from home.

“All remonstrance was immediately swept aside. Miss Buss offered to pay all school fees from her own pocket until I had earned at least a matriculation certificate. She also insisted upon my joining the gymnasium classes, which at that time were enjoyed by those only who paid additional fees.

“How could such kindness be refused? From that time work was sacred, and as the terms flew by and the examination loomed in the near future, failure became the one evil in the world most to be dreaded. When the good news at last came out, and Miss Buss, as excited over the result as the expectant candidates, warmly congratulated us, she seemed to let each one know, in a way peculiarly her own, what the pleasure or pain really meant to her; to myself, having worked under high pressure, her silent sympathy may be better understood than explained.

“She trusted us so thoroughly.

“My debt was never mentioned in any way by her, and it was only on repaying the loan she told me she was glad to have the money back, as she could then help others in a similar way.”

And there are so many who, like the writer of this story, also know, though what they know is known to themselves alone. But still, even from such vague hints as have come to them, many intimate friends can echo Eleanor Begbie’s exclamation, as she ended an interesting talk about the early days, “No one will ever know, on this side of the Day of Judgment, how many girls owe all their education to Miss Buss!”

BOOK II.

PUBLIC WORK.

1860.

1872.

CHAPTER I.
TRANSITION.

“The old order changes, giving place to new.”

My first remembrance of Miss Buss—dating from October, 1870—is one that will come up very vividly to all who remember her Tuesdays’ “at home,” at Myra Lodge, and who will recall her gracious way of advancing, with outstretched hand and welcoming smile, to meet her friends.

There was a touch of ceremoniousness in her reception of strangers that made this smile seem all the sweeter, dispelling a certain awe excited by the presence and dignity, the sense of power and purpose, which were there as the natural outcome of the habit of rule from her childhood upwards. She was rather below than above middle height, but she always gave an impression of being taller than she was in reality.

No one could be with her in any close relation without speedily knowing how really kind she was, and, after a very short acquaintance, it was quite easy to believe the story that as Miss Buss made the announcement of one of the first passes with honours, the delighted student, in the exuberance of the joy at this success, seized the dignified head-mistress, and whirled her round in an impromptu waltz, ending without doubt in one of those loving embraces which gave so much warmth to school-life; a warmth that carried her so happily through so many long years of incessant strain.

The heavy responsibilities and many cares of her arduous life always made Miss Buss look older than her years, even before she adopted the distinctive style of dress which, though never out of the fashion, had still a speciality of its own, which always made it seem appropriate. She acted up to her theory that each person should take pains to discover the style most suitable, and then, having found it, should keep as near to it as possible. This she herself did, contriving at the same time to keep in touch with prevailing fashions. Her gowns were always well made—for school and for mornings of some strong serviceable black material, with a simple collar and cap. For receptions, prize-days, and evenings, she wore rich silk or satin, with cap and fichu to match of real lace—her one cherished “vanity.” She had a weakness for good lace, not forgotten by her friends on anniversaries, so that she acquired a good store of this valued possession. For ornaments she did not care enough to buy them for herself, though as gifts she appreciated them sufficiently. It was a matter of principle with her that it is no less the pleasure than the duty of every woman to make the very best of her appearance; a duty especially incumbent in those days on all who held any views which could be called “advanced.” As Mrs. Marks says of her, “there was about her an entire absence of peculiarity. Never any one seemed less eccentric, and it was impossible for the most rabid opponent of woman’s rights to say that she was ‘unsexed.’”

And just as she had a woman’s regard for her appearance, she also cared about her house. The drawing-room of 1870 was not yet what it was later—one of the first finished specimens of decorative household art. That came years afterwards, with her full success. But even before that era, though it might be simple and old-fashioned, it was certain to be tasteful, and as artistic as was then possible.

In my very first talk with Miss Buss we touched at once at the point on which she felt most deeply. I had been interested in the question of employment for women, having written some papers for the Art Journal on the “Art-work Open to Women,” in which I had come to the conclusion that here, as everywhere, the chief obstacle to success lay in the want of education and of training. A paper read by Dr. W. B. Hodgson at the Social Science Congress, held in Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1870, followed by an able discussion, had proved the connecting link between the question of employment and that of higher education, and I then recalled all I had heard from my friend Miss Jones about Miss Buss’ schools and their new developments.

After the Newcastle meeting I received the following note from Miss Buss, which shows how things stood at that date:—

“12, Camden Street, Oct. 18, 1870.

“Dear Madam,

“At Miss L. A. Jones’ request, I forward you four proofs of our appeal. What we now want is funds.

“As you will see, our list of subscriptions is very small. The paper is as yet only a proof, because we cannot circulate largely any statement, until the lease of the new house is actually signed.

“When you return to town, I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you. Agnes has often spoken of you to me, and I am glad to know you are interested in our plans.

“If we can get one school for girls well started, the ice will be broken, and many others will be set up in imitation.

“If you wish for further information, or for more copies of the proof, I shall be glad to give you either.

“Believe me,

“Very truly yours,

“Frances M. Buss.”

Pleased as I was with this first communication from one whom I had already learned to admire, I could have no inkling of all it would mean for me in the future, as the beginning of a friendship which steadily deepened through the four and twenty years that followed; a friendship which can only go on deepening after we cease to count by days or years, since it is of the kind not begun for any ending.

As I left her that day the feeling of her life went with me in my impression of the grief it had been to her, just as her pupils began really to profit by her teaching, to be compelled to give so many of them up. Social reasons, family reasons, financial reasons, no reason at all—anything, in those days, was sufficient excuse for ending a girl’s education. But, nevertheless, year by year, these same girls came back, under the pressure of some unforeseen need, or even in the ordinary course of things, as their fathers death broke up the family, to ask their teacher’s advice how they might gain a livelihood, and to rack her tender heart with the hopelessness of their lot. Half-educated, wholly untrained, what could they do? They could do nothing. What she could do for them as individuals was utterly inadequate, though she never failed to do whatever might lie in her power. But each separate case that came before her made her the more resolute to help them, as a whole, by giving them the greatest good of all—a thorough education.

It is quite in keeping that the crowning work of her life should be the outcome of the passion of helpfulness, in which this full mother-heart poured itself out. She was a born educationalist, a teacher with the whole bent of her nature, and she must in any case have devoted herself to the task of making education a science. But her great schools were the work not of her head, but of her heart, having their rise in her feeling for the half-taught girls who were compelled to teach for a livelihood. With her head she gave them the instruction and training that would best help to this end. Then with her heart she made the gift doubly precious, since she gave them not merely the means of living, but also a life worth living; they were fitted for work, but, in the inspiration of her own life, she made it work worth the doing; work that enriched the world as well as the worker. It was her aim that teaching should cease to be a mere trade—so many hours grudgingly given for so much pay—and that it should take its true place as foremost among the “learned professions,” in which excellence of work, and not work’s reward, is the object of ambition.

From the time of her interview with the Commissioners in 1865, the idea of making a public school for girls had been growing in her thoughts, and, five years later, several of her own personal friends who shared her feeling agreed to form a trust to ensure the permanence of the system worked out with so much care.

The trust-deed was signed on July 26, 1870, by the Rev. Charles Lee, who had succeeded the Rev. David Laing, at Holy Trinity, and by Dr. M. A. Garvey and Mr. W. Timbrell Elliott. The Rev. A. J. Buss, who acted as honorary secretary, and the Rev. S. Buss were also members of the Trust.

During the ensuing week the number was increased by the addition of Mrs. Wm. Burbury, Mr. T. Harries, and Dr. Storrar, a member of the Schools Inquiry Commission. During the next six months the Board was increased by the election of Dr. Thorold, Mr. W. Danson, Mrs. Offord, Miss Ewart, Miss Vincent Thompson, and myself.

Translated into plain fact, this trust-deed represents the transfer by Miss Buss to the public of the results of twenty years’ labour. The school was her own property, being merely under friendly supervision from the St. Pancras’ clergy. The income was at her own disposal, and out of school she was free to cultivate all the refined tastes with which she was so richly endowed.

Until 1866 Miss Buss had remained with her father in Camden Street, making no change in her life since her girlhood, and not even having a banking account of her own. It had not occurred to any one that in making the money she had any special right to it.

In this year it became desirable for her health that she should live away from the school, and as Mr. Buss could not be induced to remove from Camden Street, he remained there, in the care of a relative, while Miss Buss went for a time to Mr. and Mrs. Septimus Buss, in Maitland Park. But in 1868 it seemed necessary to prepare for the coming changes, and she then took Myra Lodge, to which she removed the boarders who had been under her supervision, though in the charge of Miss Mary Buss and Miss Fawcett, at 15, Camden Street. She had to be prepared with some alternative in case of failure; for on all sides she was warned against a venture so rash as to be almost hopeless. Who was likely to send girls to a “public school”? To make the experiment meant that the old school—the work of so many years, and now a splendid success—must go. What, then, would be left?

Success would mean the realization of the desire of her life—that success which came at last after nine years of effort—success beyond all hope. But in 1870 the experiment was more than doubtful, and the chance of failure had to be boldly faced. She did not hesitate, and gave herself to the labour of the new organization, with its anxiety, struggles, and all the chances of failure. After having been all her life her own mistress, she put herself under rule, and in addition to the loss of personal freedom, she risked a present certainty, and the prospect of future affluence, to accept for the next three years a greatly diminished income with doubled or trebled work; giving up at the same time assured honour and widespread reputation for misunderstanding, suffering, and disappointment.

A letter written at the close of 1871, after a year of struggle, shows how keenly she could feel these things—

“I am beginning to feel very hard and bitter. Were it not for that Anchor to which alone one can cling, I should sometimes lose all hope and faith. One gentleman, who can well afford £5, who is largely mixed up with education, responds, in answer to an appeal for that small sum, ‘Let Miss Buss do it; she has been making heaps of money for years’! This is the general view, and is one reason why I told you my name did no good, but rather the reverse. At any time within the last ten years, having even then a large connection and some reputation, I could have ‘made money;’ but how? By taking a grand house, a small number of ‘select’ pupils, offering fashionable accomplishments, and asking high terms. In that case there would have been little work and plenty of money! Even now, if I cut myself off from the public schools, and lived in Myra Lodge, devoting myself to twenty pupils, I could ‘make’ a good income, and live the life of an independent lady!

“But as I have grown older the terrible sufferings of the women of my own class, for want of good elementary training, have more than ever intensified my earnest desire to lighten, ever so little, the misery of women, brought up ‘to be married and taken care of,’ and left alone in the world destitute. It is impossible for words to express my fixed determination of alleviating this evil—even to the small extent of one neighbourhood only—were it only possible. If I could do without salary I would; but it is literally true—although this is of course to you only—that I have to earn about £350 or £400 per annum before there is anything for my own expenditure. This house has been a great burden, but I hope it will pay in time; I could not have surrendered the other place if I had not had this, and that is why I undertook it.

“You see I, too, am growing very confidential!

“What work can do I have honestly tried to do. Money I have never had to give, and if I had earned money as mentioned, I should never have had the experience of numbers and consequent sympathy.

“Pray destroy this note, and bury its contents in silence. You can never know how much hope you have given me, as well as practical help.”

Expecting that I should in the future write the story of this work, I thought myself justified in not obeying this request, as now in breaking the silence of four and twenty years.

Miss Buss began to work at eighteen, and worked till she was sixty-eight, and she was one of the most successful women of her time; but surprise is expressed that she could leave behind her the sum of £18,000. Considering that her personal wants were very few, and that for nearly twenty years she had £1300 a year from the school (£100 a year and capitation fees) and from Myra Lodge not less than £2500, the wonder rather is that she did not leave a great deal more. It is evident that she must have spent largely, and it is certain that this expenditure was not on herself.

As a point of principle—that good work should receive good pay—the salaries in the Upper School are higher than in most schools.[^[5]] As a matter of principle also Miss Buss thought it right to make provision for old age, as she did not mean to accept the pension which would have been offered. And considering what she had been having, as well as the accumulated claims of her generous life, this provision can surely not be called extravagant.

[5]. “Some time ago I had occasion, on behalf of a joint committee of head-mistresses and assistants of which I was a member, to make a careful inquiry into the salaries of assistants, in the girls’ public day schools, both endowed and proprietary. In the course of this inquiry it came out that the North London Collegiate School is able to afford, and does pay a higher average salary than any other of those from which we obtained statistics.... The Camden School also held its own, with salaries well above the means of those obtaining in schools of its type.

“I agree in desiring the average salary to be much higher than it is for assistant-mistresses and assistant-masters too. But I claim for the great leader who has passed from amongst us, that in this matter she has given the true lead.”—Letter from Mrs. Bryant, Educational Times, March, 1895.

But in 1870 she had not begun to save on any large scale. And for the next three years her gifts to the new movement were out of all proportion to her receipts, while she was credited with the possession of means that were non-existent, as well as with a salary which she declined to take, knowing that the money was needed for working expenses.

Myra Lodge, though at first an anxiety, was before long not merely a success, but also a help to the school. In a note written at the end of 1873 Miss Buss remarks—

“It seems that I have paid from Myra, in fees (paid by her for her boarders), just about £850 in these three years: £200, £232, and £410, and I have received in all (from the school) £1600. So your head-mistress has not been a costly article!”

Counting the value of furniture, as well as the balance of salary not accepted, Miss Buss gave during this period not less than £1000, besides paying the £850 in fees from Myra. After the removal of the Upper School from 202, Camden Road, as the lease was still in her possession, she supervised a Preparatory School, the profits of which—£1500 in all—she handed over to the governing body, thus supplying funds for the gymnasium. Nor was this all; she made in addition to these gifts several very helpful loans, without which the work must have come to a standstill. Early in 1873 an entry on the minutes records the thanks of the Governors—

“The Board wish to record their strong sense of the generosity and public spirit shown by Miss Buss, when she last year pressed the Board to take on mortgage the ground and building in Sandall Road, for the enlargement of the North London Collegiate School, and when, in March last, she proposed that a considerable sum should be laid out in enlarging the building in Sandall Road; Miss Buss in both cases sacrificing the additional income which would have been hers, and undertaking at the same time still greater responsibility and harder work.”

Under the new scheme Miss Buss’ own school remained as the Upper School, but was removed to 202, Camden Road, leaving the former premises in Camden Street, with most of the furniture and “school plant,” for the new Lower School, of which the fees were fixed at £4 4s. per annum, for a thorough education up to the age of sixteen years.

All the provisions of the scheme were in accordance with those proposed by the Endowed Schools Commission, and it was intended that the fees should meet only the working expenses, the buildings being supplied by some endowment. For the Lower, or Camden School, the sum of £5000 was considered sufficient, and it was not unnaturally imagined that this moderate amount might be supplied by the same generous public which had given £60,000 for a similar school for boys. For the Upper School only £1000 was asked to supply the furniture left behind in Camden Street, for the use of the Lower School.

In September, 1871, Miss Buss says of the Camden School—

“No furniture has been paid for at all; the school is poorly supplied, and the teachers are badly paid. Instead of being rent free, we pay £115 per annum, and rates, amounting at least to £20 more.

“It is clear to me that all such schools need—First, to be rent free; second, to have an endowment, largish or small, to keep the buildings in repair and to offer scholarships; third, to have all the school furniture and fittings given. Then, but not till then, can the teachers be fairly paid, and the trustees free from anxiety. For such a purpose, I imagine five or six thousand pounds are wanted—say, £4000 for building, £1000 for furniture, apparatus, and the rest for repairs, etc.

“For the Higher School the same kind of thing is wanted, only on a more extensive scale, as furniture and fittings must be more expensive. The higher fees would still be required to meet the demand for higher teaching. According to my notions, gymnasiums are needed for every school, and large places for swimming.”

But at the first start how natural it seemed to expect the small amount of help which should do so much! “What we now want is funds!” And those very modest sums then formed the total of this requirement. She asked no more for the fulfilment of that early dream, “I want girls educated to match their brothers.” Everything was there except the funds. The educational system had been tested by experience and stamped by success; the teacher, fitted at all points, was ready for work. Friends were ready with time and thought to help in carrying out the work. Having thus all the important essentials, who could doubt that the rest must follow?

In our own enthusiasm for Miss Buss and her work it seemed to Miss Jones and to me that all that was needed was to make the case known. We were both accustomed to the use of our pens, and placed ourselves at Miss Buss’ service, beginning first by an appeal to our own personal friends, with enough of success at the outset to justify our going on. But we soon discovered that beyond this range things were of a different order.

I had seen so much of the kindness shown by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall to all sorts of philanthropic effort that I fully counted on their help. In addition to the Art Journal, Mr. Hall was editor of Social Notes, and Mrs. Hall had not given up the St. James’ Magazine; so that we saw here our way to a wider public.

The reply to my appeal seems worth giving in extenso, as a measure of the public opinion of that day. If a woman who had made her own mark on the world in ways out of the beaten track, could so write, what must have been the feeling of the average woman, to say nothing of the narrowminded and ignorant? Mrs. Hall was, besides, amongst the foremost who showed interest in higher education in being one of the earliest of the lady-visitors at Queen’s College.

Here is the letter—

“15, Ashley Place, Oct. 31, 1870.

“My dear Annie,

“I dare say you learned a good deal at the Social Science meetings. But women have no business on platforms. They have enough, and more than they can accomplish, in performing the duties which God and Nature have assigned them....

“I too am most anxious to find employment for women, and would give every female, rich or poor, a trade—call it a profession if you like—so that she could help herself. But this is not to be done by sending her to College Examinations.

“There are not a greater set of ‘muffs’ and extravagant fellows in life than our College lads. It is not by them that the business of life is carried on. Do you want to educate girls in the ‘arts’ as practised in the Universities?

“I have no fault to find with the arrangements of the Lower School, except its incompetence to provide the means which will enable women to exist. They should be taught trades—painting on glass and china; hair-weaving; certain branches of watchmaking (as abroad); confectionery; cooking—each half-dozen going into training for this at least once a week; clear-starching;—trades, in fact. When I was a girl I went down once a week into the housekeeper’s room to see how jellies and blanc-mange, soups, and pastry were made; to learn the quantities and help to do all she did.

“This did not prevent my accomplishments going on; or my riding and enjoying all the amusements a country girl could have.

“If a revolution came I know I could have found pupils to teach French and music to. I could have made a good nurse, or housekeeper, or clear-starcher.

“I would also have every boy and girl learn the Latin grammar first, or at the same time as the English. In law-copying, for instance, which young women should be trained in later, knowledge of Latin is invaluable.

“No; dear Mrs. Laing never told me of Miss Buss’ new plans. She is really so good and right-thinking a woman that I wonder how she would give the sanction of her practical name to any plan embracing ‘College Examinations,’ by way of making women useful or bread-earning members of society. Better, more useful education in what can be more practically useful, without being unsexed, is what they want, but are not likely to get while such women as Emily Faithfull lead the van.

“I saw some time ago you were restless and uncertain on the question of Woman’s Rights, which might almost be defined as Man’s Wrongs. Your head would work you up at one of the Cambridge Examinations, and now and then work up a clever woman, but what good was to arise from that if a revolution came I cannot understand!

“I should, indeed, be astonished if your father ‘went in’ for College Examinations for girls!

“I hope you will not endeavour to enlist X——’s sympathies in College Examinations for women. Dear darling! any strong-minded notions would be a source of trial to her admirable husband, and do her no good.

“I am sorry you have taken up this matter.

“Yours sincerely,

“A. M. Hall.

“I shall have a great deal more to say on this matter hereafter, if I live.”

This letter was as discouraging as it was unexpected. But I bided my time. Happily, Miss Jones had succeeded better. She not only received a donation of £30 from Miss Caroline Haddon, but Mrs. Offord, Miss Haddon’s sister, became a member of the Board, and by her practical knowledge gave a sympathy most helpful to Miss Buss. Hearty adherence had also been secured from Mr. E. C. Robins, a successful architect, who made schools his spécialité. Both Mr. and Mrs. Robins proved valuable friends to Miss Buss’ work, as they have since done to the Hampstead High School, to the New Technical Schools, and the Hampstead Branch of the Parents’ Union, started by themselves.

Mr. Robins first of all demanded a personal statement of her needs from Miss Buss, as he said—

“We are interested in her; in her experience; in her aspirations;—we want to know her ultimate aims. We want a sketch contrasting what is provided for middle-class boys with what is provided for middle-class girls; also how this particular scheme is likely to effect the desired result.”

This paper was accordingly drawn up, with Miss Buss, Mrs. Robins, Miss Jones, and myself as honorary secretaries, and we confidently expected to get the £1000 which was then the modest limit of our hopes.

Soon after this all the friends of the movement were gathered together at a drawing-room meeting at Myra Lodge, that they might see Miss Buss, and hear from herself of her plans. Her notes at this time are in curious contrast with those written nine years after in the height of her fame—

“Nov. 20, 1870.

“My dear Miss Ridley,

“Many thanks for your note; you have worked hard and successfully. I have invited several people, but as yet the number of acceptances only amount to fourteen.

“Mrs. De Morgan is interesting people in one plan.

“I hardly think we ought to ask Miss Garrett just now; she is almost worn out with meetings, having been obliged to attend two and even three a day, since the election excitement began.

“My notion is to get a mixed meeting, in Camden Street, the week after next, and then we can have speeches from the gentlemen.

“I am hopeful about next Wednesday’s meeting; the thing is to interest women, and to convince some of them of the necessity of schools for girls. Then to answer as far as possible any objections so that they may be armed to meet them.

“I have to go to a Council meeting in Queen’s Square, so am rather hurried.

“Yours sincerely,

“Frances M. Buss.”

“Myra Lodge, Dec. 1, 1870.

“Dear Agnes,

“Will you and Miss Ridley make up a list of the names and addresses of the ladies present at our meeting yesterday? Your lists and mine will probably complete the number.

“Were you content? I thought it a great success to have so many ladies. Including everyone, there must have been forty-two or forty-three.

“There had been a meeting of trustees yesterday, when it was decided that we should hold a parents’ meeting at Camden Street next week, and a public meeting in the Vestry Hall the week after. That is why I could not announce a meeting for next week.

“With love and best thanks,

“I am, yours affectionately,

“Frances M. Buss.”

Certainly the thing then needed was “to interest women” generally in the subject. There were, of course, a certain number of women deeply interested in everything relating to the status of women, educational or political. But at that special time these two groups were fully occupied, the one with Miss Davies’ new venture at Hitchin, and the other with Miss Garrett’s election on the School Board. These two ladies themselves took full interest in Miss Buss’ plans, as she did in theirs. But they all needed funds from the outside public, and demand and supply were far from being equal.

Public opinion in 1870 was very much what it had been in 1849, and to most persons the stir about improved education for women seemed very unnecessary. Most women were quite satisfied with their own girls, and did not trouble about the rest; and till women cared about the subject, it could scarcely be expected that men would rouse themselves. Thus, out of London’s millions those really concerned in this question might be counted by hundreds, and persons who for objects that really interested them would give hundreds, or even thousands, thought themselves very generous if they gave units or tens to the new movement.

Nothing could show more clearly the indifference of the public to higher education than the insignificance of the details of the work of the next two years. They may, however, be worth noting, on the principle on which the mother treasures the baby-shoes once belonging to the strong man, who, since those first uncertain efforts, has left deep “footprints in the sands of time.”

The year 1870 ended with what was then a very great and important event—one of the very first public meetings concerning the education of girls—held at the St. Pancras Vestry Hall, under the presidency of Lord Lyttelton. Very considerable interest seemed to be excited in the larger world outside the immediate circle of friends, and hopes rose. One important practical issue came immediately in the addition to the governing body of the Rev. A. W. Thorold, Vicar of St. Pancras (afterwards Bishop of Rochester and of Winchester). Both in his official capacity, and as having been a member of the Schools Inquiry Commission, Dr. Thorold was a most valuable supporter of the work.

CHAPTER II.
“WE WORK IN HOPE.”

“It never yet did hurt

To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.”

With the success of this first public meeting, it was hoped that the tide had turned. On February 15, 1871, a drawing-room meeting at the house of Mr. E. C. Robins gave still further encouragement. I had prepared a paper, entitled “Pearl and Sea-foam,” contrasting the solid work of the education given to boys with the evanescent glitter of that thought to be sufficient for girls, and giving an account of Miss Buss’ work and aims.

A good discussion followed, in which many persons interested in education took part. The immediate result was the active adhesion of Mr. John Neate, who undertook to interest some of the City Companies. This was a real advance. Hitherto there had been a general agreement that “something ought to be done,” and that “somebody ought to do it;” but it was also generally agreed that “somebody else” was responsible for action in the matter, and we had not yet found this very essential personage. The discovery was now made that in the City Companies, which had done so much for boys, we should without doubt find all that could be desired.

The prospect did indeed seem hopeful. We had already on our own governing body a member of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in Mr. W. Timbrell Elliott. Our new friends, Mr. Robins and Mr. Neate, belonged to the Dyers’ and the Clothworkers’ Companies, and all three gentlemen became, within a short time, the Masters of their respective Companies. We had, however, to wait quite till the end of the year before the first large donation of £100 from the Fishmongers’ Company set the example, afterwards followed by the Brewers’ and the Clothworkers’ Companies in the gift of the school-buildings.

Mr. Robins printed the first copies of “Pearl and Sea-foam,” which were found useful in our next effort to secure £500 in £5 donations, for the barely necessary furniture in the two schools. Miss Buss had left the greater part of her furniture in Camden Street, and had gone to an empty building at 202, Camden Road; but about this time she writes—

“If we could raise £500 in addition to what we have, I think we might, for the present, let the North London Collegiate School go on alone.

“The first thing next term will be to apply to City Companies for the Camden School.

“I am very busy, as you can guess, and you will not mind this work.

“I could send such a statement to some people, I think. But I would suggest that the whole trouble should fall on you, by your giving your name and address as Hon. Sec., or receiver, or anything you like. Any names I obtained I would send to you.”

“March 23.

“What a very nice woman that Australian lady must be! Somehow I have been in a depressed or out-of-tune condition all day, and now—faithless that I am—your note comes to cheer me up and give me fresh hope. How wonderful is the all-prevailing law of compensation! Sunshine and shade vary our days.”

“March 27.

“The City people are not to be moved to do anything that is not in the City. Honour and glory follow there, so there they will work.

“Mr. Rogers is about to open his school, and when it is done, it will be published, with a flourish of trumpets, ‘See what the City does! It inaugurates a new era,’ etc. But, after all, what matters it if the work is done?

“Mr. Rogers has already been attacked, I assure you. I went straight off to Mr. Jowett, some time since, to strengthen him, if necessary, by arguments in behalf of girls.

“Miss Davies helps me as much as she can, but her energies, interests, hopes are all centred in the College. She cannot well beg for two different things at one time, and it is for this reason that she is not one of our trustees.

“There are three City men who have in their hands a capital sum of £30,000—half of this is to be spent on a girls’ school in the City.

“Nothing but an organized opposition through the Charity Commission will make them do anything else. £15,000 on one school, and that in the City, where it is not wanted, especially if Mr. Rogers’ school be opened! I mean to try and get a grant out of them—they have given three grants, each of a thousand, to Mr. Rogers—but, you will see, they will give another thousand to him for his girls’ school, and they will give nothing to us, because we are not in the City.

“Here we begin with nothing—in the Camden School, at all events. We must work on and get publicity, then we may get money.”

“March 27, 1871.

“Mrs. Grey’s letter came to-day. You will see that her paper may help us a little, but not very much. I have no idea as to an ‘advocate.’ Dr. Hodgson is at Bournemouth—Mr. Cooke Taylor I know nothing of—Mr. Lee is the only person I can think of now, and there are several reasons against asking him. Between now and the 31st could we not get some one to pay us a visit and speak up for us?

“I will send Mrs. Grey your paper, but I rather think she had a copy.

“My holiday trip was delightful....

“Will you tell me when we meet whether you would consent to become one of ‘my’ trustees?”

“May 9, 1871.

“How brave and earnest you are! It is such a comfort to me! You can have no idea of what work and worry I have to face, and almost single-handed.

“Please accept my proposal to become a trustee. Your help will be invaluable to me and to the Cause, and, as a trustee, you can say and do much more for us.

“Let me know if you accept.”

“May 23, 1871.

“I want to see you very much. You were unanimously elected a member of our Board yesterday, and were also, at my request, put on the Memorial Committee, which is to deal with the question of applications for money from Companies, etc.

“I have written to ever so many people, but have no more names. We have got a list of the Companies, of their clerks, of their styles, ‘Worshipful,’ etc.

“The £5 collection was well received yesterday when I mentioned it at our meeting, and the list has gone to the printer. I am really quite hopeful about it.

“There are 112 girls in the Camden Schools now, and I want you to write, if you can, to Irwin Cocks, Esq. (or Cox?), editor of the Queen, 346, Strand, stating what we are doing, how we have started this school, etc. He would probably insert it, and then a friend, Miss Chessar, would write a short leader about it. It seems rather too bad to trouble you, but I really am too overdone with the inner work of the two schools to be able to do much in the outer work.

“Mrs. Laing will put our papers into Mrs. Craik’s hands, to-morrow—D. M. Muloch, I mean.

“Can you tell me for certain what is Sir John Bowring’s Company? We must begin with that.”

Lady Bowring had gone over the schools with me, and, like all who saw them, was charmed with her visit. She had promised to secure Sir John Bowring’s interest with his own Company and with the Gilchrist Trust. From the latter help came in scholarships.

But of the uses of “Pearl and Sea-foam” none gave me so much satisfaction as this letter from Mrs. S. C. Hall—

“April 6, 1871.

“My dear Annie,

“If it please God to prolong my days and my ability to work, after I have been able, by my exertions, to add a small additional ward to the Great Northern Hospital, my present impression is that I should like to help the educational plan of Miss Buss. But I never could devote my heart to two things at once, and that Great Northern Hospital is what I shall work and beg for—and nothing else—during the next year. I hate bazaars, but there is no other way that I know of to get the necessary funds—except a concert—and, at present, I can only grope my way.

“Mr. Ruskin has not been here since Christmas, but I can say anything to him, now that I know him so well; and, after I have had some hospital talk with him, I will give him your ‘Foam,’ and ask him to see Miss Buss’ schools.

“He is most charming. It always does my heart good to see him playing with the dogs on the hearthrug. Oxford takes up a good deal of his time. Miss Hill looks after his cottages. Dear little Joan Agnew is to be married this month. I am so glad she is to live at Denmark Hill. She is such a lovely darling.

“I am very glad Mr. Hall suggested that art work to you; only don’t make yourself ill over it.

“With warm regards to all,

“Your affectionate friend,

“A. M. H.”

After Mrs. S. C. Hall’s first letter I had met at her house both Mrs. Laing and the Rev. T. Pelham Dale, friends of Miss Buss, who warmly took her part. After much effort, Mrs. Hall and Miss Buss met at last, being mutually attracted.

Some extracts from Miss Buss’ letters at this time show how very busy she was—

“Mrs. S. C. Hall and I have not converted each other yet. Why? Because she was not well, and I did not go!”

And later—

“Mrs. Hall asked me yesterday to go to lunch with her to-morrow. But, most unfortunately, I had engaged a railway carriage to take the girls in my house to Windsor, and cannot possibly send them without me. I could go to-morrow afternoon, but I have a meeting of my Dorcas Committee, followed by a teachers’ meeting. Both these must be given up if I go to Mrs. S. C. Hall’s, and, as you have already met this Indian gentleman, it seems scarcely worth while, either for you or me.

“I am glad Mrs. Hall is being led to see that a woman may have cultivation, and yet be able to mend a glove. Why people should insist on thinking that the education which should make a man must be injurious to a woman, is, to me, perplexing.”

Though Mrs. S. C. Hall declined to beg for us herself, she did very good service in introducing Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, who threw herself heart and soul into the work, bringing many useful friends, and, above all, by her own bright, breezy nature, cheering Miss Buss in many an hour when hope was low.

“Miss Jewsbury has raised again some hope—only I fear she has not had so much experience as you and I, in asking and failing. She is quite charming.

“Monday.

“These suggestions of Mr. Robins’ have been carried out, as you see. By to-morrow night, every member of every court of every Company will have had an invite to Friday’s meeting, and a circular of the Camden Schools.

“I have asked Miss Cobbe to help us to publicity, and Mr. Edwin H. Abbott, of the City of London School, will speak. I will see about Mr. Bompas.

“Invitations have been sent to every parent in both schools; have been left at every house in the High Street.

“I have bought twenty-eight prizes, have ordered labels to put inside, have harangued the Camden girls, have divided all my girls, and have had a dreadful day’s work. But one hopes on, and I have been for years accustomed to find ‘after many days.’”

At the prize-giving of the Camden School the Lord Mayor (Sir T. Dakin) took the chair, and there were present the Lady Mayoress, Mrs. Laing, Mrs. Burbury, Miss Emily Davies, the Rev. Edwin Abbott, Mr. Fitch, Mr. Joseph Payne, and other friends of Higher Education. Dr. Abbott, head-master of the City of London School, spoke very strongly on the duty of the Mayor and Corporation to provide for girls schools similar to those of their brothers.

On the following day Lord Dartmouth presided over the meeting for the Upper School, also held at St. George’s Hall, Langham Place, at which Harvey Lewis, Esq., M.P., and Arthur Roebuck, Esq., M.P., Mrs. Grey, Miss Jewsbury, Mrs. Henry Kingsley, and many others, were present.

A few days after the meetings, Miss Buss writes—

“We are agitating beautifully. Dr. Storrar read me a private, but very encouraging note from Lord Lyttelton, saying that we should have some endowments as soon as they can lay their hands on any.

“This will probably be very useful to us. As Mr. Robins says, our school must be the first of a series, encircling the City. Boys go immense distances to the City schools, showing it would be better, physically and morally, to have the schools within reach of the parents. Constant railway travelling is bad for growing lads, and there is no telling the amount of moral injury from companions in railway carriages, of whom the parents know nothing.

“This cannot be tolerated for girls!...

“Do you smile inwardly at our getting the start? Whether successful or not, we are first in the field, anyway, even in the City. I feel quite lighthearted because—you will not guess—but Mr. Danson has been at work over the accounts, all day yesterday and all day to-day. He is so thoroughly business-like, and so good-natured and patient, that it is a sensible relief to me. He has time and knowledge, and is willing to devote both as his share of work.

“I think we shall leave London, by the night mail, on Friday in time to catch the Hull boat to Gottenburg, which starts at six a.m. on Saturday.

“As I am always very sea-sick, the rest I so much want will be got on board by means of being compelled to be still.

“My beginning of that last sentence wants an explanation, I see, so now you have it. Collapse comes on, in a mild form, after weeks of work, at the rate of fifteen hours per diem. I trust by the time we reach Gottenburg to have recovered.

“Mr. Robins asked me to the Swan-hopping dinner; but as it is on the 7th, I must not give up a week’s holiday for it. So Mr. Lee is going to advocate our cause privately as opportunity serves.

“Mr. Elliott has invited me to the Merchant Taylors’ dinner, on Thursday next, in the Crystal Palace. To that I am going; more, however, from policy than from inclination, as it is very possible I shall have to sit up best part of the night to pack for my journey, and put away all other things until my return.”

“Did it ever occur to you that packing, etc., or indeed, anything peculiarly womanly, is difficult, almost impossible to a woman who leaves home, day after day, at 8.30, and does not return, often—well, sometimes till 10.30 at night? That is my programme lately. But how much I talk of myself....

“I am obliged to break off hastily. I have been waiting at Myra Lodge for visitors who have not come! Quel bonheur!”

“July 24, 1871.

“This morning Mr. Lee and I met Dr. Storrar and Mr. Robins at the Mansion House. The Lord Mayor spoke most pleasantly to us. He will give us a note, which Mr. Lee proposes to have lithographed, and a copy of this will accompany every memorial. The Lord Mayor was particularly agreeable to me, and congratulated me warmly; he is very much interested indeed, and hopes to pay us a visit in working hours early next term. At all events, the Lady Mayoress will come—we must keep her up to it. The census shows a steady decrease in residents in the City!”

“July 27, 1871.

“Pray read the attack on us in to-day’s Times. The fight has begun. We are not really in opposition. Any school in the City opened by Mr. Rogers will not prevent the necessity of a Camden Town district school.

“I only trust the Lord Mayor will not back out!”

Happily, the Lord Mayor stood firm, and wrote a strong letter of appeal to go out with the memorial to the City Companies.

Miss Buss’ holiday was most profitably spent in Sweden and Denmark, where she gathered many educational facts and theories, and where she found the Swedish desk, which she was the first to introduce into English schools.

The September campaign began with the Lord Mayor’s appeal, but progress was still very slow. Miss Geraldine Jewsbury’s warm sympathy was still a great comfort, but her letters show the difficulties encountered. Speaking of one friend, she says—

“I must neither ask her to subscribe nor to ask her husband; in fact, I could not rouse her interest in this quarter. She says she and her husband have embarked so much in the cause of education that they can do no more. But it is all for boys, of course. However, £5 is £5, and I think more of it than any other £5 I ever earned. I could never have believed in the difficulty of getting money for such a good purpose if I had not tried.

“Give my love to Miss Buss, and tell her not to lose heart. But it is trying and uphill work! Only her example strengthens others in all ways.”

“Selwood Park, Sept. 3, 1871.

“Dear Miss Ridley,

“The enclosed letters will show you that I have not forgotten that poor Mr. Ruskin was to be my main hope. His illness has been very serious, and I know not at this moment where he is. I shall certainly see him when there is any chance of his being able to take thought of anything. I know how much interest he would have taken in the schools, and, I hope, will take in them yet.

“The lady in whom I most trusted to give me money has given me just nothing, and no promises even, nor expression of interest, and the aggravating thing is the reasons she gave! She has anticipated for two years the sum she gives to charitable objects or social progress to—the Society for Advancing Female Suffrage!!!

“I have been entirely unsuccessful so far, but am not going to lose heart nor hope; for success does not depend on whether an object is supported by many or by few. And I feel that these schools are just the most important step that has yet been taken for women, giving a solid foundation of good training, and Miss Buss has been raised up and trained for the emergency. She is doing the real needful work without minding the clatter of nonsense that is being talked about Woman’s Rights, and all the rest of it. The waste of money is the least part of one’s regret.

“My counsel and advice is, first, to write to the Lord Mayor and tell him that his example would be readily followed, and entreat him to lead the forlorn hope and give a small sum of money. I would write the letter gladly, only you can do it better, and are in the midst of the business of the schools.

“I will write to Mr. Roebuck, and see if he can rouse any interest. Do you also write to Mrs. Newmarch. Tell her the urgency of the matter; write such a letter as she can give her husband—not too long, but urgent. Write to Miss Cobbe, and beg her to make an article of appeal in the Echo, and at the same time interesting. Shoot all these arrows at once, and some of them will hit.

“I feel ashamed and disgusted at the tardy and small response you have met with; but, as nothing really good ever dies out, I am not cast down, and I feel just the same interest as at first—I have still one card to play for you, as I have not made my appeal to Mrs. Huth, and that I will do, both to her and her husband, sending on your letter. Do not let Miss Buss lose heart. Give my love to her, and tell her that though I have not brought in anything yet it has not been for want of talking and trying. There is always a dead pull in all undertakings to get them uphill; the wheels seem to stick fast, but, after a while, if this pull is continued, they move. Let me hear from you again, please, and

“Believe me, yours very truly,

“Geraldine E. Jewsbury.”

I wrote to Mr. Ruskin, mentioning Miss Jewsbury’s request, and with great pleasure received a kind letter in reply, expressing interest in what I had told him of the school, and of the feeling of the founder. But, having at least three times more work on his hands than he was able for just then, he could do nothing till after the Christmas vacation, when it might be possible for him to come to see what was being done and what he might be able to do to forward the work.

It was always a regret to us that this visit never came to pass. Miss Buss and her girls missed what would have been a great delight, and Mr. Ruskin also missed the sight of healthy and womanly work and play which could not have failed to please as well as to cheer him in its hope for the future.

Miss Buss’ letters for the next few months show the effect of the strain of suspense and of hope deferred—

“Myra Lodge, 10 p.m., Sept. 27, 1871.

“Not ten minutes’ leisure till now, dear Miss Ridley. Teaching in the morning, a large Dorcas meeting in the afternoon, and an overwhelming mass of business correspondence—not nearly gone through yet, however.

“First, an answer from the Goldsmiths has come. You do not need to be told what that answer is.

“An idea has struck me that it might be well for us to ask those who have subscribed so far whether they give to one school more than another? If not, let us divide the subscriptions, and so hand over to Camden Street some of our money. This is between us—just now, at least....

“I do not think we must, in any way, appear adverse to the City movement under Mr. Rogers.

“I feel we have forced him into action, and, as our motive is to help women generally, and not the women of Camden Town only, to have driven him to act is one result, and a great one, of our organization.

“Why I think of the division of subscriptions is that no doubt some of the people would prefer to help the poorer school. If so, I should prefer their subscriptions going in the way they wanted. I am sure that my old pupils help their own old school, and do not care for the new and unknown one....

“I have written to the Lady Mayoress, and will write to Miss Cobbe, asking her to let me call. Of course I shall give her your note. What a dear, bright, ever young heart Miss Jewsbury has! If you had done nothing but interest her, your work would have been great. She has saved me almost from despair at least on two occasions.

“I don’t mind our Board meetings, and really have never but once been like what we suppose a caged lion to be.

“It is now the amount of the work, and the sort of unsettled state we are in, that overdo me. But Mr. Danson is helping to reduce money matters to order, and to be relieved of the management of that would be really a comfort.

“We have now 190 girls in the Camden School; one father has come to live in the neighbourhood on purpose to send four girls. I scarcely know what to do for teachers, and am in correspondence with all sorts of people. Old pupils do not seem available, or they are not mature enough.

“We must have some more furniture too, as there is not enough in Camden Street for the present number. The ventilation in the Camden Road is not nearly good enough; but I am compelled to act, and so must risk observations from the Board. We ought to be thinking of building for the Camden School; but money, money, where is it to come from?

“I hear Mr. Mason, of Birmingham, who has just spent £200,000, or some such sum, on his orphanage, intends to give £30,000 to education. Mrs. Sheldon Amos went to him about the Working Women’s College, and got a sort of promise. I always intended to get at him if I could; so, hearing of her visit, I wrote straight off to the wife of the Town Clerk of Birmingham, Mrs. Hayes, to ask for an introduction, saying a visit to Birmingham would be nothing if there were the least hope of getting help; even if one only induced him to give part of the money to girls at Birmingham something would be gained. A visit there is therefore looming. Mrs. Hayes gives me a warm invitation to her house. She knows me through an old pupil, who is governess to her children, and called on me here when in London.

“(Ah, ah, how I wish we could get a fine building for the Camden Road School! We do want a lecture hall and a gymnasium so much.)

“Two school concerts are on me next week, and a good deal to think of in connection with them. Musical men are not easygoing: each one will have the best places for his pupils; each will go his own way. Most school-mistresses have to deal with one only; I have three, and also three young women; the latter were fairly manageable.

“A good second would be a great relief to me, and would enable me to work at something less than express-train speed—a speed that cannot be continued for very many years. It would be worth while to raise the pay of my second, as she became more useful. I never have time to prepare my lessons, which is almost indispensable if one wishes to teach well.

“There has been quite an avalanche of storms raised by parents lately, mainly because I have had to engage a governess not trained in the school. She does not therefore understand our ways, and causes me much worry; but she is really a good Christian girl, one who will do well in time. But, as I tell her, I have to suffer during the process of her instruction.

“If the Birmingham invite does not come this week, as I hope it will not, on Friday I hope to go to Mrs. Hodgson, at Bournemouth, till Monday night—Monday being our half-term holiday, and most of my house-girls away. Mrs. H. is the dearest, sweetest, brightest, most unselfish creature, and I love her dearly! You will believe me, when I say how much I am learning to love you. I cannot bear to hear of your being tired. Pray take rest and get well.

“Always your loving

“F. M. B.”

There came at this juncture a very bright ray of encouragement in a gratifying letter from the Princess of Wales. As the Queen had given her name to the first College, it was thought that the Princess might do no less for the first Public School for Girls, and the Memorial Committee made the request, on the principle of “nothing venture, nothing have.”

The following letter was addressed to the Rev. Charles Lee, as the chairman of the Memorial Committee:—

“Sir,

“I am directed by the Princess of Wales to acknowledge the receipt of a letter signed by you, in conjunction with Dr. J. Storrar, on behalf of the trustees and governors of the institution established in Camden Town for the promotion of secondary instruction for girls.

“Her Royal Highness fully recognizes the importance and great need of improvement in the education of girls of the poorer middle-class, and believes that the North London Collegiate School for Girls, with its Lower School, will not only to some extent meet this want, but that it will also serve as a model to similar schools, the establishment of which in other parts of the Metropolis, and in the country generally, it may encourage.

“The Princess of Wales, therefore, has much pleasure in acceding to the request that her Royal Highness would allow these schools to be placed under her patronage, and has directed me to forward to you the enclosed cheque for fifty guineas as her Royal Highness’ contribution to the funds of the undertaking.

“I have the honour to be, sir,

“Your most obedient servant,

“M. Holzmann, Private Secretary.

“Sandringham, Nov. 15, 1871.”

In response to this cheering bit of news Miss Jewsbury at once wrote off—

“Manchester, Nov. 26, 1871.

“I am very glad indeed about the Princess. It is the best of all the many kind things she has done. How did you get at her?

“I will write myself to Mr. Novelli, and am going on Tuesday to Sir Joseph Whitworth’s, and will see if I can move him to help us! Give my love to Miss Buss. She will ‘see the fruit of her doings’ yet; and she does not know how much her patient endurance has strengthened the hands of the many (of whom she may never hear) who are wearied and ready to lose heart in their labours. I can speak of what her example is to myself.”

CHAPTER III.
“THE SISTERS OF THE BOYS.”

“No man will give his son a stone if he asks for bread; but thousands of men have given their daughters diamonds when they asked for books, and coiled serpents of vanity and dissipation round their necks when they asked for wholesome food and beneficent employment.”—F. P. Cobbe.

The great event of the year 1871—from the educational point of view—was the meeting of the Society of Arts, at which Mrs. William Grey read her able paper on Secondary Education for Girls, in which was contained the germ of the Women’s National Education Union, and the Girls’ Public Day Schools Company. The chair was taken by the Rev. William Rogers, whose great school for boys in Cowper Street was just completed, and the audience included most of the distinguished leaders in educational movements.

Mrs. Grey took up the question of higher education for women in all its bearings, and, recognizing the needs which had to be met, proposed the formation of “an Educational League,” to embrace all who were actively interested in the question, and having for its object—

“to carry what might be characterized as the Educational Charter of Women—first, the equal right of women to the education considered best for human beings; second, the equal right of women to a share in the existing educational endowments of the country, and to be considered, not less than boys, in the creation of any new endowments; third, the registration of teachers, with such other measures as may raise teaching as a profession no less honourable and honoured for women than it is for men.”

The discussion following this paper will always retain historic value, because, as both sides had free scope, it represents the exact estimate of women which prevailed at that period. For the women of the twentieth century—in the serene enjoyment of the results of the work of the nineteenth century—it will have an interest of which wonder will form no small part. The women of 1871, as they listened, had long since ceased to wonder, but they had other feelings which, happily for the readers of 1971, will also have acquired the historic value which attaches to all relics of a far-away past.

It was when presiding at this meeting that Mr. Rogers made the speech, of which every one heard so much during the next two years, a speech that showed how he also had yet to learn from experience the difference between efforts for boys’ and efforts for girls’ schools.

In proposing the vote of thanks for Mrs. Grey’s paper, Mr. Rogers remarked that he could not agree with one statement—that there was no demand on the part of parents for a higher education; on the contrary, there was a widespread dissatisfaction with the present state of things. Being anxious to establish a girls’ school in connection with the Boys’ Middle-class School in London, he sent round a paper to the parents of the boys—numbering about eleven hundred—asking their opinion, and he received answers, and promises that the girls should be sent, from about five hundred. He also disputed the statement that “where pounds were subscribed for the boys there was difficulty in getting shillings for the girls,” as he believed that funds would be forthcoming so soon as the real difficulty—of suitable sites and good teachers—had been met.

In passing, it may here be noted that during the year following this meeting Mr. Rogers succeeded in securing the required site and teachers, and thereupon made his appeal for the girls—the “sisters of the boys.” For the boys, in one single meeting, he had obtained promises of £60,000, to which another £10,000 was added. It was the work of months to collect for the girls the sum of £5000, much less than one-tenth of what had been given for the boys. What eventually became of this £5000 will be told in due course.

On the strength of Mr. Rogers’ speech at Mrs. Grey’s meeting, I wrote a letter to the Daily News, stating that the Camden School was in full possession of the essential points of teachers and pupils, and now needed only £5000 for a suitable building.

To this appeal there was no response in money; but, on July 6, 1871, I had a note from Miss Buss which showed that interest had been excited—

“Dear Miss Ridley,

“Miss Mary Gurney has been here to-day, and she talks of writing a paper for the Leeds meeting of the Social Science. I told her about you, and asked her to write to you, and I also said that a sketch of this, the only public school for girls, would probably lead to more useful, because more positive, results than another paper on the general question of girls’ education.

“Miss Gurney is the daughter of the shorthand writer to the House of Commons, and is deeply interested in all educational questions.

“She has made our acquaintance only from your newspaper paragraph.

“I felt what the little children call naughty on Monday—wearied, dejected, worried, and over-anxious!! But body prevails, as you know, over mind, and I felt very sorry for what I said to you.

“I send you a Daily News of to-day. The leader will help on our appeal. Only the editor, all the way through, speaks of ‘boys’ instead of ‘children,’ which would include boys and girls.

“We meet to-morrow?

“Always yours,

“Frances M. Buss.”

Early in July a letter of mine in Public Opinion had been followed by a discussion on endowments for girls’ schools, which I finally summed up as follows:—

“Now, however, we may hope. In this implied support of the Lord Mayor we see far more than help to the Camden School. We see in it a hope of some large and united public effort, through which the Camden School will be only the first of a series encircling London, and everywhere meeting the same want. A great step has been taken in the City, in Mr. Rogers’ proposed new schools there. Two other City schools are also proposed. It must be remembered, however, that the resident City population is steadily diminishing. To benefit girls truly the schools should come to them in the suburbs.”

Referring to this hope, Miss Gurney writes—

“I am extremely obliged to you for your kindness in thinking of my paper, and sending me such a helpful letter about it. I will get the Illustrated News. I will also venture to write to Miss Cobbe, and I will look at your letter in Public Opinion. I think I have advocated just the same view in my paper. The difficulty seems to be to constitute the central authority. Any Middle-class scheme ought to be very superior to our Elementary Education, which has grave defects. And then, where are our suitable teachers to be found? From my experience of the world there are few people like Miss Buss. It will never do to have the teachers of Elementary schools. But of course all these difficulties must be met with spirit.

“I have been so much interested in your arguments in favour of public schools, of many of which I had not thought, but I agree with all. I should have liked to copy it into my paper, and have acknowledged your kind help, but had not room; so I have stolen some of your ideas, which I hope you will pardon, and have woven them in with a curious German report from Frankfurt. Your thoughts in favour of a ‘mixture of classes’ and ‘true independence’ have long been favourite hobbies of mine; but your idea of an esprit de corps was quite new to me, and I think it most valuable.”

In the Echo of October 10, 1871, there is a report of the Social Science Meeting at Leeds, saying—

“The time of the Education Department to-day was wasted for a long time by two factious men. They spoiled the discussion of the papers by Mrs. Grey and Miss Gurney on the special requirements for the improvement of the education of girls, by two childish speeches, the one in disparagement, the other in eulogy of woman. Mr. Baines (the president) had the greatest difficulty in shutting them up.”

In the same day’s issue of the Echo there is a somewhat sarcastic letter from Miss Cobbe, commenting on Mr. Rogers’ happy visions of help for girls’ education, and demanding the practical realization so long deferred, and especially advocating the claims of the Camden School to a fraction of the help so liberally bestowed on the brothers of these girls.

The outcome of Mrs. Grey’s papers—read before the Society of Arts and the Social Science Congress at Leeds—was a large and enthusiastic meeting in London, in November, 1871, when the Women’s National Education Union was formally inaugurated, with Mrs. Grey as president for the first year. In the year following H.R.H. the Princess Louise (Marchioness of Lorne) became president, with a goodly array of well-known names as vice-presidents, and an acting committee of Educationalists, professional and amateur. Of this committee, Mr. Joseph Payne, Chairman of the College of Preceptors, became the chairman till his death in 1875.

The Woman’s Education Journal, edited by Miss Shirreff and Mr. G. C. T. Bartley, served as the special organ of the Union, lasting for over ten years, and containing a summary of the most important events of a decade rich in interest for all women.

Miss Buss’ Journal-letters refer to the rise of the Women’s Education Union, and also to a suggestion made by a friend that Mrs. Grey, having the public ear, should make an appeal through the Times for the Camden School—

“Nov. 1, 1871.

“Dear Miss Ridley,

“Miss Gurney called on Monday. She is willing to join Mrs. Grey’s association—the National Union for Improving Women’s Education, or some such name. May I give in your name as a member, and perhaps worker? I think we ought now to print an account of what we have done—what say you? Your pamphlet, ‘Pearl and Sea-foam,’ is almost out—I have only two copies. From what Miss Gurney said, I think she would write a pamphlet, but I told her I would consult you. Please tell me your opinion.

“When you can, I want you to enter into our inner life, and then some fine day write an account of it—perhaps after my time, who can say? At all events, a detailed account of Cheltenham College for Ladies was read, at a Social Science Congress one year, and perhaps you might do a similar thing for us at a future time.

“There is a talk of getting representatives of different educational bodies on Mrs. Grey’s National Union Committee. If so, I hope you will represent us. But that appointment must be made by the Board.

“This must be the tenth letter, so you will forgive its jerky style. Our concerts went off well and were well attended.

“Your very loving

“Arnie.

“You do not know my ‘pet name’—that given me by my dear wee nephew?”

Miss Buss was elected on the Council of the Education Union as representative of the school-mistresses Association. She was also of great use in sending information, through me, to a sub-committee of which I was for a time a member.

In readiness for the need of which Miss Buss speaks I had been collecting material for an enlargement of “Pearl and Sea-foam,” but as Miss Gurney was willing to make the schools the text of her pamphlet (issued later as No. 3 of the Women’s Education Union Series), her offer was gladly accepted. In this pamphlet Miss Buss’ schools are recognized as the model on which those of the Girls’ Public Day Schools’ Company were afterwards formed.

In December, 1871, Miss Gurney writes—

“I am extremely obliged for all the trouble you have taken with my paper. It has been a very difficult task, especially after writing on the same subject before. I hope you will read my Leeds paper in the Englishwoman’s Review last month.

“I most fully feel the truth of all you say about Miss Buss. I think her personal influence most wonderful; and, although I cannot say that she has awakened any new enthusiasm in me, because an educational enthusiasm has been always a part of myself, yet I think I am able to see and appreciate her rare worth and talent.

“And yet, in this paper, we must not say anything which will appear like flattery to those who do not know her.”

Miss Buss’ own words gave her appreciation of the help rendered to her own work by this pamphlet—

“Myra Lodge, March 25, 1872.

“My dear Miss Gurney,

“The pamphlet shall go out to-day to Mrs. Gilbert. It seems to me that we cannot circulate your paper too widely. Will you order another one thousand copies, or, if you think more will be wanted, let us have two thousand.

“Should not a copy be sent to the members of the Council of the Society of Arts, and of the Social Science? Copies will be wanted for the annual meetings of both these societies.

“On all hands I hear how glad people are to have so clear a statement of our plans.

“The Merchant Taylors have given us fifty guineas and the Dyers five. As yet, no other Companies have responded to our appeal....

“Dr. Hodgson says he has read your paper with great interest, and that he trusts this strong appeal may help us. He asks whence you quoted him?

“By his advice, I have sent some copies away. During the Easter recess—from the 17th to the 29th of April—I hope to go to Edinburgh, in order to see the five schools of the Merchant Companies: 4400 pupils under one management—two schools for boys, and two for girls (one of the latter with 1200 pupils, and the other with 500), and one mixed school.

“Do you see the Examiner? It is very liberal in the women’s questions. A pamphlet, containing a reprint of many—well, several—of its articles has just been issued.

“I think you will not mind my saying that every one likes your pamphlet—so far as my knowledge goes. When are we to pay for the first edition?

“With all kind regards,

“Believe me, yours most truly,

“Frances M. Buss.

“To Miss Gurney.”

But this comes some months later. In the mean time, Mrs. Grey had to buy the experience that afterwards led to the formation of the new company. The Journal-letter of November 18, 1871, alludes to the inaugural meeting of the Women’s Education Union—

“Nov. 18, 1871.

“Mrs. Grey’s meeting was well attended yesterday, but oddly enough not one word was said of our schools. This does not matter much, however.

“Mr. Forster’s suggestion is admirable, and ought to be carried into execution at once. I think Mrs. Grey would make the appeal; at all events, I will ask her this evening. For the Camden School only, however, for women, we want about £5000.

“It will not do to include the other at present. Miss Gurney has begun her paper, but I am not very clear about it. I was so worried by visitors on Wednesday, when she came, that she and I got only half an hour together, as she had to rush off to Mrs. Grey’s committee.

“If only an agency could be started, with which I was not ostensibly connected, what a comfort it would be! But just now the applications for governesses are overwhelming, and they entail correspondence which is not compatible with the inner school-work, which I ought to do. But at present I see no outlet. I never have leisure to prepare any lessons at all, and it is only this week I have even been able to give an account of my holiday trip to Sweden—among the pupils. Denmark is waiting still; it is necessary to digest one’s materials, to draw up heads, etc., and these require leisure.

“Do you remember the peasant girl, now a first-rate teacher in Stockholm? Also the Danish peasant girl, who is mistress of the orphanage at Holstermunde?...”

“Dec. 8, 1871.

“I fear my last note was pitched in a low key. Mrs. Grey’s letter enclosed will show you there is no occasion for jubilation, but I am better, having nearly struggled through my heavy cold.

“We had a very long sitting on Monday, but got through some business, one part of which was that the Treasurers were empowered to take another house for the Camden School rather than refuse pupils! I gave my furniture, valued at £140, in the Camden School, to the trust. My scholarship is to be invested in Consols, to my disgust, as that will only produce 3 per cent.

“Mr. Harries and Miss Ewart are to audit the accounts on the 22nd, and I wonder where the accounts would be if Mr. Danson did not give so much help to us. Do you know, Mr. Danson is perfectly delightful. He is so business-like, so kind and patient, that I can’t see what I should do without him on the one side, and a certain Annie R. on the other. And I mean this.

“We are all quite sick with anxiety about the Prince of Wales, who is said to be dying. I cannot help being sad about the poor little Princess—our Princess. My dear love to you. My little housemaid is waiting for this to post it, and it is past ten, so good night.”

“Board Room, 202, Camden Road, Dec. 12, 1871.

“Trust for carrying on the North London Collegiate School for Girls.

“Look at this!

“Dear Annie,

“Are we not getting business-like! Mr. Forster’s suggestion of a lecture from Professor J. R. Seeley is a good one, but I doubt whether we should get as much as £100 from the lecture; and as Professor Seeley is already largely pledged to the Hitchin College, I also doubt whether he would lecture for our movement only. But we can try. I know both Professor and Mrs. Seeley. They have visited me at Myra, and I have visited them. Mrs. Seeley is a niece of Mrs. De Morgan.

“Your loving

“Arnie.”

This last suggestion came to nothing, but Mrs. Grey wrote to the Times, setting forth in the strongest way possible the claim of girls in general to the help so freely given to boys, as well as the special claim of the Camden School, not only as recognition of Miss Buss’ services, but from the fact that the school was in full work, and therefore proved conclusively not only the need for such a school, but also that this need could be met. She told how Miss Buss, “with a self-sacrifice as rare as it is noble, had voluntarily handed over the fruits of twenty years’ labours” for the benefit of girls, and then, for these same girls, asks that Miss Buss’ generosity may be supplemented, for the two schools, by a quarter of the amount given to the one school for boys in Cowper Street, since, otherwise, it is to be feared that—

“these schools and their able and devoted principal, Miss Buss, must break down under the strain put upon them, and a great work which has already done so much for the better training of girls, and promises to do more, will have to be abandoned.”

Among my correspondence of this date, I find a note respecting this appeal which might account in some measure for the small response it received—

“The Times won’t do things gracefully. I enclose you Mrs. Grey’s admirable appeal on behalf of the Camden Schools, which I cut out of the outer sheet of the issue of yesterday. The redeeming feature is that the letter is what printers call ‘displayed.’ Unfortunately, however, people who buy the paper at the bookstalls frequently leave the advertisement part behind!”

Within a month after this first letter Mrs. Grey wrote again to the Times, stating in detail the response given to Mr. Rogers’ appeals for boys, and giving as her own experience, concerning the appeal for girls of the same class, the following most noteworthy result:—

“The answer to my appeal for the Camden Town Schools for Girls, founded by the energy, ability, and generosity of Miss Buss, has been £47 2s. 6d., of which £20 would have been given whether my letter had been written or not; so that the net result of my appeal to this great Metropolis on behalf of the sisters of the boys for whom such a magnificent endowment has been received has been, in fact, just £27 2s. 6d.”

This second letter brought in about £100 more, raising the result of Mrs. Grey’s appeal to £147 2s. 6d. The total amount collected by all, after three years of hard work, came to not more than £700.

And yet Miss Jewsbury’s hopeful words, written about this time, were quite true. Public interest was roused, though not as yet to the point of generous giving. Miss Jewsbury writes—

“Give my love to Miss Buss, and wish her a happy New Year. The idea of a thorough education for women has now, I think, taken hold of the public mind, and will be followed by the desire to obtain it. Miss Buss’s schools will bring forth abundant fruit. She has borne the burden and cold of the day, but her work will take root. There was a notice of Mrs. Grey’s letter in the Manchester Examiner and Times, and a leading article too. I had seen a nice letter of Mrs. S. C. Hall’s yesterday. Yes, Mrs. Grey is charming, and good to the core.”

The subject was in all the papers. Miss Cobbe did good service in the Echo, and Miss Chessar in the Queen. Our hopes had naturally risen high when Mrs. Grey took the question up so warmly. The disappointment was proportionately great.

And, bad as this might seem, there was yet more to follow. During the six months since the reading of Mrs. Grey’s paper before the Society of Arts, Mr. Rogers had collected £5000 for a girls’ school in the City. But some City endowments—the “Datchelor Charity” and others—had been found available for girls’ education. Consequently, at the seventh annual meeting of “the Corporation formed for Promoting Middle-class Education in the City of London and the Suburbs,” it was proposed that the £5000—collected for girls expressly—should be used for the new hall of the Cowper Street School for Boys (already endowed with £60,000), this particular sum being just what would make up the £11,000 needed for a new hall.

Several voices, notably that of Alderman Besley, were raised against this act, and mention was made that this sum was all that was asked by the Camden School, in the suburbs, and very close to the City. But the motion was carried.

It was to no purpose that leading journals, as well as “educational enthusiasts,” were “aghast at the announcement that a sum of money contributed for the special purpose of endowing a middle-class school for girls is to be devoted to the purpose of beautifying and enlarging the present middle-class school for boys.” The thing was done.

That the school on which so much had already been expended should, in addition, take the sum, which, comparatively small as it was, would have sufficiently endowed the one existing school for girls of the same class, was a blow calculated to wound to the utmost the women who were devoting themselves heart and soul to the effort to help these girls. Mrs. Grey, in a letter to the Times, expresses this natural feeling with a strength that was not in excess of the provocation received, as she says, “It was with painful astonishment, not unmingled with bitter feelings,” that she had read the report of the meeting. Her letter ends with a still stronger appeal to the editor—

“Will you, sir, not raise, in the name of the nation, a protest which cannot be so easily set aside? Will you not at least make it clear to the public that this is not a woman’s question, but a man’s question, a national question, and that to leave uneducated one-half of the people—and that the half which moulds the associations, habits, and life of the other half—is a course so suicidal that of the nation which deliberately follows it we are tempted to exclaim in bitterness of soul, ‘Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat’?”

Miss Buss naturally shared in this bitter feeling, to which she thus refers—

“You have received my outburst of indignation about the City corporation? Fancy coolly alienating the money collected for a girls’ school, and then handing it to the boys’ school, on which ONLY £60,000 have been spent! Then the land in Southwark, purchased as the site of another school, is to be sold, and the proceeds handed over to the same school. Of course, it would be infinitely more useful to build a school at Southwark than to spend the money on the City school.

“A protest might well be sent from us against the recent act in the City—on public and general grounds. Of course we could not have any claim to that £5000. But it is no matter. Do not trouble about it. But I do feel so impatient and weary sometimes! Still, I try to be faithful. Unto the end, let us hope!

“Really, I am very despairing, spite of success so far.”

But “impatience” and “despair” were never more than passing moods with this strong, brave spirit, whose faith went deep down below all check or discouragement. Here are two notes which end the year 1871 and lead in 1872—

“Myra Lodge, Christmas Morning.

“My dear ‘Annie,’

“A very, very happy Christmas to you and to all you love! “Will you read Mrs. Grey’s note?

“Will you come here for me, or will it be less fatiguing to you, for me to meet you at the Swiss Cottage Railway Station? Please send word by bearer, and the hour. If the latter plan be agreed on, we had better meet at 10.30 or 10.45.

“After our interview with Mrs. Grey, will you return to lunch with me, and let us have a quiet afternoon together? A quiet afternoon for me will be delightful. No consciousness of work neglected, and no responsibility, will make it really enjoyable to me.

“If you will return here, I will ask Agnes to come also.

“Yours always affectionately,

“Arnie.”

“Ryde, New Year’s Day, 1872.

“My dear Annie,

“A very happy New Year to you and yours! Will you accept the enclosed motto,[^[6]] in loving remembrance of Arnie and New Year’s Day? It is a motto one needs to keep in constant remembrance. It is the hardest of all life’s lessons, that of resigning one’s self to an All-guiding and Almighty Hand above....

“I am already much better for leaving behind all responsibilities. It is very cold. On Friday, or Saturday, I expect to go to Sea Moor House, Bournemouth, Hants (Mrs. Hodgson’s), for a few days. My love to you and to Agnes.

“Yours always affectionately,

“Arnie.”

[6]. This motto is, “O God, for Christ’s sake, do with me, in me, to me, by me, for me, as Thou wilt, this year!”

THE LOWER SCHOOL.

CHAPTER IV.
TIMELY HELP.

“Having reaped and garnered, bring the plough,

And draw new furrows, ’neath the healthy morn,

And plant the great Hereafter in the Now.”

E. B. Browning.

But, however it might be borne, the disappointment was bitter, more especially in the proof given of the absolute indifference of the public to the whole question. Prejudice might have been overcome, opposition might have been met, but against indifference so invincible no means seemed available.

Mrs. Grey gave it up as hopeless. She frankly abandoned the old position, and opened out new ground in making her next appeal directly to the British commercial instinct. In starting the Girls’ Public Day School Company there was offered in addition to thorough education, a dividend of five per cent.

The success of Miss Buss had proved that schools like hers were wanted by numbers sufficient to make them pay. There was not the slightest difficulty in any case in raising the £2000 in shares needed to start one of the Company’s schools in any locality desiring to have it.[^[7]]

[7]. Miss Clough, in her interest in Miss Buss’ work, had proposed to the National Education Union the formation of a company to supply school-buildings in this and similar cases. But the council decided to start its own schools, and nothing came of this proposition so far as regarded the Camden School.

This new departure tended rather to hinder than to help on the endowment of the Camden School, of which the very raison d’être was a rate of fees too low even to pay for buildings, a dividend being quite beside the mark.

Money had come in, though slowly, for the furniture of the Upper School, and this was now quite self-supporting, though very inadequately housed. What would, in this school, have gone towards a dividend, went instead to the salaries of the teachers, higher here than in any similar institution.

But for the Lower School an endowment was absolutely necessary. Hitherto, Miss Buss herself had provided all that had been needed beyond the money subscribed. She had not the very faintest intention of fulfilling Mrs. Grey’s desponding prognostications of the abandonment of the scheme as a result of the public apathy. The precise manner in which it was to be carried out still remained to be discovered, but she never wavered in her intention that, somehow, it was to be done.

During the year 1872 the pressure on Miss Buss seemed to be a little increased by this new departure. In June she writes of it—

“Several people have written to me about the £5 shares in the Brompton School, and my ire was rising.

“Mrs. Grey’s handing over all Mr. Morley’s £500 to purchase shares in the new school shows pretty clearly—in addition to the Goldsmid gift—what chance we have of help in that quarter. There can be no doubt that the new school movement is leaving us high and dry.

“I do not feel aggrieved by the Union in the least. It only makes me more determined to act. Miss Davies shuts herself into one bit of work; Mrs. Grey into another; I into a third....

“Mr. Rogers’ suggestion about the Columbia Market (have you seen it?) if acted upon, will prevent our getting any help from the City. He says the market is useless—turn it into a splendid school for girls! I hope the suggestion may be acted upon; if he takes it up, he will soon get the money needed. We shall have no chance at all. The City Companies will vie with each other in starting this magnificent scheme. City men like to ‘live in bricks and mortar’—not to say stone. To live in human hearts is not durable enough.

“Between the two schemes, we shall be swamped entirely if we do not take the bull by the horns and make a huge effort.”

There was no real antagonism between Miss Buss and the Girls’ Public Day School Company. She was very glad of the work, and helped it in many ways, as is shown in Mrs. Grey’s letters—

“18, Cadogan Place, June 18, 1873.

“My dear Miss Buss,

“... I am troubling you again in this matter as there is a proposal before our Council to adopt your scale of fees in the new school....

“Several people have told me that your meeting yesterday was a splendid success. I congratulate you heartily, and sincerely regret not having been able to attend.

“I wonder whether I shall live to see similar success won by the Company’s schools? If we could but get a duplicate of you I should feel very sure of the success, whether I live to see it or not.

“Most truly yours,

“M. G. Grey.”

In September, 1874, the following letter was received by Miss Buss from one of the foremost supporters of the St. John’s Wood and Hampstead High School for Girls, a lady whose enthusiasm had first been roused by her efforts to help Miss Buss’ work—

“My dear Miss Buss,

“I am hoping to work for the St. John’s Wood School, though on the whole I have met with little sympathy. One of the objections to the new school will amuse you vastly, namely, that all the people to whom I applied said that they would not like to subscribe to a school that might in any way interfere with yours, and that the near (!) neighbourhood of St. John’s Wood to Camden Town might have this disastrous result. Nothing that I could say convinced my opponents.... If we cannot get the help of the intelligent and influential persons here, what shall we do?... I feel sure that you can do much to help us: your name could be on our committee, though we should not expect you to work.

“Yours truly,

“E. Tolmé.”

Miss Buss at once took shares in the company, giving her name to the committee, on which I acted as her representative. Many of her own friends were members, as well as educationalists like Dr. Abbott, Dr. Angus, Professor Huxley, Professor Carey Foster, and Mr. Norman Lockyer. The new school was built by Mr. Robins.

In the mean time her own work went on slowly enough. The main hope was now in the Endowed Schools’ Commission, since the constitution of both schools had been arranged in harmony with schemes drawn up by that body.

Whilst one-half of the governing body of the North London Collegiate and Camden Schools for Girls had formed the memorial committee, occupied with ways and means, the remaining members had devoted themselves to working out the details of the constitution, both parties uniting for the general board meetings, and there discussing all points in common.

In Dr. Storrar, who had all his life been closely connected with great educational bodies, having helped in the development of the London University and of the College of Preceptors, we had a practical educationalist; as also in Mrs. Burbury, who, as the daughter of Dr. Kennedy, had breathed education with her earliest breath; Miss Ewart, too, was in like manner born to public spirit, as the granddaughter of the William Ewart to whom William Ewart Gladstone owed his name, and as the daughter of a distinguished member of the House of Commons, who, for forty-six years, helped in every advanced public work, especially the London University. Dr. Storrar and these ladies, in particular, spared neither time nor pains in working out the scheme, and in enlisting sympathy with its objects in all likely quarters.

But, in the beginning of 1872, the Endowed Schools Commission had not finished its work, and help from this quarter was still remote. Some extracts from Miss Buss’ letters at this time show how very slow was the progress made in getting funds—

“January 10, 1872.

“Mr. Ellis privately has sent a cheque for £20 to the Camden School. Lord Calthorpe has done the same, but as yet there has been no other response to our memorial letters.

“Mrs. Newmarch writes a kind note, to say she means to pay us a visit when she can, and she sends a guinea from ‘Mrs. Brown.’ We are getting on, though slowly.”

“Myra Lodge, Mar. 10, 1872.

“The Camden sites and leases have been pressing much on me. Nothing has been done about the site. The lawyers are too dreadful. The land tenure is so complicated that it seems hopeless to understand it!

“I want to talk to you about our trying to get up a City meeting. The Lord Mayor is favourable to female education. I wrote to Mrs. Dakin, asking for an introduction to the Lady Mayoress, but Mrs. Dakin is abroad. I shall try next Saturday through another channel.”

“Mar. 22.

“Miss Gurney’s paper seems to be stirring up much interest.

“The Edinburgh Schools will be open during my holidays. So I propose to leave for Edinburgh on the morning of the 18th of April. Miss Chessar, who is going there next week, will make inquiries about apartments for us. You mean to go, I trust?

“I want to visit the Dollar Schools, as well as the Merchant Company’s Schools, and on the road home I should like to stay a day or so at Newcastle. I must be again in London on Monday, the 29th of April.

“Dr. Hodgson has prepared the way for my admission, and he says I ‘shall find open doors.’”

“Mar. 25.

“We are to have a city meeting. At least, Mr. Elliott and I are empowered to try to get one up.

“I am very weary to-day, having been late last night. I have not an hour to myself, except on Sunday before church, till Tuesday evening, every moment being filled with appointments—I mean after school hours.”

“Bournemouth, Mar. 30, 1872.

“All being well I will go with you—not without you, I trust—to Mrs. Mawson’s, on 27th of April.

“The memorial to the Princess has not gone in, nor that to the Baroness Burdett Coutts. Nothing has been done about our City meeting. I am so tied down by the annual exams, that I hardly know where to turn or what to do, or rather, what not to do.

“I am having, however, perfect peace here. It is a most lovely place, and I should like you to know my dear sweet friend Mrs. Hodgson! She knows a good deal of you.”

“April 5.

“Mr. Harries thinks the City meeting would be a failure. The Lord Mayor could not lend the Mansion House for anything not Metropolitan or National.

“This school was 22 years old yesterday!”

“April 10.

“About Lord G. H. I do not care a rush. Only if we women had not submitted to the humiliation of begging from all sorts of people, on any or no grounds, where should we be?...

“I have sent a book, papers, and a note to-day to Miss B. I think the note, though short, might move a heart of stone!

“If you can come on Friday evening, pray do. Mr. Payne is very anxious to talk philology with you. I have asked all sorts of people who have been offering me hospitality, and all the women teachers in both schools. It is desirable that I should do something for my fellow-labourers from time to time.

“The Lady Mayoress is going to the Camden School on Friday next, at 2.30. Do you care to meet her?”

“April 20.

“Mrs. Tolmés success is delightful! I have thanked her for enlisting the Baroness, but have omitted to say anything about the prizes.

“I did ask about a scholarship, and I have invited the baroness to pay us a visit. A notice of the £10 donation shall be sent to all the papers.”

The “Edinburgh Schools” here mentioned had been recently opened by the Merchants’ Company of that city. Using the money of various old charities that had fallen into utter abuse, they had made five thoroughly good schools on the latest and best principles, two for boys, two for girls, and one mixed. The first school was arranged for 1200 girls, and had proved a great success.

The account of this work had naturally been of great interest to Miss Buss, and, as she knew that there had been every advantage that could be derived from the possession of ample means, she was anxious to see for herself what had been done. She therefore devoted her Easter vacation to the visit to Edinburgh, in which I accompanied her, dating from this happy time that closer intimacy which it was my privilege to enjoy. Dr. Hodgson’s introduction to Mr. Thomas Knox, the Master of the Merchants’ Company, made our way something of a triumphal progress, as I find in my letters home the record of “intense attention from hosts of masters and other people—to Miss Buss, of course, I moving round her like an attendant satellite, and shining in reflected light.” I was still young enough to be amused at Mr. Knox’s description of the “two ladies from the south, eminent educationalists,” doing my best to sustain the character. I could at least appreciate my opportunities in hearing the talk between Miss Buss and Mr. Knox. Even apart from their friendship with Dr. Hodgson, they found a strong bond in their educational sympathies. In my journal I find him described as—

“A tall, fine-looking man, with a grand head, and, I should think, a great heart. It is he who chiefly has carried the great reforms, sweeping away one abuse after another by the force of his strong will and steady purpose. One is struck by his patriotism. His feeling for Edinburgh breaks out constantly, and one can see that his public duty lies as near his heart as any private interest, while he takes as his family all human creatures, especially all young things, from the scholars of the Merchants’ Company’s Schools to the waifs and strays of his own special hobby, the training-ship. It is exquisite to see how this great, strong man speaks to the old women at the Home and to the children, with tender consideration for each individually as well as in general kindness.”

His wife and daughter were absent, so we missed seeing his home-life, but he showed us all that was most worth seeing in his beloved city. To Miss Buss it was real holiday, and nothing seemed too much for her in that busy week which to me was something of severe mental strain, as well as unwonted physical exercise. We must have marched up and down miles of stone passages and stonier staircases; and I find more than once the record that I stayed at home to rest, while Miss Buss took in a few more schools. A “Home for Boys,” and another for “Aged Poor,” are “merely incidental” in a day which includes an Art School, and a School for the Blind, in addition to the ordinary schools. We saw all the Company’s new institutions, and Fettes College, as well as Heriot’s Hospital, and the older foundations.

The palatial structures and perfect appointments of all these schools made Miss Buss, as she said, “go raging wild with envy,” but this did not prevent her from carefully noting all there was to see. Nothing was overlooked that was in any way suggestive. She found a good system of girls’ cloak-rooms, afterwards adopted, with her own improvements, in her own new buildings. She noted that Scotch scones were more wholesome than English buns for the children’s lunch, and in the future secured a Scotch baker to supply them for her own girls. She discussed time-tables and all the intricacies of school management, while I listened and marvelled, and felt more and more like an eminent educational fraud.

Among the few things actually novel to her was the teaching of pianoforte playing in classes, eight girls being taught at eight pianos at the same time by one master. Perfect time was thus secured, as the discord otherwise would have been quite beyond endurance. Some modification of this system was afterwards introduced by Miss Buss into her Upper School.

One thing that roused her disapproval, amidst so much that she admired, was the position of the women-teachers, who, if employed at all, held only inferior and ill-paid posts. Whilst in Edinburgh, she lost no chance of putting in a word for them, and after her return to London, she wrote: “I am firing shells into the Edinburgh schools one by one—Mr. Knox, Mr. Pryde, etc.—to make them use the Local Examinations. Professor Masson has been here this morning, and he advises me to go on, as good may come of it.”

Wherever Miss Buss went she acquired new ideas; but she also scattered them broadcast. As I had an introduction to Miss Eliza Wigham, the well-known leader in all philanthropic movements, we found ourselves in the centre of work of all kinds, being well pleased to discover that though Edinburgh might be ahead in education, London could still hold its own as regarded the employment of women.

I find that we had an afternoon tea, to which leading workers and teachers were invited, of which I record: “At our party we have had a grand seed-sowing. Everywhere Miss Buss throws out hints and suggestions likely to bear good fruit. There are many persons who will remember the talk to-day.”

At Gateshead it was just the same. She secured several pupils for her friend Mr. C. H. Lake; and, although the sisters of these boys became pupils at Myra Lodge, she at that time set going the idea of the Girls’ High School, soon afterwards started, which took the younger members of these families from herself.

Before leaving Scotland we paid a visit to Dollar, where Miss Buss saw her ideal system at work, as she here found an old-established “mixed school.” Her theories were, on the whole, confirmed; but she found some drawbacks, which made her content to wait till all the perfect conditions could be secured.

After Dollar, we had a few days of quiet, with delightful drives in the scenery round the Bridge of Allan, where our friend Mr. Forster chanced to be staying at the Ochill Park Hydropathic Establishment.

The whole trip was full of interest, and not the least part of it was the delight of having that full mind pouring itself out on all possible subjects, and in scenes where the historic and poetic associations add a new charm to the beauty of nature.

But there was still more to come in an event which, important as it was in itself, acquired still greater force when taken in connection with the feelings excited in Miss Buss’ heart, by the sight of the richly endowed Edinburgh schools.

We broke our journey southwards at Gateshead, where we visited Mrs. Mawson at Ashfield, a house well known to many a worker as a place where pleasant things are wont to happen, and therefore most suitable for this most happy occurrence. The large family circle had gathered round Miss Buss, to hear her recent experiences, and to ask about her own work, entering into her hopes and plans for the future of the schools, when a telegram was brought to her. She read it; and, after a silent pause, rose and, crossing the room, put her arms round me in her own impulsive way, as she said, with rare tears in her voice as in her eyes, “Miss Ewart has given £1000 to the Camden School!”

How much this meant to the founder could be known only to those who had learnt how near to her heart was this dream of so many years. If only Miss Ewart herself could have seen, as we saw who were there, the joy thus given by her generous act, she would have been content, even without all that is still to come out of it to the girls of generations unborn, who will remember her name with gratitude.

Miss Ewart completed her good work by a large loan, which made it possible at once to think about buildings for the Camden School. Miss Buss left me at Gateshead, and went back to her work with a renewed energy and courage, which come out very noticeably in the letters received during the next few weeks.

“Myra Lodge, April 30, 1872.

“A few lines before going to the great Suffrage meeting. Forty new entries in the Camden Road. Thirty, so far, in Camden Street.”

“May 1, 10.30 p.m.

“I was interrupted last night by the arrival of a mother—Mrs. Crookes, wife of the Psychic Force Mr. Crookes. While she was talking, the cab arrived—no, no; just after she had done talking, the cab came with Mr. and Mrs. Sep, for me to go to the Suffrage meeting. We got back at one. We met everybody—Mrs. Tolmé among others. All day I was driving at express-train speed. At two o’clock Dr. Storrar came in, and, as he had a committee at University College at five, stayed till 4.30. I had had no lunch, and a council of teachers had assembled at four.

“The meeting lasted till eight. Tired out, I walked home with Miss Begbie, and found here Mr. and Mrs. J. waiting to arrange poor Mrs. B.’s affairs with me.

“They have just gone. The pressure of new pupils is enormous, and the reorganization of the school is also heavy. There is just the same pressure in Camden Street, but I have taken nothing up there, and cannot till to-morrow afternoon. Teachers, furniture, etc., are all to be found.

“Did I tell you on Sunday night that I asked Dr. Storrar if the lender of the £3000 was Miss Ewart? He does not answer, so we can draw our own conclusions.

“I am to ask her to fix the time for a special meeting, and must do so to-morrow, if I can find a few minutes.”

“Myra Lodge, May 3.

“I am sure you will believe in the impossibility of my writing much. The whole day—four o’clock now—I have been walking about, organizing classes.

“How to dovetail all the subjects of instruction and the pupils is a difficulty not to be described. Things are getting into order; but I have found no housekeeper, and want a new teacher.

“The Edinburgh papers are untouched, as I have not had a moment to arrange them. But yours will serve for the School-Mistresses’ meeting.

“Don’t be vexed, but the City meeting is quite off, so I judge from Mr. Elliott’s remarks; also there seems a feeling that all mention of us to the Princess Louise has been omitted. She called a meeting of Lord Lyttelton, Mrs. Cowper Temple, and others, to give her advice, and it seems Dr. Storrar wrote later to Lord Lyttelton to express his vexation that Lord L. had not pointed us out as leaders in the question of girls’ schools. We are to get at Princess Louise, but how is not settled. Dr. S. does not think we can hold a City meeting.

“Mrs. Bonham-Carter sends me £25. You shall see the note.

“My love to you and all the Ashfield circle. My little stay there was so pleasant, I wish I were with you now. Did I ever say how charming my Edinburgh trip was? My companion was such a dear, sweet girl.

“Did you find your new dress much tumbled, I wonder?

“Love to Mrs. Mawson and her girls.

“Did you not know that my Edinburgh trip was quite delightful to me?”

“Myra Lodge, May 13, 1872.

“I had no opportunity of expressing my pleasure at seeing you again, so do it on paper.

“Dr. Storrar knew what Miss Ewart meant to do, and he knew what I only dimly suspected—namely, that she offered to lend the £3000 also.

“She paid the school a visit on Thursday with Madame Bodichon, and Dr. Storrar says she has grown into a regard for our work. She was perfectly charming to me to-day, and especially about Mrs. Bonham-Carter’s note.

“I whispered that I could make ducks and drakes of the £25: buy a dress if I liked, as the money was given to me for my comfort! She took me by the hand, and said she wished I would spend it exactly as I liked; it really was at my disposal.

“If Mr. Robins is not our architect, I am sure he will exonerate you and me. I hope he will. Perhaps things will go as we wish.

“Dr. S. distinctly told me he thought Miss Ewart had no particular person in her mind’s eye.

“I am going to Mrs. Tait in the morning, and out to dinner in the afternoon. I mention the latter merely to let you know that I shall be hurried to-morrow.”

“202, Camden Road, May 28.

“I fear I cannot manage to get to you to-morrow evening. There is a Dorcas meeting here, followed by a lecture, which will keep me very late; and I have been under an engagement for more than a fortnight to go to Mrs. Arthur Arnold’s At Home (A. Arnold is editor or proprietor of the Echo) at Stanley Gardens, nine o’clock.”

An introduction to the Rev. Stopford Brooke gave further pleasant encouragement as Mr. and Mrs. Stopford Brooke visited the schools, and were so much interested that they even spoke of sending their own daughters. The distance made this plan impracticable, but Mr. Brooke’s interest was shown in other ways. Miss Buss writes—

“Mr. Stopford Brooke sent yesterday a cheque for £13 8s. 11d., with a note saying his people were away, but he would try again next year. Decidedly the publication of his sermon would be helpful to the cause of education, but I hope the right place would be given to Miss Davies. Please also take care of her note, which I enclose. Mr. Latham seemed to think we might perhaps get £300 a year for endowment.

“The ‘leaving scholarships’ are like the £100 a year, for three years, given by the Merchants’ Company in Edinburgh. It would be delightful to send some girls to Girton College (papers of which I send you some copies) or to Germany, for music, etc.

“If it is fine on Tuesday afternoon, what do you say to meeting me here at six o’clock sharp, and of our going together to the Botanic Gardens?

“We should at least be quiet; and a walk would be pleasant, or a drive to the entrance, and a walk inside? I want to see you.”

“June, 1872.

“Oh, how very heavy the work has been this week! I was almost overdone this morning. Last Saturday, I had to hunt about for sites, etc. There is scarcely anything to be found that will do for the Camden School, and I have been nearly tearing my hair, because the ground opposite the Upper School may be sold for a chapel. It is very trying to see that splendid site, actually the only available spot in the district—nearly half an acre—commanding Hampstead, Kentish Town, Highgate, and Holloway, and yet be unable to find any one willing even to lend on the security of the land and building. From eighty to ninety years is the length of the lease. I have been doing my best to get people to take up the Upper School—MY very own work—as Miss Ewart has done the Lower, but so far have been unsuccessful. Could we get at Mr. George Moore anyhow? Mr. Reeve, of Portland Chapel, is his guide, philosopher, and friend. Could we enlist Mr. Reeve?

“It is very wicked, I know; but, all the same, I can’t help it. I feel quite sick with despair, with that land opposite, and such worry from overcrowding inside our school-house. We must refuse pupils. And we might have such a splendid school for three hundred girls! If only we could get the sinews of war!

“Why should not Agnes write to Mr. Froude herself? Mrs. Arnold’s soirée enabled me to speak to several people—notably to Mrs. Pennington, who is doing her best to persuade her husband to give us a thousand pounds.

“I did not tell you that on Thursday morning I called on Mr. Jowett at Cowper Street. He was occupied in taking over the schools an American and the Warden of the Fishmongers. My card was taken to his room, where was standing a tall, gentlemanly clergyman, whom I at once recognized as Mr. Rogers.

“At first the mere mention of my name did not strike him, but presently he took up the card, peered curiously at it, and then turned round to me. We had some talk. I told him about the land. He said, ‘Nothing venture, nothing get. You must take the land. Secure it by putting your £1500 down; then go boldly to the public with a clear, definite scheme. People will not listen to vague plans.’ He said, ‘Don’t amateur your plans. Get a surveyor’ (he mentioned one), ‘pay him to get up the information, etc.’

“I am quite sure we have been amateuring too long. We ought to carry in Mr. Robins. I have sent his testimonials to Dr. Storrar, and Mr. Robins’ application will come on Monday. In three days Mr. Robins can put us into a position to say we want so much.

“We must do and do and do.

“But Mr. Rogers says, ‘We shall get no help for the Upper School.’ I could have said, ‘You are a University man. How did you get your education? From old endowments? or from your father’s pockets ENTIRELY?’ But that would have been rude; so I was silent.

“I am resolved not to let the Lower School be put down on the new land FIRST. Both must be done together, or the Upper first. You see why it would be dangerous to risk the Upper School. If we can only get help for the Lower—so be it. We will then borrow for the Higher, and do the two together.”

CHAPTER V.
TRIUMPH.

“There is now no such thing as a ‘Woman’s Education Question’ apart from that of education generally; and the real question which has still to be fought for many a long year, I fear, is one as old as education itself: how is the child of either sex to be trained to the measure of the stature of the perfect human being?”—Letter from Mrs. Grey to Miss Buss, Dec., 1881.

In August, 1872, things suddenly assumed a fresh aspect. It was not till July, 1879—still seven years of waiting and working—that the goal was finally attained in the opening of the new schools. But, from August 2, the date of a letter from Mr. Roby, the Secretary of the Endowed Schools Commission, to Miss Buss, this goal came within sight. This letter Miss Buss enclosed to me, with a few words of comment, which touched me not a little.

“I send you a copy of a note which I got yesterday. Please send it on, with my love, to Mrs. Offord. It is the realization, probably, of our hopes. Yet I take it as quietly as I did Miss Ewart’s donation of a thousand pounds—not ungratefully, I trust. I have offered a meeting on Tuesday morning, but expect that will be too late. So, in October, things must be settled.

“I leave this place on Monday, so as to get through heaps of work in town, before starting for the Continent. My brother Sep will be in Brussels by the time we get there. Probably it will be better to say very little about Mr. Roby’s note. ‘There’s many a slip,’ etc.”

The letter, of so much interest to us all, ran as follows—

“92, Kensington Gardens Square, W., Aug. 2, 1892.

“Dear Miss Buss,

“I am very glad to be able to announce to you that the Commissioners have proposed to the Brewers’ Company, who are the Governors of Aldenham School, to subsidize the Camden Schools, and that the Governors have agreed to this.[^[8]] As to details, nothing is settled, but I hope to get a handsome sum towards building, so as to complete, with what you have collected, all that is necessary, and also some annual endowments.

“The next step is for our Assistant-Commissioner to have a conference with you and your Board, so as to ascertain what is the amount needed, and what is the best form the assistance should take.

“If your Board could meet Latham anywhere (either at the Camden Schools, or at 2, Victoria Street) on an early day next week, it would be well.

“If not, the matter must wait till October, as we are all dispersing for the Vacation.

“Will you please to write to Latham at once?

“Yours very truly,

“(Signed) H. J. Roby.”

[8]. In the reign of James II., “Richard Platt, a wealthy brewer, left a piece of land in trust to the Brewers’ Company to maintain a school in his native village, Aldenham.” On this piece of land now stands St. Pancras Station. The value of the property became too great for only the one school to be maintained, and the sum of £20,000 was given in order to build our two schools, one in the Camden Road, and the other in the Prince of Wales Road; in addition, a similar sum was given as an Endowment, thus using the money in the Parish of St. Pancras.

On the following day I had another note from Miss Buss, and for some time to come the whole story of the hopes and fears, the anticipation and delay, may be given in her own words from these letters—

“Aug. 8, 1872.

“I had a note yesterday from Mr. Latham, agreeing to an appointment with our Board, next Tuesday morning, at 2, Victoria Street, ten o’clock.

“This is your notice; so please don’t say you were not invited!

“In consequence of the delay in getting Mr. Roby’s note to me, I asked for an appointment next week, when Mr. Roby meant this week. But, as it turns out, my mistake is of no consequence, as Mr. Latham, the Assistant-Commissioner, is still in town.”

“Aug. 10, 1872.

“I did not write to you yesterday, because I expected that very, very charming note, which came this morning. Dr. Storrar wrote to me to say—however, I enclose his note—that the meeting had better take place at 202, Camden Road. So I wrote at once to every one but you (and Miss Ewart and Mrs. Sidgwick, who are abroad), to say that our meeting was to be held in Camden Road, and not in Victoria Street. Twelve notes in all! Still, I think Dr. Storrar is right, and as only the trouble fell on me, it was better to ask every one to change. I hope Mr. Latham will not mind.”

“Aug. 11, 1872.

“Any money given to us by the Endowed Schools Commission will be for both schools. My only hope for the Upper School has been centred in the Endowed Commission. Our plan of placing the schools side by side will make the ground more easy to get.... I have long expected a grant from the Commission, but these things are so long about that there was a doubt on my mind whether the grant would be made for years to come.

“Mr. Latham says the part of the Platt income available for St. Pancras amounts to about a thousand a year. He does not like the notion of the two schools being together. So it is proposed that we ask for about £16,000 for the two buildings and ground for the Lower School, on the Platt estate, which belongs to the Brewers.”

The good news had come just as Miss Buss was starting for her summer holiday, this year spent in Germany and Switzerland. On her return she writes—

“Myra Lodge, Sept. 14. 11.30 p.m.

“Out of sight has not been out of mind, I assure you.

“I got back yesterday at about one o’clock a.m. and have ever since been in a whirlpool of work and consequent worry.

“There are more than fifty new entries for the North London School, 54 in fact, and more are coming on Monday.

“Over sixty are entered in the Camden School. The new buildings look very well—as a temporary thing—but must be furnished immediately in order to receive the new pupils; teachers must be found—housekeeper, servants, etc. I have been dashing through all sorts of work to-day, to get things in train.

“Anyway, our success justifies our taking the new place, and puts us into the way of paying for it.

“My holidays were perfectly delightful; but I must tell you about them at some other time.

“My dear Annie, I am not sure at all about success not being too elating! I will try to guard against myself, but feel doubtful. Success of a certain kind is necessary to make one learn one’s self; but too much may be puffing up.

“However, it has gone midnight, so I will say no more than that I am

“Your loving

“Arnie;

“that I am glad you are all well; that I shall not get any time to myself to-morrow, as I am to go to my father after service for the rest of the day, and that Monday will be a dreadfully hardworking day.

“Will you take care of the Times’ account of the Prize Day? The mighty Thunderer sent his own Reporter!”

“Myra Lodge, Dec. 10, 1872.

“There has been a long—2½ hours—conversation with Mr. Roby and Mr. Latham. It is proposed to send us a draft of the scheme before it is published, and this draft is (if possible) to be here by Monday week, the 23rd.