“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 59it 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 60of 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 61commonplace, 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—
62“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 63lamb, 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 64her 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—
65“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 na?vely 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 66growing 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 67help 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 68here 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 69what 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 70possession 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 71had 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 72own 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!”